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Hi all, The “Creative Nation” group at the 2020 summit seemed dominated by film, with nothing said about the Australian book or fiction writing market. I suppose the ailing film industry needs all the help it can get, but perhaps if they made more genre films, like science fiction, it would be more successful. Big grossing films like the Mad Max Trilogy and Wolf Creek show how successful genre films made in Australia can be. The Matrix series and Dark City were also made here, but not with Australian money. The industry needs to get away from historical dramas, lame-arse comedies and its love affair with druggies. I am one of the five percent of Australians who pay to see Australian films. The Proposition (western), Mad Max (science fiction), Lantana (thriller/drama), He Died with a Falafel in his Hand (comedy), Bliss (fantasy) and The Cars That Ate Paris (horror) are favourites. The recent 2:37 , which did not get a cinema release in Wang, is not a bad film either. A...

Hi all, Things have just gotten in the way of writing this week: the dentist, x-rays, job interviews, clothes buying (which I loath just about as much as going to the dentist). I've been trying a new way to promote my writing on the web which has been taking up a fair bit of my time. Other people probably have tried it, but I am not aware of their attempts, so I'll try to keep it a secret for a while. The process of setting it up is helping me to get to know the characters in the current novel I am writing. Now that I am back on critters.com, I have been doing a critique a week. I like to choose stories of around 5,000 words to critique, because I have found that if they are shorter I usually end up asking a lot of questions about the world the story is set in. I think most fantasy and science-fiction stories need to be at least 5,000 words so they have room to create their universe. One of the stories I critiqued was a fairytale updated to a future setting. I really think that...

Hi all, What else would a writer be doing on a Friday night than ensuring he had written his blog entry for the week. I read an article in the Age today about blogging. It reckons that the best blogs are updated every day. Who the hell has the time to do that? And who the hell has the time to read that? They would want to be short posts. Anyway the article by Jane Sullivan, whose column I often read, got me thinking. When I first heard of the concept of blogs, I thought that they would be a waste of a writers creative time. But I kept reading that millions and millions of people had not flogged the beast to death. Over a 100 million bloggers at last count. In case you were wondering, 36% of blogs are written in Japanese, just beating the number in English. So, I started reading them. I sought out the blogs of publishers and literary agents. In particular two blogs became weekly habits. The now defunct MS Snark and Nathan Bransford at http://nathanbransford.blogspot.com, both written by...

Hi all, I found this article in the Newscientist newsletter I receive. I cut and pasted it because I am pretty sure you have to signup to their site before they will let you read it. Male monkeys prefer boys’ toys * 17:28 04 April 2008 * NewScientist.com news service * Ewen Callaway It’s thought of as a sexual stereotype: boys tend to play with toy cars and diggers, while girls like dolls. But male monkeys, suggests research, are no different (see a related video report). This could mean that males, whether human or monkey, have a biological predisposition to certain toys, says Kim Wallen, a psychologist at Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta, Georgia. Wallen’s team looked at 11 male and 23 female rhesus monkeys. In general the males preferred to play with wheeled toys, such as dumper trucks, over plush dolls, while female monkeys played with both kinds of toys. This conclusion may upset those psychologists who insist that sex differences – for example the tende...

Help me. I’m going nuts trying to keep up with everything that’s going on in the world. I need at least a dozen more of me or a fascist brain organiser that ruthlessly splits potential input into useful or not. But I’m so scared I will miss the one vital bit of info that will result in a Hugo Award winning novel or change my life. Ahhhhh. I have already decided I don’t give a stuff about Timor and Tibet, I’ve cut them out of my knowledge pool, while I do care about Iraq and Afghanistan. And I thought earth hour was a waste of reading time, while reading everything else about climate change. I read nearly everything that hints at predicting our future. Currently I am reading blogs of numerous people as I attempt to network my way into cyberspace - could every blogger please write less, and while you’re at it bold anything that might be important. Got to go now and find a self help book or webpage on how to solve my information gathering addiction.

Hi all, Well let’s get the important stuff out of the way first. The catscan of my father’s brain revealed some broken small blood vessels which indicate he has suffered a series of small strokes, hence his current lousy memory and difficultly in putting words together when speaking. He called a bag a book the other day, and couldn’t remember the names of his brothers and sisters and his birthplace when asked by a memory nurse who visited. He also couldn’t remember how to turn on the gas heater, something he has done thousands of times before. For those out there who smoke, let this be a warning: my father never drank and was very good cricketer and footballer when young and still very fit into his fifties, playing golf and walking and riding a hike for hours, but he smoked a pack a day until he gave up in his mid-forties. His heart started acting up in his late fifties and he had to have a heart bypass operation and a pacemaker installed. He should have taken more care when out in the...