Monthly Archives: April 2009

I haz a complaint

It just must have been the day for it. I heard the same question so many times today that I started to wonder if I was in Groundhog Dog or if someone was just messing with me.

Every second person wanted to be introduced to a literary agent (one in four wanted to be
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Book Launch at Conjecture – Horn

Horn
by Peter M Ball
http://www.twelfthplanetpress.com
Book Launch – Sunday June 7th, Conjecture, Adelaide

There’s a dead girl in a dumpster and a unicorn on the loose – and no-one knows how bad that combination can get better than Miriam Aster. What starts as a consulting job for city homicide quickly becomes a tangled knot of unexpected questions, and working out the link between
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The Lifted Brow #4

I’d like to draw your attention to this little tome, The Lifted Brow #4. It has all sorts of writing-y and music-y goodness going for it. Lyrics by Neil Gaiman on the CDs, stories by writers as amazing as Karen Russell and Rick Moody, among others.

It can be acquired from http://www.theliftedbrow.com/. It’s a miscellany in the truest sense of the
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Clarity + Specificity = Authority OR How to Make the Lie Work

Art by Kathleen Jennings

Thinky Thinkerton has booked the smallest room in Hotel Brain and has been contemplating authorial authority (yes, she’s a nerd with a lot of time on her hands). Basically, I’ve been wondering this: how do
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I give you the new Writer's Bible: Booklife

http://www.jeffvandermeer.com/2009/04/21/booklife-turned-innow-it-begins/

I have been fortunate enough to beta-read this and everything in it is useful and wise. On at least four occasions I found solutions to writerly problems I was suffering. Best of all, it’s written by a writer – a real writer who’s already experienced and overcome the issues and offers up sensible, workable solutions for
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A New Nasty Story at The Daily Cabal – The Impatient Dead

“I know more about cemeteries than most people. My mother used to take me weekly to visit my father’s grave. My earliest memories are of stone angels and rusting fences. No real feelings beyond a vague sense of having missed out. I do remember my mother, her long dark hair draped around her shoulders like a mourning shawl. If my
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Rocking out the Ditmar Vote – Short Stories/Novellas*

*snurched from Girlie Jones’ LJ (Apr. 21st, 2009 at 10:11 AM)

Pimping Aussie Short Stories today.

Here’s the collective Not if You Were the Last Short Story on Earth http://community.livejournal.com/lastshortstory/2008/12/03/ best of 2008 short story reading list:

The Last Great House of Isla Tortuga…Peter M. Ball (Dreaming Again)
On the Finding of Photographs of My Former Loves… Peter M. Ball (Fantasy)
As We Know It…
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Short Films

Had a very nice meeting with talented young film maker James Findlay yesterday (http://www.vendtheshortfilm.googlepages.com/home) and had a chat about making a film of one of my Daily Cabal microfictions, Sunday Drivers (http://www.dailycabal.com/angela_slatter/). Another mutual friend, the equally talented Mark Kassab wrote a short film script, Sisters, based on Sunday Drivers, and James liked it so much that he wants
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Monsters vs Aliens (An ersatz review*)

So, last night I went along with some friends to see Dreamworks’ Monsters vs Aliens – in the interests of turning off brains, disconnecting from the problems of the world and our bad/complicated/non-existent/failing relationships. Kids’ movies are good for that. Madagascar II distracted me for days from anything
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New Story at The Daily Cabal

‘Hermione’s Farewell’ is based on Greek mythology (not on Harry Potter characters, thank you very much). It lives here http://www.dailycabal.com/.