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Hi all, I have been accepted by the online magazine Divine to write one article per month for the next twelve months. The original request for writers had only six month contracts, but I still reckon I have more than enough ideas for articles. Divine is aimed at people with disabilities but topics are wide ranging. I still have no idea how much I will be paid per article and will probably have to wait until my first meeting with the management of the magazine in early October to find out. The contract period does not begin until October which gives me plenty of time to write a couple of articles and get ahead of schedule. One of the articles I plan to write will require a bit of research, another two might come from the this week's Aussiecon 4. Yaaahooo Aussiecon 4, which I have been sooo looking forward too, starts this Thursday, and I will be down in Melbourne for the whole convention. I was worried that I might run out of things to do but I have just finished goin...

Hi all, Civilisation has not ended yet, there is still hope that the fascist Tony Abbott and his hopelessly self-serving underlings won't form the next government of Australia. At least there was hope at 12 noon today (Monday) when I watched the ABC news, which had the vote at 73 Labour, 70 Liberal, 3 independents, 1 Green and 3 seats in doubt. I didn't really think there were that many rich white Christian males in Australia. Anyone else who voted for them probably reads the crap in the Murdoch press or believes the crap on commercial television news. I worked at the Rutherglen polling booth in north-east Victoria on Saturday. Our local member - opposition spokesperson for science and innovation and practicing luddite - Liberal Sophie Merribella easily won the booth but, interestingly, the Senate vote was much closer. This could mean that for the House of Reps a lot of voters were convinced by Sophie's media advertising campaign and/or the low quality of the Labour can...

Hi all, Not much to report on the writing front this week so this will be a brief post. I still haven't heard from Divine the online magazine that I sent a couple of articles too. I sent them an email last Monday and was told that they would get back to all submitters later that week, they didn't. A couple of weeks ago Divine sent an email asking if they could run one of the articles I had written. I said I would be happy for them to use it if it meant that I would be getting a contract. They sent another email saying they were yet to decide on the writing contracts. A few days later when I looked at the Divine website there was my ebook article . I had a choice of asking them to take it down and perhaps causing them to look negatively at my application, or to let leave it up and hope that Divine had reasonable ethics, it is run by a State Government department. I should have been clearer with my emails, but not wishing to offend...oh well, I can only live and lear...

Hi all, I decided to read Red Queen , by Australian author H.M. Brown, after reading a review of it in The AGE. The review was positive and said that the novel had won last year’s Aurealis award for best horror novel, but that is not what had me wanting to read it, it was the prospect of reading an apocalyptic novel set in Australia that raised my interest. The novel is set after a virus has decimated the population. Two brothers, Shannon and Rohan , are hiding from the virus in a very well stocked cabin in the Australian bush. The story is told from the viewpoint of 23 year-old younger brother, whose life is dominated by his much older brother Rohan . The brothers have electric power from a water wheel, sheep, chooks and three shipping containers full of plentiful supplies for two people. They are constantly on guard for the arrival of virus carriers and thieves, and always carry rifles. Shannon stays up at night to guard the cabin. Their monotony of survival is w...

H i all, Back to ebooks this week. It seems that publishers might lose control of ebooks quicker than they thought according to last week's Bookmarks column in the Saturday Age. It said that agent Andrew Wylie has made exclusivity deals with Amazon, cutting out both publishers and other ebook sellers. In effect Wylie has set himself up as a publisher. I wonder how Wylie will feel when authors start cutting their agents out of ebook deals and doing it themselves, after all, if Amazon, Google, Apple dominate as the seller and pay the same royalties to everyone, what point is there of having an agent for an ebook ? And when ebooks dominate the publishing industry in a few years time, what relevance will agents have? It has been a month since I checked the prices charged for the Kindle bestselling top 100. Last time I was surprised at the demise of the $2 ebook and again I found none in the top 100. Last time there was a massive increase in free ebooks , accounting...

Hi all, Politics has been making me sick over the past week, physically. I have had diarrhoea and asthma, so you could say that the current election campaign is giving me the shits while leaving me breathless. I believe in keeping informed, so I have been reading about the campaign in The AGE and listening/watching it on the ABC. And I am very concerned for the welfare of the poor and desperate if Tony Abbott gets in. I wonder if people who are unemployed and under 30 have heard about his plans to take away their dole payments if they don't move to where there supposedly is work, even though their might be no accommodation for them to move into, like in mining towns in WA and agricultural towns like Griffith. If they don't have a vehicle, how will they get around? I wonder if people who are upset about electricity price rises realise that by doing nothing about climate change electricity prices will continue to rise as electrical generators continue to put off new...