WARRIORS OF BATAK
Campagna, Dan (Task Force Games, 1982)
Somewhere in the last century, the boilerplate book cover for fantasy roleplaying products became a picture of two magical warrior women in cleavage-armour confronting each other from the backs of dragons[1]. Continue reading
MAKE ART MAKE MONEY
Elizabeth Hyde Stevens 2013 ISBN 9781477817384
My attention was first drawn to this book when Mary Robinette Kowal mentioned on Writing Excuses that she had recently recorded the audiobook version. The idea sounded fascinating – an examination of how Jim Henson balanced the art side of his work against the business side of his work, and yet somehow managed to do the miraculous, and wildly succeed at both. Continue reading
IN A DARK WOOD WANDERING
Hella S. Haasse (trans. Lewis C. Kaplan and Anita Miller, Arrow Books, 1989, ISBN 0 09 9744708)
In a Dark Wood Wandering appears to be a compulsory part of any good second-hand bookshop collection. Though compared at its release to The Name of the Rose and similar works of medieval-based fiction, it seems to have been largely forgotten. Impelled by its glorious cover, despite my mother’s warnings not to judge a book that way, I have attempted several times to start this book. As a medievalist and historical literature fan this novel seemed theoretically ideal. Sadly, the effort required in getting into the novel was not well repaid. Continue reading
DEATH OF A SALESMAN
Miller, Arthur (Book Club Edition, Viking, 1949; ISBN (1958 edition) 9786700003299)
Timeworn novels and films have left many of us with the rather outdated image of the door-to-door salesperson as a fast-talking cracker in a suit carrying a vacuum cleaner. “Pardon me, madam. I’ve come from Suction King to demonstrate the unmatched effectiveness of our affordable new Super-Vac, which retails for just 29.99”.
In contrast, the solemn modern energy vendor turns up to your door in shirtsleeves. Sometimes he has a speechless trainee with him who just watches as he runs through his routine. He never looks older than twenty-five. More often than not, he confers the impression of having held the job himself for less than a month. He seems uneasy. You’d swap over to his syndicate out of simple sympathy, but he opens his spiel by telling you that he’s come because they’ve discovered that your energy retailer overcharges you for electricity. As if they’d detected an emergency up at Electricity Headquarters and dispatched him to respond to it. “My God, a household in Clayton overpays for its electricity. Send our best man at once.” Continue reading
EBOOK & PUBLICATION PLATFORMS
This is the second in my series on self-publishing. To begin with I wanted to have a quick look at what sorts of self-publishing options exist, both electronic and not electronic. You can read the first post in this series here.
I’m going to divide publishing options into four broad categories, outlined below: Continue reading
This is the final in my short series where I’ve attempted to root out the origin of some writing adages and put them in context. It seems more than likely that “murder your darlings” should be the easiest of these to hunt down. Continue reading
PROCLUS: COMMENTARY ON PLATO’S TIMAEUS 
Baltzly, Dirk (Three vols., Cambridge University Press, 2007, 2009 & 2013; ISBN 978-0521183888)
The masculine squalor of a man’s first share-house often owes as much to his housemates’ incompetence at housework as to their disdain for it. Some may know how to replace fuse wire or unblock a toilet, but few men of eighteen have any tangible notion of how to clean a grill trap or defrost a refrigerator.
When Dirk Baltzly moved out in the eighties, many young men couldn’t even cook. Continue reading
After hunting up an early reference to Write What You Know, I thought I’d have a quick hunt for that other old adage of writing advice, Show Don’t Tell. This is another piece of advice that is useful in some but not all instances for some but not all writers.
If you tend to over-labour your writing and use too much description then you might well need to tell not show, after all. Usually telling is required when you need to keep the pace going quickly and when the immediate scene is of less importance, either to the story or the character. You can think of this as a ‘zoom’ even. Continue reading
I was listening to an author interview today when the interviewer mentioned that old adage from writing school – write what you know. As far as writing what you know about emotionally this bit of advice sort of makes sense, though it is more often taken far more literally both by would-be writers and their teachers. When taken literally the adage makes little sense. Continue reading
THE BIGGEST SECRET
Icke, David (Bridge of Love Publications, 1999; ISBN 0-9526147-6-6)
David Icke believes in the literal truth of the postulate that the rest of us accept only as a metaphor: that the creatures who rule our planet belong to a race of blood-drinking lizardmen.
In 1991, Icke began to wear only the colour turquoise. Continue reading
An occasional viewer of ABC’s First Tuesday Bookclub, I tuned in the other month to see the “classic” up for review was Anne Tyler’s Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant. Having nursed a fierce loathing for that novel since studying it for English in year 10, I watched, somewhat in the hope of having my opinion confirmed. Obviously I knew by then that teachers don’t intentionally assign books students will hate, but I was still surprised when a majority of the panel loved it. “To reject this book,” one panelist gushed (to paraphrase), “is to reject the nourishment of life.”
Well then.
To clarify, I wasn’t one of those students who refused to read assigned texts. I didn’t, either, automatically hate assigned texts. I actively enjoyed reading and analysing most of the set books*. On learning a friend in the literature class* had to write an essay on 1984, I became very excited and volunteered to write it for her*. Nonetheless, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant is one of the three assigned books I hated with a passion. They were as follows:
The Miles Franklin Award was announced this week, going to Evie Wyld for All the Birds, Singing. The Miles Franklin is a very long-standing award and its announcement put me in mind of past controversies. I wondered if there was already a controversy around Evie Wyld’s win – a half-hearted Google rummage doesn’t seem to turn up rancour thus far at least. Nonetheless, it is the Miles Franklin after all, and sooner or later someone will complain about something. Continue reading