I Make Stuff Up

[rattfan]

I’m getting some writing done now that I have no more excuses.  Christmas and NY are over, for which I’m rather grateful.  Had a reasonably good time and caught up with friends, but find the whole “festive season”  a bit of a strain.  NYD was my first chance to start catching up on sleep.  Best Holiday Ever.  Now I’m on leave for the month, which I regard as my chance to be a full-time writer for awhile.  And get some sleep!

I prepped a story from a long ago publication to go up on the Curious Fictions site and am working on another one now.  Being so aged [I guess that’s me and the stories]  I wince at some of the clumsy phrasing my younger self came up with, so a certain amount of rewriting is needed.  Both of the stories were originally for theme anthologies;  one the Australian Republic and the other one a future dystopia featuring Shanghai.  I can’t remember too much more about that, since that publication didn’t actually take the story, so I reworked it and it was published in Agog, edited by Cat Sparks.

If any new folks are curious to read my stuff, it can be located by the link at the end of my sticky intro post.  You might be interested in Curious Fictions yourselves.  It’s a very good idea by a couple of Californians, I think they are, whereby authors can showcase their work.  It can be previously published, the rights having reverted back to you – in which case you credit that publication – or new stuff.  People can subscribe to you or tip your stories if they are so inclined.  I have put some new stuff up in my Nightsiders universe but that’s stalled for the time being.

Real life has in fact caught up with me.  The terrible fires that are now ravaging huge areas of our country are worse than anything I could have dreamed and certainly I can no longer say that the Eastern States would hold together, whereas WA is too far to remain in the infrastructure once climate change takes real hold.  True it is that SF writers are terrible prophets!

I’m working on bits and pieces of fanfic as well.  There’s one which has started as part of a Supernatural AU series, but this story is a bit of a side excursion into Tanya Huff’s book Blood Trail.  I liked her werewolves more than Vicki Nelson and Henry Fitzroy, the vampire bastard of Henry VIII, to be honest, and I was always sorry she never went back to show how they got on.  So I’ve dropped one of my characters on them to see what comes of it.   That story is currently called The Cub.  I may come up with a better title some time later.

So that's where I am at the moment.  Feel free to ask anything if you want to know more about what I'm working on.  I'm never sure what to say about my writing.

Comments

[worlds_of_smoke]

oh, I need to go finish off that series. I really liked the representation of disability in the books I had read.

[rattfan]

They were/are very good, though I wasn't sure I liked the outcome with Vicki.

The werewolves were fantastic. Remember the bit where Vicki has to admit to Peter and Rose that she can't see well enough to drive? Their reaction is just "No problem, we'll drive you," and they're just happy that the problem is solved, which makes Vicki feel a whole lot better also.

[leecetheartist]

We're being affected indirectly, what with the Eyre Highway being cut off for the past 10 days or so.

[rattfan]

Sorry, I was not clear. I was referring to the setup for my Nightsider stories, i.e. they decide it's too much to keep WA in the loop, effectively, when climate change has advanced so much (fictionally, 2030s onwards).

That's what I mean about not part of the infrastructure. I'm talking fictionally there. Obviously we ARE part of the infrastructure now, definitely affected by the real-life closure of the Eyre Highway.

[leecetheartist]

I realised that it was Nightsiders you were talking about, I wasn't clear - just kind of thinking aloud, that while we might seem an island of blue sky and no smoke at the moment we would be affected by the Eastern States being cut off, and are being. So Nightsiders is still prophetic. It was clearer in my head. :-)

[rattfan]

You're too fast for me! :-) I was still cogitating and tried to edit but it was too late! This is my edit.

Sorry, I was not clear.

I think you're responding to this bit?


"Real life has in fact caught up with me. The terrible fires that are now ravaging huge areas of our country are worse than anything I could have dreamed and certainly I can no longer say that the Eastern States would hold together, whereas WA is too far to remain in the infrastructure once climate change takes real hold."


I was referring to the setup for my Nightsider stories, i.e. federal government decide it's too much to keep WA in the loop, effectively, when climate change has advanced so much (fictionally, 2030s onwards). That's the statement I made in the stories; that the East would hold together but that they would shed WA or at least Perth. [They're still interested in the State's resources, of course!]

Now, though, I can see that if you were to jump forward 10/20 years or so and imagine a worst-case scenario, it's now more likely that the whole country would fragment. So I'm now considering that my original premise could not happen.

That's what I mean about not part of the infrastructure. I'm talking fictionally there. Obviously we ARE part of the infrastructure now, definitely affected by the real-life closure of the Eyre Highway.

Does that make sense? I think I've boggled myself.

[leecetheartist]

I was saying that Nightsiders is still prophetic in that we are being directly affected by being cut off from the Eastern States (for whatever reason - conscious political decision, or the Eastern States being on fire (due to stupid environmental decisions) )