January, 2011:

If a rebellious commoner in revolutionary France wore happy pants, would he be a Comic Sans Culottes?

Oh yes, I’ll admit it.  I’m a dirty double-spacer, and everytime I hit a full stop, it’s automatically followed with a rapid tap-tap! of that big key on the bottom.  I’ve been typing like this since forever, the practise instilled into me during typing class at high school (yes, I did this, and yes, I was the only boy).  By all accounts this was a standard business practice, even during the early-mid 90s, and some folks in the class questioned this.  Not only was it part of the curriculum, it was in all the style guides and text books, and religiously adhered to.  So, when we all learned to type without looking at the keys, we also had the double-tap drummed into us, much like the protagonist in Zombieland.  And this was in the era where PCs were already widely in use, and the nascent internet was just kicking off, so I’m not a crusty old typewriter fetishist (okay, I’m that too, but that’s a revelation for another day).  I honestly didn’t even hear about the “OMG how dare they double-space” brigade until a few months back.

So yeah, nowadays some publishers are requesting that the extra space go the way of the dodo, and it’s even occasionally in the submission guidelines.  I’m pretty sure WordPress takes the space out, to protect me from myself, and I’m starting to run a Find+Replace before submitting my fiction to markets, replacing all instances of two spaces with one space.  It’s just another thing to think about, but I’ve resigned myself to the fact that it’s a bugbear for many folks, and I just have to take a concrete pill and harden up.

But…I don’t see what the big deal is.  Some folks see that extra space and assume that I also kick puppies and push old people down the stairs.  The double-space is completely invisible to me, and I personally never notice these supposedly horrific gaping chasms of white space in the average manuscript (which is *already* double-spaced vertically, with tonnes of room for comments and editorial jottings).

I’ll do it, but I think it’s bloody pedantic and I don’t mind saying so.

Some time ago, I came to the realisation that, if I wanted to be a professional writer, I was going to have to sacrifice my one great love, the humble video game. Given that I favour time-sucking strategy games and RPGs, this was a wise decision. However, all work and no play makes me a grumpy sod, so once a year I down tools and scratch that itch for a month or so. Last year it was Fallout 3 and all of the Thief games, this time around I’ve dusted off the PS2 and rented me some pixellated goodness. Given that the end of 2010 was frantic writing-wise, and that a huuuge stretch of writing is about to kick off, this is some well-earnt me time and I’ve loved every button-mashing minute.

Silent Hill: Origins

I’ve quite liked this series; its weird, moody atmospherics, the resource scrabble reminiscent of the Resident Evil games, and just a shade of old school survival horror, looking back to the original Alone in the Dark.  Good times.  This is a prequel of sorts to the Silent Hill series, but effectively it’s more of the same stuff – you trudge through a haunted hospital, a haunted loony-bin, a haunted theatre and then a haunted hotel.  Oh, and there’s another mirror world underneath all this stuff that is even creepier.  You basically need to hit up the walk-through if you want to finish this game in under six months, lots of puzzles and to-and-froing.  When I got to the haunted hotel, and saw how much stuff I had to do, I will admit that I ejected the disc in disgust.  That’s cool though, cause next up was:

Star Wars: Battlefront

Yay!  I’m in an X-wing, I’m in an AT-ST, now I’m a wookie!  Pew pew pew!  Great fun, drop it like it’s Hoth.

Civilisation IV

My long beloved time-sucking computer mistress.  This game has carved away perhaps a year of my life in total?  Worth every second.  Settlers make cities, cities make units, units make with the turn-based conquest.  I have all of the expansions for this, and must say I was never too enamoured of Beyond the Sword – it was just too busy, and with the addition of Espionage and Corporations, there was just too much going on for me to enjoy this game.  Micro-managers might dig that level of control, but I just want to jam a trireme full of vikings and just wreck someone’s shit.  So I’ve been cranking out Civ IV: Warlords, and a cool fantasy mod (Fall From Heaven) for the original Civ IV itself.

So I’ve officially had my gaming fix, and now I’m onto the outstanding submissions, doing some long-overdue edits, and I have a particular story up on the blocks for a complete rebuild.  Once that’s done, I’m going to stomp 2011 in the face, and exciting times await!

Me: “So, there’s this new 13th zodiac sign, and turns out it’s actually mine”

Workmate: “Really, what’s the name of it?”

Me: “It’s Fisch’s.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophiuchus

(true, it is mine!)

So yeah, someone really pissed me off today.  I wanted to call them out on their shabby behaviour, but thought better of it.  Life being too short, such behaviour being unprofessional etc. Karma just dictates that you should try and let certain things go, learn to avoid the same situation in future, and eventually time will erase or mitigate any damage or insult done. If nothing else, you can add to your repertoir of wry cautionary tales.

When these moments come along, all you can really do is crank up the Portsmouth Sinfonia, and let your angst float away on a tide of godawful orchestral manglings

See?  All better now!

Queensland Floods

It’s a truly horrifying time for Queensland, and the flood is a bona-fide disaster of arse-kicking proportions.  Like everyone else I’ve been devouring the news sites, clicking on maps of the affected areas, and worrying about friends and family near the flooded areas.  It’s really sad to see such a beautiful city cop the brunt of this riparian smack-down.

Tehani Wessely of Fablecroft has put out a fundraiser to help those affected by the floods, an e-book edition of her new anthology After the Rain.  More info here: http://editormum.livejournal.com/266883.html

The Ideas File Is A Bleedingly Obvious Idea

As a writer, if you keep getting distracted by cool new ideas that take over from whatever project you’re currently working on, start an Ideas File.  Dump all the salient info into this file, and forget about it.  If it’s still capturing your imagination when you’re ready to start your next project (even if it’s 6 months later), it’s probably worth writing.  If it doesn’t rock your socks, it was not meant to be.  But at least you got your other stuff done and didn’t get derailed.  I should have started one of these things 2-3 years ago, instead of bounding from idea to idea like a hyperactive kitten.

Elliptical Rider:

There is now a great big stonking piece of exercise equipment in our living room.  Toddler Fisch “assisted” in its construction, and by all accounts it is a very cool new thing with moving pedals and big handle thingies.  Goodbye, spare tyre

Pimping my peeps:

Fellow WOTF winner and allround good guy Steve Savile has put the word out that his novel Silver is now $2.99 in e-book form, and I’m happy to do my part to endorse and pimp such a groovy book.  I devoured this book in a couple of days, and can’t recommend it highly enough.  Good fun, a great thriller that had me from start to finish, and he out-Browns Dan Brown.  I don’t normally read this genre but if I enjoyed it, anyone can.  It can be found at the following links:

http://www.amazon.com/Silver-An-OgmiosTeam-Adventure-ebook/dp/B00332FFHU/ref=tag_dpp_lp_edpp_img_in

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/19399

Goodreads

Is very very good.  Since signing up to this website (and rediscovering public transport) I have absolutely smashed my way through a stack of books.  There’s just something about being accountable with your reading, and being able to easily score/review a work.  I used to throw the occasional “I love this book” on the old LJ blog, but this is arguably a much better way of managing one’s reading.