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Hi all, I have been working longer hours this week so I haven't done much writing, just the barest minimum every day. I am only 60 pages into the novel I am critiquing, I hope to read a bit more next week Surprising how my hint count on my blogs went up last week as soon as I mentioned my Master of Creative Writing. Speaking of which, I was rung up yesterday by a research company wanting me to comment on the ACT Ombudsman's handling of my complaint against the Uni of Canberra. I told the researcher that I would have loved to be privy to the conversations between the uni and the ombudsman, and I didn't think the ombudsman was qualified to comment on some of the issues. In a fair world the university would have had some form of independent compliants proceedure and I would not have to had to bother the ombudsman. This weekend I have the house to myself so I have decided to do a bit of a Homer Simpson so its time to slob off.

Hi all, I apologise for this post as it is probably going to wander all over the place, just like a rant usually does. For the past few years I have been trying to intergrate myself into the Australian speculative fiction writing scene. I have been doing this for a few reasons: most importantly to learn what Australian writers are writing and getting published; secondly to learn more about writing speculative fiction, particulary science-fiction; and, as I am stuck out in the bush, the chance to just communicate with people who write speculative-fiction was also important. I started by joining Eidolon, an Australian email based forum on speculative fiction which had a lot of published, semi-professional writers on it. This forum was fairly active when I began, but since just about spluttered to a halt. I joined Infinitas, a Sydney based critiquing group, but I never seem to be co-ordinated with their critiquing cycles. I joined Myspace, and found very few Aussie writers, so I joinned F...

Hi all, I have been running the same blog on Myspace (for over a year) Blogspot (for about six months and Livejournal (a few months), and I have decided that’s not working. At the moment I have two competing aims, one is to communicate with science-fiction readers, who have no ambitions to be writers, while the other is to network with writers, particularly those who are at a similar stage of writing to mine. As most of the people I am networking with on Livejournal are writers, I have decided to cut back on my entries there and just read it for a while, maybe making a comment every now and then. While at Myspace and Blogspot I will continue to comment with the naivety of someone who loves speculative fiction and wishes everyone read more of it. And for those of you reading this on myspace and blogspot, basically I get the impression that the Australian speculative fiction community is very small and its members have very long memories.

Hi all, Nearly half way through the year and still, I estimate, only nearly half-way through the first draft of the novel I am writing. Hopefully, now that I am back using broadband, I will spend less time waiting for emails and facebook applications to appear and more time writing. I think I have finally broken my new computer in, although I have a feeling that Office XP will be flashing a message at me in about forty days saying that it is no longer active because I have installed it on two machines. Originally I thought the software could only be installed on one machine - my old computer - but it seemed to let me install it and activate it on my new computer. I have Open Office - a free clone of MS Office - as a back-up if XP starts to complain. So with broadband saving me time and no more software and hardware to install and register, I wrote more than usual this week. I even had one of those sessions when writing didn't feel like a hard slog. I love those days. But isn't ...

Hi all, As I get around to making an appointment to get a wisdom tooth extracted, I wish I lived in an age where nano-dentistry existed. Where nano-machines mingled with the bacteria in my mouth to destroy any plaque and cleaned out and fill in any decaying teeth, molecule by molecule. I hope to be around at the other side of the coming technology spike or singularity, where a combination of artificial intelligence, genetic engineering and nanotechnology will totally change what it means to be human. As it is, in my more negative moments, I think I’ll miss it and the last years of my life will be lived in a word ravaged by the consequences of global warming, where I, like the billions of others, will spend all my time trying to scrap the resources together to eat. Nanotechnology has the potential to fix global warming: nano-swarms could deconstruct the carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere. Only a couple of months ago I read an article by a right-winger, Chris Berg, ...

Hi all, Let's get the excuses for not writing much out of the way first. I bought a new computer and consequently spent a bit of time installing software, creating backups and downloading updates. I then rejoined the broadband world, after being on dial-up for a while. My new monitor is 19 inch and many of the pages of the interactive story on my webpage are rendered unreadable when the page is stretched over a large screen, so I spent a while fixing up my webpage: www.grahamclements.com. While doing some research for a previous post, I saw Conjure, a science fiction convention, was being held in Melbourne this weekend. I checked out the program and couldn't really find anything that I thought would be of great benefit to my writing. Perhaps a bit of interaction with other writers and fans of science fiction would be beneficial, but I decided not to go. From the point of view of writing, I think I have gotten all I can out of writing festivals where the focus is on the end prod...

Hi all, Do readers of speculative fiction care about the many awards that are given to speculative fiction books every year? When they hear a book has won a Ditmar or Nebula award do they rush out and buy it? Does Hugo or Aurealis award winner on the cover of a book make the casual browser more likely to buy it? Or are they more like the contestants on American Jeopardy the other night who had no idea what the Hugo award was for? While perusing the shelves in the local book shop a few years ago "George Turner Award Winner" caused me to purchase a book - I am a fan of George Turner's writing. The book was a disappointment, but I did enjoy reading another of the winners of that award in Michelle Marquardt's Blue Silence. Note: The George Turner award was for the best manuscript by an unpublished Australian speculative fiction writer and, as far as I know, was only presented three times. Speaking of George Turner, I think his Arthur C. Clarke awarded "Sea and the Su...