Author: deborahb
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Mamon
Today’s art discovery, discovered while I was searching for ‘God and Mammon‘ (for the gothic essay on No Country for Old Men): Mamon, by Louise Bourgeouis. The sculpture, which resembles a spider, is over 30ft high, with a sac containing marble eggs. There’s a stainless steel one in front of the Tate, but if you…
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Is it me?
One of my favourite psych ‘disorders’ is narcissism. This may have something to do with my Psych degree, or it may have something to do with meeting so many narcissists. Or it might just be all about me. See, that’s the irony of narcissism: a little can be quite healthy, a lot turns you into…
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Stories: how they end, what comes next
Taking a breather from trying to come up with finish an essay on why I consider No Country for Old Men gothic, to close some browser windows. So, then. If this is the future of storytelling, I don’t think I mind it at all. Also, some reading for 2010. Could come in handy, particularly if…
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Now you can hear the Hush
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…
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Balancing day and er, not day
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…
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A deathknell!
Well, I didn’t have to go very far to find my welcome-back-to-the-blogosphere deathknell. Fictionbitch calls this the end for writers, but I wonder if it’s more about the end for readers. The end of a nice sit down in a bookstore, that is, heralded by Waterstones — a British bookchain, from the sounds of it.…
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I’ll pretend you didn’t say that
Man. I was gonna say something about the whole PW thing — particularly with reference to my suspicion it comes down not to ‘we r excluding women’ to ‘we r using a definition of ‘good’ that aligns with our definition of ‘masculine”, & so on. Or, as Jim Hines suggests, a result of a kind…
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WFC 09
Alas, over already. I kept opening the blog during the week only to shut it again from severe brain drain. Some highlights: * Firstly, this has been my favourite WFC so far. * Wednesday: the Caltrain from San Francisco to San Jose is a straightforward commute, though it’s not designed to accommodate suitcases. I choose…
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The Age likes us!
*Forgot* to mention, The Age review has been transcribed by ‘the publisher’ over on her blog: The busiest short-story writers in Australia are working in speculative fiction, a mixture of dark fantasy, science and other unsettling stuff. They are also some of the best, although largely ignored by the major local publishers. Biancotti has won…
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Culturally worthwhile day
Body didn’t know, last night, if it was sleepy or awake. So alternated between the two states at random, testing them out. Asleep at 11pm, awake at 1am, 2am, 3am, 4… asleep at 9am, 10am… You see the pattern. Spent the night going to the window, burningly alert, staring out at the city. ‘Can’t wait…