Heroes

Tonight I'm off to see one of my writing heroes....the man who created this:



and this:



which are two of my all time favourite TV shows, as well as many other things of geeky goodness.

Part of the reason you connect with any writer is the voice, and I do adore Joss Whedon's writing voice but I also love his worlds and characters. He writes strong women and strong men. He writes humor and pain, darkness and light. His characters are real even when they're facing the unreal. I'd probably prefer it if he gave some of his couples a real HEA once in a while (but that's partly a problem of writing for TV where such a thing is hard to pull off) but he does do romance and yearning pretty damn well, so we'll let that one slide.

And tonight, I get to go and listen to him talk about how he does it! So woot! And possibly squeee!

Pretties

My books aren't steampunk...they're more gaslight fantasy (Steampunk is Science Fiction)...steam tech but with magic and critters not so much steampunky gadgets. Having said that, I do love the Steampunk Aesthetic and a conversation on Twitter today with BookThingo, kicked off some searching for a steampunk iPhone cover amongst other things, so I thought I'd share some pretties with the world.

First up, possibly the closest thing to mass market steampunk iPhone cases...gorgeousness from Exovault



I confess to being a little bit sceptical about how much shock these absorb if you drop them compared to a leather case but they are beeyootiful!

Then, possibly even cooler...this bit of wonder from Japan (Factron)



Now, over to the category of people are just very very clever....

Handmade steampunk iphone cases!



via Laura

Or



made by Lilibat on deviantart

Or how about a steampunk iPhone dock?



Freeland Studios

Then we got onto the subject of e-readers...how cool would a steampunk e-reader be? (Though Mel picks an e-reader is going to be a whole 'nother post!).

I haven't yet found an actual punked e-reader but I have found a cover....

Outside



Inside



Wishwords on LJ Steamfashion (hattip to @Misssteamstess on Twitter

And just because, this is awesome and one day when I own a mansion with a library the size of Neil Gaiman's, I shall work at a desk like this...



via Steampunk Workshop

Though someone would need to invent me an ergonomic steampunk keyboard! lol

So there you go, some pretties from the steampunk world. Don't get me started on the jewellery (don't type steampunk into Etsy! Danger Will Robinson!)

Signed

Sometime in late July 2001 I attended a talk at the Victorian Writers Centre given by Anne Gracie. I think she was pretty much the first real live author I'd met at that point. Fired up by what she had to say (and somewhat struck by the somehow-had-escaped-me-until-then fact that authors are just people and maybe I could really be one), I finished my first novel manuscript in September 2001.

Today, about nine years later from that fateful talk, I did this...



First contract signed and about to be delivered back to Penguin! Woot! It makes it all feel that much more real and another step towards seeing my book as a real live book!

If you want a boost

Go watch this. (sorry, no embedding for some reason). Go Susan.

And now I have realised I only own Les Mis on vinyl and still love some of the music. Off to iTunes I go.

A brand new adventure

I've said it before and I'll say it again. My friend Linda is one tough cookie and now a brand new mama for the second time.

Welcome to the world little Jethro who zoomed into the world after a mere two hours of labour (much appreciated by Dad and me helping...not sure how much Linda enjoyed it).

It's going to be fun watching you on your big life adventure.

The sky is smiling

No, really, it is! There's a very cool alignment of the crescent moon/jupiter and venus over Australia tonight. And I managed to take one non blurry shot thanks to the new camera and my baby tripod. The stars looked bigger and brighter than this in real life (click to make the photo bigger and you'll get a better effect):



And here are some other squiggly attempts just because they make cute faces! May the sky smile on us all and hopefully it's a good omen!

Oh my

On a completely off topic aside, if Stephen Moffat keeps writing Doctor Who episodes as romantic and heartbreaking as he has been then he might just have to be added to my writing god pantheon. Not only did you invent my beloved Captain Jack Harkness and write the brilliant Blink but now River Song.

Can't wait to see what he does running the whole show next season...hopefully more River.

PS David Tennant, I adore you. Seriously. No-one plays the heartbroken or enraged doctor quite like you.

PPS Oh my indeed. Just realised (well, wikipedia'd) Stephen is one of the brilliant minds behind Coupling. Unfair heapings of talent indeed. Can I have a Tardis to get to the rest of Doctor Who already please?

Tassie snapshots

Something's wrong with the world when you get home from Hobart and it's colder in Melbourne! Tassie managed to bust out four days of pretty darn good weather for late winter. Sunshine, a semblance of warmth and no arctic breezes. Which meant we had some lovely days of sightseeing and puttering around under the guidance of our GPS (promptly christened Madge due to her slightly authoritarian tone). Madge had some weird issue with the speed limit on the Tasman Bridge (insisting I should be going 4kph or something) but otherwise delivered us safely to our desired destinations even if she sounded cranky when we detoured from her desired route. So thumbs up to Garmin GPS units.

Anyway, some pics of the adventures (which included thwarted attempts to sample scallop pies, a gin rummy extravaganza and tasmanian pepperberry liqueur amongst other highlights).

Richmond:





Pirate Bay



Tassie devils with excited red ears (food incoming)



Port Arthur





And this which caught my eye at Narynna, a great heritage house in Hobart.



Funny that this year I've had two of my first non-writing related trips in ages and they were both to Tassie. But this time I didn't have a wedding with all the associated wedding stuff to go to and could just really be a tourist for awhile. Nice. Must do more often. The girls are happy and hopefully ready to work next week.

Back though with little brain

I am home again. Conference was fab and I shall report more later but most importantly big WOOHOO's to my ever more brilliant crit buddies:

Carolyn who took out the Emerald Single Title (and also won the STALI earlier this year) and Chris who took possession of the Clendon and followed it up with a highly commended in the VP.

More once my brain is back online.

Woot!

Big huge mega congratulations to my brilliant and talent crit buddy Chris who won the Romance Writers of New Zealand Clendon Award last night!

Mucho champagne and choccies for her!!

A good weekend in words and pictures...

It started like this....aka Thursday night



Then Jenny Crusie gave a brilliant workshop which will hopefully help me whip Wolf 2 into some semblance of shape.

Then we progressed to this....aka Friday night (that's me in black, Trish Morey in red)



Photo courtesy of the fabulous Fiona Lowe

Then there were wonderful keynotes and workshops on Saturday.

Then this (yay! and congrats to Rachel Robinson who won the category category of the same award)...aka Saturday night





Photo courtesy of the fabulous Keziah Hill

And then there was a brilliant workshop by Anne Stuart on writing dark contemporaries (Anne has been added to my official pantheon of writing goddesses).

Then there was the Cherry lunch on Sunday where Anne and Jenny were unanimously voted honourary Aussies and we tried to convince them they should move here and come to conference every year...



(from left to right: Erica, me, Jenny, Amy Andrews, Anne, Robyn and Roben)

And then, I decided to spend part of my winnings on a new toy...pwetty! (and yes, I need one, it means my big iPod will no longer risk life and limb when I exercise : )...which I need to do).



And now I'm home...luckily I'm doing an online course to stave off the post conference blues.

Checking in

No earth shattering news so far this week. Lulus was fun, the baby got christened accompanied by her two blond sisters looking angelic in white frocks and her also blond big brother looking less pleased at the prospect of three sisters but still pretty cute.

One good thing is that I've discovered that power pc memory for macs is now way cheap (I assume due to the release of the new intel based macs) so mac mini is going in for a RAM upgrade Saturday morning. It generally chugs along quite happily but hopefully 1GB will mean the spinning rainbow ball will become a very rare occurrence instead of just a seldom one.

It will also mean I can play even more happily with Curio which is a fabulous brainstorming tool which produces fabulous collages if you're into that sort of thing for your writing and I'm sure could produce many other fabulous things as well. I discovered Curio via Heidi gushing on the Cherry Forums so if you want to know more about it go here. And Jenny Crusie has had a few posts on Argh Ink as well. Collage heaven. I mean I've barely started playing with it and I managed a good brain dump of stuff about Wolf 2 and my revision ideas for the GH short contemporary book both of which have the girls muttering away. I will be digging deeper this weekend between writing and eating chocolate and hot cross buns and visiting the folks. Sadly it's only for mac users but hey, everyone should be a mac user.

PS For the deformed bunny, I think you might like Curio!

Golden days

Apparently it’s the year of the fire pig in chinese astrology. The Golden Pig, as it’s also known. Now my chinese sign is the pig and therefore a fire pig which is generally a very good thing is an extra good thing. And so far that’s been the case.

Today is an extra golden day because I found out I’ve finalled twice!! in RWA’s Golden Heart Competition. Wolfy in the paranormal category and one of my category manuscripts for short contemporary. I’m kind of stunned but very thrilled. I’d hoped the wolf had a chance given it’s done well in comps so far but wasn’t expecting the short to final at all. Now Dallas will be extra exciting.

The only sad part in the tale is I missed the actual call (which was early morning here in Oz) because I was showering (and giving myself the ‘well you probably would have heard by now so not finalling is okay’ pep talk in the process). Luckily Karen Fox emailed me as well as left me a message on the machine so I have proof I’m not dreaming. And even better luck that I decided to check my email one last time before leaving for work because I hadn’t noticed the answering machine blinking at ALL. I might just wear out my answering machine playing back the message.

Big congrats also to Bronwyn Clarke, fellow Aussie, who finalled in the GH Romantic Suspense and our aussie RITA nominees, Barbara Hannay, Marion Lennox and Sara McKenzie.

In fact a big fat CONGRATS and WOOHOO to anyone who’s finalled in either comp because it’s a great achievement.

Now I’m off to have some champagne and just possibly play my message again : )

Woohoo!!

I alluded to some very good stuff in my last post.

So here's a bit of an update. I have an AGENT! A fantastic, fabulous agent.

In fact, pretty much my dream agent!!!

I've been walking around for a week now, pinching myself and re-reading the emails from her to know it's not a dream but given we've just had our second phone conversation (at the moment our email seems to be playing a not so fun little game called 'every now and then we'll just mysteriously disappear into the ether' - stern words will be had with my ISP shortly) and she didn't seem to have forgotten who I am : 0, it is apparently all true.

For now, I'll call her Agent X, there's still the legal stuff to be done, but I'm pretty excited (and have now crowned myself queen of the understatement). She's smart, she's good, she likes my stuff! And she'll be championing the wolf book into the wide world of publishing.

Let the games begin!