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Hi all, I felt like a writer last week, spending a lot of time researching, reading and writing. I was told of a disability site requesting articles on disabilities from writers with disabilities, I had a look. They were offering a contract for four articles over six months and requested a sample article, I decided to have a go. As anyone who has been following this blog knows, my father recently died from dementia, so I was keen to write an article about what it was like coping with him. I wanted to write something that helped give permission to people to place a dementia suffering relative or parent in a nursing home. I know I felt like I had betrayed my father when we had him assessed as high care and to be placed in a nursing home,but there was no way we could have coped with him living at home. I wrote the article. The original version went for over 1000 words which I had to cut down to a 500 limit. This meant cutting out many of the anecdotes and rendering it a lot...

Hi all, I have just caught up on my reading about the dumping of Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister by the NSW Right, and in particular Mark Arbib . I read two articles in The Age stating that scumbag Arbib forced Kevin Rudd to postpone action on climate change, threatening him with the loss of his Prime Ministership .The fact that Kevin Rudd was forced to back down on immediate action on climate change explains why he did such a bad job of selling the change of policy: he didn't believe it abandoning the fight on climate change. It's a pity scumbag Arbib is a senator, because if he was the labour candidate in my electorate I would place him last on the ballot at the next election. I watched Kevin Rudd's final speech, and it is truly heartbreaking. I think we might have actually seen the departure of one of our few Prime Ministers who actually cared about the less fortunate in society, with a lot of the good he tried to do being thwarted by the senate and havin...

Hi all, It has been a busy start to the week so I have only now gotten around to doing my weekly blog post. I spent more time writing last week then the previous week so things are on the improve. The end is insight of the novella, but I've changed nearly every word since half way through, so I will want to edit again before I let anyone look at it. Didn't read anything much on ebooks last week so I will leave the cartoon, out of The Age , below as my only comment on them. I was also cheered up by the latest newspoll , not great, but better than the last one. At the moment I fear that politically we are at episode one of the Stars War's saga, with Tony Abbott, aka Darth Vader, only beginning to flex his growing power, under the tutelage of the evil emperor Rupert Murdoch. We still have a long way before Luke (Kevin 010) defeats Darth. Princess Leia (Julia Gillard ) has to help put him on the right path first. Let's hope that Hans Solo (Martin Ferguson)...

Hi all, Yesterday an acquaintance was looking at my blog and the photo did not appear. They had just upgraded their computer to windows 2007 so that might have been the problem as the photo always appears for me. I was wondering if my computer has to be on for the photo to appear (I only have it on when I am using it, so it was not on when the acquaintance accessed my blog). I won't have my computer on for the next few hours - it is 9.40 am est in Australia - so can anyone who reads my blog leave a comment on whether the picture came up and if they use windows 2007. Graham.

Hi all, I was a really miserable human being last week. Life has been a series of ongoing emotionally draining events: my father's death, cataract surgery, losing my job, next door neighbours who have no respect for other people's property or sleeping patterns etc. On top of that I have become increasingly unhappy with the Australian billionaire run media, where Murdoch, Stokes and Packer seem hell bent on Tony Abbott becoming Prime Minister after October. The less fortunate in society might as well slash their wrists. Nothing will be done about global warming, nothing will be done to improve the condition of Aborigines, refugees will be locked away on islands for years, and the middle class whose primary news sources were Murdoch's papers or Channel 7's news, leading them to vote for Abbott, will have to spend much more of their incomes on services that were formally provided by the government. The only people who will be better off are the rich. As this ...

Hi all, Last week I finished reading the short stories nominated for the 2010 Hugo awards: Spar by Kij Johnson - Anyone who says sex never occurs in science fiction should read this story as it is one long sex scene where an alien and human trapped in an alien lifeboat repeatedly penetrate each other. It is more of a moment of time than a story, with no clear conclusion and meaning, other than how strange the interactions between humans and aliens might be. The Moment by Lawrence M. Schoen - Different groups of aliens visit humanity's first steps into space, a footprint on the moon. The story is difficult to read because of the language and invented terminology used, which is appropriate considering the point of view characters are aliens. The aliens are interesting imaginings. It's an optimistic story of humankind's expansion into space. The Bride of Frankenstein by Mike Resnick - The only nominated author I had heard of before. This is the story of Frankenstein (the scien...

Hi all, The transcript of the coyotecon .com online speculative fiction convention session Survival for 21st Century Writers is available here . I attended the session in which Scott Nicholson predicts that the ebook market will quickly be dominated by $2 ebooks and by the end of the decade most ebooks will be free. See my previous post for my thoughts on the future of publishing when free ebooks are dominate. Graham.