It’s getting pretty Christmassy around here.  Raeli and I had a mammoth shortbread baking session yesterday, producing not only shortbread daleks but also cats, bunnies, high heeled shoes and other ephemera.  Sadly the sheep, cows and rockets didn’t work out as I had hoped as it turns out those fancy cookie cutters I bought are crappy, and you can’t get the dough out of them without breaking it.

I have a jar of dried fruit marinating in rather a lot of brandy, ready to be turned into a cake this week.  Should I worry that most recipes say to soak the fruit in rum or brandy overnight?  My jar has been going since November!

My other baking plans for the season are icecream centric – I want to make a frozen pudding bombe and some moulded icecream “mince tarts.”  Ironically with all my icecreamy plans, the weather this week has been cooler than we’re used to in December.  Good baking weather, not so good for melting icecream.  Still, not complaining over here!

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My new phone has a camera in it! I know, most people are way ahead of me on this technology, but I’m excited by it, especially as the only camera we own that I’ve ever known how to use has broken recently. So hooray, lots of pictures!

Kathryn Lomer at Fuller’s Bookshop last Sunday, launching Three Things About Daisy Blue, the final book in the A&U Girlfriend series by Kate Gordon. You all know how much I have loved this series – while it’s sad to see it end I was delighted to be able to attend the launch of the last one, which happens to have been written by a friend of mine!

Here’s Kate herself, describing what sounds like a great fun teen book set in Bali. She read a scene about a girl eating a durian and throwing up on a boy’s shoes which had us all squirming! I look forward to reading this one.

Jem’s new trick, feeding the Glammer! She loves sitting at the big girl table, but loves feeding her food to grown ups even more.

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Heh I need to quickly sum up the rest of the con before I forget it all! I do rather feel like I’m repeating myself, as I have done summy up podcasts with Galactic Suburbia covering some of the same material. But here we go:

Sunday was Father’s Day! No sleep in or cooked breakfast for my sweetie, though. He did receive a school-made card from Daughter #1 and a gift card for the apps store from me (very appropriate as the iPad had become our complete lifeline over the trip, as entertainment, internet connectivity and a social networking tool. I want my owwwwwn.

My one panel for the day was one I had been super excited about – The Case for the Female Doctor. Not only did I get to sit next to Paul Cornell, but the really cool thing was that all of the panellists except the moderator were completely in love with the idea of a female Doctor, and thus the discussion moved quickly belong ‘should we’ to ‘how should we’. Discussion points ranged through the age of the Doctor, whether a female Doctor would *have* to be older to convey confidence and dignity, or conversely *have* to be younger to count as ‘now’ and ‘sexy’ from the production POV. We also discussed the readiness of fans and the media to accept a female Doctor, and the different ways in which gender might affect the show. I was particularly delighted that almost all of the arguments about things that might change were met with a heartfelt ‘yes, wouldn’t that be great’! Mostly by me, admittedly

So yes, it was a great panel and completely buzzy to be part of it. I’ve been meaning to send Grant Watson a heartfelt THANK YOU by email for putting me on it, but what the hell, better to do it on public. Being on a Doctor Who panel at a convention is one of those things I have always wanted to do in my life, and this far exceeded any expectations. Grant did some fantastic work with devising programme items, many of which had great female-centric or feminist themes, and I think it’s worth a particular shout out because in my experience, often the media items are the ones most likely to end up with all male panels, or unimaginative takes on the material. Not so this year!

From a ‘mama writer at the con’ point of view, it’s worth noting that I had Raeli sitting up front with me, right in front of the table. Paul Cornell managed to frighten her by suggesting that she touch the inflatable daleks who visited us, to prove they weren’t real, but she had come to terms with them by the end of it and announced that they really were just like the bananas. Mostly I kept her busy with sweets from the table while she worked in her activity book (anonymous sketch artist who presented the panellists each with a caricature from the panel – thank you for including Raeli in this! it’s adorable!). At one point she whispered that she wanted to ask a question and I am ashamed to say I wouldn’t let her – afterwards I checked what she would have said and her question was “why are you talking about a female doctor?” which to be fair wouldn’t have added much to the conversation.

I told her why we were discussing it and asked her if she thought the Doctor could be a woman and her response was “hee hee, that’s silly.” Good thing I didn’t let her contribute!!!

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My baby is one year old today. It’s been a mad, jam-packed year of broken nights and novel deadlines, of manuscript papers and dirty nappies and really, really hard work squeezed into impossibly tiny spaces.

It’s also been a year of great joy, of watching this new child grow into herself, of watching Raeli grow into being a big sister.

Jem, otherwise known as Jemimacakes, Babycakes, Jem-Jem, Mima, My Mima, Jemmels, La La and Bunny Girl, is one hell of a person. She is full of energy, a crawler and an intriguer where Raeli was a much gentler soul. Jem never met a power cable she didn’t want to chew, and my that gets old pretty fast. Her favourite trick is yanking out the ear buds of my iPod. Her colour is orange, which is something I never expected. (I kind of hope she does go through a pink stage when she’s 3 otherwise there’s a crate of handmedown clothes waiting for her that will make her very unhappy)

She is crawling, pulling herself up on furniture, and for a few floaty and exciting moments yesterday, was standing on her own.

She’s a Gooner girl through and through, and while she didn’t get much choice in being an Arsenal fan, she most certainly considers her fluffy soccer ball to be one of her favourite toys. She recently discovered the deep love of hitting an empty biscuit tin with a pair of chopsticks, and took to drumming with alarming vigour.

She can say Mama and Dadoo and Ra-ra or Rae. She can clap, just, and wave, almost.

When watching Xena with me, her hands move as if she’s trying to figure out the sword moves. That could be a problem later.

It’s important, as deadlines crunch together and I fight for every spare moment to work in, that I stop and relish the time I get to spend with this tiny precious person, who won’t be a baby much longer.

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I linked yesterday to Tehani Wessely’s reading of my story “Relentless Adaptations” from the upcoming Twelfth Planet Press anthology Sprawl. Only commented on it in passing, because I hadn’t actually listened to it yet! But I did today, on my way to and from a baby playgroup (very appropriate) and it was so lovely to hear it!

This is a story I am especially proud of because it’s the first piece of new writing I produced after Jem was born, and like my story “The Scent of Milk” was for Raeli, it’s a story that sums up the very specific feelings of having a new baby in your life. In both cases I deliberately tried to infuse the story with as much of the crazy that was whirling in my head at the time, in order to capture the moment.

With “Scent of Milk” I was overwhelmed by the closeness with my new baby, and how quickly she seemed to change day to day. I was late in my pregnancy when the “baby Montana” kidnapping hit the news, and while the story resolved happily, I found myself obsessing about what it must be like to miss out on a few days, let alone weeks, of your baby at that age. That turned of course into a story about changelings, and a mother’s hunt to get her baby back no matter what.

This time around, my thoughts were mostly about just coping with it all: with sleep deprivation, the great sibling balancing act, and trying to get back to work. There’s also that deep suspicion that everyone else is somehow doing better at the whole parenting gig than you are… and mixed in with that was books, writing, reading, and the business. I wanted to write a near future science fiction story that predicted what bookshops might look like in five years time, once the Espresso Book Machine and print-on-demand became more readily available, while at the same time “predicting” a rather alarming result from the current literary trend of mashing up classic books with supernatural movie tropes.

It was so lovely to hear the story read today and realise that actually, it’s exactly what I wanted to do with that story, and to top it off it’s read by Tehani, who is not only a good friend, but a suburban mum who, like me, had a new baby in the last year and understands a lot of what the story is trying to do.

Books and babies, babies and books. Luckily we were born with two arms, so we can juggle both.

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“Relentless Adaptations” can be heard here, and will be published in Sprawl, an anthology of suburban fantasy, edited by Alisa Krasnostein, due out in time for Aussiecon in September 2010.

I’ve spent the last few days wrapped up in the emotions of my characters, digging away at them, making them better, and occasionally turning my back only to find them making out with each other. (seriously, it’s like having a houseful of teenagers, you can’t take your eyes off them for a moment and the hormones take over!)

My honey has gone to bed early. I can’t blame him. Just imagine what it must be like to be partnered with a writer, someone who spends so much time not only glued to a laptop (possibly I would do this even if I weren’t a writer) but also staring into space, having imaginary conversations with people who aren’t there, and occasionally acting out fight scenes in the living room (possibly he doesn’t know I do this).

I think that from the outside, possibly it looks a bit like this:

One birthday party down, one to go. I managed some work this afternoon, cranking up some Lucksmiths and eventually graduating to my actual edit playlist as I transitioned from footling with my first chapter to flat out writing an all new chapter 2.

I’m at that stage with the structural edit when the comments from the editor finally sink into the backbrain and instead of ‘yeahhh spose she has a point’ I’m completely at ‘how could I have POSSIBLY thought this was good enough, yeeHAH let’s do some digging at this ditch’ only possibly with a less bad Yankee accent.

Now we’re chilled out, watching yesterday’s Masterchef and waiting for Raeli to get into her pyjamas for bedtime stories. I am going to have to try and work in the evenings now instead of just chatting, watching tv and blogging – but that means convincing a different part of my brain to wake up after 9pm! Brains can be trained. If you have enough carrots (cough, Magnums) and sticks (deadline deadline deadline).

Since I want to kick the part of my brain that can write pretty sentences, I’m feeding it with the best books I can find. No Gossip Girl for me this week – well, no more Gossip Girl. Instead, I’m dipping into Dorothy Parker and immersing myself in Ellen Kushner’s The Privilege of the Sword, one of those books I’ve been meaning to read for a really long time. It’s gorgeous. And yes, it makes me want to lift my game. Damn it. Don’t you hate that?

EDIT: Forgot this – I was chided by Tehani on Twitter for not telling the world that the Guild comic #2 is out as an iApp. I didn’t know until she told me! But now I do and I read it and it is awesome. I am loving the Cyd backstory, and the how-she-met-the-gang encounters, plus actually seeing the visuals of how the game works, the aspect of the Guild that is (understandably) worked around/invisible in the actual episodes. I am sooooo hanging out for the new season to find out what happens between Cyd and you-know-who-and-if-you-don’t-what-are-you-waiting-for-watch-it-already-YES-I-SAID-SHOULD.

And that is all.

Kelly Link has been blogging all around the internet, popping up in all kinds of places and discussing a variety of topics, ostensibly to promote the paperback release of Pretty Monsters (which has made it all the way to Kingston, Tasmania – I spotted it in a bookshop today!). Over at i09 she talks about using your obsessions as fuel for short story writing, a technique I used to be quite evangelical back in my years of teaching creative writing. I called it ‘the list of awesome’ and suggested students construct a list of their most obscure and passionate interests in order to write stories that were uniquely theirs.

At some point this year I’m going to be writing a bunch of stories about or inspired by: the Shelley-Byron circle, the deified Livia and Drusilla, Brideshead Revisited, Robotech, iPod playlists and Julius Caesar. I’m really looking forward to them, as my treat for finishing Book 3. Assuming that thing happens.

Ahhh, short stories, how I miss you.

Jemima is growing and developing and doing all those amazing things that make my heart hurt, because every new stage is the end of an old stage, which is never coming back. In the last couple of weeks she has developed an amazing sense of balance (she still needs to hold on to furniture to stay upright but only just), has developed babble into something very close to a recognisable code (aka language) and refuses to be spoon fed because she wants to do it all herself, thank you very much.

We’ve leaped from mushed vegetables to whole bananas, noodles and toast, seemingly overnight. It’s a shock to the system. Just as I was congratulating myself on no longer having to spend quite so much time spooning food patiently into my baby, I discovered that actually she’s not happy puddling around on the floor with toys any more, she wants stimulation and interaction. During my writing time.

Which means I basically have to rethink everything I’ve been assuming about my own working habits.

The weekend is another festival of birthdays – two parties for Raeli to attend, at least on different days, but both at 10am. I had to break it to my honey tonight that there would be no weekend sleep ins, for any of us. He gets to stay home on baby duty while I venture into the wide world of pinatas, cake and musical chairs. Why do children have better social lives than us? I am exerting my vengeance by making her sit sweat-shop-style to produce handmade birthday cards.

My first editing week of three is half done already. The clock is ticking. Or maybe that’s just the caffeine-induced heart palpitations.

Lovely evening tonight, hosting for Donna and her work friend Alex, who were both a big hit with our girls. And not just because they got roped into reading bedtime stories…

My honey made his famous fish pie (local salmon and scallops in vintage cheese sauce) and I made salad and a lemon sour cream cake (great simple recipe, thank you internet! I left out the lemon rind though cos my honey has a thing about it) which we served with Valhalla vanilla icecream. Yummmm. The Tasmanian experience, on a plate!

The edits are continuing. I’m almost at the point where I know what it is I have to do with them. At this stage I’m concentrating mostly on the first ten chapters, because they seem to be the part that needs most work. I haven’t got my momentum up yet – I tried my kick ass playlist and it just sounded like noise! I have to work up to it. Right now I am finding The Guild League nice and calming as background music while I do my intensive thinking and planning.

I’m trying to get back into my routine with Raeli at school – including exercise and housework in my day as well as work and baby time. So far I’ve been great at the housework – a bit too good, its mindless repetition is so tempting in comparison to the trickiness of editing. But hey, the house is in great shape!

Onward and upward.

Maureen Johnson has written a great manifesto about how she is not and never intended to become a brand – she elaborates on what’s wrong with that way of thinking (which is ultimately self-defeating, authors who get too obsessive about Branding Themselves tend to put potential readers off) and how the best way to promote yourself on the internet is to be genuinely having fun with the platforms you use. Not a new concept – this is something that Jeff VanderMeer among others has written about – but Maureen being Maureen, the message here is not only loud and clear but extremely entertaining to read.

Colleen Mondor at Chasing Ray follows up this post with the deeply ironic story of an author who had been told to brand herself “just like Maureen Johnson” and looks a bit more at the actual issue of promotions in a world where over-branding labels you as insincere.

Branding and marketing are things that authors tend to worry about a lot! How do you promote yourself without coming across as too promote-y?

Maureen’s example of an author so busy trying to sell herself and her message that she’s missed out on a chance to join a conversation is a good lesson to writers, I think – something to try to avoid in ourselves, like reciting “don’t be Anne Rice on Amazon” as a mantra when dealing with critical/inaccurate reviews. Or is that just me?

I think it’s tricky in particular because the internet has changed what many readers want to see from authors. The “professional, flawless demeanour” that many authors display on shiny websites (and perhaps used to display on TV chat shows) can appear hopelessly old-fashioned, and indeed there’s a new generation of authors whose web presence revolves entirely around a tell-all personal blog or a handful of other social media. And of course, many shades in between. I know that I am genuinely startled to discover that an author I am searching for information about doesn’t have a website or blog at all – and it still happens!

As an author myself, especially with a book to promote, I am often super self-conscious at how I am using the internet to promote myself – is it too much, am I being obnoxious, am I saying too much, am I not saying enough? Everyone does it differently. While I don’t go in for the ‘brand’ concept myself(anyone who reads my blog regularly knows that consistency is not my superpower) it’s more because I would be no good at it than because I disapprove of the concept. The word ‘brand’ gets thrown around a lot when I’m talking to Alisa about Twelfth Planet Press because she literally is creating a brand, she’s trying to establish a business which is distinct from herself as a person: it’s about connecting her publishing house in people’s minds with quality fiction, with well-made books, and anything else is just decoration on top of that. Branding makes sense in that context.

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