You know when you’re just a little off? When things just refuse to go right? That’s me at the moment.

Thursday I went home from work sick. I had a meeting first thing and then an overdue deadline. I sat and worked on the one page briefing for a couple of hours and tinkered and worked on it and thought I’d just get it done then I’d go home. But I could see I had another hour maybe to whip it into shape and I was reallllly not feeling well. The – if I leave this longer, the train may no longer be an option – kind of unwell so I emailed it onto my boss and headed home. C of course was out for lunch with the car so I had to catch the train and then a bus to him to get the car and house keys to get home. And then I slept for 3 hours. As you know, I don’t nap, so that’s never a good sign.

And then I spent a good 24 hours just not on – staring into space, watching terrible (but oh so good) television, answering emails and reading Deadline by Mira Grant. Saturday was more of the same. I was just … not quite right. And doing things like slamming doors on my hand coming out of the bathroom, woke up with a pinched muscle in my back and limited neck movement etc. That ever happen to you? When you just don’t seem to be firing on all cylinders? I dunno if it was flu that never really came on (auto immune diseases are good for one or two things) or being really run down or what.

Sunday I managed to make it to the quilt and craft fair. My usual buddy couldn’t come this year as she broke a bone in her foot last weekend (!) and since the duty was looking like falling to C, his mother stepped in and said she’d be happy to join me. So I met her there and we spent a couple of hours looking at the exhibition and buying fat quarters and having coffee (and I’m really getting married, aren’t I?!) and then I stayed behind to get a few more bits and pieces before heading home. [I bought 3 fat quarters, 6 buttons, a tea cosy book because I am obsessed with hilarious tea cosies, a pattern for a kimono shirt, and bits and pieces - pencils, pins etc]

Then I headed to Helen’s to have a nice catch up with her and Amelia and I’d not been there half an hour when I took a rather dramatic tumble down Helen’s back stairs. I don’t know what happened, I’d hardly moved when I fell forward and then fell down the stairs and kept going. I seem to have managed to have fallen on my whole body – slammed one hand and have taken a chunk out of the palm of my hand so I can’t type well or knit, and scraped the other whilst I landed on my other arm, one knee and both shins copped it, one much worse than the other with a massive scrape and then my ankle and toes which have blood blisters. But I reckon that’s the only thing that stopped me breaking a bone. And we weren’t sure there for a while. I nearly took out Helen’s daughter and as I lay there sprawled on the stairs the look on her face was of such terror I spent all my effort on not crying. And then not fainting. There was blood and a lot of pain and a lot of bruising and I go into shock quite easily.

But after a while, and some ice and bandaids, all was good and I had a cup of tea and cheered right up!And then went home to enjoy Eurovision. OMG I loved Turkey and Ireland so so much.

Today I hobbled into work to find much of my team had either been off sick, were off sick or went home sick. And I found a physio in the CBD to look at my neck/back. The city is pretty convenient for having access to things (better than either of the other jobs I had this year). And I got a new pillow, which might have been some of the problem. And I need to address stress, and ignoring headaches. and peering at the laptop like I’m doing right now. And probably it’s time for bed.

I hope you’re fairing better than me right now.

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

We’ve sent all our forthcoming books to the printers, we’re in the process of making our lists and checking them twice –> Twelfth Planet Press is off to Natcon 2012/Continuum 8 in Melbourne. We shall be in the dealers room all weekend! You can also find us at:

Twelfth Planet Press Hour on Friday Night – its a gold coin donation day at Continuum so open to all and sundry!

Ever wondered how your favorite Twelve Planet collection would taste like in cupcake form? Then come along to the Twelfth Planet Cocktail hour, to celebrate the launch of the newest Twelve Planets, Through Splintered Walls, by Kaaron Warren, and Cracklescape by Margo Lanagan, plus the new TPP novella Salvage by Jason Nahrung. All your other favourite Twelve Planets will be there and we’ll also be making a surprise announcement!

Each book will be lovingly interpreted as a cupcake by master baker, Terri Sellen. Your cocktail choice is entirely your own…

Galactic Suburbia will record an episode live over the weekend,

Embiggen Books Event, 5pm Saturday

A book launch with a difference! Come join host Ian Mond, TPP publisher Alisa Krasnostein and TPP authors as they launch the Twelve Planets into space, via a live podcast from Embiggen Books. Find out what goes in to putting together this acclaimed series of boutique collections. Hijinks will undoubtedly ensue.

A Stitch In Time Travel Preview
Come and help beta test a pattern from the upcoming new craft ebook from Twelfth Planet Press.
Crochet hooks optional.

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

I’ve been a bit quiet again about these parts but last weekend C and I made a whirlwind trip to Sydney for the Aurealis Awards. I’m so glad C came with me. I’m just not enjoying flying as much these days as I used to and it made such a big difference to have C along. And I’ve found the perfect way to get myself to sleep on the plane – bring enough entertainment (knitting, podcasts, reading) to fill the entire trip. I fell asleep before takeoff from Perth on Friday night at midnight (hadn’t been sleeping during the week) – I even complained to C that they didn’t do the safety demo and he just looked at me like I was odd. On the way back I slept for about half, still not bad for me. But still what use is three hours sleep for me?

After the red eye, we arrived at the hotel at 7am and were unimpressed not to be able to check in. We headed off for breakfast with C’s sister and a couple of friends down to Ripples at Luna Park. So we’d been there an hour and were taking in the gorgeous Sydney Harbour Bridge up close and personal. Breakfast was lovely and it was nice to just hang out and talk weddings and things. And then we headed back to the hotel, via a little chocolate shop to run an errand for Terri. Sadly the shop did not have what she was after but all the chocolates looked so delectable I grabbed a few things for the little party I knew we’d have later that night when Tansy and Alex arrived.

We got back to the hotel at midday and our room was still not ready. By this stage, I was pretty ragged and just wanted my room so I could nap before the awards. We waited in the lobby, I fell asleep a couple of times, watched the staff behind the desk not be there pretty much most of the time. Eventually we got to check in at 1.45pm and I’d just showered and laid down when Tansy rang me to tell me she’d arrived.

We’d booked a suite for the weekend – two rooms and lounge and stuff for Galactic Suburbia to hang out. We knew we’d chat long into the night! I’d organised strawberries dipped in chocolate to be there on arrival as a surprise but the hotel stuffed that up too. Bit of a shame. Tansy and I caught up a bit before Alex arrived and then it was all on! We grabbed dinner, with Emma who we found at some point, before we glammed up for the awards. (I took no photos)

It was fantastic to see everyone start to filter down into the lobby to head off to the Independent Theatre. Lots of hugs and squeals and quick catch ups.

The awards were nerve wracking! I had three speeches I was in charge of … should the occasion arrive! Some of the categories were excruciating when I had several horses in the race – I love all my babies equally! I did get to accept Sue Isle’s Aurealis Award for “Nation of the Nights” from Nightsiders for best Young Adult Short Story.

And then, Galactic Suburbia was awarded the Peter McNamara Convenors’ Award for Excellence. I can’t really capture the feeling of sharing such an honour with Tansy and Alex. We were so blown away for the podcast to be recognised. As we stood there sort of processing it all, Tehani read the most amazing few words about the project:

The Peter McNamara Convenors’ Award for Excellence is awarded at the discretion of the convenors for a particular achievement in speculative fiction or related areas. This award may take into account a body of work or achievements over a number of years; it can also be for a work of non-fiction, artwork, electronic or multimedia work, film or TV, or that which brings credit or attention to the speculative fiction genres. The award was originally known as The Convenors’ Award for Excellence and was renamed in 2002 after Peter McNamara (d. 2004), publisher, editor and the original Aurealis Awards convenor, shortly after he was diagnosed with a terminal illness.

Galactic Suburbia (GS) is an Australian feminist speculative fiction podcast, hosted by Alisa Krasnostein, Alex Pierce and Tansy Rayner Roberts (produced by Andrew Finch). Since March 2010, GS has been providing fortnightly podcasts covering SF news, culture and opinion, and in particular discussing these topics from a feminist point of view. Of particular note is the “Spoilerific Book Club”, which has produce in-depth and critical analysis of books ranging from Joanna Russ’ How to Suppress Women’s Writing, to the hugely popular YA dystopia ‘Hunger Games’ trilogy. The GS team produce serious critical analysis, whilst still keeping the topics entertaining and accessible.

Galactic Suburbia was one of the first Australian podcasts of SF literature and culture, and has inspired many new Australian podcasts, including The Coode Street Podcast, The Writer and the Critic, and Bad Film Diaries, Live and Sassy and The Book Nut. Thus GS has founded a new arena for SF criticism and review in Australia, as well as bringing a new international audience to Australian writing, not only promoting works by Australian authors but also highlighting feminist issues within the global speculative fiction scene and thereby encouraging vital debate and discussion among community members.

It’s still not really sunk in for me, I guess. To be recognised for excellence for our little podcast is just amazing. It just makes us so happy that people tune in every fortnight, and shout at the podcast, and laugh with us and cry with us and eat cake with us and send us feedback. Being part of Galactic Suburbia – not just getting to mull over and dissect ideas and issues with two intelligent, thoughtful women – but seeing a community grow around it has just been one of the most positive and uplifting projects I’ve ever been involved with. Hearing from other people that things we’ve discussed have made them think about how they are in the world, how they read and how they interact with text and film and audio and the world, and in some cases *changed* that  – I mean, that’s the best outcome you can ever hope from the work you do. And it’s shown to me that you *can change* things, you *can make a difference*, even “just” three women talking into their laptops in their bedrooms on a Thursday night. And, that change is possible? I mean, that means *anything* is possible.

If you listen to the podcast, I want to say thank you. Thank you for listening and for hearing. Thank you for reminding me that fighting the good fight is the point. And that one person *can* make a difference – what’s the quote? – that’s the only way it’s ever been done.

After the awards, we went to the after party. I have to admit I didn’t overly mingle. I spent a lot of time catching up with TPP peeps. It’s so rare to see them in person and we have things we’re bubbling on the back burner! And then at midnight, we whisked away for more chatting in the room – intersectionality, awards and all sorts of thing!  Luckily for me, C was watching a rugby game which started at 1am so I was actually in bed before he was done!

And then up at 8 or something stupid with 4 hours sleep. I think I had 10 hours over the weekend. But I was not going to miss the awards breakfast – it’s the point of going, don’t you know! And it was awesome! We had the most amazing chats with Kirstyn and Cat and Kaaron. I forgot to go back up to the room and a grumpy C eventually came down to tell me I had to check out

And then we headed off to do more family stuff. The weekend was a great opportunity for me to meet C’s other side of his family and we spent Mother’s Day lunch with his aunts and grandmother. I had a really lovely time and it was a really nice way to end the weekend. After lunch we caught the bus to the airport and headed home.

I’m not sure I’m a big fan of the whirlwind one day on the other side of the country and back thing, especially when I’ve got a high sleep debt but it was worth it. Great to see everyone in a non con setting, a bit more laid back and a lot of fun.

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

One of the things I really enjoyed about reading Sweater Quest was the various discussions around knitting and knitting philosophy. I think you can find universal truths everywhere and I am always looking for them. Something that the Knit Harlot said in it was that she loved how nothing really terrible can happen when you knit. She says the worst thing is you set out with a ball of yarn to knit a sweater, and you end up with a ball of yarn (no sweater). You still have your ball of yarn. I like that. And it’s helped me move beyond perfectionism about the first jumper I’m currently knitting. It’s not perfect. It looks handmade. That’s because it is. And it’s not the last thing I will ever knit, I will get better and more than that, the jumper will eventually get worn and then worn out and I’ll part with it. It’s the circle of (knitted) life.

But I liked the idea that … you know … if you never do anything because you’re so scared of it not being perfectly executed, then you will never do anything. And how is that better? And this turns out to be a really good way to break through paralysis or roadblocks. Or in other words, sometimes a decision is better than the right decision, especially when you no longer fear failure. What’s the worst thing that can happen when you execute an idea (especially when it’s not a life or death one) and it doesn’t work out?

I’m starting to feel like I’m making headway on things that have been hard to conquer in the past. And it turns out, that with progress on any of these, the most effective thing has been consistency. So I’ve been very slowly, every day, working on culling and decluttering. And some days it might only be one or two things but will power is a muscle – it gets stronger the more you use it. It gets easier to cull and part with things the more often and regularly you do it. And I used to know this, I just got out of practice. I have now almost completely cleared out the “to donate or sell” corner of stuff I had piled when unpacking. I have slowly been taking it in small shopping bags, now and again, to charity bins (there aren’t many near our place so I have to do it when I go up to Perth). Today, I made the decision that selling my culled books on eBay was not worth it and, after the discussion with the secondhand bookstore owner yesterday, I decided to donate them. Today, I took all those not currently up on eBay, and also some craft kits that I was planning on selling, and donated them. And it felt AWESOME!  I parted with stash and I parted with book collection and the world didn’t end and I feel more free! I am loving the cleared space – the space that I know used to be filled with things that made me feel bad and guilty.

And I went a step further. Whilst I was procrastinating on making a decision about something else (I did, in the end, just make one and moved on), I decided to sort my To Be Read bookcase in my bedroom. I decided to shelve the books by genre since I feel like I am more of a reader who feels like genre (so I might feel in the mood for YA, a short story or nonfiction). I took them all out to sort and as I did so, I did the kind of “airing of the stash” thing that knitters do. I looked at each book. And I decided that some of them I didn’t actually want to read, that if I was in the middle of one and hadn’t gone back to it in over a year, then it was ok to not force myself to finish it just to say I had but rather to just … NOT! OMG I feel AWESOME having given myself the permission to not finish books I’m not enjoying. I kind of want to (and am) start looking at reading like Simon from The Readers Podcast – he’s reading like it’s the Apocalypse. And seriously, if you think, hey I might only have this year left to read, do I want this book to be one of those?, it’s amazing how much easier deciding not to finish or read something becomes. Guilt free!

And I decided to cull my TBR bookcase to only contain books I honestly see myself reading in the next year or two. And the rest  I took out. That makes this bookcase much less guilt making with the books I feel I *should* be reading and more with the enticing here’s the books I *want* to read, which shall I read next? excitement. Aka how reading should be. And I’m going to be totally ok now with shelving unread books back into my general collection – that is, books that I want to read *at some point*. If I genuinely want to read something, and I feel in the mood for it, then I am perfectly capable of going and finding that book to read. So now I feel happier about sorting and culling the general collection and then having everything shelved by genre etc. Read and unread mingled. Because what is definitely worse than read and unread books co-mingling, is not being able to find any of the books you own exactly at the minute you want to find them. It especially applies to books like short story collections or nonfiction, which I really see as “own with intent” – books I want to own and intend one day to read, or to refer to.

And all of this has had me thinking about craft stash. And other perishable things (like gift soaps etc). I think I have gotten to a place where I don’t know what happens if you use the stash. I was rummaging in the stash on Saturday night (where, OMG I think I found evidence of moths OMG) and happened upon a very delicious hank of yarn I had forgotten I’d bought – Socks that Rock in Stormy Weather (it’s a gorgeous spectrum of greys). And I thought, hey that might be great for a new scarf – I need some lacy, lovely scarves now that I work back in the city, total scarf wearing for decoration type attire requirements. And my next thought was, but I bought that for socks and I also really want a pair of socks in that colourway. And I think that’s where an obstacle comes up for me. I could knit the skein and buy a new one. Or I could knit the skein and knit myself a pair of socks in a different colourway. Or whatever. But I literally couldn’t think past the idea of actually using up my stash. That I like the stash and don’t know what I would do if I actually worked through it – this concept is not one I am comfortable with. When in reality, working through the stash would make me happy by a) knitting, which I love b) turning lovely skeins into lovely wearable possessions for me or for gifts and c) free me from guilt about buying new yarn. Yet this is still not something I feel comfortable with.

And I wonder if this is a similar thing at play with my TBR. Working through it would mean I would have to go out there and find new books to read (note, I have no problem impulse buying books). There is something comfortable at being familiar with what you have yet still to do. That and, I always feel like I need brain energy to switch into reading a new book – new writing, new concepts, new worlds to get used to. I suspect though, that this is just a reading muscle that needs to get flexed to build strength again. Hence the encouragement of reading what I feel like reading and maybe reviewing them here to a) mark the read books b) validate book choices beyond the peer pressure and c) getting back comfortable at review

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

I mentioned on last episode’s Galactic Suburbia that I’m reading a lot of nonfiction at the moment. It’s quite weird for me as I haven’t really read nonfiction for fun in a few years. It’s going through a bit of a reassessment of aspects of my life and my reading is one of them. Basically, I’ve discovered you don’t have to force yourself to do or like things and that (revelation ahead) if you choose not to, you are much happier. Sounds obvious, and yet, not actually how I was running my life for the last decade or more. And so I realised that the reason I’m not finishing books is I am not reading the books that I need to be reading right now – are you a mood reader like me? I have to be in the right frame of mind for certain books and it’s why I tend to travel with more books than I can read in case I’m not in the mood for some. And right now, nonfiction, and nonfiction about craft, seems to be really appealing to me.

In Sweater Quest, Adrienne Martini spends a year trying to knit an Alice Starmore jumper. If you’re a knitter, you already know about the complexity of the fair isle and the holy grail that is the Alice Starmore projects. And if you’re not, you probably don’t really care. So suffice to day, in some ways this challenge is akin to the Julie Julia cooking project. And I kinda like me a craft related quest. Maybe if epic fantasy involved some kind of quest across country for maiden silk yarn, I’d like relate more?

This book is written in a very friendly tone – similar to the way online knitting blogs are written. Again, if you’re a knitter, you know what I mean, and if you’re not, well, knitters are pretty tech savvy and have many an online community. Because of course, knitting is deeply fascinating but noone said knitters didn’t love to bond over more than just the gorgeous yarn and pattern you’re working on right now. In Sweater Quest, we get to know Adrienne and a bit about who she is as a knitter and a person.

I enjoyed the quest to knit the Starmore but what I enjoyed even more were the truly crunchy questions Adrienne’s journey threw out. The thing about the Starmore is, according to Alice Starmore, you can only knit a Starmore if you use her specified yarn and colour combinations. If you deviate, she (and her lawyers) might just ask you to not call it a Starmore. And the problem is, they don’t actually make the yarn for many of her older patterns anymore. If you aren’t aware of the Starmore controversies and you like yourself a bit of internet drama, then this book is a great introduction to some of the goings on from the early 2000s and will point you in directions to chase up a bit more of that story.

Adrienne goes on a journey, both in writing her book and physically as she visits lots of the big name online knitters, asking the question, if she isn’t using Starmore yarn (she had to substitute one or two as she couldn’t chase down all of them), is she knitting a Starmore at all? I don’t know that I every really felt like I got an answer to that question. But I loved the thinking beyond that – a designer dreams up a knitted item and writes the pattern, knitters tend to pick that up, change the colour and/or the yarn brand, maybe change the cable here or there, add length, reduce length, change the collar or the sleeve… at what point does the end product no longer resemble the intent? When is it no longer the pattern? And more than that, what does a designer own?

I loved thinking these ideas over in terms of how they translated to writing and publishing and plagiarism. But I also loved the ideas as they applied to knitting. For years, I have been laughing at new knitters online who would never even have thought that you could look at a pattern and knit it in red instead of yellow – that they would hunt around for red jumpers if that’s what they were intending to knit, rather than find a pattern they liked and then just change the colour of the wool. Here in Australia, it’s only been really recently (and even more recent here in WA), that the yarn brand specified in the patterns was available to buy, let alone the colour. We are used to substituting not just the colour but the yarn and thus swatching before knitting is obviously a must (nonknitters – first you must work out how the yarn knits out – in terms of tension and so on – by knitting a square of a set number of stitches and then comparing the resulting dimensions to those of the pattern to figure out if you have to add or subtract stitches to be able to knit the resulting size garment). Basically, we are used to *not* using the same colours or yarn brand for knitting. So for me, the idea of Starmore’s, that to knit her jumpers you had to use her wool, was mindboggling. And before the internet and ebay, basically meant you would never be able to knit her work at all.

I dunno that I’ve finished thinking through a lot of the ideas from this book. I really enjoyed the food for thought. Recommended to my knitting geek friends.

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

Wow, this last week has been full on. I’m back in that whole finding a new routine, getting overwhelmed with a whole new normal and doing all that background reading to get up to speed. That’s right, I started my new job this week. And I also might have written my car off on Monday in the most understated, not dangerous accident one could ever have.

After the car bingle, I discovered that I can cross the street right outside my house and get on a bus that is 10 minutes from the train station, get on the train, get off the train, go up the stairs, walk round the side of that building, get in the lift, walk to my desk all in under an hour. I have absolutely no complaints about the public transport to my new job and back. It’s actually MUCH easier than driving (finding a spot to park at the train station is a pain). AND I get to sit on the train and read. A Book! Fabulous!

And I’m pretty much loving the new job. My new team is great, I feel like I fit in pretty well. The office space is pretty good and it’s inside a building designed to avoid sick building syndrome – it’s new and it doesn’t have that new building smell! It’s pretty awesome. No headaches. No feeling lightheaded by the afternoon. No fatigue when I get home. Not bad! It’s designed to make you walk around a fair bit so going to the bathroom or kitchen means you get some good movement in. I get two computer screens, to encourage paperless working. The job itself is going to be full on as the project is already behind schedule. And it’s going to be challenging. Which I’m kinda really looking forward to. It’s also kind of weird to come into a new job and be all over a lot of the issues and history. It’s a bit of a brain adjustment for me as I am taking a step back from the approach I’ve been requiring in my day job for the last 7 years and am now being more of a straight water engineer, if that makes sense? I don’t much like to talk about day job stuff here so I’ll just say that this is taking me more back to the nuts and bolts of my training as I learn to apply that in a new philosophical approach/role. It’s cool in that it feels like a breath of fresh air through my brain.

Then I’ve been coming home and pulling late nights for Twelfth Planet Press. Leaving little time for much else. Hopefully that won’t last too long, once I have the last few things done for Natcon, things should ease off a bit. But I’m kinda having fun and that is the point, I think!

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

Today I found myself floating around a bit and ended up tagging along with my mum to her secondhand bookshop where she wanted to exchange some books. As we were browsing whilst the books were being valued I noticed a sign which said that due to the current climate in bookselling, she was no longer offering held credit. This piqued my interest and so I wandered over to talk to her about what she and her business were experiencing in the wake of ebooks.

She told me that times were hard, that she thought they’d be able to ride it through but that she’d had 4000 books in and no books out – I didn’t ask her specifically what timeframe that was but she clarified that she’d really been feeling it in the last 12 months. On probing, she felt that it was the ereader that was the main factor. She said that people were coming in and telling her they were getting rid of all their books and would never buy a paperback book again. I thought that was interesting and wondered aloud to her as to whether that would be a long term, permanent thing, noting that I had heard that (particularly in Australia) a lot of people were getting a Kindle and then downloading the free ebooks online and not much else. I have read elsewhere that classics are being downloaded the most because they are free and the Kindle offers a nice way to get that “should have read” reading done but that other parts of the book industry were not feeling it as much. She also told me that some people were coming back and citing that they missed reading physical books. She told me that the worst problem was that she felt people were cleaning out all their books at home, racking up like a $200 credit with no intent to ever by a book from her in exchange at all. That she felt like she was being used as a dumping ground.

It was a really sad conversation. Her secondhand bookshop is small but has always been a good one. It’s the one my mother frequents  – she’s a voracious reader and was bringing in some really good condition, recently released books to swap. And the owner of the shop was well read and wandering around recommending books and answering questions – I threw a few at her as well. And there were some great customers who came in and shared a few recs and talked to me a bit about a few writers too. It’s a great little bookstore.

It’s easy to talk about the predicted future of the book industry and how brick and mortar stores and secondhand bookshops will die but it’s another thing to look at an experience that you genuinely love and realise that that too will go. Secondhand bookstores are a great meeting place, a great place to find recommendations and to chat over books and writers. And I know online you can get forums, and reviews and recommendations, and it’s not like I don’t buy books online or find my way to new titles via online means (or run a reviews website for that matter). But I don’t want one to be at the total expense of the other. I love bookstores too.

I bought some books – she has a pretty good Australian science fiction/fantasy section. And I made sure to push our expenditure over the required credit usage. Because I don’t want bookstores to die.

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

So a while ago, a long long long while ago, I used to discuss issues on my blog relating to feminism and the gender disparity in SF. Lots of those conversations would get derailed and pulled back into what we coined “Feminism 101″ – that’s like when we all are mid conversation and then have to stop and convince someone that sexism exists. And those of us who were mid conversation and kept getting stopped just at the interesting bits, got frustrated. Stopping to explain Feminism 101, prevents the rest of us from moving beyond that conversation and into the crunchier bits, the more interesting parts of the conversation. That’s kind of where the idea of Galactic Suburbia came out of. A place where we could have a one or two hour conversation and not get derailed and prevented from delving.

In and amongst the blog posts at the time, we would note the gender disparity in anthologies, in which authors were being collected and in awards shortlists and winners. And at the time, people would say “oh it’s just this one” or “it’s not as often as you think” or … bleurgh go find the feminist bingo (women aren’t there cause they aren’t any good, I read for quality, I read for reasons other than gender but happen to only read/like male authors, not as many women get published/write/submit etc etc etc etc *yawn*). We had all those conversations. For years. It got boring. And so for the record, I don’t engage anymore not because those view points are right and I lost but because I’m over there –> *elsewhere* <– doing more interesting things. But the one thing I was determined to do then, and remain doing on Galactic Suburbia, is to continue to point out gender disparity on ToCs and on awards lists so that it doesn’t go unsaid and it doesn’t get pushed away and under  a carpet somewhere. When an award or a ToC bucks that trend, we point that out too because 1) yay and 2) isn’t that interesting! and 3) doesn’t happen all that often.

Mondy has crunched some recent numbers for gender breakdown for the Ditmars this week and shows an interesting change of more women, overall, in fiction being nominated for Ditmars. Interesting to note is that this number wraps up novels, novellas and short stories into 1 number. Whilst I’d be interested to see what the breakdown across these three categories is, it’s still an interesting graph. It shows in the last three years, more women than men (in total, for these 3 categories) have been nominated for Ditmars.

The question of course is, what does that mean? Did we go too far? Are we now looking at further disparity? Are men being persecuted and experiencing sexism by the voters? Are more women suddenly being published than men?

I think that these questions are hard for me to answer given that I have more than 1 horse in the races here (both in terms of the works nominated and the commentary being made on the awards). I have not made it any secret that an objective of mine is to showcase Australia women short story writers.

I don’t, though, think there is need for us to panic that the menz are in trouble just because an odd year or two show shortlists dominated by female writers. Noone panicked for decades when they were male heavy, afterall. And I don’t think the quest is for every category to have equal numbers of men and women, every year. I think parity in fact could be seen in years of all female, or even all male, shortlists. *As long as* those years are the outliers and not the norm. And that’s really the point isn’t it? The sky isn’t falling down just because more women were shortlisted this year. It’s the greatest number on the ballot in these categories, probably, for the lifetime of the award (no numbers crunched to support this statement). Doesn’t really say anything. It doesn’t correct for the long term trend.  And unless we have 50 years of only women making the shortlists, I don’t think we need to panic, just yet, about the reverse injustice.

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

A big shoutout to Sim who knows me and how I think. It was her comments on a previous post about this stuff that really helped me move past my paralysis and guilt relating to my crafting/not crafting/stash/huge number of WIPs. She suggested I put away the charm quilt that was squelching my crafting mojo, be cool with the project lying on hold for a while, and then audit my entire WIPs.

So this took me a while, both due to limited time and also having to actually face both the mess and the unfinished objects. But as one of my tasks I have tackled in my 5 day break, I actually spent a good couple of hours on this. I both created order and more serenity with my craft WIPs and space and I also found the spare bedroom bed. (I then was encouraged to sort out all the clean washing in that room the following day and found the bedroom floor for bonus points. A couple more smaller tasks to go in that room and I can sign it off as Completed. It’s funny how once you break through the paralysis, you just keep eating away at the elephant. And it’s all so much less insurmountable).

I took photos of everything. All my knitting works in progress have been uploaded to my Ravelry page. And yeah, I can see how in that form it’s all a lot less scary and horrible and a lot more encouraging to work through. My name over at Ravelry is girliejones if you’re then and want to be friends.

There doesn’t seem to be an equally useful quilting equivalent so I opened a spreadsheet and loaded all my quilt projects before folding them neatly up and putting them away in my craft cupboard. I also put all related bits and pieces for each project in its own labelled box. This killed two birds – 1. everything is neat and grouped and easy to pick up and put down and 2. it put use to all the little boxes I can’t part with.

Here’s an overview of the quilt projects. You’ll be able to see the gradual reduction in mess on the bed underneath as the task progressed.

The only thing I have left is to sort my fabric scraps. I’ve been picking up a few scrap quilt books and it turns out, saving every last morsel of fabric is ok and perfectly normal and you can make really stunning quilts from them. And you don’t have to only have one scrap quilt for all your scraps. Thus my dreaded scrap quilt which was getting me down can be finished off with the blocks made, I can feel good about drawing a line under it and feel excited about looking into other possible quilts. But first I have to sort them. So – more boxes to be put to work as I sort these according to colour. Another ongoing project but easy to go into the room and do a few and then move on.

Now I just have to decide if I feel up to cataloguing the rest of my yarn stash into Ravelry …

But I feel *so* much better now! And everything is far less daunting and confronting and doable again. And I have a few finished pieces to show! I am interested to see if my catalogues will be used by me – it can be really easy to file that stuff away and then it’s out of sight so you don’t feel bad and then you never go looking for it so you can continue to not feel bad. But the interesting thing in all this decluttering has been to let go of the guilt of having to finish something – a book, a project, whatever – just because I bought it or started it. It’s very freeing to say, “actually, I don’t like this” or “I’m not enjoying this” or “it doesn’t work for me” or “it’s not what I thought it would be” and to then act by giving yourself permission to … gift or donate the book or unravel a started project. So much future time freed up for new and other things!

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

What you want is the dramatic – you want to flash from the before to the after photo with maybe a montage of yourself flipping back your fringe, wiping sweat off your brow, balancing a pencil on your thumb, laughing at a joke and sipping a bottle of water. You want to go from A to B, from being past you to future you without having to sojourn for long in the present or the between times. To get the A+ in the exam without actually having to put in all that hard work studying.

Would that that was how it worked.

And what a revelation that it’s not. Not.

Or maybe that’s the real reason that it’s taken me this long. I’m starting to wonder if maybe it’s that I’m inherently lazy. I know what you’re going to say to that, so let me stop you there and say, actually I *appear* productive because I *procrastinate*. A. Lot. You see publishing company. I see how that was supposed to be a masters degree, phd if I’d really dug deep, in environmental engineeering. Sure, I prefer the publishing company but is that really the point?

My transformation has been going on a lot longer than the 12 weeks that I’ve been doing the 12 week body transformation. It was part of the reason I signed up at all. But I think this program kicked me into top gear on addressing my physical transformation (still in progress) as well as teaching me how to think differently which has accelerated a lot of the mental one (also still in progress).

I’ve learned a lot in the last 3 months that I’ve been able to apply to other things I’m still grappling with. Number 1 is – no more excuses. It turns out for me, that excuses are my number 1 reason for not doing things and when you check yourself and become aware that something is an *excuse* and not a *reason*, it’s much harder to let that play out. When you start removing your ability to accept excuses from yourself in one area of life (like, I can’t exercise today because it is raining), you start to stop accepting them elsewhere.

Blocks. I’m learned to look through them, around them and vaporise them. So the above, I can’t exercise because it’s raining, becomes – well I know I don’t like to exercise in the rain, so here is a DVD I can do inside at home. Damn! Excuse identified, solution provided. Annoying! But then you start to look elsewhere at why you aren’t doing things – so in part I think it’s cause I’m lazy. (I should say, obviously I know I work hard and for long hours and that I want to read a book or knit for fun and I am *entitled* to do this, but I also have things I want to achieve, and if I want that, if I really want that, then I have to work harder. It would be simpler to just not want it, then this wouldn’t be an issue.) But ok. The other thing is, I get blockages when it’s something I don’t want to do or say – like, I struggle with keeping my inbox in shape because a lot of my emails will have to be telling people no for something or that I don’t want to do what they want me to, or asking for more postage or sending rejections etc. And I don’t want to do that, I don’t like how it makes me feel. But .. those are just excuses! And so it goes … ain’t nothing but to go forward, say no as best and kindly as I can, and move on.

I discovered that a plan, a realistic plan, works. I’m worried that was such a surprise to me. I make plans all the time and I achieve things. But a couple of weeks ago, I reached the goal weightloss I had set myself for these 12 weeks and we were looking at the goals I was setting for the next 12 weeks. And I looked at C with real incredulity as I said, “but … it really *works*, I mean, you say you want to lose X kg, you execute the plan, and… and … then you get the goal at the end?” and he was really puzzled by that. (I spose his day job revolves around such thinking.) But I’m not sure I’ve ever really done that before – set a plan, break it down into tiny steps of how you’re going to do it, and then follow it to the letter and then get where you wanted to go. And a lot of it has to do with the fact that I did set myself a realistic goal. And I know that. But it also makes me wonder if all I need is a more detailed plan for my life

But this has also reinforced something that I did know – it’s all about consistency. It’s about following the plan, keeping your eye on the prize in the distance and not letting the ebb and flow of individual days get in the way. It’s about chipping away at it every single day no matter what. But this is actually quite huge. I’ve discovered as long as I lose about 200g a day, I’m going to reach my weightloss goals. I don’t always lose 200g a day, oddly thurs through sat/sun I’m pretty light and then I’m not from then to weigh in on a weds. I know this now about my body and I don’t freak out if I bob around the goal of the week. Eye on the prize.

But consistency is unbelievably important for any large or long term goal. I always knew this about publishing. I work on TPP every single day. Every day I do something to move something along. My rule of thumb has always been to edit/proof something every day. If I do that, the book gets done by deadline. But now I include that – do something every day – to a bunch of others aspects about running the press. As long as you keep things ticking over, it will all get done. And make sure you do it with consistency (always give good customer service, always be prompt, be professional etc).

I’m starting to see how this applies to other things. Like big, seemingly insurmountable things – like the big house declutter and big craft projects. I’m learning to see things like these as dynamic, ongoing projects. That if I chip away at them every day, they will eventually get done. And I need to find the equivalent of the 200 g daily milestone rather than looking at the whole thing and getting upset I didn’t build Rome in a day. I often watch the Hoarders Buried  Alive show to reassure myself I’m not like that, and to kick myself into not being that. It’s the best way to get me to look at the last dregs of my house move stuff still to sort out. So much emotion wrapped up in this last declutter. But I’ve been starting to see progress finally and it’s from just continuing to chip away at things and also at finding ways to go around roadblocks. For example, I finally started addressing the book collection issue last week. If I have less books to shelve, then that will help in deciding how to shelve them. I started culling. And I started donating what I didn’t think I could sell and I started eBaying what I thought I could. I removed three shopping bags of books from my house last week and have sold 10 books so far online (I’ve made $7). I keep in mind the hoarders who successfully overcome their being buried alive – it’s a long process, it’s not won in a day – if they got their houses bulldozed away in one day, that would deal with the mess but not the issues that got them there. There is something really vital about actually working through the problem. By being in control – by setting a plan and carrying it out – by talking yourself through the excuses, the panic ,the roadbloacks and the emotions, you can not only achieve the goal but be freed when you finally reach/overcome it.

I also learned something so important and so freaking obvious it’s not funny that this is a revelation. You can’t undo hardwork. If I go off the nutrition plan and have something “bad for me” – I haven’t ruined my diet, I have eaten one thing with a bunch of calories. That *could* mean that I go on to exceed my calorie intake for the day, but it might not. One thing is for sure, eating more “bad things” is only going to *add* to the exceedance. It’s not like you restart the next day at a nil balance. And it’s not like you have a tick or a cross for your day performance and if you do 1 bad thing you go from a tick to a cross. And in fact, if you eat one thing that was off plan, most likely, you can wiggle around and accommodate it. You know, if the rest of the time you are consistently on the plan. One chocolate bar does not make you fat. I have no idea, now, how the logical course of action in my head to having one “treat” was to say “oh well, ruined it now, may as well tuck in and eat whatever the hell now, there’s no point.” Which of course means that now, having one treat is no longer associated with a feeling of “badness” or being naughty. It’s a choice. And it’s amazing how often, when given the choice, I don’t want what’s on offer.

It’s the getting used to most of the time saying no to things I normally said yes to so that I can say yes sometimes and it be ok. And the only way I don’t mind doing that is when I look at how many times I said yes to things I either didn’t care one way or the other about or didn’t even necessarily like. I said yes because it was there or because it was offered to me. Not good reasons to say yes about anything. And guess what? When you get used to say no in one aspect of your life … it gets easier to say it in others …

The transformation continues.

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

I watched me yet more reality TV this weekend. Last weekend I was avoiding things, or relaxing, whichev. This weekend I was sick. The kind of sick where I’m too sick to even think about work let alone feel bad for not doing any. We ended up spending 3 hours in Emergency on a Saturday night to find out that they don’t know what was going on. C says I take him on the best dates and apparently the TV had on Marley and Me which was the movie we saw on the day we met. I was mostly outside, not watching it,  due to the OCD panic attack and the not enjoying the whole ED vibe.

Anyway, I spent a lot of the weekend watching stuff I’d recorded on Foxtel for just this kind of day – Tori Spelling’s latest reality show, The Real Housewives of Atlanta, Tabitha Takes Over and Bethenny Ever After. And it only just occurred to me tonight that whilst Hollywood is still struggling to find roles for older women and for powerful women in lead roles, reality TV has no issue with it. And not only that, but in these shows we find complex women from a diverse array of backgrounds and living real lives – trying to balance being good mothers and partners with still following their personal dreams and all the guilt and difficulties that go with that. Well except for Tabitha, that’s not what her show is about. But I realised that when I’m looking around to see other women doing what I am working towards, I find a lot of awesome women in shows like this.

Take Tabitha for example – an Aussie in America, she’s strong and confident and knows a lot about business. She comes into struggling hair salons (though in her new series, I just saw her take over a bar), sizes up why it’s losing money, deals with staff issues, makes over the place and gives advice to the owner about what they’re screwing up. She does present herself as the Bitch, in her own words, and she owns that. But she knows a heck of a lot about running a business, both on the floor and behind the scenes, and I’ve learned a lot that can be applied to any other kind of business too. I even discovered my Dad watches that show (he used to run MBA programs) and he says that he learns a lot from her. And she’s gay – that’s actually not relevant, though she’s openly so on the show and often interacts with the gay community, but this speaks to the diversity of women role models on offer.

The Real Housewives of Atlanta is an interesting one. In this version of the franchise, only one of the “wives” (right now only 2 of the women are actually married) is white. So you have almost a whole cast of black women and it’s not often that that happens and what it does is it allows black women to play all the roles – in reality TV shows they edit the season so that there is an overarching narrative and usually different people end up being the good and the bad guys over a season. Sometimes one person acts as the agitator and next season they might be the peacemaker or everybody’s friend. I think there must be something in those contracts that demand drama of the women cat fighting variety and also some of those women don’t appear to be actual friends so they must have to have a set number of social events that all of them must attend etc. So you get the big fight somewhere in the season and then lots of episodes of groups of women gossiping and plotting and whatnot. But your sympathy towards characters seems to change over the course of the series. Aside from all that stuff – which I don’t really enjoy because they always seem to be such petty things that they’re fighting over and people never seem to have the whole conversation that you’d need to actually resolve the original conflict – I’m really interested in the women. They are socially powerful, some of them come from the socialites scene. Most of them are very wealthy – like I can’t comprehend the wealth of these wealthy (collections of $15k handbags and shoes) – and I’m fascinated how they came to it. Some married into it. Some seem to move from wealthy man to wealthy man and accumulate it and that’s not very interesting. Though some of those women then take the money and start businesses and so on, and that, I think can be empowering. If it’s sustainable. But some of those women really did make the money themselves – one is a successful song writer and music producer (though the only work I’ve heard of was the album she wrote for TLC). And another was a model. I enjoy watching their struggles to juggle parenting and life and work. And the choices they make about all of those and how they feel about them. Cause there’s no right answer in that stuff and mostly, I think, you/women end up feeling bad.

I have to confess that, though it took me a while to actually watch it, I’ve discovered that I really admire Tori Spelling after watching her ridiculous reality TV shows. She has a very bad rap, every one assumes she is rich cause of her father and that she is stupid because Donna was in 90210. But actually, her father left her almost none of his fortune and she got paid very poorly for her work for him, and got almost nothing in the syndication of that show. In watching her on her reality shows I’ve discovered she is smart and really really funny (I think you need to be smart to be funny) and she’s very ambitious. She works hard and she mucks in and raises her kids herself, well she has a nanny too because she still actually works full time. She is a very caring, compassionate and down to earth person, very aware of her identity in the public eye but also really solid and real. And she is constantly working on business deals and so on. I am enjoying watching and learning from her, both in how to deal with your real self versus your perceived self, and how to not let it get to you, and also in balancing work/life.

And Bethenny. I think I love her the most and was so hanging out for the next season of her show, which I’ve just discovered is now airing. She was originally on The Real Housewives of New York but it soon became clear she needed her own show. She was single, mostly, on the Housewives and then she met Jason and got a show for her wedding and then life after her wedding. She’s a chef who worked for celebrities, making them organic, nutritional, calorie controlled food and then she developed her own line of sugarfree and all the other free (gluten, dairy etc) baked goods. And then she invented the Skinny Margarita which became a whole brand and then she sold it to Jim Beam for a LOT of money. In the meantime, she was still doing speaking events and writing books on the back of her success of both the cooking and the Housewives stuff. But what’s to love about her is she is unbelievably hilarious, she will not miss an opportunity to make the joke, even if doing it will cost her (you know, making light of a bad situation etc) and she is smart, ambitious and successful. She had a baby straight after her wedding and so taking care of her baby has been thrown into the mix. And she just turned 40. So she’s you know, kind of where I would like to be (I don’t feel I need to be THAT rich!) and she’s still struggling with what we all struggle with – how you can fit that much into this little time and still give everyone what they need and want, and still do what you need to do for you.

There should be more women like any and all of these women written into the fictional TV and movies that are made. These women exist. Women exist across a whole spectrum other than just virgin and crone / girlfriend and mother. But until then, I think I’m going to feel less guilty about watching my reality TV.

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

I’ve loved reading all your comments on how you shelve your books, whether you have reading queues and what books you keep and why. You’ve given me lots to think about. I also loved Tansy’s post which it sparked – Book Karma and the To Be Read Shelf. She covers lots of things that I was wanting to get to, after my first confession. I like the idea of slowing down on book accumulation to give myself a chance to catch up. But alas, 1. I read really slowly – we’re talking 12 novels a year if I try hard these days and 2. I still want to believe I can keep up with the shiny zeitgeist. Do you see how 1. and 2. conflict? (It’s not that I don’t know.)

The other problem is that I really want to get to the whole Hugo list before  I vote. That’s going to take me all the time between now and the deadline. It will also mean I will behind on 2012 reading for the 2013 ballot.

But that means I’m probably not going to actually get to my To Be Read shelf til well into the latter part of the year even if I miraculously picked up reading speed.

Which means I am pondering more the idea of getting read of the queue completely. I’m seriously considering just merging all my bookcases and shelving everything by genre/category and then you know … just whatever. If I really want to read a book, it’s not that hard to walk two rooms down to the bookcase and getting it out. And if out of sight means out of mind and I never read it, did I really want to?

This year I’m experimenting, well it’s gone beyond trials into action and changing in thought process, with freeing myself of self imposed guilt, negativity and general bad feelings. There’s enough crap *out there* to fend off without self sabotaging from in here. And so it turns out, the world doesn’t end if you cull stuff/people/ books/emails/clothes/blogs you don’t like or actually want. It’s ok, liberating even, to start to identify what I don’t like, outside of what I might think you’re *supposed* to like. It’s letting me carve out a sense of myself and I’m really starting to like it. Firstly, it reduces down what I consume to things I’m excited about or interested in or make me happy. That makes a vast amount of difference to my mood. Remove the things that bore, disinterest, irritate. Pretty nice. Secondly, it’s giving me space to figure out who I am in a way that I’m not sure I’ve ever really done before. For example, I’ve discovered I have a completely different taste in clothing than I thought. More on that another day.

Relinquishing where I can self imposed anguish seems like a good thing to do. Which brings me back to my book guilt and my reading guilt. I have a reading block at the moment (I just can’t seem to focus on anything and am not finishing anything I start. I don’t really enjoy reading at the moment.) and it might not get fixed real soon. And even if it does, I am not going to be working my way through my To Be Read queue at any pace. I’m not joking about its expanse. So … what use does the burgeoning bookcase leering at me with books not read do me? On the other hand, I’m not sure I could just let go of the commitment to read these books. If I assimilate them in, there’s no going back. Well, worse, if I go back later to pull out all the unread books, more will be pulled out than got assimilated in. Which is also the problem – it’s completely random what is in the To Be Read bookcase and what is not.

ARGH!

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

The other day something I had been avoiding for a while now smacked me in the face. Well actually, it knocked one of my Ditmars off a shelf and broke it (it’s one that was probably glued together in the first place so can be easily fixed, I hope). I’ve been in denial about it but the truth is – I have never actually unpacked my books and put them away in this house. Terri came to borrow a couple of books that I *know* I own but when I went looking for them, I couldn’t find them. Normally I am really pedantic about my books. They are the first possessions that I pack and move when I move house and I always always have a very specific way to shelve them.

Alas, I moved in with C in June last year and all I did was *unpack* my books. And locate them kind of in the study. I had lost bookcases in all my various house moves and all the bookcases here were full. So there was nowhere to unpack them into it. I did go and buy myself four bookcases from Ikea. Two are in the study and are filled hapazardly with my books. One got pilfered for C’s games in his man cave. And the fourth is in our bedroom and is filled with my To Be Read books. But there is no order or reason to any of my bookcases at the moment and worse, they nowhere near fit all of my book collection, some of which are stacked in front on the shelves (leading to Ditmar fatalities) or piled under my desk and just around.

I was really upset that I couldn’t lend Terri the books she was looking for. I did lend her some books she didn’t *know* she was looking for and I think that worked out ok. But I am really really unhappy that I don’t know which books are where and have just abandoned this part of settling in. I think maybe, I can’t really be properly settled in if my books aren’t.

On the weekend, I finally started to confront this issue. I started to sort my books into some grouping order – everything was just everywhere. As I started to sort them, I started to realise I could actually cull some books. This could help with the storage issue. And something else too. As I’ve continued to declutter, both in my physical and my electronic world, I’ve found a great sense of freedom and removal of weight from letting go or letting myself off the hook or out of the guilt of wanting to want to read or do or like certain things. I think this might also be part of settling into your late (eek!) thirties. I’m caring less about doing things to fit in. And I know we as a community pride ourselves on not doing things to fit in but even in this community, there is still pressure to read (and like) certain books or blogs or whatever. And I’ve started to notice that I force myself to try to like some things and then I ignore or don’t allow myself to just not. And lately, I’m kinda starting to let that go. Who cares if I don’t like something? Life is pretty short, too damn short, to spend it reading books you don’t like or doing something you don’t care for just because everyone else is. And as I start to let go, I’m actually finding I’m discovering ore of me in the process. But that’s something for another blog post.

So I realised that I didn’t need to keep books, to let them take up shelf space, just so I can impress someone else. If I don’t own a book any more, does that mean I didn’t read it? How would you know? And if I do own a book, does that mean I *have* read it? How would you know? So I started being ok with removing books from the collection. And some of that is about letting go of possessions I have dragged with me for the last 15 years and somehow contribute to defining me for that reason alone. I’m not done. I’m not nearly done. But I’m ok with having started.

I am still going to need more bookcases. But I have to first figure out where they would go.

But I’m actually posting about this to ask a question. I have more than one To Be Read area. My bookcase in my bedroom is my recent (last 2 to 3 years) accumulation of books to be read. I have another little bookcase (15 cm wide and only three shelves) in the study which is an overflow To Be Read bookcase, probably of books with a similar book stashing timeframe, possibly a bit longer. Kind of books I’m somewhat less wanting to read. This case can probably be properly sorted and perhaps weeded. But in my main book collection, I noticed I have a lot of books that I haven’t read but still want to own and at some point, not in the immediate future, intend to read. Some are classics and I never really feel bad about buying those and then popping them in the main collection. But not all are. And for some reason, I’m ok with them being there and not in the To Be Read and feel confident that when I feel like reading those specific titles, I will go looking for them. BUT … why don’t I feel that way about the main To Be Read books? And further, those books take up an entire bookcase. At some point, I intend to read them and then shelve them in the main collection. So … that means that I need another whole bookcase just for the To Be Read alone, assuming I continue to accumulate at a constant rate.

Do you keep your To Be Read books separately? How do you tell the difference between books you really intend to read and books you feel you should just own?

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

I have been remiss by not showing this to you sooner. Here is the gorgeous cover by Amanda Rainey for Kaaron Warren’s Twelve Planets collection, Through Splintered Walls.

Kaaron’s collection is Book 6 in the series. It’s the half way point. How are we already here? And Amanda has done an absolutely outstanding job capturing the mood and the theme of this collection. This is Kaaron Warren at her best. From the back cover:

Country road, city street, mountain, creek.

These are stories inspired by the beauty, the danger, the cruelty, emptiness, loneliness and perfection of the Australian landscape.

There is a fabulous introduction by Gemma Files who says,

Every Warren story is a trip with no map… If you are bent on opening this book, therefore, remember: Keep your eyes open, accept all of what it has to offer without qualm, and beware the only thing I can promise you is that you will be taken where you may not want to go. For Kaaron Warren, while many things, is very much not your Mum; she owes you nothing except the words on the page, this open door into four very different someplaces else through which she will escort you, then take her leave, without a single glance back. And it will be entirely contingent on you to get yourself back out.

Through Splintered Walls will be launched at Continuum in early June and I promise to reveal more details about what we’re planning for Natcon soon!

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

You can check out the new Galactic Suburbia episode on our website or at iTunes. You’ll notice we were really subtle about the Hugo nomination, because we didn’t want to be tacky.

In which this Hugo nominated podcast is Hugo nominated and discusses the Hugo nominations while being Hugo nominated. Also, the internet is full of things. Some of those things discuss gender, feminism and equality, some have wide ranging implications for the future of SF awards, and some of them are nominated for Hugos.

HUUUUUUUUUGO SHORTLIST

Hunger Games Hunger Games Hunger Games

Build up to make a hit
The reviews are in:
Topless Robot
Forbes
Our Alisa

But in the real world, the character Katniss Everdeen faces an even greater challenge: Proving that pop culture will embrace a heroine capable of holding her own with the big boys.
It’s a battle fought on two fronts. First, The Hunger Games must bring in the kind of box office numbers that prove to Hollywood that a film led by a young female heroine who’s not cast as a sex symbol can bring in audiences. And second, for Katniss to truly triumph, she must embody the type of female heroine — smart, tough, compassionate — that has been sorely lacking in the popular culture landscape for so very long.

The Clarke Award Shortlist:
Christopher Priest’s original post
Cat Valente responds:
“Because let’s be honest, I couldn’t get away with it. If I posted that shit? I’d never hear the end of what a bitch I am.”
And further she responds

Outer Alliance discussion on Gay YA Dystopia & Paolo Bacigalupi

Qld Premier cancels Premiers Literary Award
“Before the election, the LNP pledged to cut government “waste” as part of its efforts to offer cost-of-living relief to Queenslanders.”
Response of Queensland Writers Centre

The Fake Geek Girl at the Mary Sue

Eisner Award shortlist

Kate Elliott on the portrayal of women in pain & fear

Ashley Judd on the media’s attitude to women and their bodies

Valente on the war against women in the real world

Philip K Dick Award

Chronos Award Ballot

Tehani on Aurealis Awards stats, gender

BSFA stuff – Actual winners
The first post that raised the problems with the ceremony.
A response (there for historical sake, though I think since at least partly recanted)
how the Tweets saw it
Cheryl’s take

EDIT: Since recording, the BSFA have issued a full and unreserved apology, along with an explanation of why it took them so long to respond.  That’s how to do it, folks!

Jim Hines works through his privileged dumbassery
Kirstyn McDermott works through whether her feminism is good enough

Vote for Sean the Blogonaut for NAFF

What Culture Have we Consumed?

Alex: Monstrous Regiment, Terry Pratchett; Showtime, Narrelle M Harris, Woman on the Edge of Time, Marge Piercy; 2312, Kim Stanley Robinson; The State of the Art, Iain M Banks

Tansy: So Silver Bright, Lisa Mantchev; Kat, Incorrigible, by Stephanie Burgis; Cold Magic, Kate Elliott

Alisa: The Hunger Games (movie and books), The Readers (podcast)

Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs,, check out Galactic Suburbia Podcast on Facebook and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

Wednesday I finally managed to get to my post office box. It feels weird after it being the regular detour on the way home every day to only make it once a week or once a fortnight! I kinda hate not knowing what mail has arrived. On the other hand, whenever I go now, I get to stagger out with a huge pile of parcels and ephemera. In this batch, all but one of the boxes of books were not for ASif! and instead were the random book buying purchases I did for a week a while back in a blur of online shopping and then forgetting. I had to actually stop completely when I couldn’t remember which sites I’d visited and what I’d actually bought. Just as well I stopped because I totally didn’t remember shopping at Fishpond at all and the evidence says differently!

Just after I posted my first Creativity Dysfunction post, Amazon sent me a book recommendation that looked gorgeous – Sunday Morning Quilts. It got me thinking about quilts but then I deleted the link. Then I was auditioning some quilt related podcasts maybe two weeks ago now. One of them was American Patchwork and Quilting Radio (still not sure I like this one). The episode I listened to had the two authors of Sunday Morning Quilts on as guests. I was actually more interested in them talking about their blogs and the communities they’d built around them and how. And then they spoke about the book and I realized a) it was the book I’d seen and b) their thing is scrap quilting and in fact, playing with colour and scraps. I was INTRIGUED.

I went straight home and spent *quite some time* on the webs looking at options, their blogs and also some books. It had not occurred to me until that moment that scrap quilts – plural – was a thing. That I could in fact make several. Or that they are ongoing projects rather than one ongoing project and I could finish the one I’m making and then move on. That I need not feel the weight of the ever-increasing- with every other project – pile-of-scraps. That scraps could be a great thing, just like stash. I got excited. And then, for some reason, I did not buy that particular book but these.

I’m really excited by the uniformity that lots of small pieces of non uniform fabrics can convey. I’m ready to get started!! (except for that pesky in progress and queued queues of projects)

And so now I do not know why I didn’t get Sunday Morning Quilts. A look on Fishpond has it quite expensive, which could be the reason but it’s not as expensive on other sites. Hmmm …I also had a great peek around the book online last night. I think I’ll start sorting my scrap stash in the meantime, anyway.

I also got these knitting books. Guess why?

 Yup – 1 point for Knitting and 2 points for LISTS!!

And the other is Elizabeth Zimmerman, who is Knitting. The book inside seems to be The Opinionated Knitter and she’s grumpy and fabulous.

I had a quick squizz through Knitter’s Life Lists last night. It’s a combination of lists of things you should do before you die (love!) and also all kinds of interesting factoids and resources to go chase up. I’m definitely one for setting goals for lists of things I want to do, less on the execution of (you may have noticed …) Though I also quite like the idea of just setting aside a small portion at a time/year to look at.

I hunted through to see how part of the knitting zeitgeist I am – in their research for the book they asked lots of knitters what their goal patterns and stitches and techniques and so on were and that was used to compile some of them. I tend to not really *apply myself in knitting. I like the monotony of known patterns and stitches and I tend to knit to switch off. Except, actually that’s not really true at all. When I looked at, for example, all the yarns you should aim to try at some point in your life, I thought that wasn’t something I was really interested in, flicked down the list and thought, “ooh but bamboo! And seasilk and soy silk!” – materials I’ve been wanting to try for agggges. And then when I looked at sweaters and the holy grail and very long list of things to try there, I saw I’m already working on a couple of them! – the kimono jacket, which is my first ever sweater, and also I have the Baby Surprise Jacket which I bought all the yarn for when my niece was incubating and then didn’t make. I’ve since tracked down the pattern (it was hard to find as basically out of print) and now I have a new nephiece coming so I was intending to whip that up for them. So I’m already working on these and I realise do get adventurous at times. Only need a little bit every year and my lifetime of knitting will always be new and challenging.

And then I noticed that the list has Alice Starmore on it.

And look what also arrived in the same book haul, talk about yet more synchronicity.

I’ve not really ever had a desire to try fair isle other than … maybe if I’m stuck on 6 months holidays somewhere and really had no tv to watch or something… But I came across Adrienne Martini on Cast On a while ago (yes, it’s the same Adrienne Martini, the world is this small and I LOVE it) and she was talking about this book that she wrote which was based on her one year quest to complete an Alice Starmore sweater. That’s all I know about the book but I was instantly drawn to it and wished I’d known about it to follow along her journey of it. I can’t wait to read all about it. I just love these kinds of things (similar to the Julie and Julia blog etc). I wish I could be consistent for a year and commit to one thing that I could obsess about (oh! Nevermind! Stop judging!) Anyway, these sweaters are really hard to make and also, really hard to find the yarn, I think. I’ll tell you more when I’ve read the book which I’m dying to start right now.

And finally, I got Redwood and Wildfire from Aqueduct Press which is very funny because in the morning I’d gotten a refund on postage for a book I’d ordered the night before (Brit Mandeolo’s new book on Joanna Russ) and was swooning about how much I love Aqueduct Press books and then one of the packages had their sticker on it and I thought … huh? What ELSE have I bought! This is the Tiptree winner for this year and Tansy raved about it on Galactic Suburbia as well. I’m thinking if you liked The Freedom Maze by Delia Sherman, you might like this. But I’ll let you know.

So many books and craft and things and so fricking little time!

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

Well, there were very good arguments put forth, so I peeked! Very excited!!!  Socktopus yarn! In River Styx colourway. So pretty! And nautical themes for the two choices of sock pattern – one of which is called turbulence. Am I over fluid dynamics enough to go for that option ?

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

So. The timeline has expired. I have not completed my Cookie A socks and look what came in the mail today.

Yup. That there is package number 2 of the sock club.

The question is – will I open it and peek inside to see what the next one is or will I make myself wait til I’ve finished the first pair?

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

The 2012 NAFF race is on. In fact it closes in just 11 days, on April 22. What is NAFF? I hear you ask?

The National Australian Fan Fund (NAFF) was created to assist fans to travel across Australia to attend the National Science Fiction Convention (Natcon). NAFF assists fans to travel to the Natcon and, where possible, covers the costs of airfares and accommodation. The Natcon donates a convention membership. This year’s NAFF race is to the 51st Australian Natcon, Continuum 8, which will be held in Melbourne over the Queen’s Birthday weekend, 8th-11th June 2012.

All Australian fans are eligible to vote. Voting costs just $5 and goes towards the fundraising for NAFF. You can even vote to hold over the funds or for neither candidate – all votes however cast help to raise money for the coffers.

But, this post is to tell you not only that you should vote but that you should vote for Sean. Here’s Sean’s candidacy pitch:

Sean Broughton-Wright

A fan reviewer and commenter writing at Adventures of a Bookonaut, Sean promotes Australian speculative fiction authors, publishers and community news. In 2011 he ran an interview series on ‘Authors & Social Media’, featuring the likes of Marianne de Pierres and Margo Lanagan. He submits audio interviews to the fan produced Galactic Chat podcast; Claire Corbett being his most recent. His cunning plan at Continuum is to record audio interviews; file a daily report and tweet selected panels. He will gladly participate in panels or con activities that match his expertise.

Nominated by: Alisa Krasnostein (WA), Tansy Rayner Roberts (Tas) and Alexandra Pierce (Vic)

And as you can see, the members of Galactic Suburbia are his nominators. That’s because we think Sean is awesome. But let me introduce him to you a bit more to show you why he would be a great NAFF candidate.

Sean lives in South Australia. He is not the other Sean who lives in South Australia. He’s never been to a Natcon before – and so he doesn’t yet know what he is truly missing. Though he is starting to suspect – check out his Tweet stream over Swancon weekend. In fact, if you’re on Twitter you’ve probably chatted with him, had your signal boosted by him or gotten the breaking news from him. He’s a great supporter of Australian SF/F even though he’s fairly new to the scene. Sean blogs at http://bookonaut.blogspot.com/ where he promotes Australian SF/F fiction. If you write, produce, edit, publish or perform Aussie specfic, he’s more than likely tooted your horn for you.

Sean came on board our sister podcast Galactic Chat last year and has conducted some suburb interview for the podcast. They’re really worth listening to. His recent interviewees include Helen Lowe, Claire Corbett and Ian Irvine.

And maybe you’ve seen him around the traps fighting the Feminist 101 fight like the strong feminist ally that he is, so that some of us can take a wee break from the front.

I believe Sean is the kind of candidate that NAFF is intended for – an Australian fan who has never been to a Natcon before, wouldn’t otherwise be able to make it to this one and already participates so enthusiastically in fandom. Let’s bring him out to Melbourne, show him what a Continum con looks like and introduce him round!

Sean is running against WA fan Sarah and John Parker. They are strong and worthy candidates. No matter who you vote for, voting makes the fundraising easier. So get voting. Here’s all the information on how to vote:

Votes are being collected by: Sue Ann Barber (VIC) and the candidates. For more information please contact Sue Ann at activeim@hotmail.com. Voting opens Tuesday 3rd April 2012 and concludes on Sunday 22nd April 2012.

Please make all cheques payable to NAFF or National Australian Fan Fund. Email Sue Ann if you would like to pay via direct deposit or PayPal. Cash, in person, is welcome, but not through the mail! Postal address:

NAFF
PO Box 249
Pascoe Vale South VIC 3044

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

As I said, still not with the sitting still and doing one thing. I am *supposed* to be finishing my first lot of socks for the Cookie A sock club. Here is how much I have done of the first sock. Nearly the cuff. And I know that the second round has been posted to me so I am knitting against the clock here. I chose the pattern that is going to knit up like fortune cookies but that lace repeat is starting to get to me. Any second now, I get to turn the heel. And yet.

And yet, even with the deadline, I mostly knit on the kimono jacket.

And that has its own story. When I was cataloguing my WIPs, I pulled it out. I guess it was about half done and not touched for a good five years. I realised what was stopping me from finishing was that I had no idea where I was up to on the pattern. I know realise it would have been only a matter of measuring the sleeves and continuing on. However, actually when I measured it, I decided I was knitting it one size too small for me. So I unravelled the whole thing and started from scratch with one size up. But. Either the wool had sat for so long under a window in the sun and perished a little, or a moth or two had gotten to it. Or my knitting was not all that flash hot. Because the yarn is frayed to broken in some places. In more than a few places. So this has been a process of joining broken yarn and so on all along the way.

At first this was really hard and I realised that it was because I want this piece to be perfect. And I also want it to look exactly like the picture in the pattern. Except for two things. 1. Its not the same yarn as in the picture so it’s not going to look like that (why I didn’t buy that yarn when I purchased the it is a mystery for the ages because I no longer remember)  and 2. This is the first sweater, and in fact non accessory sized adult garment, I’ve ever knit. Its probably not going to be perfect.  And I’ve realised I need to give that up and get over myself and knit the damn jumper. It’s just a jumper. So I am nearly back knitted up to where I started when I unravelled it. And miraculously, most of that knitting happened this weekend. It was only just maybe 10 or 20 rows in when I took it to Swancon on Friday. And now I’m halfway through through the sleeves. I’m not sure if it’s going to be long enough but I’ll see.

The exciting bit about this project is that it involves a dropstitch when you get to the end. Yup, you purposely drop a bunch of stitches across it – and that, I reckon probably will make it might lighter and longer. So I’ve been waiting for that moment for about 5 years. I’m all about the delayed satisfaction.

So what with all this excitement and deadlines. Yeah I totally spent yesterday on something completely else. Remember my panic about moving over to knitting and not quilting? Well I’ve been listening to a bunch of podcasts on my drives all last week – both on knitting and on quilting – and following the lead on one of the quilting podcasts led me to a New York Beauty quiltalong. I only first came across the New York Beauty blocks last year but I fell in love with them and I fell hard. I love the art deco feel you can get with them and I love the sharp contrasts of points and circles and I love the amazing effects piecing them can bring. But I’m scared of them cause I’ve never done circular sewing before.

But I stared at this quiltalong all the rest of last week. And even though I’m not going to join and even though I’m *knitting to deadline*, I printed out one or two templates. And then today I went rifling through my stash. I kinda wanted to use the Paris cats fabric for it but I don’t know how much of that is still committed. And then I remembered/found this gorgeous set of fat quarters called something or other Noir. And I had bought it for liking it but with nothing in particular in mind. And it has Eiffel Tower fabric in it and …. and I started another project! Oops!

It feels terrible to be so utterly unfocussed right now. But it also feels fantastic to just follow creative whim. And this turned out so much better than I thought it would. It’s not a great semicircle (it has a bit of lineaity in it) – but first try! And I love how the points came out. I’m so suckered into the New York beauty! There are nine different blocks in this quiltalong.

I think I’m in!

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

Yesterday was a huuuuge day! We woke up to a twitter stream informing us that the Hugo ballot was out and Galactic Suburbia was on it! We’ve made it onto the first ever Fancast category ballot and it’s absolutely amazing, hard to take in and just totally floored me. Thank you to every one who nominated us!! We’re so glad you think what we’re doing is Hugo worthy. This category is absolutely awesome, if you don’t listen to the other podcasts, you’re missing out!

Best Fancast

• The Coode Street Podcast, Jonathan Strahan & Gary K. Wolfe
• Galactic Suburbia Podcast, Alisa Krasnostein, Alex Pierce, and Tansy Rayner Roberts (presenters) and Andrew Finch (producer)
• SF Signal Podcast, John DeNardo and JP Frantz (presenters), Patrick Hester (producer)
• SF Squeecast, Lynne M. Thomas, Seanan McGuire, Paul Cornell, Elizabeth Bear, and Catherynne M. Valente
• StarShipSofa, Tony C. Smith

As you know, at Galactic Suburbia, we LOVE awards season and we’re major fans of the Hugos. To be a part of it is too too cool. I’d already decided that this year I’d follow Alex’s suit and work me way through the entire Hugo packet and I can hardly wait til the 2012 one is out!

If you want to play along and if you want to cast a Hugo vote! you can do so by buying a supporting membership here.

And if that wasn’t enough for one day, I was so pleased to hear that Nightsiders by Sue Isle won the Tin Duck for Best WA Long Fiction Best WA Professional Production. I’m so very proud of this book. I’m so very glad that others are enjoying it and getting as much out of what she has done in this collection as I did.

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

I’ve been sitting here all day with the intention of writing up a bunch of posts I want to make. There are a few on a bunch of topics, so many in fact I thought, well, I could queue up for the week so as not to deluge the blog. I have though in fact started only this one. Mostly because I couldn’t decide where to start. And that’s been pretty much most of the day and in fact my week. And it’s not even been too much to do, no idea where to start. I have a list, comprehensive lists, breaking things down into bite sized tasks. Any task to suit any mood. Alas my mood has been to flit with no desire to sink my teeth into anything or indeed to sit still long enough to sink at all.

Take today, I’ve half cleaned the kitchen, half started the laundry, cleaned a bit of my desk, folded some laundry, and sorted a bit of my in tray. But I’ve completed nothing, really. And instead I’ve been sort of consumed by my knitting and the internet. And I still don’t feel much like doing anything even though I have TONS to do. I just don’t seem in a settling into anything type of mood.

I made it into Swancon on Friday and Sunday – Friday was unexpected as we found ourselves with 6 hours to kill between Easter breakfast with C’s parents and Seder night with mine. And I wanted to pop in and see Marianne and drop her in some books. I settled into her interview panel with the beginning of my knitting (above) and thought I’d just stay for that. Zoe interviewed Marianne and I believe it was recorded so perhaps available for listening at some point in time. And it was a really great interview, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I mean, yeah, really lovely things were said about Glitter Rose, and Kendra asked a fantastic question about the book (always so freaking awesome when readers get what you were trying to and/or really think about the work – Marianne described Kendra as a “thoughtful reader” and I instantly decided that’s what I want to be when I grow up and also how lucky I am to have thoughtful readers of the work I publish) but it was just really energising to hear Marianne speak. It’s kinda rare now that I think about it to sit in a big room, for it to be really well packed and for just one woman to speak about her experiences as a writer. An she had so much of interest to say.

After that, I ended up kind of conning – I believe it’s called? I just sort of floated around, got into conversations with people and had not a care in the world. It was great. And C had headed off to the gaming room when we got there and I got a text asking if I was ok and if it was all good to stay and I was happy, he was happy and it was good. I had a brief chat and debrief with Marianne just before we had to head off to dinner and that was that.

Sunday we headed back in – I had two panels on and C played in the magic tournament thingie. I managed to persuade Jonathan to come and join me on my first panel with Helen and Satima on what to do once you’ve finished your manuscript. And then we headed off to lunch with Kathryn and Terri. And after mooching about, I had a second panel which I don’t think went very well and then I headed back to the dealers room where I managed to successfully win the fan art pictured with my knitting above! It’s by Susan Margaret who also painted the Glitter Rose glasses from last year. I think I might love her work I’m looking forward to drinking lots of cups of tea whilst knitting and reading in a winter with this cheery set. It was part of a beautiful installation which I would have bought more of but I had no more money on me.

And then I could dodge it no longer. Marianne sat me down and gave me the hard questions to “check I was still on the straight and narrow.” How lucky am I to have such awesome mentors? Something that’s a real struggle is finding publishing mentors in Australia – there’s lots of avenues for how to learn your craft as a writer or editor, all manner of courses and workshops and societies. But so much less, to almost nothing, on how to grow an independent press. I think it would be fair to say in the SF/F scene, most small presses stick around 5 to 10 years. And very few make the leap from small to medium. I’ve been lucky to be introduced to a bunch of people who have been willing to help by answering my questions and to offer guidance. But I’ve been luckier still to have good friends who throw ideas at me and let me bounce off my crazy. Marianne, though, is the one to whom I confess *everything* and who has been keeping me honest and on track so I don’t get too crazy. Or that I at least keep the crazy on the back burner for now. She knows a lot about the business and anyone who had the chance to hear her talk or to talk with her this weekend knows just what an honour that was. I for one am glad I had nothing hidden I had to confess to her face!! I would not have enjoyed that! And it was instead great to talk through with her my plan with the upcoming novels and everything that goes along with trying to make this a real thing.

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

I’m a big fan of Locus, of what they do and also of preserving history and historical artifacts. Here’s a really good chance to chuck a buck or two in the pot and make sure that a bunch of the genre scene doesn’t get lost or misplaced and that the ephemera Charles Brown spent his lifetime collecting can be accessed, used and enjoyed. You never know when you might want to research something.

Locus Photo and Ephemera Archive Project

I’m going to go contribute now.

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

If you’re just joining us, and want to try out Galactic Suburbia for the first time, here are the top episodes that we think represent the best of 2011.

Episode 32: 11 May 2011 In which we bid farewell to Joanna Russ, talk e-publishing (again) and Alisa reads a real live actual book. With bonus raving about Doctor Who and Alistair Reynolds – in other words, another episode of Galactic Suburbia.

Episode 36: Spoilerific Book Club: Joanna Russ Featuring: “How To Suppress Women’s Writing,” by Joanna Russ; “The Female Man,” by Joanna Russ and “When it Changed,” by Joanna Russ

Episode 47: 24 November 2011 In which we bid farewell to the queen of dragons, squee about 48 years of Doctor Who, dissect the negative associations with “girly” fandoms such as Twilight, and find some new favourites in our reading pile.

Or if you’re feeling adventurous, you can check out our entire 2011 catalogue of episodes! Thanks to our silent producer for gathering those links.

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

I needed to post about my Nana before I could post anything else here, it didn’t feel right. I hope also it’s understandable that I will be a bit unreliable on things whilst I take a bit more time out of commitments and also that I may not make it to Swancon.

Also this week, in the midst of everything else, I gave notice at work and resigned on Tuesday. An old boss had come looking for me some time ago to work for her on something that would be the kind of job I would write for myself if I were to write one for me in public service. It also comes with a promotion, more money and less commute – in fact it’s ridiculously close to the train line. So that’s a 15 hour return of time to my week as I can read, slush, reply to email etc whilst commuting. It’s a pretty good opportunity.

The problem was, I didn’t look for it and I was enjoying where I was when she came and found me. I like my boss and my team. And I’m still learning how to do the job. And I knew how badly they needed extra hands for the work load and by leaving, I will be leaving more work to less people. For which I feel pretty awful about. So I had been dreading resigning, in fact I almost didn’t even consider the offer in the first place because of this. I am so lucky to have such good work friends – one of whom smacked me around for a bit for not even considering it. Especially as it has the opportunity to apply for permanency which I am yet to have ever been offered (the opportunity to apply for) in the 7 years working where I am. And I was the worst feminist ever, being so apologetic for taking a better offer, I apologised like 5 times as I left the room after resigning. Seems I’ve at least moved to a point where I will take what’s right or better for me but I don’t quite own or feel proud of doing so.

I’m sad too to be leaving my agency and moving on. But the job feels the right fit for me. I’m a little scared by how badly they are needing and wanting the skills I have. I think maybe the job is going to be really hard and I won’t have much supervision to guide some of what I will be doing (not overly different to where I was in my last job but I do know how that then feels). I raised some of the issues that I thought there would be in my taking the job and they have already offered some solutions and I’ve thought of a few ways to deal with things too. So … I guess … I’m actually doing this. I start April 30.

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

I’ve been doing research for the Craft Ebook line that I’m working on. I forgot research was fun! I also forgot research is vital, but never mind that now, I got there in the end. Anyway, one of the things I’ve been doing is going back and listening to old episodes of Cast On podcast. I stopped listening for about a year, I suspect some time in the last bit of my relationship with the ex. Brenda took about a year off and so once she was back podcasting and I rediscovered her, I wanted to go back and listen to the episodes I’d missed. And then I was enjoying listening to her so much on my long drives that I started working my way back through older episodes.

The old format of the podcast aimed to sound like how a magazine read so it included news, and announcements, a regular feature called Today’s Sweater, other features and then an essay. The essays started as Brenda’s and then were sometimes were written by listeners and read by guest readers.

A couple of weeks ago now, I was listening to one such essay that made me cry and made me really think about what knitting means to me. A woman wrote about a scarf she’d made. She’d picked it for a long road trip, something complicated enough that she wouldn’t finish it in the first hour or two, but simple enough to not need to pay too much attention. And then she talked about how she’d knitted it on the journey, about the scenic backdrop of the trip and how happy they were and what a great time she’d had. She didn’t finish the scarf on the trip. However, not long after the trip, she fell down the stairs in her house and broke her neck. So immediately after this trip, she’d gone through the worst time in her life. It was a very dark time, she was lucky enough to be able to be operated on and regain her mobility but her recovery was very slow and painful. And she talked about all the days filled with pain and not being able to sit for very long. And how she then thought that knitting her scarf might be something she could do. At first she could only knit one or two stitches at a time and that she couldn’t sit for very long as well. Eventually she gained more strength and the pain lessened and she worked at the scarf and was able to wear it, finished, by the time she was well enough to go on a gentle camping trip again. She wrote about what that scarf, and knitting, meant to her. That project had been with her at the best of times and then kept her company in the worst of times, giving her something to focus on, to mark her recovery and to immerse herself in.

After I finished wiping away tears from the happy story, I thought a lot about the last time I had really thrown myself into knitting and what knitting means to me. My grandmother taught me to knit. I don’t know when. One of my earliest memories is dragging an old round plastic bag, that had contained a small ottoman, around my grandparents’ house, filled with white acrylic yarn and lots of knitting needles. I was about three and I would pretend, though think, I was knitting like my grandmother. I couldn’t have been that much older when she finally taught. I feel like I’ve always known how to knit. I don’t remember not knowing how to. I love to knit and I love doing something that my grandmother taught me. Now that she’s gone, I love that I continue to do something that she taught me and that she loved to do. I love the bringing a part of her with me into the future. My other grandmother taught me how to crochet and I feel the same way about that. And I guess there is something very nurturing and comforting in it.

Some time around when my relationship with my ex (I really need to find some geological reference word to refer to that period of my life. Answers on a postcard) started to head south, I took up knitting in a big way. Like A BIG WAY. I got really engrossed in the online knitting world which was starting to take off. All these personal blogs with gorgeous photos of works in progress and hand dyed yarn, and groovy modern patterns. And etsy. And paypal. And sock yarn clubs. And podcasts. It was a heady, frenetic time. I was in my first serious grown up day job. The ex would spend exorbitant amounts of money on ridiculous things (like private golf club memberships, boating and my favourite, oops I wanted a brand new car. Again) and I figured, why not do the same (on so much smaller an order of magnitude)? I fell into a new fandom, of sorts. I stashed like hand dyed yarn was going out of fashion. I joined sock yarn clubs. I ebayed. I ogled and leered and drank in colour and fibre. And I knitted so much. I would literally stay home on a Saturday night, in preference, to knit. (Sure the choice was usually to go and sit in a cold damp stadium and watch really poor basketball played poorly.) I knitted. A. Lot. I knitted so many babies booties, I’m still gifting them in large piles to every baby that has been born since. And I still have a huge drawer full. I tried my hand at an etsy store, to little success. I even tried stalls at craft fairs. I was in this obsession waist deep. I had knitting on sets of needles all over the place and I was always starting new thing. I was immersed. I must have knit about 30 pairs of adult socks. And scarves. A few shawls. And those gorgeous hot water bottles (that yarn I used was just divine).

It got obsessive. And looking back on it now, I think maybe I understand why. I didn’t really knit like that once I moved out into my own place. A lot of the projects I’m cataloguing now, I started before I moved out and then never really picked back up again. I packed away most of my stash and didn’t look at it til I moved last year. I picked up a new craft – the patchworking – and got into that, but in a much less obsessive way.

It occurs to me now that the knitting was a way of finding love – of surrounding myself with something I associate with someone who always comforted me. Getting involved, no matter how much from the (consumer) sidelines, in the online knitting world was a way of coming home, of being understood, of being wrapped up in a nostalgic love. Because I wasn’t even being overly creative with my knitting. I knit a lot of plain socks and straight scarves, with fabulously colourful yarn. Teaching myself to knit socks was possibly the most adventurous thing I did during that time. And I never got sick of knitting stockinette. I just knit and knit and knit. Like my life depended on it. And maybe it did.

And last night I wandered into the TV room and looked at my bag with my sock yarn club yarn in it, all balled up and ready to go, and I felt that feeling again – of coming home. Of warmth and fondness. Of belonging again. And I guess that’s different to how I feel about patchworking – which is filled with creativity and invention and experimentation. And I actually mentally checked myself when I felt that way – like to be cautious that I don’t fall into that big knitting hole again. Almost a don’t enjoy this too much, kind of thought process. Don’t get consumed. Why not? I wondered? Am I scared of the obsession? Should I not feel at home with my online knitting peeps? Is that so wrong? I realize now, after writing this, that that won’t happen – it can’t happen – because I am in a very different mental space. That it will be ok even if I do enjoy it too much. Because this time, I’m doing it because I love to knit and not because I’m trying to kit over (or out of) a hole.

That said, I still am a *little* bit scared of the siren that is knitting online.

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

Thanks to those who left feedback on my craft post of anguish. I am terribly behind at answering comments. I took all your advice and packed up and put away the Charm Quilt project. I packed up all the pieces that I had laid out and put them in a ziplock back and made a box just for this project. And that alone made me feel so much better. I’ve got a few pieces of that project still out on my sewing table – a few of the hexagons all pinned and ready to go – and some of the scraps. I’m mostly just mildly contemplating them from a distance. I feel like I could finish them off so they’re still out. But I am also very aware that I might feel completely better if I just packed them all up and put them away for now. Of course as soon as I did this, another little batch of fat eighths I’d ordered from a Jinny Beyer sale as a reward for something I finished came in. I took a photo of them and then popped them in the box as well. I’ll figure out what I’m doing with all that another day.

Tansy says I always have this panic and I always move in cycles. I dunno though – this quilting thing is pretty new. I only really started collecting fabrics just as my relationship with my ex was breaking up. So – oh. What’s that? 5 years ago now. Hmm maybe it’s not that new after all. Maybe I should just chill out about this and let go and let the cycles happen on their own. This forcing business only makes me feel bad anyway. It’s just that I have so many beautiful projects that I want to get to and I also want to actually finish the ones I have started. Anyway. This is not the point of this post. In any case, this time round, I really want to hope to believe that I can somehow be immersed in two crafts at once. Just like you can be immersed in two books at once. Oh. Nevermind.

I took up some very excellent advice from Sim in the comments to my last post. She suggested that I audit my projects. I’ve only partly started this. I’m hoping to have finished it by the end of the week. However, this exercise was very interesting because I found where all my sets of DPNs (double pointed needles, come in sets of 4) were. Yes, they were in various stages of different pairs of socks.

I decided that what I really want to focus on is starting and finishing the socks from the Cookie A’s sock club before the next skein of yarn comes in. So I went in search of the right needles. I found them in a sock project I had stashed in C’s glove box for those times I’m with him and we’re driving somewhere (we live 45 mins to an hour from stuff). I was maybe 25% away from finishing the pair. I’d started them on a couple of days field trip in the last job, oooh what? Last June? Last October?

Yes, well. I pulled out the project and assessed it. It was close to being finished but very quickly, I also discovered that the second sock was a little bit shorter than the first – I’d put the heel in too soon. So I ripped back the half of the gusset and the heel and started over. I was a bit annoyed at that, creating more work etc, but the stripes, they didn’t match and I’d made a point of casting on the second sock exactly at the right point so that they would. And it would only annoy me every time I wore them if I didn’t fix them now. What’s an extra day of work compared to be annoyed every time I wear them? These socks wear really well – they are a commercial self striping sock yarn and about 15% nylon so they machine wash and wear great. The first pair I made with them, something like 8 years ago, still look fantastic.

So in summary, I ripped back the sock to almost halfway, reknit it and finished these off over the weekend. A weekend in which I was out for most of Saturday and did various work things as well. A couple of hours and a new pair of socks. Makes me eye off the other socks in various stages on the needles. How long would it take me to have all new socks before winter? I suspect some of this has come about because I am so used to knitting for other people. I’m not sure why I am like that for knitting but a vast majority of what I have knit I have gifted away. And that sort of taints how you feel about it, I think. I mean, I love knitting and it might be that I am more process than product focused. Thus as long as I am knitting, I am happy. And how many of any one craft thing does one person need? Etc. But at some point, if you never enjoy the spoils of your labour, you must lose enthusiasm. So, whilst I do have a list of projects I want to gift this year, I think I really need (and I think I already had done so?) to set aside this year and craft primarily for myself. You know, til I have too many hats, scarves and socks etc.

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

Oh look, here’s another topic I have been struggling to pull into a coherent piece. We’re getting married. And I’m over the moon that I am going to marry C. I’m really excited about our wedding day and the life we are planning together. But I have to admit that the planning of the wedding, for me, is an internal struggle between two parts. And as we get deeper into this, it gets more uncomfortable and as such I am getting less and less decisive on things. Which means, I am embarrassed to admit, C is doing much more of the coordination of details than me.

Here’s the thing. There is 12 year old me aka the Hollywood stereotype thinker and there’s 36 year old me – independent woman, feminist, etc. They actually agree far less often than you might think.

12 year old me has always dreamed of the white dress, the veil, being walked down the aisle. The whole kit and caboodle. And in some ways, this would be the really easy option. Open up the Hollywood recipe of how to plan a wedding, follow steps A through W and bazinga you have yourself the white wedding we all dreamed of.

The thing is … I’m 36. And I’m not the wide-eyed innocent swapping her parents’ home for her husband’s, to be wife and mother. I’m really struggling with a lot of the symbology of weddings. And I think it would be really easy to just not think about them and I spose a lot of people don’t. But I started to think about what things mean, as people ask do I want this or that, and I don’t want to be an automaton. I don’t want to do things just because that’s what is expected or because everyone else does. But as soon as you start to think about deeper meanings and symbolism of rituals, it really starts to hurt your brain. So for example, I’m not something “to be given away” – I’m not property and noone owns me and more than that, I already left home some time ago and earn my own keep. I’m not really comfortable with a veil – what’s that about, hiding the bride’s face and all that? And then there’s the dress itself. Can I really, with a straight face, saunter down the aisle in a big white meringue and not look completely over the top? Except, some little part of me still says, in a very tiny voice, but I want to wear the dress! And .. it’s not often you have an occasion to wear a ball gown, so why not? And … but veils are so pretty! And this is a one time chance to wear one. Picking wedding colours, styles and a theme feels so defined, such a statement of “this is who I am/who we are” when really it might just be one aspect of who we are. On the other hand, we’re planning a wedding here and decisions need to be made and things booked and deposits paid. It’s all rather overwhelming.

I blogged before about this: I want our wedding to be meaningful to us and represent who we are and what kind of life we plan to make together. It very much needs to be a blend of the two of us. And for my part, throwing out a lot of the traditions feels right and wrong at the same time – I am a person who loves ritual but at the same time, cannot go along with things that have always been just because they have always been so when they let women down. Which means we have the chance to start from the foundations and build upwards. But I have no idea what that means or what that will eventually look like. Or where to start thinking about that.

That all makes it sound so much more tortured than it is! We had a lot of fun going wedding cake tasting which I might confess I took inspiration from the Gilmore Girls. Oddly though, I got over cake much quicker than I thought I would. We didn’t even eat all the cakes here in this wedding cake taster box! And in the end, it only took a morning of doing the wedding cake circuit to find the cake I wanted and lock it in. Though I maintain I will find an event to plan so I can order and serve the light green cake with Japanese orange blossoms

PS. After I wrote this post, I realised that I want to change the theme of our wedding. C just rolled his eyes. Though it has meant that I spent the weekend creating picture boards of my ideas for the theme and I’m much more excited and feel much more focused and clear on what I think I want.

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

Monday morning got you down? Check out the latest episode of Galactic Suburbia

Episode 56

In which Alex falls by the wayside and Alisa & Tansy soldier on to talk about awards, Connie Willis, Tina Fey and Chicks Digging Comics. And more comics.

News The Galactic Suburbia Award has landed.

Manfire: the latest exploration of genderbending comics protest through artwork

Ditmar nominations open (wiki with things eligible; how to nominate)

Cool comment about understanding Aussie fiction awards from outside our country.

Aurealis Awards nominees: press release

Brit Mandelo new Strange Horizons fiction editor

Pinterest for Galactic Suburbia! Thanks, Celia

Swancon Program is out – Perth SF convention this Easter.

Tansy’s Creature Court books (Power and Majesty, The Shattered City and Reign of Beasts) are now available on the Kindle internationally! Should be available on other platforms too – iBookstore etc. If you see them for sale somewhere in your country please let us know. Fly, my pretties, fly!

What Culture Have we Consumed? Alisa: All About Emily, Connie Willis; Bossypants, Tina Fey; Hunger Games Movie Tansy: Astonishing X-Men, Joss Whedon & John Cassaday; Saucer Country by Paul Cornell, Chicks Dig Comics, edited by Lynne M Thomas & Sigrid Ellis.

We’ll be giving away a copy of Beyond Binary, edited by Brit Mandelo (and featuring a Tansy story). Tweet us with the name of your favourite queer/genderqueer/QLTBG character in SF or fantasy to be in the draw!

Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs, check out Galactic Suburbia Podcast on Facebook and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

WARNING: Spoilers for the books and the movies herein.

Last night, after recording the latest Galactic Suburbia podcast, C and I rushed off to the movies to see The Hunger Games. The darling man that he is, knew I had been looking forward to this movie in particular and had bought Gold Class tickets as a surprise a couple of weeks ago. (really, the marrying him is such a no-brainer). I’d not been to Gold Class down here and was a bit unsure what to expect. It’s a little more expensive but you get a free soft drink and popcorn. As we entered the glass doors for the Lounge, I realised that we were not the only ones seeing a 9pm movie. And in fact, the Gold Glass at Rockingham has a lot more seats. It also has a regular movie goers section in front of the partitioned Gold Class. It was not … as exclusive, shall I say? Also there were a lot of people, which made it noisy. And we got sat next to some *younger* people. I know I am “older” now when I no longer react to over-hyped teenaged/early 20s young men who are laughing and jeering and making fun of people to a) draw attention whilst b) trying to cover their insecurities. I just mostly don’t care about what they think and I want them to be quiet. And get off my lawn.

So you can see I kinda was unimpressed and a little annoyed when the movie started. I don’t know if that impacted on how I experienced the movie. Everybody was given a bowl of popcorn as the movie started and I did like that. Also, Katniss Everdeen is pretty darn impressive – so much so that even those jeering boys were quiet as the tension mounted and I could feel they thought she was quiet the awesome.

The movie. This a review, after all. Normally, I am really forgiving of movie adaptations from books. I don’t expect the movie to be true to the story. I understand a 2 hour movie has much less scope for subplots or large casts of supporting characters. And I don’t mind if chunks of the book get left out. It’s not *all* crucial and it doesn’t *all* need to be included. A movie is not a book. However, I can’t tell if I just loved these books more than most or if my reaction is  fair one. But I felt disappointed for much of the movie. I felt disconnected and a little bit robbed of my emotional journey. And I’ve spent the day thinking this through carefully. I didn’t really like or enjoy the movie.

I didn’t mind the production of this film. I imagined people in the districts to be poorer I guess we might see more of this if the second and third books get adapted. After all, we mostly see District 12 in their Sunday best for the Reaping Day. I did feel though that the whole movie felt less glossy and shiny than a Harry Potter. I’m still not sure if maybe it *should* be, given it’s post apocalypse. And I have to also say that about 5 -10 minutes in, I felt very uncomfortable because the opening Reaping Day scenes are a little bit triggering for me (all a bit too close to rounding people up for things and you know how I am with such imagery). C leaned over and reminded me I picked this film and then said we could leave whenever I wanted to. Actually, maybe that’s what I mean about it not being shiny? These scenes of the District Square and so on had a very 1940s feel to them.

But there were a lot of things I liked about this movie. The capital is very exciting and futuristic, and the stark contrast to District 12 with colour and fashion and design was really well done. Haymmich is played brilliantly by Woody Harrelson. I think he was an excellent choice of casting. The entry scene into the arena on chariots was done well as was the Girl on Fire schtick. And that whole prep prior to the game was also well captured. I found the TV hosts a little grating because they weren’t charismatic enough but at the same time you could see they served as the narrator at points (to explain stuff for info dump, not done particularly savvy) and also were a little bit of a window into the All is Not Well in the Capital foreshadowing.

But really, ultimately, I was disappointed with the storytelling from the time they entered the arena onwards. Too much was cut from this part of the story or did not translate into movie. We see very little of Peeta from when Katniss takes off once the game starts and it means that we lose the paranoid elements of the experience of being in the game – we lose Katniss’s flipping back and forwards with deciding whether he is genuine and loves her or whether he is playing her. And because this is lost, all we get is him shaking his head at her when they are on the dais waiting for the countdown, him as part of that first group of the Careers hunting her down and the trackerjacks and then her going to find him once the rules changed.

There is no motivation or explanation given for why Katniss decides to go find Peeta at this point. Why would she want to save him? We really didn’t get the sense in the movie that she didn’t want to have to kill him, that was dropped much earlier on. And so her last interaction with him is the group coming to hunt her and her setting the wasps on him. More happens between them in the book so that its obvious she would drop everything to find him. And from memory, there was something more in the book between them after the wasps and before the rule change that makes it clear that if nothing else, they are on the same side and would make a natural team. Also that she knows he is injured. In the book there are more opportunities for them to interact in the game so as to start laying down the beginning of a love story for the Hunger Games audience to engage with and make her more of an asset for the producers of the show to keep her and them in. And to in fact change the rules as a response to that. Whereas in the movie, she just ups and somehow knows where to find him and then is all kissy kissy. I was left in the cinema not buying it.

I felt ultimately that the complexity of the relationship between Peeta and Katniss is sacrificed in the movie and so it was a very bland and unsatisfying watch. Katniss’s feelings were far more complex and they make the ending more poignant (and moreish). So too, I don’t feel we got a good sense of Peeta, though possibly because them being a team inside the arena was much shorter screen time than it is in the book. You really felt at the end of the book sympathy for both Katniss because she was playing up the story to survive, yet also really values Peeta as at least a friend, her feelings on him still budding and so hurt that she had hurt him, and also for Peeta who so completely loves her and actually wanted to be picked in order to help her survive, at his own expense, and also knows that his love is helpless.

That said. And I will go back and reread the books now because I felt cheated on the ride. I did still really enjoy a lot of aspects of what makes The Hunger Games awesome. I was struck by how lovely it was to see a heroine dressed up in hero garb – in this case the unitard of the training gear – and still *look* like a woman. She’s tough, there’s no doubt, and there were some great scenes of her fighting guys, and the climatic scene on top of the cornucopia where Peeta gives her a hoist up and then she turns round and pulls him up after her. She clearly was strong and equal physically, which is refreshing to see on the movie screen. She doesn’t just fight the girls and she doesn’t only accept help from the boys. But they never took away from her her womanness. If I can say that. Whether in hunting gear or the ball gown, she was still always feminine. And one of her strongest traits, and I think assets, was her maternal instincts. So used to mothering Prim, she mothers Rue – which is heartbreaking. Oh Rue!! And in turn, Rue is a very strong and important ally. And she cares for Peeta when he was hurt. And then even in the final moment, when she shoots the final dude, I forget his name? and he falls off to the wolves below, her “humanity” is to put him down, with that last final arrow. She is tough and a hunter and survivor, but she is still loving and full of compassion and care. I liked the way they were portrayed.

So, in all. I dunno. It felt like a let down. Am I too much of a fan of The Hunger Games? Did it get in the way of my watching? C had not read the books and said he felt it hung together quite well. He felt less disappointed than me.

I’m going to spend the weekend immersed in the books again. Send tissues and chocolate.

EDIT TO ADD: I realised I hadn’t touched on the depiction of violence in the movie and I wanted to mention it. There are dead bodies of kids. There is some you know, killing of kids. A lot of it is offscreen, as it is in the book. And a lot of the rest of it is filmed in such a way that you can’t really see what’s happening – shaky and unfocussed cam etc. That said, there is no escaping Rue’s death. And its horrible and poignant. And I cried lots.

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

Trigger warning: I talk about food issues herein.

Well it’s week 6 of this 12 week program I’m on – almost half way through. Already? It’s hard to believe actually. I thought it would be so much harder – to give up some of my much loved habits and I thought it would be harder to drag myself up off the couch. Which is not to say that there haven’t been skipped workout sessions or off program meals but they have been the exception rather than the norm. I’ve never stayed on a program this long before. I am the queen of the two week flunk out, to be truthful.

It’s weird to know that I really can go 6 weeks without a packet of lollies and not only not die but not even really miss them. Sure I get the odd craving but it turns out cravings are fleeting. Huh. There are a few things that I have downshifted calories and servings sizes so as to not have to give them up completely. I might really think the world without chocolate is not worthwhile so I’ve shifted to a sugar free dark chocolate which, to be honest, is really not that bad. And we’re also allowed a brand of low fat ice-creams so I’ve not really gone ice-cream-free either.

That said, there have been two main reasons for stopping myself from throwing it out the window and diving into the mini fun size choccie bars flopped seductively in their charity box just 10 steps down from my office cubicle. The first is that I really have worked hard to get to here, both physically and mentally, and I don’t want to undo that and that leads into the second, which is, I suspect that if I had one taste, just one, I wouldn’t be able to stop again. I’d be back into those foods having a hold over me and I’d be back where I started. If I could have just one chocolate bar and stop. And then not have another for a while, I’d be ok. And the goal is to get to that place. I just think it’s a little while off from here still.

So, where am I at? Cause as it turns out, it isn’t just about losing weight.

I’ve lost 5 kg in 5 weeks, which I’m quite happy with. My 12 week goal was to lose half a kilo a week (6kg) and I almost completed that in the first third of the program. I have had to review my goals (which is apparently what you are supposed to do and not just me shifting the goalposts) and now am aiming to lose 12 kg by the end.

We’re eating a lot more healthily and consistently than we were before. We clean out the fridge at the end of every week because we need to make room for the new week’s food plan. I noticed this weekend that we threw out a lot less moldy fruit and veggies and that we had almost no leftovers from cooked meals in the fridge at all. And what went in were almost all fresh, unprocessed groceries. And lots and lots of colour.

On top of this, I’ve started taking a nighttime multivitamin which is supposed to promote rest and repair for your body. I’m really really crap at remembering to take multivitamins in the morning but a nighttime one suits me perfectly and I’ve been really consistent about this.

So the sum of all these things is that I am sleeping better than I have done in years. In YEARS! Yes I also gave up espresso coffee. And I’m exercising a lot more than I was before. And OMG sleeeeep. I know that’s the thing people with children tease you about but I have never ever been a good sleeper so being able to sleep through the whole night without waking up 6 times? Divine! And new for me. And you know what else? I wake up feel rested. RESTED! It’s like a whole new body. Every day. And therefore, unsurprisingly, my Crohn’s is really settling down. I’ve found the nutrition plan has a lot more gluten in it than I would ordinarily eat. We’ve sort of tried the food as is to get a feel for it but this week I am switching things out to replace, especially bread, with gluten free options. I’ll be interested to see how this plays out.

And exercise. OMG exercise. I have a love/hate relationship with it. It’s always been this way for me – putting on the clothes (to be fair, more so when it was those thick ballet stockings with the seam you had to have perfectly straight) is always the hardest part for me and sometimes can be the stumbling block I cannot climb. I am enjoying seeing myself get fitter and stronger. I’m enjoying being able to do more and recover faster. Today I ran all the way down to the sports complex and back and I can’t believe how comfortably I did that (in 3 min/2mn run/walk blocks). I’m getting the endorphin rush that makes it all worthwhile. And I’m also really aware of all the studies that show how exercise can alleviate depression and Crohn’s symptoms.

I’m also *moving* around and strengthening core muscles! I’m suddenly aware of how many friends of mine suffer from RSI and it occurred to me that whilst I am not a writer, I still spend a lot of time at a desk and then further hours hunched over a laptop. It might be prudent for me to be proactive about preventing injuries. I’ve noticed since about the first week of this program that my headaches have gone – I used to pretty much have constant headaches and now I know, because I *remember* them, that I have had only 3 in the past 6 weeks. Not only that but my neck issues seem to have eased up as well. And you know, physios and doctors tell you that exercise will help but you kinda look at them and think something FREE will fix this? Come on! Yeah it turns out getting off your arse and moving around a bit is good for you. Who knew?

I’m only 6 weeks in. I have to make it another 6 weeks and then beyond. And I don’t know how I will go yet. But I have started to get really (more) cynical about a bunch of things in modern life. All these things that are supposed to be convenient and help you save time but really make you fat and lazy and cost you money and then you have to pay more money to get thin and moving and so on. You really have to wonder what kinds of mugs we are, just lapping up all the cola and fries we can get whilst flicking the channels on the remote.

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

Apologies for this and the next couple of posts I’m going to make. They’re a bit of a whinge and a self kicking but I feel like I need to get them down here before I can move beyond them. Not talking or writing about it is becoming a block and not helping with the working to move past it.

It’s not surprising given how I feel – frustrated and drowning – that I’m not getting much done on my craft projects. And that frustrates me even more – craft is my outlet. But not being able to face crafting? Makes me even sadder. I noticed that what I have been able to do is more of the scrap quilt. And worse, I noticed I was doing it with almost an obsessive quality. And … well … this is not a project that is going to have a quick end date which means there is no quick payoff or enjoyment to dedicating myself to it. I’m not even really getting scraps tidied up and reduced because there are just *so many* of them. And it’s an example of how I so easily get sidetracked and how I do it as an avoidance technique.

Once I identified this, I realised it was because I was stuck pairing the above triangles for my charm quilt project. So I spread them all out on the table, as you can see, to just, face up to it and start making hexagons. Mm.. I have a lot of charm pieces. And they don’t match. I managed to pull maybe 8 hexagons (6 triangles in each) out of these stacks last weekend. And then I just got kinda depressed with the damn project. I can’t make those damn pieces match. And … *deep breath*  I kinda hate how the project is turning out. Here is just a small part of the pieced quilt top so far. I just. It’s not really doing anything for me. It’s not really going where I wanted it to go. And I can’t tell if this is just deep-into-project-fatigue or my general ennui or if it totally sucks. And none of these are really helping with the getting on with working on, and enjoying making, the quilt.

So that’s not really going very well. And neither is the rest of it. I was really inspired and loving the craft projects I had on the go. And the point of having the spare bed in the craft room was to have it as a working space to piece quilt tops and get them to the finished stage this year. This is how the bed looks at the moment – and this is after I cleared all the clean laundry off it and put that away. I can see 6 separate projects there in various levels of disarray and there is at least one more to the right of that box. Nothing about this inspires creativity.

AND. Course of course there is an And. I’ve been researching for the craft ebook project and listening to a lot of back episodes of Cast On podcast (more about the VJJ project later). And I am starting to miss my knitting. I have this terror of switching crafts – I’m sure I felt it when knitting about moving into quilting and now that I am here, ensconced in quilting, I don’t want to get absorbed back into knitting and abandon all these projects. But as much as I am kinda feeling I’d like to get back into knitting, or figuring out how to knit and sew at the same points in my time-space continuum, I think I’d like to try a sweater. I’ve never knit a jumper before. Which is not really 100% true – I have a kimono jacket which has been on the needles, possibly since the ex and I split. And this not finished. I’ve never embarked on a large knitted project and I’m kinda tempted. But at the same time, I feel like I need to finish the many many WIPs I have on needles about the place. And what’s stopping me? Not knowing where I was up to on most of them.

Can you say it with me now? AAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

Am I driving myself crazy right now?

Yes.

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

I am so struggling to keep a daily blog. I can’t even express how frustrating I find this one thing. I’ve been blogging for longer than any of the other things that I do. I started my first blog, back in the days of Diaryland (yes, I am *that* old), to make sure that there was some point in my day, every day, that I sat down and wrote something. So it’s really sad for me to turn around at the end of another week and see that I didn’t get time to sit down and write something.

And it’s also frustrating to me that I am still grappling with what does and does not feel appropriate to post about. It used to be that everything in my life was fair game. And I posted in a no holds barred way. And maybe that became a bit of a train wreck at some points. I made and lost friends over some of the posts. But it felt a lot less restrictive. These days, even though they aren’t really directly linked, I am still the public face for my press and that’s deeply important to me.

Actually, I do have a few things I want to sit down and write about and I hope I will start to get on top of things so that I can sit down and … write again. Because that’s the other thing giving me great frustrating these days – time. And my lack of it. I’m desperately frustrated at the moment – drowning and drowning in my frustration about the drowning. And I guess more than a little frustrated at my current lack of being able to do something about it. There are a few things going on in the background but none of them are guaranteed at the moment. And so I am left with constantly feeling like no matter how hard I work, I have barely taken a chunk out of the to do pile. I worked solidly yesterday all day, even waking up a bit early for me for a Sunday, and still barely scraped the surface. It’s a very very upsetting thing to see where it is you want to go, and the path you need to take but a lack in the funds and time to actually do it. And if that is why I ultimately fail, I will be heartbroken about it, I think.

I hope this malaise is really just the dark before the dawn. I do have things in motion to deal with some of these things. I’ve had to admit that I really am going to have to delegate if I want to get as much as I want done. There is really only so much work that one person can do in a week. I’ve been so lucky to have Terri come on board to pick up Publicity and Promotions for me. It’s such a crucial aspect and yet so easy to not be on top of as you grapple to meet print deadlines and editing and so on. We had a really productive 3 hour(!) meeting a couple of weeks ago now and have so many ideas and tasks to develop. I’m also hoping t oset up some new interns who are coming on board. We really do have some cool projects under development, and I can’t wait to start making progress on them.

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

Thanks everyone for your responses to yesterday’s vox pop. I’m going to tally all the responses later because I think there were some interesting things in it.

Meanwhile. Today the Aurealis Award shortlist came out and I’m delighted to see the Twelve Planets series get a few nods. Namely, Bad Power by Deborah Biancotti, Nightsiders by Sue Isle and Love and Romanpunk by Tansy Rayner Roberts are all shortlisted for Best Collection. I’m so very proud of these three books. Additional nods came in the Young Adult category where both “Nation of the Night” (Nightsiders) and “The Patrician” (Love and Romanpunk) also got shortlisted.

Huge congratulations to all the other shortlisters. The full list is over at Tehani’s blog if you’re interested.

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

I have so much to update here but here is something really interesting I just came across on the interwebs:

The real reason it’s so hard to get your Australian novel published

which I came to via, Who’s afraid of Australian novels?

Which pauses me to ask you, when was the last time you bought an Australian novel? Answers in the comments box, just as a fun exercise. I mean, I’m in the process of buying Australian novels to publish but it’s an interesting question. As I looked round to see what I have just recently bought and when I last bought an Aussie novel, I guess we bought Tansy’s Reign of Beasts last month in February. And before that, maybe The Courier’s New Bicycle? at Xmas/New Year? Not too bad really. But if I was to go back before that … probably the last time I was at Crow’s Books and it was raining that day and I still worked at my old job.

So, how about you? (Bearing in mind you’re probably doing the AWW 2012 challenge, right? )

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

Warning: I talk about food issues and weight in this post.

So I’m at Week 5 of the 12 Week Body Transformation. Weigh in is Wednesday but I’m on track to lose another 1kg+ which pushes me below my first round number milestone. The program promises to be more than just a diet and exercise regime, promoting itself as a life transformer, part of the outcome being the weight loss and the other part, changing the way you think and behave. At Week 5, I think I really can see some of those changes coming through. And it’s required some fairly big mindshifts as well as some soulsearching and thought self policing. I’m not even sure I can fully articulate what’s changed and what kind of ride this is.

My issues with food are complex and not really something to go into here. But they are separate to issues with body image. Which adds to the complexity. My inner monologue is almost constantly negative. And I tend to use food to fix all that ails me – feel down? feel anxious or angry? feel depressed? want comfort? celebrating a win? Is it a day ending in y? All get a liberal serve of food to remedy. On top of that, I am addicted, I think, to certain foods. Maybe that’s a cop out but that’s how it feels. Food is my drug of choice – lollies and chocolate and icecream to be specific. And muffins and pastries and desserts and and and. Add to that that the exercise thing had kinda fallen by the wayside, the whole OMG the momentum required to put on shoes let alone leave the house!

And you’re not gonna overcome that kind of stuff in a day or a week or even in 12 weeks. And the thought of never going back ever again, still doesn’t feel quite real so I know I have a long way to go. But hey, today when I was hanging out with Jonathan for lunch, I happily chose a salad, considered it a “meal” and enjoyed it. There’s hope.

I’ve actually really enjoyed the nutrition side of this program. To be fair, C has taken on the shopping and cooking for it which is a major deal. I would likely not have been remotely as successful if I had been doing the food stuff on my own. And I think the food is far more interesting and exciting than what I was eating  – especially for breakfasts and lunches during the week. So that already makes this hardly a chore. And now, 5 weeks away from bags of lollies and licorice and blocks of chocolate, I can look at it a lot more from the outside looking in and deconstruct a lot of it. Some of which I want to talk about below. But that said, I know that if I were to even taste some of those things, I would be right back there scoffing a bag in a blink and be hooked again. I hope in the future to have a more balanced and healthy relationship with these foods.

The exercise on the other hand has been more of a struggle. You have to complete 6 workouts a week and I find that really hard. I’m juggling so much else in my week sometimes I just keel over. But one of the exercises before the program started was to write down all the excuses you use to avoid doing exercise (or related to food) and you know … I still catch myself trying to fob them off. Like … if you’re injured, that’s fine but you can work around that and still exercise. For me, sometimes my Crohn’s is worse than other days and doing crunches is so not the best thing for it. But now I know that I can just skip the crunches and do something else in the session rather than not exercise at all because I “feel sick”. Big revelation. Also, for me, I tend to find time by jettisoning exercise off first. Now, I’ve discovered I can reorganise my day, perhaps by several hours ahead so I still get in the exercise as well as all the other commitments. I’m still not doing great at this one – I am so overcommitted. And I’m becoming that person I hate – who is too busy to get to things or to answer emails promptly or to prepare ahead of time. I’m working on this one (commitments) and it should be better soon. But I discovered something really important. I had been describing myself as not an active person, or not someone who enjoys exercise. But actually – I do! And I’d forgotten. I’ve had so may moments of flashbacks to when I used to dance and these have reminded me of how exercise and pushing myself to my limits felt back then. And how much I enjoyed that. It’s been really nice to get back in touch with the me of 20 years ago. Before things got screwed up. It’s made me have to readjust how I see myself.

So taking some of what I am learning or skilling myself up to help get through the program has really flowed into the rest of my life. I’ve noticed the same kind of internal talk for addressing other things in my life and have taken to using similar techniques to deal with that. It’s slow and it requires constant awareness of my inner talk and in changing that around but I think I’m making inroads.

I gave a talk on the weekend and I felt that it went terribly. I didn’t feel comfortable up at the front, I hadn’t prepared enough so I ended up reading my prepared notes instead of talking off the cuff, I felt nervous and sounded so and I stammered a bit. I was pretty down about it. At the end of the day several people came over to tell me how much they enjoyed my talk, how it had made them think and so on. But I walked away still saying to myself I’d screwed up and it was a shit presentation. But over the rest of the day, I started to turn the talk on myself – how could I ignore the several people who said differently to how I felt? Why would I value my own self destructive talk over outside of me evidence to the contrary. Maybe all the things I thought about how I went were true but maybe the material I presented overcame that?

And so now I’m looking at tackling two issues I’d like to get straight. One is that I’m having trouble motivating myself to get (more) stuff down (I know I know but …). Back in the postgrad days I used to have a list system that kicked arse – I would write a serious list 0f 10 big deal things I wanted to achieve for that month and then I would divide each down into the exact single tasks or actions it would take to get that big thing done. And then I would give myself a red tick each time I got a task done. A tally at the end of the month for red ticks would determine if or what kind of reward I would get. I have a feeling at the time I mostly was getting stuff from the Body Shop but I’d set a dollar limit and could choose. And being close to the tipover into reward would push me to scour the list to find low hanging fruit. I got a lot done and the system really worked for a while.

I’ve been trying to get back to that system but now I have this habit of moving the goal posts. So I’ll say if X, then Y and then when I do X, I’ll say, yeah but that was easy, now you need to also do W for Y. And no rewards ever get doled out. Which defeats the whole purpose.

Add to that, the very real need for me to find other ways to deal with emotions other than placating with food. I’ve actually found a really good technique for dealing with anger or frustration is to action something. Doesn’t have to be related but just *doing something* when you feel helpless or frustrated really makes you feel better, more in control. Plus you get that thing done. It takes a negative and makes it positive. So I’ve been looking for something to help with other emotions. Something that I could also use as rewards for the getting things done requirement. And it turns out, as I’m doing better and better on this program, I actually feel better about myself. And as I told a friend the other day – you nurture what you love. I feel better about myself. I feel great healthwise as we are eating so much healthy, unprocessed foods. Even my hair looks shinier! And I’m happier.

So last week, I decided to do something about this. I decided I needed to get some perspective on what is reward worthy and hopefully recalibrate my own internal feeling about what is a good job well done. I decided to go to two of my favourite shops – The Body Shop and T2 (since I was at the shops already replacing yet another bung laptop charger) and buy in advance a bunch of treats. They varied in size and value, some just little testers of things I wanted to try and others more luxurious. But all things that would require indulgence once obtained. So the reward would be twofold – 1, I get something! and 2. I have to then use it – to relax, to cheer myself up, to feel good about myself, to destress, to take time out etc.

And then I gave the bag of rewards to C to supervise. So someone else with a nonscrewed up barometer of achievements could help me figure out what deserved reward and when. He cracks me up – when I gave him the bag, went through it and then stood up and nodded and said, yes he had his head around what was in there now, and then swept it off somewhere. To be honest, I felt a little scared at that point! Should I have given up that power?

Today I got my first reward – it was delayed from the promised reward fotr preparing and delivering the paid speaking gig I did on the weekend. I was such a pain in the arse preparing for it and I don’t like public speaking. Still, I sucked it up and I got on with it. And my reward was – picture at the top – Strawberry and Cream tea! And this evening, instead of casing the pantry for after dinner shaped things, I sat with my feet in a hot bath with Radox and I sipped my fruity tea! And it was good.

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

I think right about now is not the right time for me to read fiction about slow apocalypses. (What *is* the plural of apocalypse, anyway? – Buffy) Everytime I look, the US gets scarier and scarier but just incrementally. Here’s this video I just watched about a protest in Virgina against the bill to force ultrasounds prior to abortions. This passed bill is a scaled back version of the original which required the insertion of the ultrasound wand inside a vagina to scan the foetus before an abortion. Last time we all checked, there was a word for that, and it’s four letters, starts with “r” and rhymes with “cape”. Sanctioned by the big men in government. Nice one.

Anyway, the “watered” down version of this bill still treats women like … well I dunno what. Idiots? Children? Malevolent, unfeeling beings who would change their mind if only they *understood* the real magnitude of their decision? Really, if this is who those men think women are, why do they feel ok leaving their innocent children with them all day long while they go out to work? Why do they feel better about forcing women to become parents? If women are *that* heinous, … well, wouldn’t they know no depths for ill intent? Wouldn’t they be exactly the kind of people you wouldn’t wanting raising, shaping and influencing your young?

I might just be me, but I think it’s crueler to force a child into existence and leave it in poverty, homeless, without a meal at night, no warm blankets, a crack habit etc etc. But you know, whatever. Big picture, small minds etc etc.

Anyway. So, it’s unsurprising that you know, women out there, in the world, think this is intolerable. And not only this but other moves afoot in US politics relating to birth control, the denial of it to women, the giving the power to women’s bosses, their *bosses*!, to opt them out of being covered by insurance for contraception and so on and so on (seriously, it is so anger making! and for a whole bunch of reasons, the least of which is, do they not study economics and social reform? that countries productivity and standard of living *improve* when women are educated and have access to birth control??). And these women (and some men) came out to protest in Virginia about that. As is their right. Yo, that’s what democracy looks like:

And here’s the scary thing  – that was one of the most peaceful demonstrations I’ve ever seen. If you look closely, the demographic spans all ages, there are young women and older women in the crowd. There’s like, your mum in that crowd. And they are moving to stand in front of the Capitol and voice their dissent, peacefully. As is their right in you know a Free Country, something that particular country has been supposedly bringing to other countries in the world for the last 15 years. And not 3 minutes in, riot police are called in. There are men with machine guns to stop your mum standing there and chanting that she wants her rights, and my rights, to birth control. For heavensake!

Very moving for me was when the crowd chants at the police – who do you serve, who do you protect?

Because there are two things at play here. One the far right weirdo conservative men in government who think women who use birth control are sluts. Which is offensive on so many levels. But there is also something going on with the police in the US right now. Especially when they see a need to intervene on a crowd of people standing around and demonstrating their disagreement with something. Never once did the crowd get angry or rowdy. It’s like now, the police are afraid of the people. Of people on mass.

I dunno, it’s a sad day when you’re representatives prevent you from rocking up to display your disagreement with how they are (not) representing you. Here’s hoping the voice of dissent is loud in the ballot booth later this year.

But something else interests me. About 15 years ago, I saw, I think, Danny Devito (could have been someone else like Al Pacin0 or maybe Sean Penn) who was talking on Oprah about a program he was heading up to supply people, just regular people, with video cameras. And at the time I thought that was like so not a priority surely? And for what? Home videos? But he explained that it was for capturing on the ground what was happening to people. That it would empower people because they could get the word out beyond their borders. And I’ve been watching since then and seen how damn, he was right! as more and more footage comes out from places by handhelds and captured by bystanders. Even the hanging of Saddaam Hussein was leaked that way. Footage from the sinking of the Concordia, and also police brutality and unlawful force used in the occupy protests.

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

I made a couple of additions and corrections to my last post about Twelfth Planet Press award eligibles.

- Stephanie Gunn as WA reviewer at ASif!

- don’t forget our podcast producer Andrew Finch for Galactic Suburbia and Galactic Chat. He is very very patient with us whilst recording!

- Lucy Sussex is eligible for the Sir Julius Vogel Awards which are still open for nominations til March 31.

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

I’m so behind at the moment that I thought I had written some posts about our trip to Melbourne last month. A quick check of my archive tells me that I only composed them in my head.

We went over for my cousin’s engagement party – I’m so happy to be sharing this journey with her, we shall both get married within two months of each other. She had her party first and we went for a long weekend to share her celebration and for a bit of a rest. We had a really great time. C says it was a holiday for ADD people but I think even though we were basically doing things all the time, spending three hours in a bar on Chapel St is hardly taxing!

We stayed on Swanston St which turned out to be a bad idea because they were ripping up the tram lines right in that section for only 48 hours, the only 48 hours we were there. But aside from that, and the trams not running down that street, we were in the perfect location. After a dismal breakfast in the hotel, we spent a lot of the rest of our time in and out of the alleyways finding all kinds of scrumptious things and shopping surprises.

We also hung out a bit at Federation Square and found some awesome yarn bombing out side of the Starbucks right there!

I was really impress by a few overtly environmentally friendly initiatives and actions that I saw about the city. The first was this bike one – you can hire a bike, ride it about and then leave it at another station – and there are stations all about the CBD. I thought this was really really cool.

I also noted giant signs talking about the water restrictions. Though we have similar restrictions in Perth, they aren’t actually really talked about, like this:

And, just cause it amuses, Batman Av:

During one of the first shopping outings, we found Tansy’s new book Reign of Beasts in Dymocks on Collins St. And bought a copy! C of course had finished it by the time we arrived back in Perth. I am proud to say that I finished Power and Majesty on the trip.

I scored a new pair of shoes from somebody who forgot to mention I needed to wear (and thus bring) closed shoes to the taping of The Project. C had seen a live taping of the show last time he was in Melbourne and was keen to go along again. It was raining a lot that evening and we headed down to the Channel 10 offices. We were early and needed to by shoes and after that we took shelter in a lovely bar and drank cocktails and ate Mars Bar cheesecake. We headed back to the offices at the appointed time and it was all very TV-ish which was a lot of fun. They gave us lots of lollies, I guess to hype us up and we were taught to clap to sound like we were more people, and to shout and laugh as well. We were hustled into the show and sat and watched the episode go live to air. It was a bit nervewracking knowing you HAD to laugh at the jokes but it was all very interesting and new.

Afterwards we headed back to the Cabinet Bar for some drinks and a bite to eat. And watched a couple on a blind date.

On the Monday, before we headed home, we wandered down to Southbank, contemplated seeing a movie, and then had a lovely secluded lunch on this balcony overlooking the water instead. The food was divine.

I dragged C down to the restaurant that sits under one of the pylons to a bridge across the river there:

And then we headed back to try what, we were told by Narrelle Harris, was The Most pretentious coffee in all of Melbourme. We drank a lot of coffee (I mostly drank decaf apart from this one) but apparently this was the most snobbish. We’re engineers and interested in mechanics. I though, am also a coffee snob.

We drank our coffee over a very long and enjoyable conversation with Narrelle, who met up with us there. It was really lovely to catch up with her and of course there were lots of stories and laughter. Interestingly, this coffee, which they describe as being more like a tea than a coffee, was unbelievably gentle on my stomach, when normally a black espresso would not have been so.

And I promised on Facebook a picture of the puppy when we got home – he is normally white, but shown here to be dusty from the red dust at the farm he hung out on whilst we were away.

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

Actually, I’m starting to feel like a real slob – really I’m a neat person!!! – as I take these photos one by one around my house. I mean, I’m not going to be showing you the neat bits and I’m worried you’ll get the wrong idea about me!

Still … we did a lot of unfucking today. Sadly we got held up by discovering a few things at the back of the cupboards. So the only before and after shots I have from today are the ones below. The rest is in a state of progress, to be finished tomorrow before my parents drop by!

We did though start putting our engagement presents away – I’ve been feeling bad about doing that til we finish writing all our thank you cards. C has a different take on that. But either way, it was definitely getting in the way and we need space for people to sit down. So we went through them and I reread all the cards and took things out of boxes.

The top of the fridge was mostly a man and puppy zone:

Now it’s turned into a great place for the beautiful cookbooks we got as presents!

I’m not allowed to throw anything out tomorrow as our bin is full again after being emptied on Friday. Still so much more to do!

We worked on the 20/10 – 20 minutes unfucking, 10 minutes break and I managed to get through some unpleasant/less fun sewing things and watched the whole season of Episodes – which I kinda liked, not awesome but a fun look at making a TV show from the side of English writers in Hollywood. I also started Fresh Meat – a UK drama about freshers who move into a uni share house. I quite like it.

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

There’s a bunch of awards open at the moment for nominations so I’ve finally sat down and checked word counts and so on for fiction I published in 2011.

Here is the breakdown:

Twelfth Planet Press 2011

Above/Below by Stephanie Campisi/Ben Peek

• 2 novellas, one book, both Science Fiction.
• Stephanie Campisi is eligible for Chronos Awards.
• Considered short stories by Chronos Awards.
• Both novellas by Hugos rules.
• Both are eligible in the novelette and novella Ditmar category.

Nightsiders by Sue Isle

• Sue Isle is eligible for Tin Ducks.
• Collected work
• “Nation of the Night”,  “The Painted Girl” and “The Schoolteacher’s Tale” – short stories by Tin Ducks rules.
• “Nation of the Night” and “The Painted Girl” – novelettes and “The Schoolteacher’s Tale” – short story by Hugos rules.
• “Nation of the Night” and “The Painted Girl” – eligible in the novelette and novella Ditmar category. “The Schoolteacher’s Tale” is eligible in the short story Ditmar category.

Love and Romanpunk by Tansy Rayner Roberts

• Collected work
• “Julia Aggrippina” – novelette and “The Patrician”, “Last of the Romanpunks” and “Lamia Victoriana” – short stories by Hugos and Ditmars rules
• All are short stories by World Fantasy Award rules

Thief of Lives by Lucy Sussex

• Lucy Sussex is eligible for Chronos Awards
• Collected work – eligible for Long Fiction for Chronos Awards
• “Alchemy” and “Thief of Lives” – both considered short fiction by Chronos Awards
• “Thief of Lives” – novelette and “Alchemy” – short story by Hugos and Ditmars rules
• “Thief of Lives” – novella and “Alchemy” – short story by World Fantasy Award rules
• Lucy Sussex is also eligible for the Sir Julius Vogel Awards

Bad Power by Deborah Biancotti

• Collected work
• “Cross that Bridge” – novelette and “Bad Power”, “Web of Lies”, “Palming the Lady”, “Shades of Grey” – short stories by Hugo and Ditmars rules
• All are short stories by World Fantasy Award rules

Amanda Rainey designed the covers and internal layout for all five titles and is from WA.

As for Fan Categories:

Galactic Suburbia (Alex, Tansy and Alisa, Produced by Andrew Finch) – Alex is from Vic, I’m from WA.

Live and Sassy (Jonathan and Alisa) I especially want to point at Episode 2 – Live and Sassy with Alan Beatts. Jonathan and Alisa are both from WA.

Galactic Chat (Tansy, Alisa and Sean, Produced by Andrew Finch) is eligible for Tin Ducks as Alisa is from WA. We interviewed Ian Irvine, Ben Peek, Kelley Armstrong, Deborah Biancotti, Bevan McGuiness, Kirstyn McDermott, Glenda Larke, Tansy Rayner Roberts and Marianne de Pierres.

ASif - Aussie Specfic in Focus (Alisa and Tehani) and ASif Reviewers include Alex Pierce (Vic), Jason Nahrung (Vic), Lorraine Cormack, Tehani Wessely (WA in 2011), Guy Salvidge (WA), Gillian Polack, Mitenae (WA), Ross Murray, Stephanie Gunn (WA) and Tansy Rayner Roberts, among others.

Nominations for The Tin Ducks close March 4.

Nominations for The Hugos close March 11.

Nominations for The Chronos Awards close March 18.

Nominations for The Julius Vogel Awards close March 31.

Nominations for World Fantasy Awards information available here.

Nominations for the Ditmars are yet to be announced.

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

Almost didn’t get a post in tonight. Almost didn’t get anything unfucked either. But then I thought that actually there weren’t that many dishes there tonight – C had caught up on them from last night – so it would be good to maintain rather than to have to attack from behind.

So – after work today I did a cardio workout, made dinner, read the latest issue of Locus, did the dishes and one load of laundry.

Clear bench:

(that’s C getting a glass of juice and temporarily putting things on the bench mid-shot)

Now I have some TPP stuff or some Last Short Story reading to get done before bedtime (in 5 mins) – arrrgh!

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

Well I probably can’t actually count the credit for this one. Remember how I brought all my stuff with me when I moved in, then we had double of a bunch of white goods and I didn’t want to get rid of mine because of “just in case”? C jokes that I need a truck in the backyard for the “if we break up”. So it’s mostly that but it’s also the hoarder’s thought process – it’s good stuff, it’s valuable, I want it to be *used* etc.

So yeah. Not much progress has been happening in that regard. C though has it on his to do lists to sort out and he, as it turns out, is very outcome focused (I’m more process focused by comparison). He was looking on Gumtree this weekend and found someone in our area looking for a quite cheap fridge. And he gave me the look – make the decision already! – and so yes, we contacted them and they came and had a look, were a bit nervous about why such a big and in good condition fridge was so cheap (could we turn it on and leave it running to check it worked) and in the end, they bought it. As we were moving it from the back patio to out the front for the pick up, C pointed out it had been bought from a police auction – oh yes! I had totally forgotten that it wasn’t a new fridge to start with. And um, I hadn’t paid for it either. So we got some money for it, the fridge was taken away for us and the new to Australia family got a very good deal for a pretty great fridge. And I parted with more baggage. Win all round.

Wednesday is weigh in for the program. And I might have gotten a new whizz bang digital set of scales this week – you know, the kind where you can’t lean a little to the left, lean a little to the right, til you get the answer that you want. Apparently Week 3 weigh ins are tough but I think I had my tough week last week. I lost 1.2kg this week and I’m happy with that. I’ve had to make today my rest day from exercise due to having spent more than 5 hours driving today. But that’s ok because we have a long weekend this weekend coming and I’m happy to not have the Sunday as my rest day then.

Finally, I’m continuing with my getting daily posts up on this blog and the Twelfth Planet Press news blog.

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

I’m kinda hoping for a regular craft post. But for now, here is one, and I’ll hope to make another soon!

At the moment, I seem to be really distracted by these teeny versions of log cabin squares. I think technically they are steeplechase or some other name but the pattern is part of the log cabin family. And what this project is is two things 1) A fascination with using the scrappiest of scraps to make something useful/art that would otherwise have been thrown away and 2) an example of how I can distract myself, go off on long winded tangents and also create huge rods for my back.

This project is a long term one. It’s a scrap quilt. It’s using pieces of fabric I really didn’t want to part with – many of the scraps are from charm squares remainders after I’ve cut the piece for my charm quilt. But the problem is, I’m finding I’m acquiring these scraps faster than I can cut and sew them up. My mother threw in a bunch of her scraps from a few quilts she made last year. And I’m really collecting scraps out of my charm square project among other projects. It turns out, it’s not that hard to accumulate scraps. And in the interests of not having this get sucked into hoarding tendencies, I’ve been really trying for the last three months or so to get on top of it (I’m not really making much headway).

The squares are small – I’ve thrown my car key into the picture for scale. And they are a little fiddly to cut and sew. I have four ziploc bags filled with pieces I’ve cut out and then I work on some other project and use the spare thread at the end of a seam to sew bits of these together. Using the scrap thread for the scrap quilt.

Except, these little blocks are so colourful and fun to make, I sometimes get a little absorbed in them instead of working on other “proper” projects. It’s distracting! I’ve been playing around with lights and darks on these and intend to have a careful play with piecing the finished squares to see what I can do with the overall picture. I’ve learned a lot with my monochrome and charm quilts about colour, lights and darks and movement and I’m interested to see if I can pull something off with this little scrap project. Also, it’s based on an antique quilt I saw once on cable TV from a dressmaker who lived in an Australian gold mining town during the gold rush. She used silks from ties for hers but it looked spectacular. I’m hoping mine will be similar. Though I’m a bit worried it might be a really huge quilt (hers was a small wall hanging).

Lately though, I’ve been so pressed for time and so immersed in other things, I’ve hardly had time for crafting at all. I’ve mostly spent what little time I’ve had on cutting out pieces for this quilt rather than actually work on anything creatively. And I’ve actually been happy with that – it’s been “enough”. And what fascinates me about that is that rarely is the prepping for a project fun for me. I like the bit just after that, the starting. And I remember reading in Quilting Lessons that some days, all she did all day was cut out pieces for a new project, and thinking that there’s no way that would ever be my activity of choice and certainly not for extended periods. But it turns out, sometimes your head is just too busy to be able to do more than that. (Maybe I was just never this busy before in my life?) And that actually that’s totally ok. Because later on, all I’m going to want to do is sew and create and PastMe will have done all the groundwork to facilitate that.

And don’t even get me started on the *wanting* to get started on the first socks for the Cookie A Sock club I signed up for. We’ve decided not to bake the biscuits that came along with the yarn for just now. But I really really want to knit along with this one all year so as not to end up with 6 balls of yarn for my stash come Xmas. Stay tuned …

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

On the weekend, I discovered Cat Valente’s new tumblr project Girl Unlocked and the Unfuck your habitat tumblr and suddenly got inspired. Here was a successful woman talking about exactly the same shit I’m feeling and living and not doing.

Tansy has a great post today about it too – Mothering, Writing, Pilating, Guilt. I guess as I sit here, I can hardly feel hard done by by the feminist movement – I have a good professional day job with great prospects and entitlements. I’m respected by my manager and most of the people I work with, even if I am often still the lonely girl in the sea of men at the boardroom table. On top of that, I have my own small business that I started up and is mine. And I have a very loving, understanding and giving fiance. (The puppy is um … the puppy.) But you know, as much as that is possibly living some version of the feminist dream, I still can’t shake the expectations of the domestic goddess. I am a neat person and I appreciate order and neatness. I like my pantry to have everything stored by category and be in the neat tupperware containers. I like my clothes to be clean and folded and ironed and away and waiting for me to choose an outfit to wear. I want my house to be spick and span and ready for Vogue inspection without warning.

But that is in no way the reality. Working two jobs fulltime, plus a big commute these days, and trying to make time to care for myself by exercising properly and keep up with reading, and family and friends, and have downtime to recharge. Yeah, I don’t live the domestic goddess dream. I don’t have the time and it doesn’t happen. We go to bed with dishes in the sink, clothes unhung up. Puppy toys strewn across the house. Papers not filed and away. Mess. I wouldn’t give up any of my priorities to be the ideal housewife. But its really really hard to give up the guilt and feeling of coming short when judged on my (lack of) ability to keep house. I fear people dropping by and seeing how I live sometimes (and judging me). I stress myself out because this in no way gels with my OCD which is far more under control than several years ago but still present. I can’t let go of the guilt. And the mess weighs down on my psyche, adding to the white noise of background stress.

But what to do? Can’t create more time and if I could, Twelfth Planet Press already has dibs on it. And 2012 is already more frentic than 2011 was and I know 2013 will be likewise more than 2012. It’s just the way it is.

So this whole unfucking your habitat thing kind of appeals to me. I guess in the same way that the 12 week body transformation is working for me. Basically, fucking off excuses – excuses for why you didn’t or can’t do shit are bullshit. There is only do or do not, you know? And there is mostly the suck it up princess and get on with it. I like Cat’s attitude on her tumblr. I also like seeing before and after shots of tidying. So I’m kinda jumping on the bandwagon and will try and get small things unfucked when I can and keep them unfucked from there on out. And I’ll post some photos as I do.

So these three photos to the left and above are of my dressing table. Which has basically looked like the top shot for most of the time I’ve lived here (since moving in last June). The chest is a bit high for me to actually use for dressing but I really love the wood and the deal with myself on buying it when I did (plantation wood) is I have it for life. But um yes, it was totally untidy, unfriendly workspace and facing my bed. So I both cannot find any of the lovely makeup and jewellery I own (and therefore have not been using or wearing) and stare at the clutter pretty much all the time. I realised I could actually take one of the drawers for my makeup and also use one of my lovely boxes that I love to collect but have no purpose for to lay it all out in an easy, enticing and accessible way. I actually like to wear a little makeup and some jewellery, it makes me feel good about myself. But I don’t when I don’t feel good about myself or when I have to hunt around to find it. (Of note, haven’t worn a lot of either in recent years).

And now my bedside table. A great source of annoyance to anyone else who shares a room with me. I like to take glasses and mugs to bed to drink whilst reading but I don’t like to return items back to the kitchen. I let things pile up til either something spills or I have nowhere to put my glasses when I finally go to sleep. Seriously, I don’t know how that’s a bad habit of mine when I actually am naturally neat person. Honest!

I spose it comes from now having an actual office that I work at. Though, ahem, we do have a study here and I do have my own desk. Yes said desk is absolutely covered in clutter, things to file, sort and whatnot. I spose those before and after shots will be coming soon!

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

Well. Here it is. The big 36. The 12 times 3. The 6 times 6. The lots of numbers.

36 is scary because it’s biologically old. So they tell me. If you care about such things. 35 is the big number and 36 is MORE than 35. I can say this with some amusement because, whilst I *do* care about such things, 36 actually is not that bad. Sure I creak and groan and stuff. But you know, I kinda think it’s all going to be ok. And um, besides, I had my meltdown about this a couple of months ago now. So … yeah …

It wasn’t really a big day. I went to work – normally I take the day off but I felt it was a bit soon in my contract to do that (since I already did for the weekend jaunt to Melb two weeks ago). So that was a bit ordinary. But my inbox and twitter and phone were inundated with messages all day wishing me a happy birthday which was very cheering! We didn’t do anything special (yet) for it – I have to admit that what with finally getting my engagement ring, having a party last weekend and getting engagement presents, I’m doing alright this month! (And last year’s present continues to amuse.)

And my present from C was a combination of practical – related to my new exercise craze – and something I’ve been meaning to get round to for ages: a copy of Blade Runner, which I’ve never seen.

Back to work tomorrow. Back to regular programming.

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

Subscribe through iTunes or download our latest episode (from last Thursday!) at Galactic Suburbia.

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

Well. This blogging thing has fallen over. I’ve got so many posts I want to write and I’m beside myself that right now I have absolutely no time to even draft out words for them. This week went by in a blur. Last weekend we had our engagement party, just a small thing for very close family and friends, and I want to post about that and some other wedding related things. I’m hoping to grab some photos first – one of my uncles took like 450 photos! Can’t wait to see them. Anyway, we were utterly exhausted Sunday night after the weekend and that’s never a good way to enter the work week.

By Thursday I was so knackered that I got into work, woke up and realised I felt vile, sat at my desk working for 2 hours and ran hot and cold and awful and then got back in my car, drove an hour and a half home and collapsed fully clothed on my bed. And slept. And slept. And Slept. And I don’t nap. I mean, I NEVER nap. Not even when I’ve pulled an allnighter or flown 36 hours to the other side of the world. I hate napping. And then I was Zombie!GJ for the rest of the evening. Bleurgh. I would have also taken Friday off but we had this big meeting on and I knew that I needed to be there for it to figure out my role in the project (which I’m glad I did attend because now I do know what’s going on and how to move forward. Also weird to have been doing this gig long enough to go to random meeting with 10 people from all over the place and know like half of them really well.)

Anyway, I mostly stayed on nutrition track this week. Treat meal came a little early in the week but I’ve managed to avoid falling off the tracks this weekend. Exercise though fell by the wayside. I was just so freaking tired, I was literally dragging myself through the week and standing next to walls to avoid falling over. I skipped three days of exercise, only getting back on the wagon yesterday. So I only managed to lose 0.5kg this week. On the other hand, normally for me, a week like this one, I would have yoyo’ed back up a bit so that I’m taking as a win. But yeah. One of the excuses I noted down that I use before I started this thing, is “I feel sick” and that is such a hard one to navigate. Should I have continued dragging my arse through cardio on Thurs and Fri? I do know my body and self pretty well and I was hitting the wall on Thursday. I reckon if I hadn’t pulled the plug on some stuff, I’d have been ill in bed this weekend.

Fact is, currently this routine is unsustainable. There is no time left in the day after commuting, working, exercise and sleep. I’ve been trying to find time for TPP and that’s ended up being taken out of the sleep bucket. Doesn’t really work long term. I’m a bit better on track with the upcoming books - Showtime is at the printers, Through Splintered Walls is half at proofing and half at finalising final copy edits, I’ve begun working through Salvage edits, Cracklescape is almost ready to go to layout and we’re working on edits for Asymmetry. Though I’m only ever happy when it’s not me being the bottleneck. And it’s possible that with the end of last week, I am. And of course my readers are working through the novel manuscripts and I’ve made a start on those. Publicity and marketing are behind. And I had one grant application to submit last week (done but through the haze of exhaustion) and one still to be written for next month. And I’m working on a talk that I’m giving on a Saturday in a couple of weeks. And so on and on and on.

It’s not sustainable right now.  Tired. So very very tired.

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

Check out the gorgeous cover (and back!) that Amanda has designed for Showtime (Book 5 in the Twelve Planets) by Narrelle M Harris!

Never ask me which is my favourite – I’ll never be able to decide!

Here’s what the text on the back cover says:

Family drama can be found anywhere: in kitchens, in cafes. Derelict hotels, showground rides. Even dungeons far below ruined Hungarian castles. (Okay, especially in Hungarian dungeons.)

Old family fights can go on forever, especially if you’re undead. If an opportunity came to save someone else’s family, the way you couldn’t save your own, would you take it?

Your family might include ghosts, or zombies, or vampires. Maybe they just have allergies. Nobody’s perfect.

Family history can weigh on the present like a stone.  But the thing about families is, you can’t escape them. Not ever. And mostly, you don’t want to.

 

It’s a beautiful collection of pieces, each one utterly classic and completely new at the same time… In Narrelle’s hands, everything old is new again, and everything new has the weight of age.  There’s magic in that, and in this book. — Seanan McGuire

 

The book went to the printer’s last week so I’m expecting the proofs any day now. Can’t wait to see this one in real life!

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

We didn’t do Valentine’s Day this year. Firstly, being finally a little bit more organised this year, I bought C’s gift online early. But um, I for some reason sent it to him at our address rather than me. So he came out wearing the particular clothes item I had sent him randomly and like a week ago and I was all … “um? Ooh … I bought you one of those just like that for Valentine…. oooh” Yes. Well planned but not well executed, shall we say?

Secondly, I am getting a particular piece of romantic jewellery later this week that celebrates our love (they rang! It’s ready!) and anything more than that seemed a bit over the top.

And we *could* have gone out to dinner or something on the night but here’s the thing: I already know how much C loves me.I know this cause he was already going to be cooking me a very special dinner at home:

Last minute on the weekend, I signed up for Michelle Bridges’ 12 Week Body Transformation. I’d been umming and ahhing about it for a while having followed her on Twitter after getting her latest book for Christmas and watching everyone in “pre season training”. I mentioned to C on Saturday that I’d been thinking about it but that it cost money to join and well, I don’t pay money for that sort of thing. We talked about it a bit and I realised that I should do it – that deciding I don’t pay for this kind of thing is exactly the kind of thing that holds me back and a way in which I self-sabotage (I don’t pay money because I don’t believe I will do it and thus will waste the money thus starting out where I think I’ll finish up and therefore do.) Within an hour of signing up, C had searched out what gear I needed to buy, had hustled me into a sports store (I somehow never notice those in shopping centres) and got me the things I needed (I got a cashback on the aircon ages ago of $100 and spent it on a step. I already had dumb bells and a yoga mat etc) and worked out what the food would be. It started Monday and he’s been cooking and preparing the food for me all week. It’s actually a really great program and so far the food has been delicious. Let’s just say it’s far more varied and interesting than the lunches I was packing for myself the last 3 weeks for my new job (where there is no canteen and not much within walking distance).

So we didn’t *do* Valentine’s day this year because we didn’t need to. Or we were already in the spirit of things, perhaps.

But I have to say, at this point in the week, I really am feeling energised and strong and it’s been a pretty interesting week for me personally. I don’t like to talk about such things here and as part of the “journey” of this program, I think I really have to. Because not talking about it, not acknowledging it, not saying when it’s gotten me down or when I’ve been actively trying to do something about it, is an old trick of mine, a trick in my bag of self sabotaging tricks. Here’s the thing, *I* am not happy with my body right now. And that’s a statement of my own feelings about myself. And I just don’t want this to be a Thing anymore.

I thought long and hard about the kind of dress I wanted for my wedding and then I thought about how much weight I’d have to lose for that and then I thought about how fucking cliched it is to go on a diet for your wedding and that really, I’m sure I could find a perfectly lovely and suitable dress at the weight I am now and look fabulous in it. And I could. And then I thought, well that’s that then, won’t worry about that. But the thing is? I know that dress would be a compromise. But beyond that, *this* actually isn’t about that at all, in any way. It’s about getting over myself and my personal baggage and not taking it with me into my marriage. It’s about dealing with a bunch of shit I like to bury away and ignore. It’s no longer giving myself permission to slack off or take the easy way or just not do things that look too hard. And it’s about being the healthiest person I can be – I worry very much about the fact that I have been ill with a bowel disease for 13 years now and the kind of toll that sort of nutrient depletion can do to a person’s body and about what that makes a body for growing a person inside. And I want to give my children the best start I can. And beyond that, I don’t want to teach them the very bad habits and relationship to food that I have. And the only way to do that is to be a better role model – not to fake it but to *be* it.

I want a fresh start. I want to deal with it all once and for all. I want to set out on a journey and be my best asset along the way. I want to believe I can achieve the goals that I set out. I want to take myself seriously? I want to be accountable. I want to feel the risk of having to share my failure rather than keep it quietly to myself. I want to be committed. So here I am, posting about it here on my blog. I’ve signed up for it, and I’ve committed to it and now I’ve told you about it. And now you know. And I know that you know. Because I’m done with all those old tricks of mine. I’m gonna buy me a new bag, an empty one and fill it with new awesome tools of my trade.

So. Wednesday is weigh in and even though I only started on Monday, I’ve already lost 1.5kg. And I’ve also already learned two interesting things about myself. 1. I’m excellent at making bullshit excuses not to do things (all kinds of things) and 2. I invalidate my own successes.

I made a list of all the excuses I use to not exercise every day. And it was a long list. And it was also a long list that was really easy to navigate around when we sat down and looked at it. And so far, I’ve worked out every day. And what else? I finally got my endorphin rush back. I mentioned back when I was doing the Couch to 5K that it never kicked in? Even after a 25 minute solid run. Yesterday it was so there. And it was so familiar but had been such a long time – it reminded me instantly of what it was like after ballet classes when I was what? 15. That’s 20 fucking years ago. But it tapped into some part of my brain that’s related to that me, the one who LOVED dancing and exercise. And I had that rush again today. I think it’s all gonna be ok. Again. Finally. And the thing is, when you start noticing how shit/good you are at self sabotage in one part of your life? You start to notice it in other parts too. And damn that’s an interesting process. I procrastinate and make excuses for an enormous amount of things. No more!

I invalidate my own successes. I watched myself today process my 1.5kg loss in 2 days. I watched myself take it apart and diminish it down to less than 0.5 a kilo because of this and because of that. Instead of just fist pumping the air (Silent Fist Pump) and wooting and about how all this hard work was paying off and so soon and oh yeah baby! No, I sat there and said, well it’s not really that great because of this and because of that. And I do that ALL the time. Ask me anything about any of my achievements and I can tell you why they weren’t really what they look like. It’s taken me all day but now I can say, hey I lost 1.5kg *so far* this week and that’s awesome and also I am nowhere near done. I just got started.

I’m having a great 2012, that’s no secret. I feel empowered and I feel like things are finally starting to come together. A lot of awesome opportunities have come my way and it’s only February. I’m a Dragon and so, yeah, 2012 just might well be my year. I’m going to harness some of the fire breathing and do some more things yet!

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.