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28Jan

Shirley Hazzard’s CLIFFS OF FALL

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“Elizabeth got used to the sound of her own laughter, which she had at first found faintly improper.”

(From “Cliffs of Fall”.)

Ugh, I hate reviewing Shirley Hazzard’s CLIFFS OF FALL. What words can be used to describe such beautiful, lyrical, bittersweet, intelligent writing? Better, surely, to just read the words themselves. And I think you should, you should really read CLIFFS OF FALL because it is sad and beautiful and bittersweet, and Shirley Hazzard *should be more read*. She even made me want to use phrases like ‘our Shirley Hazzard’ or ‘one of Australia’s best exports’, taking refuge in cliche to hide from the dazzling brilliance of her writing. I’m so glad she’s written this book, this collection of, well, not even short stories, but of *moments*, sparkling moments chipped from a colossal diamond that Hazzard probably keeps in her apartment. (I’m not sure which apartment, either the one in New York or the one in Capri. A citizen of the world, she was born in Australia.)

There are themes uniting Hazzard’s works: yearning and sadness, maturity, society, femininity, duty. Relationships. What is said and what it means. What is not said.

None of which would have attracted me to the collection, I admit, unless someone I respected had told me, “Shirley Hazzard is one of the best short story writers working today.” So I will just say to you: Shirley Hazzard is one of the best short story writers working today. But, again, be aware she’s not dealing in narrative. She’s dealing in moment. In emotion, finely expressed and exquisitely, attentively observed.

Some motifs return, such as the aloof male partner, the “meekly attentive” female partner (description quoted from “In One’s Own House”), the social expectations surrounding them from his mother to the people they were at the party with. And there is so much careful detail, almost casually presented, that you have the sense you are there, I mean, really *there* in the 1950s/60s, in an elegant house wearing elegant clothes and swapping witticisms with dreadfully refined men and women at an exquisite ‘do’, while Hazzard’s characters give controlled smiles to everyone they meet (while secretly harbouring complex emotions and reactions which would have them turfed from said party if they dared speak them out loud).

I thought at first Hazzard’s greatest power was the remarkable balance and efficiency of her prose, the moments of sly wit. Lines like this:

“He linked across the lock a small gilt chain in which May had complete confidence.”

(From “A Place in the Country”.)

Doesn’t that just say it all? A security chain on the back of the door, a slight measure in which most of us have ‘complete confidence’. Except it doesn’t. It doesn’t say it all. Because then I realised that the real power of this sentence on its own isn’t felt, that the true impact is not from the innate wryness of tone but relies on it’s equally balanced and efficient context. Because the ‘he’ in that sentence is May’s husband. And the reason May’s confidence is so very ironic is because the true danger in the story doesn’t come from without. It’s already inside, as May’s husband locks the door against social judgement and resumes the affair he’s been having with May’s young cousin.

*Now* read that sentence, & see how much power and meaning Hazzard has packed into it:

“He linked across the lock a small gilt chain in which May had complete confidence.”

Are you thinking ‘poor May’? Let me assure you, that’s because you haven’t met her. Or maybe it’s because you read all the way to the end, because by then Hazzard has given you enough insight into every character that you will find yourself warming to the cold, methodical May in ways you hadn’t anticipated. And she’ll do that, again, in a sentence.

I admit that Hazzard’s characters have a sameness of affect (or even effect), so much so it’s occasionally hard to tell one long-suffering woman from another, or one intelligent-but-emotionall-distant man from another. But the pace of the pitch-perfect prose is enough to keep you reading, and the fact, again, that the stories are *moments* means in the end they feel as if they might even add up to one story, one set of circumstances for one set of characters – an observation that is only obvious when the stories are collected together in this one, slim volume.

Which I strongly urge you to read.

“For the fact was that they were not really suited to one another, which he would have discovered if he had ever tried to understand her properly.”

(From “The Picnic”.)

 

—–

O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed.

- Gerard Manley Hopkins, ‘No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief‘

 

This review is part of the AWWC2012 challenge & is cross posted on Goodreads.com.

08Sep

Alan Ball on creation

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Was lucky enough to attend the Alan Ball interview at the Opera House tonight. He’s a warm, funny man & down to earth, surprised, I think, by the event & the crowd. I thought: this is what you get when you talk to a real writer, that acknowledgement of how hard won the successes are, & how constant the failures. And what interested me most was his inspirations, where they’d come from and where they’d eventually lead.

He was writing the Cybill Shepherd vehicle, Cybill, many years ago, writing what he called “moments of shit”. Moments, I would paraphrase, of cloying sentimentality, averaging one a week for three years. And at night, at 2am, he’d sit awake at his desk writing a movie that would express his rage. And he called that movie American Beauty.

Right before Alan (sorry, I just can’t refer to a human being as ‘Ball’, it sounds … weird) was nominated for an Oscar for American Beauty, he had moved onto a job writing a sitcom about a talking dog, & hating the ‘tv sitcom gulag’. But luckily for him, he won that Oscar & the talking dog sitcom got canned & he got to move on. To an idea that was pitched to him by an exec at HBO.

“We want a show about a family who runs a funeral home, we think you’re the guy to do it,” she said. Something clicked in Alan’s brain, the idea of death and dark, dark humour. And so – despite being contracted for another year of talking dog – he wrote a pilot.

And HBO said, “We like it, but it feels like you’re playing safe. Can you make the family more fucked up?”

Alan said, “Yeah. I can do that.”

See, that’s what I find most interesting about the creative process. That sometimes the grain of sand that starts the pearl comes from someone else, some other source that triggers your brain and you cannot NOT do what they’ve aluded to, even though the idea may not have been yours. The expression of that idea becomes all you can do. I’ve had some moments of that, sometimes, & if I can step outside my existing frustrations, I realise that the two big projects coming out this year with my name on the cover are BOTH grains of sand that began with someone else finding a trigger that set my brain in a direction that had to be realised. Which makes me just a little bit even-more-gladder for those other people.

And the reassuring idea that even when you’re in a gulag, there could be something awesome about to happen for you outside its walls.

At least, I fcking hope so.

,

22Aug

Flowers and candy and other rewards of the business

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Ask a roomful of successful authors why they decided to write and not one of them will answer “for the money,” any more than a hooker would say she chose her profession “for the flowers and candy.”

– Paul Carr, “Mr. Swift’s Moronic Proposal: Ebooks Will Keep Writers from Writing“, The Awl

 

And this on the same day I noticed that Joyce Carol Oates is selling short stories for a dollar each (or thereabouts) for the Kindle. I mean, what an awesome model that is, eh? With the size of Oates’ fan base, that’s a lot of dollars.

I’m loving the potential electronic publishing might offer writing. You can buy ‘singles’ without buying the whole album. A novella can stand proudly alongside a novel on the same ‘shelf’. In fact, novellas become EVEN MORE enticing: the whole unit price issue is moot, & novellas can offer a great intro to an author at a great price point.

Anyhow, I know this is old news for most people, but the new models for publishing are giving me a lot more hope than the old. This, and the Domino Project’s short, peppy emails around building a tribe advocate putting the power back in an author’s hands. At great investment of time, sure, but heck, even traditional publishing is a great investment of time for an author. And I’m not saying I’m going to leap into self-publishing any time soon. But it does show there are smart ways to deal with the changes to publishing. And it gives me confidence that no effort is wasted if you believe enough in what you’re doing. Which is a nice belief to foster, & one I’ve spent years lacking.

 

Traditional media is all about interrupting strangers. Modern media (including modern bookselling) is focused on building a tribe, earning permission and then creating products and services for that audience.

– Seth Godin, Now look what you’ve done, The Domino Project

10Feb

The War of Art

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Years ago I stumbled across Steven Pressfield’s THE WAR OF ART (no, I didn’t write that down wrong) & loved it. Loved its passion & determination. Loved it so much I bought a copy for a friend’s birthday. Only to shortly hear that he didn’t want gifts that birthday. So I shelved it until an entirely different friend came visiting, complaining of her inability to follow her creative force, to build creative focus & to just *create*, goddammitt. And she picked up the Pressfield WAR OF ART book from my shelf like it had been destined for her — in its shiny silver, tactile cover — and said to me, “Is this a good book?”

“Even better,” I told her, “it’s YOUR book.”

And I fetched the copy that had been intended as a gift & I gifted it to her on the spot. It was a satisfying moment. THE WAR OF ART had found its other home.

So, if you feel the need to be invigorated, enraged, ENGAGED to fulfill your creative vision, THE WAR OF ART might be for you, too. Though I’m not sure if they’re still doing it in the tactile silver covers.

Thanks to the wonders of Twitter, I found Pressfield’s now doing a blog on creativity, & I wanted to mention that his entry called “Panic is good” is rather marvellous if you find yourself feeling afraid. And there are plenty of other entries if you’re up to some other part of your journey.

So. To war!

29Aug

The irony of writing: Joss Whedon

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Not so shiny: Plenty of drama for Buffy creator Joss Whedon
– Bernard Zuel, Sydney Morning Herald, August 25, 2010

More seriously, he says that the cancellation of Firefly not only made him “the sourest man alive” but had an unexpected and potentially devastating side effect.

“I stopped having ideas, which for me is an extremely rare experience,” Whedon says. “It was something much more subtle [than losing hope], it took away my ability to think in terms of episodic television. For years.”

[snip]

“You have to have a certain naivety, almost Memento-like, and get bitch-slapped over and over. You’ve got to go in with an enormous amount of confidence because everyone is going to question everything you do. You have to be the person who believes when nobody else does.”

It seems that rather than the five stages of grief, for writers there is just one stage: wiping your memory and starting again, like the characters in Dollhouse.

“Yeah, pretty much. Anger, anger, anger. Anger. Bargaining,” he deadpans.

, , ,

27Jan

Woohoo!

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How cool, A BOOK OF ENDINGS has made the shortlist for the 2010 William L. Crawford Award!

I’m assured the readers are ‘very picky’, so a heartfelt *hug* and congratulations to fellow short-listers, Kari Sperring (LIVING WITH GHOSTS), and Ali Shaw (THE GIRL WITH GLASS FEET — wow, I love this title) and an even bigger *hug* for Jedediah Berry. Not just for his passionate guitar-playing at the annual WFC cheese party. But also for winning the Crawford Award with his book, THE MANUAL OF DETECTION.

Been meaning to read THE MANUAL for a year — many rave reviews have been directed its way.

Many thanks to Gary K. Wolfe & the whole crew for taking the time to consider my book. Very cheered!

Plus: gotta love an award where the winner is announced at the same time as the shortlist-ees. Really takes the stress outta the thing when the race is run before you realise you’ve even been running. Thank-you, sophisticated Crawford-ites!

11Jan

Well, that’s kinda cool

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Look at that, two of the new stories from A Book of Endings (now available, etc) are on the nomination list for the British SF Awards. Woot! *Not* the shortlist, I hasten to add. It simply means, I think, that some kind member(s) of the British SF Association has (er, have) nominated ‘Diamond Shell’ and ‘Problems of Light and Dark’ for best short story — putting me in the same list as Cat Valente, Peter Watts, Bruce Sterling & Eugie Foster, to name a few.

NOT a shortlist: let’s not go overboard.

But as fuel for my ongoing love affair with the British, this is cool. I am much cheered, & find myself wanting to use such archetypal British phrases as ‘geezer’ and ‘hows yer farva’, and to name my firstborn Ebenezer, which I think is a British name.

If you are a kind British person &/or a member of BSFA & you’d like to read these stories, feel free to drop me a line (deborahb AT livejournal DOT com) & I will cheerfully — very cheerfully — forward you an electronic copy of said stories. I may get a bit carried away & send you more than those two, but you’ll at least get those two stories & you can read ‘em or use ‘em for your electronic bird cages as is your wont.

Go to it, kind British people!

Edit: someone mentioned they couldn’t get through on that email address. I tested it & didn’t get a bounce message, but I didn’t get the test message either! Instead, then, try rous AT deborahbiancotti DOT net for all your correspondence needs.

16Dec

Chastised

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One of the opportunities A Book of Endings created was the chance to get my writing in front of a wider audience. To see what the rest of the world might think. The Australian genre scene is so warm & welcoming that I’d grown suspicious of the kind words occasionally attributed to my work in reviews & conversations.

So I pinged a couple of wider-stream review sources to see if, well, if the Emperor really was wearing any clothes.

The Syd Uni Alumni review came out first & said: “These are unnerving and elliptical, in the main, and tread a fine line between the everyday mundaneity that never is and overblown literary style that can be tiresome when too self-conscious. Mostly they stay on the right side of the line and intrigue more than irritate.”

Yes, I spotted it, too. “Mostly”. But that’s cool. Given the book is largely retrospective I could even entertain the idea that maybe the irritating ones were the early ones, and the new ones are better. Hell, I’m occasionally optimistic that way.

The Short Review is a site dedicated to short story writing, & is definitely worth checking out. Of my book, reviewer Mario Guslandi said, “Deborah Biancotti’s debut collection left me both hopeful and frustrated. Here we have a writer with a great potential, able to produce some outstanding stories, who, unfortunately, often wastes her talent writing tasteless pieces with implausible plots and nondescript characters. When inspired, Biancotti is a top notch author. When uninspired, the author of mediocre tales can irritate, in view of what she can do when at the top of her game.”

I know, I know. Now you, like me, want to know which are the tasteless stories!

Well, I guess taste is a matter of … erm, taste. So I can’t fault Guslandi for his passionate chastisement of my choice of writing subjects. Though I am curious about it. Maybe I’ll email him to find out what he means. Since he also reviews for SF Site, infinity plus, Horrorworld and Alien Online, it’s certainly not that he’s NOT a genre reader — which would be the easiest out.

Guslandi then go on to discuss the “five sparkling gems” of the book — and this is the really interesting stuff, I find: I love finding out what stories *worked* for people. There’s no predicting it, and here again I’m surprised to find what he enjoyed the most. If I’d had to choose my 5 best stories, would I have chosen these? … Hmmm. Maybe not.

If you’ve read the book, I’d love to know what stories worked for you — & what you found positively TASTELESS! :) Comment or email as is your will, noble readers.

,

14Dec

And in today’s unusual discoveries…

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… turns out you can still buy Redsine #7, edited by Trent Jamieson & Garry Nurrish, from about 2002.

I loved Redsine and always wished it had continued for longer. It was a classy zine, and short (a good characteristic for a zine, imho: one-sitting-reading always scores well with me).

And I love it not only because it was the home of my second-ever published (and first-ever completed) story, Silicon Cast — which is, ahem, *also* still available thanks to GoogleBooks. Well, in part.

Not sure how I feel about that. *pauses to reflect* Well, pretty relaxed.

Silicon Cast feels very young to me now, but still has a relatively straight-forward horror narrative that makes me grin. I do love a bit of ‘ew’ in my reading. Terry Dowling, my first teacher, read this over for me when I was struggling and it was certainly in part because of his encouragement that I ever continued with writing. And yes, you can read a hardcopy version in A Book of Endings if you’re so inclined.

Anyhow. If you read the full version, let me know what you think of the story!

, , ,

13Dec

Readers and writers and short stories

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Honestly? I got into short stories because it seemed like a good way to learn to write. It’s become much more than that, of course, but I’ve not paused very often to think about what place they do have for me, and further what place they have for readers.

I’ve been surprised by the amount of interest in A Book of Endings, for example, and overwhelmed by the response of readers. Enough of my friends not only bought the book but *read* it to make me think people actually are interested in the short form. When challenged, plenty of my friends were adamant that yes, they really did like reading short stories even before my book came along and yes, they weren’t just buying it out of sympathy (though I suspect some of them were!) that I thought I’d overlooked something.

I admit I always thought short stories were rather esoteric, enjoyed more by writers than readers. Short stories are often a harder read than novels, I think. Because you have to pay attention the whole way through. Novels you can drift in and out, doze off on a daybed, miss a few words because the hammock is swinging too hard — all those hiccups that occur in perfect reading fantasies. But overall it’s easier to keep track of a novel because even if you miss bits the narrative spine will hopefully pull you through.

So I was still surprised when I read this in the Syd Uni Alumni magazine review of A Book of Endings: “Biancotti is further proof of why readers enjoy the short story, even though publishers prefer to pretend we don’t.”

And over here at the Guardian, some discussion about why women, in particular, are being recognised in the short story field (are they? well, isn’t that good news).

Short stories, on the other hand, are famously uncommercial; that, coupled with the perceived exactingness of the form and its heavyweight literary lineage, means that short stories by women are taken seriously – and awarded accordingly.

That would be ironic if true: women gain more recognition in short stories because short stories aren’t coveted by publishers either. ;)

, ,

03Dec

A brief delay

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I made it. With the emailing of the full draft of my 21st Century Gothic essay on NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, I’m done. That’s it. I’ve met my deadlines for 2009. Which is remarkable because for a while there I thought I wasn’t going to make it.

(I think I made it by going a little crazy for a while.)

Of course, a lot of those deadlines were for A BOOK OF ENDINGS (six new stories, yours now via Twelfth Planet Press!), but the timetable of 2009 work made it all the way into December. Now I’ve got to start thinking about my timetable for (*gulp*) 2010. Something a little calmer, I hope, though I maybe have just signed up for another Gilgamesh project. And there’s editing for the contemporary Ishtar story soon, most likely.

Anyhoooo, the essay. It’s in & it may or may not coherently argue that the battle of good (Sheriff Bell) and evil (Anton Chigurh) for the soul of one man (Llewellyn Moss), the elements of the supernatural, the voice of despair, the struggle to believe in a God who seems less involved in the world than Satan are all Gothic elements of this modern novel. There’s other stuff, too. I refer to Anne Radcliffe and Terminator in about equal measures, and naturally I mention MELMOTH THE WANDERER more than once.

But here’s the thing: I thought I was pretty knowledgeable about gothic literature. Turns out I’m not that knowledgeable at all. It impresses me how much trust esteemed editor Danel Olson has placed in his extensive contributor list (2 volumes!).

Plus, essays. Wow, I’d forgotten how hard they can be.

For now, though, the next steps are to return to the fun stuff. My stuff. The BROKEN novel. I’d left off with John Eiger about to — well, let’s just say he could be making a big mistake.

Man, I love when characters make big mistakes. I love sitting alongside them thinking, ‘oooooohhh, buddy, you’re in trouble now….’.

But tonight some rest and something new to read that *isn’t* NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. I’m thinking it’s time to return to some Michael Robotham.

,

16Nov

Now you can hear the Hush

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Over at Terra Incognita, my story Hush is now online as a podcast — AND coming soon to iTunes. Double the Hush!

This time we don’t get the whiskey tones of Nick Evans, I’m afraid. The author has to read her own stories at Terra Incognita. Must be part of that whole global economic crisis thing. I’ve tried to remember what I learned watching Dorothy Porter read one of her stories at Stanton Library years back. What I liked most was that she made it sound like a conversation. No Grahnd Poh-etry Rahding Voice for Dorothy Porter. I loved her more for that.

But heck, I never even shook her hand. So you can be assured that all flaws and shortcomings in this reading (well, this story, too) are mine.

Hush is one of the six new stories in A Book of Endings. It’s a little bit steampunk, a little bit revenge tale. And it features a dog and a talking horse. What more could you want?

—–
A Book of Endings, go on, buy it via Twelfth Planet Press.

13Nov

Balancing day and er, not day

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I’ve had some shitty day jobs.

There was the mortgage-processing job, where the boss was at great pains on day 1 to tell me about the culture of ‘no blame, only teamwork’. And two months in when I uncovered an error that had been made with some mortgage cheques, he tried to guilt-trip me about the costly solution he’d have to implement — apparently assuming that because I’d uncovered the error, I’d also made it. (I hadn’t.)

There was the workplace I refer to as the Toxic Avenger, where my last defiant act was to act as a witness in a formal complaint of corporate bullying. I hadn’t really considered the aggressive, ignorant behaviour of my superiors to be bullying until I went to HR for something else & they showed me a copy of the Anti-Bullying Policy. Which was about when I realised that no one had ever described my exec director as accurately as that document. He was also a liar, but the policy didn’t cover that.

There was the Narcissism Is Me workplace, where the MD was prone to sending self-pitying emails to all staff about stuff he’d decided to take personally: staff leaving, staff not filling in their timesheets, staff calling him a moron (oh, wait, no one told him that, right?). He also had a nifty way of firing people or downsizing a role without ever actually having to pay out a redundancy. He wasn’t so much a liar as a man living in a land of complete make-believe, fantasising about his own efficacy in the chaotic organisation he’d fostered. Perhaps unsurprisingly, those at greatest geographical distance from him reported being the most happy in their jobs.

Reading back over this list I can see the truth of the idea that people don’t leave bad workplaces, they leave bad bosses.

And of course, we must note the good jobs. The State Library job was a lot of fun. I loved working in a ‘cultural institution’, loved the events, loved the Library’s mission, loved the history, the building, loved a bunch of the people. The casual jobs I had while at or just after uni were great. I worked on campus in a bunch of roles: stuffing envelopes, staffing the info centre, admin-ing at the careers centre. None of it taxing, all of it cheering. The multimedia job I had (right before the internet ate all the multimedia technologies that weren’t net-specific) was also awesome for the 3 months it took the company to go bust.

But the caveat on each day job is that it must feed the writing. Occasionally this has felt like the inevitable failure to serve two masters. Sometimes — less often — it’s worked.

The multimedia fed the writing because it was both creative AND structured (I was a Macromedia Director author, in case anyone recognises that terminology) – but because I loved it I also worked a bunch of extra hours on it, which limited my writing time. In contrast, the Toxic Avenger allowed me a helluva lot of time (these were the years when I was most active in the blogosphere) but made me feel dead on the inside. It’s hard to write when you’re dead. Not so hard to blog, oddly.

I figure by now I’ve tried just about everything I can think of. I’ve tried the dead-end, dull job, I’ve tried the all-in, exhaustive job, & a bunch of patterns in between. I’ve tried a day-job in writing & several well outside. I’ve tried part-time & full-time work. I’ve learned what -– for want of a better word — works. I’ve tried my darnedest to maximise that stuff & minimise the rest.

And I think Eden Robins’ post over at Ecstatic Days is the picture-perfect day-job description. If you’re a similar kinda writer as me, that is.

16Oct

The books are in!

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For anyone waiting on a copy of A Book of Endings from last week’s launch (where we ran out of books), the box has arrived! Distribution is imminent.

I’m off to the World Fantasy Con in a little over a week, though, so we might have to make this quick. May have to be a pub gathering next weekend. ;p (Note to developer friends: ever done a soft launch AFTER the real launch?)

11Oct

Signed over

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A huge thank-you to the people who came to the launch of A Book of Endings yesterday. NG Gallery put on a damn classy show (the catering was so artfully done most people actually *mistook* it for art), & the crowd was cheerful & kind & wonderful. I was blown away by the number of attendees. Among the crowd were many friends & family I hadn’t seen in years. (One relative commented that the last time he’d seen me I’d measured up to his waist.)

I was overwhelmed.

Margo Lanagan gave me the most gracious, convincing write-up I’ve ever had (thanks Margo!), & I believe my family was duly impressed. Especially when I burst into tears. (We shall speak no more of that.)

Alas, we sold out of every book I had! Some of you put your names on the order list, but if you haven’t done that & you’d still like to order a book, please just let me know via the comments, or email me at deborahb AT-diddy-AT livejournal.com. I shall post ‘em off when ‘the publisher’ sends more.

Special thanks has to go to my sister, Rachel, whose up-selling skills were something to behold. Instead of offering people change, she’d ask them if they wanted to purchase a second book. Some did fall for her charms — & I just love that my good buddy Sue rocked up to the head of the signing queue with no less than FOUR books in her hand! They do make great Xmas gifts.

Also there was a rather special family photo taken of the Biancotti-Wegert-Reganzani-Miller family which I intend to frame for the wall.

Thanks again to everyone. I’m just blown away.

Crowdscene

More photos at Flickr here & at Cat Sparks’ photo stream, or feel free to forward your own!

06Oct

Sydney launch reminder

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A reminder for anyone who’s free this Saturday afternoon (and also, in the vicinity of Sydney), that A Book of Endings will be launching locally:

3pm Saturday 10 October
NG Art Gallery
Upstairs at 3 Little Queen St
Chippendale NSW 2008
(about 2 bus stops from Central Station or a 10-minute walk)

Launch MC: Margo Lanagan

Champagne & OJ provided, or feel free to purchase a drink at the bar downstairs.

$25 on the day (cash sales only on the day, or order online)

And in honour of the event, I’m giving away a FREE! copy of A Book of Endings to the person who has the wackiest answer to the question:

What would be YOUR favourite ending?

(Feel free to interpret that any way you like).

Best answer chosen by Friday this week. Postage anywhere in the world!

01Oct

The Disappearance of Richard Ridyard

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I’ve been checking back in with Angel Zapata’s blog for more news of our plagiarist friend, Richard Ridyard, & by now I’ve learned:

* Richard Ridyard is the name of a deceased journalist, who — if he had any kind of professional integrity — must be rolling in his grave to see his reputation sullied by some petty thief.

* Editor after editor is coming forward to express their horror at being duped by a guy that would steal the words of STEPHEN KING, fer goodness sake (there’s some speculation this one was a cry for help — after all, someone will eventually twig to what you’re doing if you’re stealing from Stephen freaking King, kiddo).

* ‘Ridyard’ also approached Infinite Windows with his “The Tyburg Jig”, with my stolen paragraph in it. Infinite Windows has removed all his work.

* ‘Ridyard’ has also been publishing under the name RM Valentine — & “The Tyburg Jig” has been shopped under that name as well over at StoryWrite (who have now taken all RM’s stories down)

* I didn’t know this, but the Tyburg Jig is the dance of a hanged body. How … apt.

* The Facebook pages for Valentine Publications & co-founder Matthew Shackleton (who professed to knowing his buddy Ridyard ‘for ten years’) have both disappeared, and the website has also disappeared.

* Brimstone Press has a little something to say about ANOTHER theft.

I mention the names of the zines because I think they deserve kudos for reacting so quickly to the discovery of plagiarism. Thanks, guys! Ridyard appears to be disappearing into a vortex of his own making.

What baffles me, though, is how prolific this guy’s been with his stolen stories. Hell, he’s published “The Tyburg Jig” at least 3 times. I only sold that story once!

Clearly I have been slack.

But just think, if he’d poured all that effort into original work, instead of cutting & pasting & emailing that sucker out so many times (and all the other stolen stories, of course), he’d probably *be* Stephen King by now.

,

30Sep

I must be famous now

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In today’s exciting news, apparently I’ve been plagiarised.

A man called Angel has alerted me to the theft by a man called Ridyard who apparently is a co-founder of a business called Valentine Publications.

Proving that reality can confer upon you the need to write sentences that are more bizarre than any fiction.

Angel Zapata emailed me about the plagiarism of my story, The First and Final Game (excerpt available online, which is obviously what made the theft possible) & the plagiarism of several other writers’ works, & directed me to his well-researched piece on his blog, A Rage of Angel.

Word for word, these lines were stolen from this, my first published story (& I’m repeating them here in a way of stealing them back, I think):

“Electricity is irregular here, and so are phones, but the privacy is absolute. You could kill every single person in every single house and hardly anyone would disturb you. It’s that kind of place.”

MicroHorror, the site where my own theft occurred, reacted instantly & removed the offending story & sent me an apology. Full kudos to MicroHorror for their committment & care, & to Mr Zapata for putting in the time to expose all this in the first place!

(I feel like I’ve fallen into some kinda odd film noir reality.)

So if you’re approached by someone claiming to be Richard Ridyard, look out! He seems to be a well-established plagiarist and editor of Valentine Publications: ‘Home of British Flash Fiction’, currently closed for ‘administrative reasons’. (If you google it, you’ll find a cached version.) You can also join Valentine Publications’ Facebook group, where you’ll find, oddly, no mention of Mr Ridyard, who is described over at Valentine Publications like this:

Undoubtedly a man of many talents, he has lived his short twenty-one years with a vivacity and boldness, which few could achieve in a lifetime.

A-ha.

I’m only mildly taken aback by the event itself, but I’m rather appalled by Ridyard/Shackleton/Whoever-it-is’ unethical abuse of other writers. Mostly I find this behaviour … odd. What exactly has the owner of the sock puppet gained? How much effort has been put into the plagiarism that COULD have been used to do real writing, real work that might have resulted in real gains?

So I won’t be deleting my online excerpts. But I won’t stop short of exposing plagiarists, either!

24Sep

Spring in the step

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Spring is a crazy time. Not just because of odd things like dust storms, but also because spring is when I want to do EVERYTHING at once. I want to write and read and paint and sing and watch great cinema and scour my brain of all the ideas it has spinning around inside.

Today the air is crystal clear again, sky is blue, the ‘red menace’ (as the media is calling it) has retreated & if it wasn’t for the photos, you’d swear it never happened. Flickr has an entire project dedicated to yesterday in Sydney: it’s called the Red Sydney Project, unsurprisingly. Some of my photos are there, too. And members of the Red Sydney Project have been asked to contribute to a print-on-demand project called Dust Storm. As you see, we in Sydney are obsessed with the whole red dust event.

And, of course, we still have the dust. Anything that was outside yesterday is now covered in a layer of red dust. Apparently car wash firms are having a field day.

But none of this is what I wanted to discuss today. I wanted to say that due to an unforeseen double-booking, Garth Nix won’t be able to make the Sydney launch of A Book of Endings on Saturday 10-October. Garth is a tough act to follow, of course, and with his absence the question became, ‘what brave, thoughtful soul will step unto the breach? what noble, wise, etc?’

But in excellent news, Margo Lanagan has promised to don the mantle — or the cape, as it were (I haven’t told her about that bit) — for the role of ‘making me look good to my family’. Margo promises my fam will be impressed. Though there was an element of ‘mwhahahahaa’ to her words, I’m pretty sure.

A Book of Endings. Launching Saturday 10-October, 3pm at NG Gallery, Little Queen St, Chippendale. Now with extra Margo Lanagan!

16Sep

Today’s outcomes

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This morning a good morning on The Great Unsaleable. It’s coming together nicely on this draft. By taking a secondary character and making her more primary, I’ve — unexpectedly — added a layer of logic to the events. This is gratifying & confusing in equal measure. (I’m trying not to question it. Go with it, deborahb, goooooo with it.)

This afternoon, doesn’t bear discussion.

This evening, a glass of red to ease out of the afternoon, two episodes of Burn Notice, time spent staring at The Great Unsaleable, moving pieces about like shifting blocks back and forth on the floor. Perhaps not a lot achieved, but something consolidated. Perhaps that’s just in my head? Afraid to work too much on it in case, in my frustrated/red-wined way, I screw it up.

Watching Burn Notice makes me think it’s time for me to do one of my infamous (ie. not-famous-at-all) livejournal polls. Which you’ll find here.

I’ll start you off. I wish I’d written Burn Notice. Damn, it’s fun!

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