I've been on the road these last few days; driving through thunder, lightning, flash floods, aquaplaning towards concrete crash barriers, sitting in traffic jams, waiting for delayed planes - that sort of thing. Not doing a lot of writing, but taking the opportunity to catch up with reading and with simply thinking about writing (a worthwhile thing to do at times), but I'll say more about that in a future post.
What I want to do here is give a shout-out or two, by way of celebrating just some of the good stuff that's happening around the writing community.
To Louise Cusack, who signed a three e-book deal (or is that threee-book deal?) with Pan Macmillan's digital publishing subsidiary, Momentum Books, to re-release her fantasy trilogy, Shadow Through Time, to the international market.
To Mike French, whose debut novel The Ascent of Isaac Steward (Cauliay Publishing), was waiting on the doorstep for me at the end of my journey, after a bizarre journey of its own (Amazon failed to send my pre-ordered copy, Fishpond spent two months losing the copy I requested from them, and then told me last week it was no longer available and so wouldn't be sending a replacement copy... but managed to post it to me on the same day). Likened by R.N.Morris to "the surrealist literary experiments of James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake but blessedly readable", I'll enjoy starting it soon. Big CONGRATULATIONS to Mike too for being long-listed by the Galaxy Book Awards under New Writer of the Year category.
To Cam Rogers, whose claim that Fight Club is one of the "best zombie films ever made" got me thinking about this favourite movie in a whole new light. He presents a weirdly convincing case.
To Jay Kristoff, who tapped into my doubts about the value of tweeting and had me cheering at the same time, with his Ten reasons you can Follow THIS.
To Dmetri Kakmi, whose article on why Australia's constitution should be rewritten to recognise the country's indigenous inhabitants has had me wondering if a group of writers couldn't harness the net to make this happen. Or whether this is something that Avaaz might be prepared to take on.
And I have to stop there, so you can check out the links. There's so much good stuff happening at the moment. This is just a flavour.
