story is

The events in the month of April when I was eight years old are not as momentous in my memory as the story I read for a week, every lunchtime after the meal until it was time to go back to school. (In the Netherlands in those years school children generally went home for lunch.)
The neighbour’s where I had that meal that week had an old copy of Remi by Hector Malot (translated into Dutch from French) leather-bound in old green. The pages were thick and yellowed, fluffy from use at the edges.
Remi, at eight years old, discovers he was a foundling when the man he thought of as his father sells him to Monsieur Vitalis for forty francs. M Vitalis was a street performer, we would say now, who owned a troupe of animals. Remi helped care for them and learned to take his part in the performances. After the death of his master Remi has many more adventures finally to find a home, and be re united with his lost original family.
A few years ago I found an English translation/adaptation, by Consta…

This story is about the way we/people accustom ourselves to our loss of hearing. If it is a gradual process, we don’t notice it. We merely and often unconsciously adapt our lifestyle. Friends and family often do notice the changes, but not the reason for them.
A lot of people need to begin wearing spectacles between 45 and 55 when their eyesight begins to be affected by aging. The same process affects our hearing. Listening to loud music and films, being around heavy machinery, shooting, hunting and explosions generally, also have the capacity to damage human hearing.
My hearing loss is probably due to loud music, heavy machinery and a few explosions. I did first start to notice it in my forties, when I couldn’t hear the words in a song on the radio. I forgot there was a time when I might have heard them and learned to enjoy the music without the lyrics. It wasn’t such a big deal to me, I’d always enjoyed instrumental music more and anyway, I said to myself, if you want the words, get…

Desperate to get an illustration of the object itself, I tied my computer into knots several times. It's still frozen several layers below this one and it refuses to let me close it. Words will have to do this time, and if you are totally interested check out this link, http://www.peterdehaas.net/ where is a nice pic of one.

I learned to read on a ‘leesplankje’. Aap, noot, mies were the first words. Aa p was printed under a picture of an organ grinder’s monkey dressed in a little red jacket sitting on a house gutter.
N oo t was under a walnut against a blue background.

A tabby cat sitting on a cream gravel path with grass and a paling fence in the background, represented m ie s, a popular cat’s name at the time ... read more

It’s day 3 of my life with hearing aids. So far, it’s like having my own SFX streamed into my ears, similar to sitting in the dark and hearing the crystal clear soundtrack of a movie.
Except that I’m sitting on my terrace, writing by hand – a power cut has stopped me vacuuming, an Essential Energy cherry-picker truck and crew are out front replacing the cable between my house and the power supply.
I don’t mind. I will enjoy the sound scape. It is Friday, AM, a busy day. Before, I’d hear an undifferentiated cacophony of industrial noise emanating from Tyres and Batteries in the second yard from mine.
Now I can hear every wrench clattering to the concrete floor. The compressor chugs non-stop. The continual hiss-and-clack of the compressor-powered tool to loosen nuts and tighten them after the wheel is replaced. Air released from a tyre hisses out on a descending scale. The jack-on-a-trolley is dragged from one car to the next. There’s hammering on the wheel rims. The finished wheel-and-…

As well as 'seeding' plot starters for the eventual working out of larger ideas, a story teller needs to 'salt' the text with information necessary to a reader's understanding of the world that the story is set in.

I was struck by the following example of salting in George R R Martin's A Storm of Swords (Book Three of A Song of Ice and Fire Series).

In one of Arya's sections, starting with 'She was grubbing for vegetables in a dead man's garden when she heard the ... ' comes the line, "Two miles upstream," said Tom. "A league at the most."

Yes! I knew a league was two miles. Or rather, I used to know and had temporarily forgotten. There is a lot to know in the world. I was glad to learn it again, because my idea of the distances in the story were getting a little screwed up.

In amongst the mainly non fiction research reading that I am doing at the moment, I am still reading the Song of Ice and Fire. Not just because there ar…

The story I'm working on needed some serious research. The chemistry of Life. The formation of planets. Possible accommodation on the Moon and Mars. These gave me the grounding for the world I was 'building'.

A negative side to basing a story-world completely on known scientific facts, is the narrowing of possibilities as a result. This is probably one of the reasons I normally write in the science fantasy genre. Wikipedia gives a nice discussion of the science fiction/science fantasy conundrum.

Writing essays back in the days of my tertiary education years, I'd use the material in the recommended texts and find my work lacking oomph. I'd hie back to the library (actual books and journals) in those not too far off days, and I'd browse. Usually not in the area under consideration.

For example, for an essay was about Australia's relations with Asia, I found some excellent supporting material in Nineteenth Century Biographies. If my foray into the esoteric an…

Back in the boat on the river of life and not just drifting either sees me having another go at a short story. I have a four week slot. For a title I'm tossing up between 'The Weight Distribution Process' and 'EVA Module 5'.

Reading-wise, 'winter is (still) coming' and George R R Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series is being re read. I missed out so much the first time around, reading in my usual fast chase after the plot. 
Added to which I have finally acquired a Kindle, and am for the present reading the ebooks which I had been storing on my Mac. Best Horror Collection by ASIM is my present in-between read. 
The Kindle is, so far, a great way to spend the odd ten, fifteen, twenty minutes that are an invariable part of modern life. My mother tells me that in the olden olden days when her mother was a child, those ten fifteen minutes would be spent knitting socks and socklets onto stocking legs (that took longer to wear through). Each girl in the fam…

My immersion in the A Song of Ice and Fire by George R R Martin continues. While sick with the flu for the last couple of weeks, it was wonderful to be able to spend most of the time reading the various instalments as they came to hand. The local library with the first three, the bookshop with Parts Four (cover illustrated) and Five.

Reading and re reading. I think I mentioned in my previous post how for my first read I skipped through a Part to follow particular characters. In Part Two there are at least ten protagonists.

The above strategy made it easier to enjoy the story as Martin meant it to be followed, the second time through. With the third and fourth re reads, I finally got the stage where I could begin to appreciate the various aspects of writing craft that I'm always on the lookout for.

Such as world building. The action in A Song of Ice and Fire ranges over a hugely detailed world but Martin does not do info-dumping, the bad thing that some writers do to get detail ac…

Following my enthralment to the TV series Game of Thrones (and this is not the second series which is playing as of now in the US) I began, as soon as I could get my hands on Part One, reading A Song of Ice and Fire, the books that the TV series is based on.

The illustration is of Part Two, a brick of a read of 873 pages that will not let go. Never in my life have I read one series so constantly and for so long. I think I'm in my third week of close attention to Parts One, Two and the first half of Three. Which is only half of the whole.

It is probably possible to read a book right through. I haven't found it the best way for me. With twelve or fifteen viewpoint characters, I quickly started leafing through the book and getting continuity of each character in turn, or each couple of characters. For example, it was fairly easy and propitious to read Sansa's story and Tyrion's at the same time in Part Three, first half.

There's no problem yet in reading Daenerys'…

I'm celebrating a little with a couple of days of catching up with mail, blogs and real life after finishing my latest draft of Monster-Moored, my speculative fiction novel set in a 22nd century Byron Bay and hinterland. It will be the first part of zig zag sequence taking us all over the country, or as it is in the novels, all over the Australia Archipelago.

In between writing these last couple of weeks I've been enthralled with, or more honestly, in thrall to Game of Thrones, the TV series on DVD. A smash hit by all accounts, and I can understand why. Ten hours of suspenseful story with a host of brilliantly acted characters of all ages. I'm sure it's possible for anyone to relate to someone in the story.

An adult fantasy series (of novels) A Song of Ice and Fire by George R R Martin (1996) is set in a medieval style world where winters and summers last longer than one year, and are of a variable pattern. If pattern is the right word.

Australians should be able to relate to the weather really well. We have variable weather. So does the Game of Thrones planet, but more so. The Stark family, one of the Houses, with the majority of viewpoint characters in Series One, has as their motto, "Winter is Coming".

This story has everything: action-packed politics, sword fighting, war, fighting, and everything that goes with …

Synopsis from Wikipedia:Inspector Tyador Borlú, of the Extreme Crime Squad in the European city-state of Besźel, investigates the murder of Mahalia Geary, a foreign student found dead with her face disfigured in a Besźel street. He soon learns that Geary had been involved in the political and cultural turmoil involving Besźel and its twin city of Ul Qoma. His investigations start in his home city of Besźel, lead him to Ul Qoma to assist the Ul Qoman police in their work, and eventually result in an examination of the legend of Orciny, a rumoured third city existing in the spaces between Besźel and Ul Qoma.


Events take place in the cities of Besźel and Ul Qoma which are cities very nearly superimposed on one another but which are perceived as two different places, with the help of a secret power called Breach. 


Citizens must not see, unsee - or rather see and then ignore - anything in the other city whether it is a building, person, car and car accidents, even if they occupy the next co…

I'm finding the most difficult thing while supposedly cleaning up a story for eventual submitting, is not to start any new threads.

I think it must be that I have a short fuse for boredom, and reading and correcting a manuscript for the so many-est times gets plain boring.

And so I have already failed this important step in my attempt to make Monster Moored a better story. My beta readers marked up the areas which needed more explanation and I was well on the way.

However, one of the suggestions was to have the monster eat someone, as in consume bloodily. This is not an easy matter, I found. The only ones in the surf with Tardi at the time of the the monster's manifestation were Polk, Tardi's best friend, and Threen, Tardi's secret love. (You understand I couldn't have the monster eat Threen!)

So, OK, it's easy to have the monster seize Polk and chomp into him. It's not easy then to write Polk's demise forward and backward. His end has to have some eff…

The calderafungi at blogspot.com

Draft one and notes of and on the new as yet untitled opus miranda

The eventual short story

The slight rejig of Monster Moored, preparations to submit it some time in April

and

Learning Scrivener

and

Finalising house renovation plans, choosing bathroom tiles, paint, a new stove, etc


Walking, going right now, as soon as i post this, it is 5.34 PM here despite what it might say at the top of this post.

Reading, a History of Ash by Mary Gentle.

Euphoria and depression go hand in hand as we, if we’re so inclined, pass around the circle of life. 
First I had one of my euphorias. It was probably brought on by a year’s worth of stress. The last straw was being unable to force myself to have a viewpoint character doing physical violence to other characters in a story I was writing.
A fine insight you might say and I will agree with you. Another was the instant understanding of the difference between writing from the head and writing from the heart. A good story is under construction as a result.
But how does euphoria follow from that, you're wondering? I don't know. In three percent of us it does apparently. I go into a cognitive dissociative state, a trance, and my unconscious generates extreme bliss. With no help from any drugs. 
But the higher I go in the euphoria, the deeper the depression afterwards takes me. And where the euphoria was a wonderful eight day event with two or three days to recover, the depression is,…