Stephen Dedman

Tokyo!

2009-11-14T02:18:25Z

Arrived safely last night. Off to Akihabara (Otaku Central) today, Harajuku tomorrow.

Writer's Block: Instant attraction

2009-11-10T04:34:41Z

Do you think romantic chemistry is instant or evolving? Have you ever given someone a second (or third) chance and lived to regret it? Have you ever fallen in love with someone you didn't particularly like or desire at first?

View 1103 Answers

Evolving, but with moments of realization which count as punctuated equilibrium and are etched into memory.

The Raven has landed

2009-11-10T04:19:00Z

after a dreadful flight (cue Beatles): turbulence, on a red-eye, with no leg-room and the obligatory crying baby. We're now in Hong Kong: photos and more story to follow.

Taking Off

2009-11-07T09:28:50Z

Flying out to Hong Kong tomorrow night to give some lectures, then to Tokyo for a short break, so I'm not likely to be online much for the next week (not that the difference will be immediately obvious to readers of this page, I admit).

I'm not doing NaNoWriMo this year, but I finished enough of the marking that I started writing a new story on Thursday. Today, though, was spent revising and updating my thesis for a publisher. I sent that off this afternoon, and also did the line-edits on my story 'Wetwork' for the Shadowrun anthology Spells & Chrome. Oddly enough, that does count as a day off, by my standards.

Publications since my last update: one review in The West Australian, one article in Pyramid, and a reprint of 'Teeth' in Realms 2, though I haven't seen a copy.

Bibliography Update

2009-10-14T14:00:06Z

Just received my author's copy of Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine #41, featuring my story 'Sleep No More'.

I'd probably be more excited about this if I hadn't realized, after looking at the Aurealis Award Nominated Works yesterday, that it's only the second new genre story I've had published this year.

Nameless here for evermore...

2009-10-11T04:58:34Z

Ramsey Campbell to judge the 'Nameless' competition

The AHWA and 'Nameless' competition director Stephen Studach are thrilled to announce that the 'Nameless' competition will be judged by multi-award winning master of dark fiction Ramsey Campbell.

In honour of Mr. Campbell's involvement, the competition's deadline has been extended to the 13th of March, 2010.

Read the story here. Come up with a conclusion and a title! Make your $10 donation and enter the competition here.

Competition prizes include a $500 winner's cheque, and a prize pool of horror goodies:

A manuscript version of the story signed by as many of the writers involved as can be tracked down.
A copy of The Australian Writer's Marketplace 2009/2010.
A copy of The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror 19th annual collection (edited by Datlow, Link & Grant.)
Free 1-year membership, or 12-month renewal, to the Australian Horror Writers Association.
Books: Signed limited editions “ Dark Harvest by Norman Partridge; Wild Things by Douglas Clegg; Prodigal Blues by Gary A. Braunbeck.
A boost to any personal horror library “ Development Hell by Mick Garris; Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill; Infected by Scott Sigler; The Nature of Balance by Tim Lebbon; The Dark Descent edited by David G. Hartwell; a pre-loved copy of The Books of Blood (vols 1-3) from Marty Young's own collection.
A first edition of The Last Days of Kali Yuga, Paul Haines' forthcoming collection of stories; published to impeccable standards by Brimstone Press, and slated for release in December 2009.

The six best endings will be featured at HorrorScope - The Australian Dark Fiction Weblog.

All proceeds from this competition go to award-winning author Paul Haines, to assist Paul and the Haines family, while Paul undergoes treatment for cancer.

Source: Stephen Studach

I will not read your 8-point type. I want to bash you with a pipe!

2009-09-24T13:59:01Z

Jim C. Hines on reading slush, in the style of Dr Seuss.

Interview

2009-09-19T00:25:10Z

Randolph Carter interviews me about role-playing games and writing. The page also links to interviews with other writers.

There's a light...

2009-09-14T02:08:03Z

Life, pace Dorothy Parker, has not been "a glorious cycle of song" or "a medley of extemporanea"* of late, for reasons that I won't go into here... but I was still able to smile at this review of the German edition of my Shadowrun novel, A Fistful of Data. My German is rather rusty and I don't have a dictionary to hand, but I'm pretty sure that "ein nahezu perfekter Shadowrun-Roman" translates as "a near-perfect Shadowrun novel".

Of course it would have brightened up my day even more if the English language edition of the book wasn't out of print...

* Yes, I know she was being sarcastic.

Healthcare meme, smurched from

2009-09-05T01:23:16Z

No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick.

If you agree, please post this in all your social networking accounts.

A Morbid Taste for Bones

2009-09-04T11:19:35Z

For those of you who share my taste for the macabre, have fun fossicking through Quigley's Cabinet.

Update

2009-09-01T12:04:37Z

Since my September began with the unexpected news that a good friend was going into surgery to have a brain tumour removed, I feel I shouldn't complain too much about August.

Finished an old story and submitted it; wrote and submitted two articles for Pyramid. One sale; a reprint. Rejections: none. Publications: none that I noticed. Nothing to see here. Move along. Move along.

Addendum: Just discovered that I had something published in August, after all - a review of a Traci Harding novel.

Meal times

2009-08-17T14:32:23Z

Smurched from sfwa, this excellent food timeline tells you when different foodstuffs and recipes were introduced to the menu, from our first meals of seafood 380,000 years ago. The FAQ includes information on traditional meal times since Ancient Greece, and the cost of food from the 13th century onwards. Essential for writers of historical fiction, and for time travellers who don't want to be late for that all-important dinner with Socrates.

July noted

2009-08-05T14:52:40Z

While last month will probably go down in history as one that I'd rather not remember, it was reasonably productive writing-wise. One new story (the first in far too long) and one review begun, finished and submitted; another review and a Pyramid article published. Also submitted another eight stories: six previously published stories submitted to one reprint anthology; another to a foreign-language publication; and one, that's been rejected as too disturbing even by editors with a taste for the weird and gothic, sent to a horror magazine which is being edited by a writer who's about as twisted as I am.

Cheques: one. Rejections: zero.

Okay, so it could've been worse. I'm still glad it's over.

Through a glass, darkly...

2009-08-05T14:20:40Z

Of my four published novels, I usually think of Foreign Bodies - near future sf, set in an economically depressed US in the 2010s, when private security firms owned by white supremacists attempt to take over American cities - as my least successful.

Occasionally, though, stories such as this one, this one and this one makes me think I might have gotten more of it right than I realized...

Smurched from <a href='http://w

2009-08-04T05:02:09Z

15 billboards that don't belong together... except maybe for the pair at #11.

Female Appreciation Month

2009-08-01T03:09:47Z

Okay, I'm a little late, but it's still July somewhere in the world, right? (and I hope those parts had a better July than I had, but that's another story). So here are some hastily chosen clips by some of my favourite female singers and groups, starting with Indigo Girls

Tracy Chapman

Joan Baez

Maddy Prior

Janis Ian

Marianne Faithfull

and Jane Siberry

The Great Moon Hoax

2009-07-27T11:22:28Z

For anyone in Australia who hasn't already seen it (or wants a second viewing), SBS is showing The Dark Side of the Moon at 10pm tonight. Highly recommended.

On Parallel Importation

2009-07-26T09:40:12Z

As my Australian readers will probably be aware, the Australian Government's Productivity Commission has recommended that Parallel Importation Restrictions be abolished in three years time. The Australian Society of Authors (of which I'm a member) and Australian Publishing Association both lobbied against this, and continue to do so, as have individual writers, and Shane Jiraiya Cummings has drafted a response on behalf of the Australian Horror Writers Association (of which I'm also a member).

As both a writer and an independent book~~pimp~~seller, I applaud their efforts, because I certainly don't see the repeal of PIRs as a good thing for anyone but the big chains who've been lobbying for it... but something that has received much less publicity was the Commission's second recommendation: that since most of the benefit from PIRs was going to non-Australian writers and publishers anyway (my paraphrase), "current subsidies aimed at encouraging Australian writing and publishing" be reviewed and "revised arrangements should be put in place before the repeal of the PIR takes effect" (emphasis mine).

Now, while I am far too cynical to be entirely confident that this will happen, I think this recommendation may potentially be of more benefit to Australian writers, publishers, and independent booksellers than PIRs ever were. While continuing to campaign for the retention of PIRs, then, perhaps we should also offer the government some better alternatives.

Please consider, if you will, these modest proposals:

(1) While allowing the repeal of PIR, treat remaindered books by living authors as pirate copies and prohibit their importation.

We're already importing remaindered books from the US and selling them cheaply. In some cases, it's Australian publishers doing this: Penguin Australia, for example, sells many ROC titles* that aren't published locally at prices so low I find it difficult to believe the authors are being paid - though I could be wrong, and I don't wish to single them out as bad guys**. It might be possible to limit this to titles by Australian authors, but for all I know the US Free Trade Agreement*** may not allow that sort of discriminatory practice.

(2) Either (a) remove the GST on books, or (b) make sure that a much larger proportion of that GST money is redirected to Australian publishers and writers.

I can't locate them at present, but I have recently read figures on how much the GST on books has netted for the government since it was introduced in 2000 (and that's even if you don't count the annihilation of the Australian Democrats****) compared to the tiny compensation pay-outs given to Australian booksellers, publishers and writers.

(3) Substantially increase Public Lending Right and Educational Lending Right.

Keep the ceilings on payments limited at present, by all means, but increase the amount per book - and lower the threshold to, say, 25 or 30 copies of a book in each library system from 50, for a more equitable distribution of funds. (This might be paid for with money from 2b - or not 2b, if 2a is adopted instead.)

Thoughts?

Appendices:

* including Shadowrun novels such as my own, at $9.95 retail. That was complicated by the sale of WizKidz; all I know is that I've never seen a royalty statement for the book, much less any royalties, and have no idea what happened to most of the copies, except that I was never offered the opportunity of buying them rather than letting them be remaindered or pulped.
** please don't ask me about arrangements between Tor Books and Pan Macmillan Australia unless you want a harangue that will make you want to rip off your ears and eat them. I mean it.
*** which I strongly suspect was a major reason John Howard agreed to send Australian troops to Iraq, but that's by the by.
**** I'm still astonished that Meg Lees failed to notice that this would be a wedge issue that would not only split her party but leave both halves bleeding to death - because I'm sure that Howard, a grand master of the wedgie, knew full well.

Writer's Block: Duos

2009-07-11T02:49:18Z

Sam and Diane, Ross and Rachel, Chuck and Blair—who is your favorite TV couple?

View 506 Answers

Willow and Tara.

June: Another month, another...

2009-07-09T12:24:21Z

... brick in the wall?

... year older and deeper in debt?

Well, yes to both, but I did finish and submit two new pieces of writing... both book reviews, rather than fiction, but they were finished and submitted.

... rejection? Two. Both for Immunity, in the same month. I think that's a first, at least for me.

... publication? Not that I noticed.

July's going pretty well so far, though. I had a great time at Supanova, catching up with mdep and Jennifer Fallon (though I didn't see any of the other guests, barring a quick glimpse of Dave Gibbons), and selling a lot of books. And I'm teaching creative writing (ENG 2204) again this coming semester, as well as professional writing. I may even finish the month less deep in debt... though doing something about the 'older' bit may be a little more difficult...

And then Buffy staked Edward...

2009-06-21T03:18:37Z

You loved the t-shirt, now watch the movie!

Thanks, janni!.

Haunted Legends table of contents

2009-06-10T07:50:08Z

Via ellen_datlow, the ToC for Haunted Legends, an anthology of stories inspired by regional ghost stories and urban legends, edited by Ellen Datlow and Nick Mamatas and coming out from Tor in 2010 (we hope).

Knickerbocker Holiday...Richard Bowes

That Girl...Kaaron Warren

Akbar...Kit Reed

The Spring Heel...Steven Pirie

As Red as Red...Caitlín R. Kiernan

Tin Cans...Ekaterina Sedia

Shoebox Train Wreck...John Mantooth

15 Panels Depicting the Sadness of the Baku & the Jotai...Catherynne M. Valente

La Llorona...Carolyn Turgeon

Face Like a Monkey...Carrie Laben

Down Atsion Road...Jeffrey Ford

Return to Mariabronn...Gary A. Braunbeck

Following Double-Face Woman...Erzebet YellowBoy

Oaks Park...M.K. Hobson

For Those in Peril on the Sea...Stephen Dedman

The Foxes...Lily Hoang

The Redfield Girls...Laird Barron

Between Heaven and Hull...Pat Cadigan

Chucky Comes to Liverpool...Ramsey Campbell

The Folding Man...Joe R. Lansdale

The not-so-merry month of May

2009-06-07T11:02:02Z

I put this off because I've been busy marking assignments and didn't want to let myself get distracted. Now that I've finished (at least until the exam papers come in), I can do my monthly update on my writing career.

Sadly, it's sufficiently depressing that I'm going to put it behind a cut. The writers among you will find more useful information at Kristine Kathryn Rusch's Freelancers' Survival Guide.

New work finished: none, unless you count an Australia Council ~~lottery ticket~~ grant application.

New work started: none.

Publications: none.

Submissions: one proposal, and the Australia Council ~~begging letter~~ grant application.

Rejections: two; one novel, one short story.

Looking at Kris's article, I think I may have lost the love, and I have no idea how to get it back.

Smurched from yendi

2009-06-07T08:53:25Z

Sir Ian McKellen as King Lear, with with Sylvester McCoy as the Fool.