Champagne and Socks

Posting again after a longer silence than I intended. I had meant to post every day as a way of checking in with the world and also to mark progress on this long project of mine. But life has a way of not ending up the way you thought it would, doesn’t it?

Take today, I feel really like I haven’t actually accomplished very much. I didn’t “sleep in” but left the house early for breakfast with C who is on long service leave for a bit. We did some vague errands and came home. I feel like I loitered around on the computer for hours and now it’s quarter to 6 and almost dinner time. My loitering involved uploading some more ebooks to Kobo – I have started rolling out the TPP backlist on Kobo (no longer really relying on Smashwords to do it cause it’s now so unwieldy to use). So a couple more books are up waiting for publishing and three I noted are now published (A Trifle Dead, Cracklescape and Asymmtrey). I answered some emails. I sent some feedback to writers on work submitted that I read yesterday. I started setting up some other online accounts and things for projects in development. I filled some book orders and answered some emails about other orders. And I received the proofs by courier for Caution: Contains Small Parts. I proofed those and have spoken to Amanda and the printer about some issues with those. And I backseat drove a bit of  the wardrobe cleanout that C was doing

And in truth, between you and me, I feel like I might have wasted the day.

Which comes to the title of this post – expectations. I think I’ve probably always lived my life trying to meet someone’s expectations, whether they be mine or other people’s. I remember getting my very first report card in Grade 1. My mother was standing with a cousin and they were comparing my report card and my cousin’s (I had about 5 cousins in my class, small community). He had got As and I hadn’t. And up until that very moment, I didn’t know I was supposed to, or that we would be graded and that the grades would *count*. And I remember thinking, “Why didn’t I know this?” And for years looking back on that moment of feeling completely behind the 8 ball, and inadequate, I’m still not sure how you are meant to know that life is going to be filled with marks and assessments and *judging* unless someone tells you. I still remember vividly being 6 years old and feeling completely inadequate and not good enough. (And I’m sure the grades were of things like handwriting and colouring in).

That moment kind of taught me that life was going to be a race and that people were going to scrutinise you and compare you to others. And that seems pretty harsh and stressful, sure. But I went to a high achieving school with over achievers. If I’d not had  a competitive streak in me (and maybe that Grade 1 report card lit that spark for me), I would have drowned in that school. Others did, and I felt sorry for them at the time. But for me, I think otherwise, I would have been lazy and sat at average. Instead, I was up there competing and pushing and striving to be the best. I never was though. Fourth was the slot for me and I had to slog away and work my arse off to maintain it. In high school, we  ended up in much much smaller classes and I might have topped Calculus on a good day (but there were only two of us in the class anyhow). But the pushing to be the best got me an engineering degree. And even though I was probably only average or just above class average in my degree, without that expectation to perform, and without constantly measuring up, I don’t think I would have passed. As I said, I have the tendency to be lazy.

I started TPP as an experiment, really. I wanted to see if I could implement some of the ideas that I had through ASIM. And I wanted to see if a small press *could* be financially viable. I’m still seeing if a small press can be viable – I don’t consider TPP to be established enough yet as a business to really be able to test it (longevity, credibility, reliability, consistency, backlist and relationships and networks take time to develop) and I’m still learning so much about publishing. But one of the people who lit a spark in me to be competitive was Paul Haines. We were at a room party at a Convergence and he said to me, “Yeah GJ, what you’ve done is good and all, but you’ll burn out soon enough, like they all do.” And I looked at him and I said, “No I won’t.” And he said, “We’ll see.” And any time I’ve felt down or tired or like I could burnout or throw the towel in, I’ve remembered that conversation and thought, “I’m going to prove to him that I can do this.” And I still will.

I’m lucky to have found people in this community of ours who believe in me and support me and help make this dream a reality but also know how to push my buttons. Some people push them the wrong way but a lot more of them know how to push them to help me achieve more and better than I would have done if left to my own devices. And I’m really grateful to those people – who pick me up when I am down and push me on when I need the push. And sometimes the people who push you aren’t doing it with love. But without them, too, I’d be less.

But what happens when you aren’t in a classroom anymore or in a workplace where promotion is the thing you’re working on? I work from home now, by myself, on a project I am mostly in charge of myself including the direction, the point, and ultimately how my performance will be graded. I don’t have anyone to mark myself against. And having done this before, albeit that time I did it on campus so I had a lot of people around me to mark my expected progress over time etc, I know that a PhD is essentially a solitary endeavour and can be very confronting. The whole point of it is to come out the other side which then, after doing it, justifies and makes meaning out of the journey.

In some ways, the answer is that there is no real difference to what I was doing with TPP on my own – setting my own expectations, devising milestones and marking progress along the way. I guess, though, the trouble with me (and isn’t there always) is that I can actually go either way – be lazy or set unrealistic expectations. And there’s that word again. Because somehow, I think that because I am now working on this full time, I must therefore achieve exponentially more than I was before, whilst also taking off my weekends. And now on top of that, I’ve suddenly, in my second trimester, developed the need to sleep 10 hours a day, every day. I have NEVER slept that much before. I’m a 6 to 7 hour a night person with 1 day in the week of maybe 8 or 9, and I’m good. This sleeping so much feels … wasteful, I guess? Even though, if I don’t do it, I feel physically ill, and I can intellectually understand that my body needs the rest, what with all that multitasking of growing inner ears (we did that last week) and fingerprints (or whatever it is this week).

I’m just really scared that I will squander this opportunity I have here. It feels like such a huge gift and I want to make sure that I exhaust every aspect of it and put it to good use. And then I “sleep in” and work more slowly and feel sluggish a lot. It … comes back to expectations. I know.

It’s taken me this long to blog about our trip at new year’s to Paris. I think partly it’s been because there’s been a horrible delay in our wedding photos which got me down about thinking about the whole thing. And also partly because it felt so private. But, you know, with distance and time and all that …

At our wedding reception, a friend of mine wanted us to open their gift. Alas, all the gifts had already been packed away and were en route to my parents’ and they were quite alarmed. “Promise me, you’ll open it before you leave!” she said desperately. “The present will be meaningless if you wait til you get home.” My parents managed to bring two potential present candidates when we met up with them on Christmas Day and we opened the wrong one first! But when we opened their present, it was really clear what she meant!

Instructions – that they had given us a gift of memory – what a fantastic idea! We were to head to the bridge as outlined in her note and then place the lock enclosed on the bridge to symbolise our enduring passion and then toss the keys into the river below.

Engraved on one side are our names and on the other, our wedding date. We both loved the idea and also the sense of mission about it. I think we decided it would be the first thing we would do in Paris, it had such a sense of urgency about it and set of tasks and would help us settle into the city and get our bearings before we figured out what else we wanted to do.

We headed off, jetlagged into the cold Parisian day. Stopping, of course, past the first patisserie we saw – on the corner opposite our hotel – and ate what I think will always be the best pastry of my life.

One of the really fun ideas that worked out well was I bought a bunch of  walking tours of Paris on cards – I think there were 50 different ones. And we pulled out the one that went past the bridge we were to visit and headed out and did that. This photo is of C checking the card for directions! They were so much fun – really appealled to the gamer in C and I got to see lots of out of the way things that I never would have found on my own. The cards also pointed out important things like which cafes and icecreameries and famous patisseries to stop past on the way to things

And voila! Here I am on the bridge. Note my tourist sneakers! Notre Dame is just in front of me and to the right. And all the shiny things behind me are locks on the bridge. I dunno. I was kinda torn on this whole thing, en masse, does it ruin the bridge or does it make it into a contemporary living and breathing part of the city? I tried not to think about the pollution of all those rusting keys in the river bed below.

Proof that we succeeded in our mission.

And just one of the reasons I love him – taking some pictures for the coordinates of where we placed our lock so we can come back and find it again later. xx

Today’s statistics are for Midnight Echo.

Midnight Echo is according to the website: “the official magazine of the Australian Horror Writers Association. Each issue contains more than 100 pages of horror (or dark) fiction, poetry, art, comics, columns, articles, book releases, and more!”

The editorship is a rotating one. Only the first two issues had female co-editors. Since Issue 2, no woman has been at the helm of Midnight Echo. The magazine has never been solely edited by a woman. In contrast, five issues have been solely edited by men.

The gender breakdown for the prose fiction for all issues of Midnight Echo is:

The average gender breakdown for the two issues coedited by women is 24% female authors to 76% male authors.

The gender breakdown for poetry, nonfiction and interviewees (ie people who were interviewed in the magazine, Note: interviewers were not always listed in the ToCs so have not been computed for this market) are:

Several of the issues feature a comic as it’s done by the same pair, the illustration is separate out from the overall art figures:

As well as looking at awards stats, I’m also looking at the publishing stats, to place one in the context of the other. Additionally, I’m going to be looking specifically at some case studies as I move further into my PhD. Likely those won’t be Australian presses but the Australian context is within which Twelfth Planet Press sits.

Today’s data then is for Eidolon and Potato Monkey.

Eidolon Magazine was edited by Richard Scriven, Jonathan Strahan and Jeremy G Byrne and then later on by Jonathan Strahan and Jeremy G Byrne. In their debut editorial, this team outlined their vision for the publication:

Eidolon is for you if you are interested in encouraging the development of new writers, if you are passionate about your views on speculative fiction in any media and if you enjoy discussing all of this and more. In short, Eidolon is for people who care about speculative fiction and all its off-shoots.

…

We are committed to promoting the idea of the “pro-fan”; a person who has a love for some aspect of speculative fiction, be it literary, cinematic, game-related or some other facet, and who strives to extend the boundaries of his perception of that passion; a person who seeks to create, to contribute and to objectively discuss.

Eidolon featured fiction, non fiction, interviews, reviews, artwork and letters from their readers. I thoroughly enjoyed getting absorbed in the discussions in the letters and through these discovered the editorial for Issue 12 which addresses concern over the apparent gender bias in their published fiction. Issue 24 (1997) was a Special Women’s Issue. I would have been interested to compare the gender breakdown pre- and post- this issue but Eidolon closed four volumes later, in 2000 with Issue 30. Nine issues had all male fiction ToCs. None occurred after the special issue.

Here is the overall breakdown of the fiction published in Eidolon by gender:

The breakdown of Nonfiction by gender:

Here I’ve looked at both the reviewers and those they reviewed by gender:

And then done the same for interviewers and those they interviewed:

And the artwork broken down by gender of the artists:

And then finally, the gender of the authors of the letters printed in each issue:

Potato Monkey was edited and published by Ben Payne. It ran for five issues from 2001 to 2007 and featured fiction only. Of the five issues, issue 5 consisted only of fiction written by men. Apart from issue 1, all the cover art was created by women.

This is the breakdown of the fiction in Potato Monkey by gender:

First of all, it’s important to realise that the absence of formal prohibitions against committing art does not preclude the presence of powerful, informal ones. For example, poverty and lack of leisure are certainly powerful deterrents  to art … It’s commonly supposed that poverty and lack of leisure did not hamper middle-class persons during the last century, but indeed they did  – when those persons were middle-class women.

…

As for the leisure .. Emily Dickinson seems to have had it (although she participated in the family housekeeping and nursed her mother in the latter’s last illness), but according to biographer Gordon Haight the time of the famous Marian Evans (later to become George Eliot) was demanded, through her late twenties, for managing the household and caring for her dying father … Marie Curie’s  biographer, her daughter Eve, describes her mother’s cleaning, shopping, cooking and child care, all unshared by Pierre Curie and all added to a full working day during Madame Curie’s domestic years, which were also the beginning’s of her scientific career.

Nor does the situation change much in the twentieth century. Sylvia Plath, rising at five in the morning to write, was – as far as her meagre work-time went – fortunate compared to Tillie Olsen, a working-class woman, who describes the triple load of family, writing, and full time outside job necessary for family survival.

Joanna Russ, How to Suppress Women’s Writing (University of Texas Press, 1983)

We haven’t really fully decided what’s going to happen post-baby. In our first broaching of the conversation, my husband asked me what I was thinking of doing and I told him my plan was to submit my PhD Candidacy application on time (due Sept 30), hopefully get candidacy, and then go on maternity leave. He nodded. And then I said I was planning on withdrawing from my degree for a year once the baby was born. To uh, you know, do the thing you do with newborns.  And my beautiful husband stood there, and looked at me and said, “Really? Uh … are you sure … are you sure you will be happy doing that?” Frankly, he looked really skeptical that that was a good plan for me and I possibly kissed him.

*Obviously* I’m not taking time off Twelfth Planet Press! When I stated such, he nodded and seemed much relieved. (Seriously … how is it that I ended up with the perfect person for me, who actually understands me?)

But in all seriousness, I’m preparing for the next chapter in my life. I’m well aware that my life is about to change. And I’m also really aware that I can’t expect myself to perform the way (or in the timeframe) that I am used to. At TPP, one of our focusses is to support female writers. And a big part of that has been to be ensure that we understand that timeframes for writing for women with family commitments need to be flexible, longer and understanding. Life happens. And it’s really easy for writing to fall off the radar when more pressing matters have to be dealt with. And when you haven’t published for three or five or ten years because you’re raising or caring for your family, well, it’s really easy for everyone else to decide you don’t write anymore. We have a few projects in the background at the moment working on supporting writers who are just going to take longer than commercial timeframes demand, because that’s the way it is. And I’m really proud of them, even if I don’t get to talk about them yet.

But that’s also why I’m not as hard arse an editor as I should be about deadlines. I’m way too soft with writers about meeting their timelines, and I think that’s possibly a weakness of mine. On the other hand, we’re all grown up professionals. And writers who are serious about writing, will write. And the rest are not. I make back up plans and I work with what I have. But I certainly don’t think that creativity being stuffed into 1 hour of writing before the kids get up or the last 10 minutes of lunchtime is going to be improved by hardlining.

That said, that pushing creativity into the hour before the baby wakes up, or grabbing a spare 10 minutes where I can find it, is going to be me soon (again, I guess, since that’s how I ran TPP when I had that pesky day job). So in preparation, I have been carefully planning what the heck I’m gonna do. I’ve blocked out a good chunk of time assuming I will be completely nonproductive (it’s possible I haven’t given myself enough time – Oct to Feb/March at the moment, thoughts?) And I’m trying to get ahead of that big block of down time with some titles finished early so that we can still roll out our books on time. A few authors got advanced warning of my news – I’m pregnant, you have to write faster! – so that we could bring forward some deadlines, shuffle some others around. Everybody’s been really great about it and I’m completely overloaded at the moment with work. If it doesn’t get done, it’s on me.

I don’t know how it’s going to go. But what I do know is, if you really want something, you find a way to make it work. And for now, I’m clinging to my plan

So I’m not feeling all that awesome today. At the moment I seem to be having two days respite from morning sickness and today is not one of those days. I had a bunch of errands that were time specific so I’ve spent the morning trying to find a window where I thought I could, if efficient, get to Australia Post, the ATM and the shops in minimal time and get the hell out to go lie down again. I found that window just under an hour ago. I managed to get to the post office just before the queue and got in and out in no too bad time (yay for being an expert in parcels by now). I navigated Woollies and started to feel a bit faint towards the end of my list, discarded a few items, bought myself some tulips to cheer myself up and headed through self check out.

On my way out the shopping centre, focussed on getting to my car ASAP where I could sit down and maybe feel less woozy, I headed past a WWF stand. As I passed it, one of the young lads there called out to me but I shook my head and carried on walking. When I was more than 5 m past him, he called out to me, “hey, did you buy me flowers?”. To which my annoyed response was, “I DID not!” as I carried on walking.

But by the time I got to the car I was fuming. The heckle was harmless. Almost innocent. But … that kind of shit in the context of often getting singled out and heckled when out by yourself gets tiresome after a while. What does it achieve? Obviously I didn’t buy him the flowers, I wasn’t going to stop and give them to him (he WAS NOT remotely cute enough) and I was always going to keep walking. What was the point? The point was, I ignored him. And he couldn’t let that go. He *needed* me to acknowledge him so he heckled to demand my attention, even if it was negative. And for what end? My feelings towards him are unchanged but he managed to make himself exist enough in my world for me to write this post to say – you are not entitled to my attention, I get to walk past you and not notice you.

Tomorrow is the beginning of the new round of the 12 Week Body Transformation program and I’ve signed up again. I’m doing so under medical supervision and with a promise on a handshake that I made with my midwife (and then signed off by my OB) that I not put on any weight in this pregnancy. It’s a pretty daunting thought. Don’t pregnant women *have* to put on weight? Aren’t you supposed to be a whale? Aren’t you eating for 2 etc?

Many years ago now, when I was having an anxiety meltdown, Tansy said to me – you have to work out *how* you can do [particular thing I wanted to do but had decided I could not, due to OCD] and figure out all the things you need to set in place to make that ok. What she was saying to me, and what she’s said many many times since is – figure out and set goals for things you have control over. It’s not reasonable to say “my goal is to win [X] award or publish [so and so] or create a viable business” but it *is* reasonable to set high standards for the fiction you buy and your editorial processes in order to publish the best work you can possibly publish. *That* is something you can control. And it turns out, *that* is also something you can be proud of. The rest, you can’t control so what is the use in stressing about it?  I’ve taken this advice and I’ve clung to it. When I start to freak out about something, I look at what I *can* do about it and I focus on that. If noone is buying any of my books this week, I look at what I’ve personally done to promote them and what I could be doing. And I do that.

So in the face of all the media hysteria that gets thrown at you about leaving having babies too late, I looked at what I could do, given that I can’t halt time. I looked at the factors that were within my control – I lost 15kg. I ate better, consistently. I reduced my intake of alcohol. I exercised. I didn’t take up smoking. I don’t know whether these made a difference but I do know that they gave me things I could focus on, healthy things that would improve my quality of life, even if that’s the only benefit I got.

And now here I am. 37. Pregnant. And getting bombarded with all kinds of other scary risk factors and statistics. Having a higher BMI increases the risk of complications later on in pregnancy. And given my family history of diabetes. And my own potential health complications. The best thing I can do is be healthy in this pregnancy. I believe my midwife called it ‘body sculpting” – I guess whereby the sculpture I produce at the end will be a baby? I sorta feel bad that said baby will have been made out of ice cream, chocolate and gummy bears. But probably that’s just the funny things my brain does to random shit I hear.

There’s no doubt that eating well will help me feel better and make the best baby I can make. It’s been rough so far as I have had no appetite at all, felt sick pretty much most of the time, and can’t stand the taste of water. This has meant I’ve mostly eaten glutinous carbs which have also made me feel sick due to Crohn’s stuff. I don’t see how you are supposed to only eat 200 extra calories when pregnant yet also stave off morning sickness by never having an empty stomach. How does that even freaking work? Carrots don’t quite seem to cut through that empty growling abyss in the pit of my stomach. And with my heartburn issues, there’s a whole bunch of food that I used to be able to eat that I now cannot. And so, being a vegetarian with gluten and lactose intolerances now having to avoid anything acidic … you see why toast with honey is the option, right?

Anyway. Here’s to morning sickness abating (any day soon!) and moving on to that whole extra energy thing I hear is supposed to kick in (any day soon!). I’m signing up to the next 12WBT with the goal of not putting on any weight and of getting fitter in preparation for this whole labour thing I’m trying not to hear so much about. Mostly I’m looking forward to someone else thinking through the balanced diet thing so that I start to feel better. (Incidentally, the 12WBT has a pregnancy plan option which adds in the extra calories, gives a range of meal options with pregnancy safe foods and pregnancy workouts).

So that’s me telling you the goal, as per pre season task 4. I’ll probably check in once a week on this. I start tomorrow.

Here be spoilers:

Last night we saw Star Trek: Into the Darkness in Gold Class in Rockingham. It’s not quite as flash as Gold Class in the Northern Suburbs but it’s a nice date night out and considering C and I have been apart for a few weeks and he’s at sea on and off at the moment, it was definitely a nice night out. You get free popcorn and a drink with a comfy seat and not too many people in the theatre. (I got mud cake and icecream as well!)

I’m a trekkie and would have seen this movie no matter what. And despite what I’m about to say about this movie, I’ll still head along to see the next one.

First up, you can tell a lot about the promoters think about either the movie or the audience heading along to a movie by the trailers they run before it. And what I learned is that probably not a lot of women are expected to enjoy Star Trek. Which is funny really when looking around, I estimated that the audience was about 50:50 on the gender lines. There were hardly any women in any of the trailers for movies you might also like to see. The women who did make the trailers got to be wives or whores. There was one woman who got to train and suit up in the robot warrior costume to fight big monsters in the upcoming Pacific Rim. And that was it. Male protagonists and view points all the way.

So. The movie. For the most part, I enjoyed it. I like the reboot. I kinda like the Spock/Kirk dynamic. I like the shiny and I like that it’s new Star Trek onscreen. But for all that, it was a bit … Bat Man, is the best way I think I can describe it. It feels like science fiction action now needs to be Bat Man-like for some reason. I don’t even know what I mean by that but watching this film, I felt like I was back watching the Dark Knight Rises. We’re in a gloomy place for science fiction it seems. All the preview trailers were about the end of the world. And the Star Trek film is placed just prior to the Klingon/Federation (?) war. I guess in general, we don’t seem to think brightly about the future right now.

I liked the pacing of the film and I liked the tension. I also kinda liked the pastiche to the original series. But I have to admit, I feel a bit like the point of a reboot for a franchise should mean the opportunity to do other things. I mean, sure, we’re going to walk back through an alternate timeline but does that mean we have to encounter all the previous scenarios and nemeses? Surely there is freedom in just doing totally different stuff and going in new and different directions? I would think there would be a lot of pressure in bringing back old enemies and friends.

I have two main gripes. The first is that we get a new female member to the main crew of the Enterprise – she gets a name and a job title and everything (there are other women on the bridge, probably more than in the Original Series, but they don’t get named and I think only one ever gets spoken to). So after 40 years of feminism, we get TWO named women in the gang. But … in exchange for this, we have to see her in her underwear. And like, I get that Kirk is that whole cowboy playboy dude of awesome and all but … really?? In 2013,  we still have to minimise the female physicist weapons specialist by making her take off ALL her clothes right before she disarms bombs and stuff??? Seriously?

I also have a bit of an issue with the way they directed Uhura when she bravely volunteers to attempt to negotiate with the Klingons on Kronos. Was it really necessary to make her physically appear scared? I don’t think they ever make the male characters look that afraid when they are about to do scary things. They get to just bravely do them. But Uhura has to be vulnerable …

Secondly. Like Skyfall, the last 15 minutes of this movie undid the rest of the fun. If you can’t make a pregnant woman cry in a death scene, then your writing sucks. Because, let’s be honest, this is a franchise and there’s no way you bother rebooting this whole gig for just 2 movies. Which means, we know that Kirk isn’t gonna die. Or isn’t gonna stay dead. So having to suffer through that whole badly acted scene was AGONY. There was no tension, no suspense and no real depth to the dialogue. Which is a shame because the moments before that, when Kirk works to save the ship are highly charged and full of suspense – not in will he, but how will he?

But, like I said. I’m still gonna come back for movie three

Yesterday, I attended the opening for the Through Splintered Walls Art Exhibition at the new Rockingham Art Centre.

Background: Last year, around this time, we launched the sixth volume of the Twelve Planets series – Through Splintered Walls by Kaaron Warren – at Natcon in Melbourne. We had a great launch and sold a bunch of copies and then later in the con, we discovered that there had been a printing error – the top line of every page was missing. After manic searching to check this error didn’t happen at our end, we promised everyone we would replace their copies and then we set about thinking what we could do.

It was such a let down and disappointment. You work so hard to get a book to print and then you proudly release to the world and anxiously anticipate how it will be received. And you hope it will fly. So when it dives and crashes and burns … well it’s a devastating feeling. And one I hope to never experience again. Whilst we stood around feeling sorry for ourselves, Narrelle Harris suggested that we think about turning the spoiled books into artworks – to find a way to get artists involved to use the books for art instead of pulping them. As an environmentalist, I was totally broken hearted about the idea of the waste of all that paper. So the idea sounded perfect. Plus, we had a chance to tank a mistake and turn it into something better.

The three of us worked on some ideas and a pitch and then I took this to Lee Battersby who works at the City of Rockingham (the city I and TPP are now based) as the Cultural Development and Arts Coordinator. His immediate response was “we can do that!” and when I turned around, he’d organised the whole thing. He organised four artists to give four different workshops for anyone who wanted to come along and learn about paper art techniques. And then he organised for the participants to submit their finished works (made from three copies of Through Splintered Walls each, the ruined copies which I donated to the city) for a final art exhibition.

And yesterday, we attended the opening for the exhibition. Here is the Mayor of the city opening the exhibit. It turns out, this is the very first exhibition to be held in the long awaited Rockingham Arts Centre!

Kaaron was brought over for the event and to give a writing workshop whilst she was here.

Here she is giving a few remarks and raving about how awesome the finished artworks are.

I wandered around and took photos of most of the pieces. Here’s a gallery of them – every one used to be a copy of Through Splintered Walls!

This one, the artist came and gave me the story to the piece. It’s not quite as she intended. You see, her new puppy accidentally chewed up that copy of the book and so she had to change her plans! I love this piece, I think it’s really great!

And these are works that one of the workshop tutors made as examples:


It’s quite an unsettling feeling to be pleased to see copies of your book shredded, cut up and folded. I’m so happy with the way this project turned out!

I don’t really have a highly informative “this is what happened” kind of con report to deliver. Apart from the fact that a lot of my con was taken up either trying to avoid or manage morning sickness and being tired cause pregnant, when you trade in the dealers room, you don’t really experience a con the same way as everyone else. Programming becomes this outside force that determines when you think you can expect waves of people to wander through or to explain why you haven’t seen a non dealer for what feels like days. You usually head to the room before 9 to straighten up and set up for the day and then you hang out there til the room closes. If you’re lucky, like at Conflux, the room has a lock on it and you don’t have to pack your stuff up at the end of each day.

So for me, attending a con tends to be about spending time with my friends – both at my dealers table when they come and hang out with me and keep me company or bring me food (and water) and at breakfast and dinner. This time round, cause I knew this might be my last con for a while (alas, I can’t go to Brighton now), I was determined to really spend quality time with friends all in one place. Because I had to hit the sack early, I didn’t get as much bar time as I would have liked. But this, I am learning, is life.

It’s also about all the people who come past – not just to buy or look at our new books but also to say hi, to show me stuff, to check in on projects we’re working on and to pitch me. I do a lot of other business, other than selling books, in the dealers room at a con. I also get a huge creative boost just by interacting with people. I come home from a con buzzing with ideas and energy and usually throw myself into frenetic work pace for weeks afterwards. I love it.

This is what I get out of being a publisher – my favourite thing, the thing that I get the buzz from, is working with others on a project. I love the creative process from beginning to end. I love coming up with ideas, whether on my own or bouncing ideas with others. I love the development of a work – I love working with creators, I love that synergy, the being on the same wavelength, inspiring each other, taking a good idea to a better one, pushing and inspiring and supporting someone else to be the best that they can be. That’s why I do this, that’s what it’s all about for me. And if my press is never more than what it is now, I think it will have been well worth it. I’m having an awesome time with it.

It turns out, the world is a really dangerous place, eatingwise, we just never knew. As I mentioned before, I got me the OCD which is related to my anxiety stuff. And so I have a pretty darn strict set of food related hygiene rules. Trust me, I annoy everyone I live with with them. But actually, most of them are pretty standard – they’re mostly what you would do in a commercial kitchen (a lot of illness at home can be attributed to incorrect food handling).

Anyhoo, pregnancy brings with it a whole new set of food rules and I gotta admit, for someone who is in therapy for their food rules crazy (among other things), even *I* think this shit is out of the park. Let’s see … no soft cheeses, no processed meats like salami (I’m a vegetarian), no smoked salmon , no uncooked eggs of any kind – so, no poached eggs, no hollaindaise sauce, no chocolate mousse, no commercially made custards, no exciting desserts out at restaurants – no prepared salads and no unwashed salad leaves including the prewashed salad mixes you can by at the supermarket. No sushi. No eating prepared food that has been sitting around for more than 24 hours, including at your house ie no leftovers from more than 24 hours ago.

The world is completely unsafe for pregnant women! Seriously, we should look into that! My developing theory on this, by the way, is that “pregnant women” – the subgroup in society – is a moving target. So you’re never really inconveniencing the same people for more than 9 months. And then they got other things to do and so get distracted. But really. This shit is just ridiculous.

I already have a bunch of eating issues – I have some food allergies (nuts, sulphur) and intolerances (dairy, gluten, deadly nightshades food group (tomatoes, eggplant etc)) and then some other foods I avoid because of my bowel diseases (meat, seeds, grains). And it turns out, that all the foods I’d been relying on to eat to fulfill my daily nutritional requirements as a person are in the above group pf outlawed foods whilst pregnant. And further, that when restaurants cook for vegetarians, they add only the above, banned for pregnancy ingredients. Over the last weekend, I ended up eating meals like – boiled pasta with butter stirred through it at a very nice Italian restaurant because they could not remove the soft cheese out of any of their vegetarian options and when I asked well what did they have for pregnant vegetarians? all she could offer me was pizza. At the con hotel, there were three vegetarian options on the menu two of which were chips. And the third had uncooked eggs. There was also a buffet meal option but the food looked like it had sat out for quite some time. The soup of the day remained creamy mushroom for the entirety of the con which raised other concerning questions. I took to stealing boiled eggs in their shells at breakfast in order to be able to eat something at lunch.

So over the weekend I lived off bread, muesli bars and eggs. I dunno about you but there’s some kind of fucked up irony where you end up feeling gross, bloated, unwell and wondering when you last ate protein, cause you can’t fucking eat anything in case you accidentally kill your baby. All these stupid rules leave you thinking … but now I am eating a stupid arse unbalanced diet. How is this right??? Seriously. How?

I’m lucky because my friends have been travelling with me at cons for a while and they know my Crohn’s gets triggered and we’re starting to pinpoint how this happens. Mostly because I am a difficult eater, and I don’t like to be openly difficult so I will tend to eat things I know I shouldn’t just to fit in. I eat too much gluten and it doesn’t end nicely. This time round Terri and Tehani made sure I got gluten free options by including it in the Coles runs they did to source food (how lucky am I to have such great friends?) and I didn’t feel as bad as I usually do.

And it begs the question, has part of why I’ve felt so horrible in my first trimester been because in order to follow the stupid “don’t leave your stomach empty” rule to supposedly avoid/manage morning sickness, the easiest thing to grab is gluten filled carbs? You’re supposed to only eat 200 extra calories whilst pregnant but bugger me if I can figure out how you do that AND maintain a constantly non empty stomach. When you have that raging hunger abyss in the pit of your stomach, a carrot stick just ain’t gonna cut it.

I read an article on an online news site yesterday which said that women who eat (primarily) junk food whilst pregnant are more likely to have babies who are addicted to junk food. And I thought – fuck off! When you rule out all the fucking healthy shit I’ve been eating in the last year because of risk of listeria, what the fuck else does that leave you?

So. Yes. Welcome me to the world of never can win, eh? The guilt and shame of being a pregnant woman and being constantly at fault. It’s delightful.

At the con, I drank a juice and halfway through I thought that maybe it was fizzy – maybe it was? maybe it was supposed to be? maybe it was reaction with my mouth (I had a minor flare up over the con and my mouth was full of ulcers, hello not being able to eat properly, and my tongue gets funny). Anyway. I panicked cause I thought maybe I had drunk off juice. And I asked those around me, “OMG have I killed my baby?” to which I got two very matter of fact “Nos” from Alex and Rachel (love you both). This is what we do to women with all these fucking rules.