by Jason Fischer | Aug 30, 2011 | Pimping, Uncategorized
Seth J Rowanwood, my rather awesome illustrator from Writers of the Future (who took out the Golden Award in the sister contest, for his illustration of “The House of Nameless”) was lucky enough to have one of his book covers packed onto the last ever space shuttle launch and sent up to the International Space Station (just the cover, book itself was over the strict payload limit). That’s right – the squeezings of his brain got flown into space. I don’t care where you’re from, that’s damn cool 🙂
Few people get to cross that one off the ole bucket list. Well done Seth!
More info here:
http://www.sethjrowanwood.com/archives/767
by Jason Fischer | Aug 22, 2011 | Announcement, Publication, Writing
Sometimes, the best anecdotes involve those things that didn’t quite work out. In writing circles, we’ve all got that project that crashed and burned, the one that got away, the thing that for whatever reason lost its mojo, usually after a lot of effort, time, and heartache.
One of my favourite failure anecdotes was to talk about Tusk. This was a novel I wrote in 2004, the product of the Colin Thiele Literature Scholarship that I received from the SA Youth Arts Board. I was fortunate enough to be mentored by local fantasy author Tony Shillitoe, and over the course of 18 months or so I wrote this novel to the best of my abilities.
The tagline for Tusk is this: telepathic elephants enslave mankind. Planet of the Elephants, or as Tony called it “Gladiator in Grey”. So I spent a large chunk of time/money writing this book, sent it to one place, got a rejection, buried it in a drawer and it physically pained me to look at this MS forever afterwards. Again, we’re talking the journeyman stage of my career, where the sting of rejection is a brutal thing.
This was 2005 me. 2011 me is much older, much wiser, and much more ruthless. Especially when it comes to editing. So, after many years of fermenting, Tusk has once more seen the light of day, and has been polished to within an inch of its life. Even better than that, it’s already found a really awesome home.
Which brings me to the next part of this announcement. Black Glass Press have teamed up with the folks at Black House Comics to come up with a new regular anthology comic, called Terra Magazine. There are some brilliant (nay, award-winning) folks from comic circles involved with this project, and there’s a bit of everything in this book. It’s a bit like 2000AD, in that there are ongoing serial stories, you will soon find it on the shelves in your local newsagent, and there’s never a dull moment.
This book has got samurai, detectives, freaks in space, sorcery, yakuza, and cyborg lunatics. Terra Magazine is also the new home for Tusk, which will now be released as a serial story, illustrated prose much like Gaiman’s original stardust. It’s the only non-comic instalment, and will appear in each issue.
There’s some more info about Terra Magazine here:
http://www.terramagazine.com.au/
and a press release here:
http://www.blackglasspress.com/component/content/article/58-terra-magazine.html
by Jason Fischer | Aug 9, 2011 | Writing
So since July 4th I’ve been a full-time writer, and shall be until the end of the year. Putting my money where my mouth is, I’ve cashed in all my long service leave, and taken the rest of the year off from my job to work on a number of projects. Chief amongst these is the novel “Papa Lucy and the Boneman”, which has landed me a Project Grant from the good folks at Arts SA. So, I’m basically a scruffy house-bound bum until 2012, supported by you, the tax-payer 🙂
In many ways I’ve been well-behaved, and have treated this chance at doing my dream job as, well, a job. I’ve steered clear of blogs and blogging (though admittedly I continue to dabble in the short sugar-hit aspects of social networking). I’m working through a list of goals, in order of time sensitivity, and putting down solid word-counts on a regular basis (average word-count is 1500-3000 words/day). So far, so good!
The List is as follows:
After the World: Army Corpse (1st draft now completed)
Embargoed Project
Papa Lucy and the Boneman (novel)
Embargoed Project
Both of the embargoed projects are super-cool, and rest assured I’ll be dishing out some more details when I can. Here’s some hints for the wise, *cough* elephants *cough* computer game *cough hack wheeze* 🙂 So this writing full-time thing is going very well, and if I keep this momentum, I’ll have no trouble meeting these goals, with oodles of time to polish everything up, and work on a few other bits and pieces that need doing, such as the story fragments kicking around on the backburner, the composition of new pieces for my upcoming collection (Everything is a Graveyard, from Ticonderoga Publications), and whatever else needs doing.
The first challenge with writing full-time was finding the rhythm of things, the sweet spot where I park my arse and unpack a bunch of words from my head. Clocking in a 8am with a cuppa and a smile just doesn’t seem to work for me, and I’ve had to try a few different methods before finding the one that works. The best method, the one that often gets that awesome absentee writer thing (where you vague out and come back hours later with something that you’re only partially responsible for) works for me as follows:
Mornings are for chores, correspondence, pottering, research, wool-gathering. An early lunch is held at the computer, going over the previous day’s work. Then the rest of the day is given to writing like buggery, until the family are all home, and then there’s tea and family time, and then another solid stretch of writing in the evening, through to 10-12 o’clock. And just like that, I’m pulling in 3000 word days, and it doesn’t even feel like I’m working. Am truly grateful for the opportunity to work like this, fitting writing in with family and full-time work was a bit of a bugger and this sojourn makes me very happy indeed 🙂
Some days the rhythm just doesn’t work, or other things come up. The wheels sometimes fall off for a day or two, but everything is mostly ticking along and I’m hopefully justifying the faith that has been put into my mad enterprise.
Will also try and update this blog/website more often while I’m on the public dollar. Speaking of which, when next I swing by I hope to talk about arts patronage, and some of my experiences in the last few years. I figure if I’m going to have an Official Website, I should use it to do Highminded Things.
Cheerio!
Fisch.
