Champagne and Socks

The Aussie Spec Fic Snapshot has taken place three times over the past eight years. In 2005, Ben Peek spent a frantic week interviewing 43 people in the Australian spec fic scene, and since then, it’s grown every time, now taking  a team of interviewers working together to accomplish! In the lead up to Continuum 8 in Melbourne, we will be blogging interviews for Snapshot 2012 conducted by Alisa Krasnostein, Kathryn Linge, David McDonald, Helen Merrick, Ian Mond, Jason Nahrung, Alex Pierce, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Tehani Wessely and Sean Wright. To read the interviews hot off the press, check these blogs daily from June 1 to June 7, 2012.

As we celebrate the breadth and depth of the Australian spec fic scene,  2012 Snapshot is also a bittersweet time and we take the opportunity to remember two well-loved members of the community who sadly passed away in the past year

In honour of their memory, the first two snapshots are:

A tribute to Paul Haines.

A tribute to Sara Douglass. 

Today I managed to leave my building swipe card at home for the first time since I’ve worked in my new job. And I managed to miss the early train whilst fumbling to look for it and trying to call C to come back get me (he didn’t). When I got to work I went to reception and got J, who starts at 7am, to come down and get me. And she did – I felt somewhat like a Kindy kid getting fetched to go home and she was so nice about it, I nearly cried.

It’s fair to say I was a bit down today. Sometimes the stuff, it gets to you. If you let it, it can really shake your foundations. But today what I learned is, you are truly blessed and your world is rich if you have people to make you laugh when things look down and when you have friends and colleagues to remind you why it is that you do what you do. And what it’s all for. And my day was filled to overflowing with kind words and actions and a lotta laughing. A new friend at work gave me a new saying which is so inappropriate I could never type it here.

I am so lucky to have a new job find me that is filled with people who make me laugh, who share my passion and philosophy and who get me. I know how rare this is. I am so lucky for the family who support me and to have ever met C who loves me and cares for me and makes me laugh through my tears. And I am so lucky for the friends I’ve made along this publishing journey and the writers I have had the great privilege to watch at close range do what it is that they do. These people make my heart brim and overflow with joy and happiness. And if you have that, what else can you hope for?

And the most important thing – all the chocolate in the house is mine.

You know when you’re just a little off? When things just refuse to go right? That’s me at the moment.

Thursday I went home from work sick. I had a meeting first thing and then an overdue deadline. I sat and worked on the one page briefing for a couple of hours and tinkered and worked on it and thought I’d just get it done then I’d go home. But I could see I had another hour maybe to whip it into shape and I was reallllly not feeling well. The – if I leave this longer, the train may no longer be an option – kind of unwell so I emailed it onto my boss and headed home. C of course was out for lunch with the car so I had to catch the train and then a bus to him to get the car and house keys to get home. And then I slept for 3 hours. As you know, I don’t nap, so that’s never a good sign.

And then I spent a good 24 hours just not on – staring into space, watching terrible (but oh so good) television, answering emails and reading Deadline by Mira Grant. Saturday was more of the same. I was just … not quite right. And doing things like slamming doors on my hand coming out of the bathroom, woke up with a pinched muscle in my back and limited neck movement etc. That ever happen to you? When you just don’t seem to be firing on all cylinders? I dunno if it was flu that never really came on (auto immune diseases are good for one or two things) or being really run down or what.

Sunday I managed to make it to the quilt and craft fair. My usual buddy couldn’t come this year as she broke a bone in her foot last weekend (!) and since the duty was looking like falling to C, his mother stepped in and said she’d be happy to join me. So I met her there and we spent a couple of hours looking at the exhibition and buying fat quarters and having coffee (and I’m really getting married, aren’t I?!) and then I stayed behind to get a few more bits and pieces before heading home. [I bought 3 fat quarters, 6 buttons, a tea cosy book because I am obsessed with hilarious tea cosies, a pattern for a kimono shirt, and bits and pieces – pencils, pins etc]

Then I headed to Helen’s to have a nice catch up with her and Amelia and I’d not been there half an hour when I took a rather dramatic tumble down Helen’s back stairs. I don’t know what happened, I’d hardly moved when I fell forward and then fell down the stairs and kept going. I seem to have managed to have fallen on my whole body – slammed one hand and have taken a chunk out of the palm of my hand so I can’t type well or knit, and scraped the other whilst I landed on my other arm, one knee and both shins copped it, one much worse than the other with a massive scrape and then my ankle and toes which have blood blisters. But I reckon that’s the only thing that stopped me breaking a bone. And we weren’t sure there for a while. I nearly took out Helen’s daughter and as I lay there sprawled on the stairs the look on her face was of such terror I spent all my effort on not crying. And then not fainting. There was blood and a lot of pain and a lot of bruising and I go into shock quite easily.

But after a while, and some ice and bandaids, all was good and I had a cup of tea and cheered right up!And then went home to enjoy Eurovision. OMG I loved Turkey and Ireland so so much.

Today I hobbled into work to find much of my team had either been off sick, were off sick or went home sick. And I found a physio in the CBD to look at my neck/back. The city is pretty convenient for having access to things (better than either of the other jobs I had this year). And I got a new pillow, which might have been some of the problem. And I need to address stress, and ignoring headaches. and peering at the laptop like I’m doing right now. And probably it’s time for bed.

I hope you’re fairing better than me right now.

We’ve sent all our forthcoming books to the printers, we’re in the process of making our lists and checking them twice –> Twelfth Planet Press is off to Natcon 2012/Continuum 8 in Melbourne. We shall be in the dealers room all weekend! You can also find us at:

Twelfth Planet Press Hour on Friday Night – its a gold coin donation day at Continuum so open to all and sundry!

Ever wondered how your favorite Twelve Planet collection would taste like in cupcake form? Then come along to the Twelfth Planet Cocktail hour, to celebrate the launch of the newest Twelve Planets, Through Splintered Walls, by Kaaron Warren, and Cracklescape by Margo Lanagan, plus the new TPP novella Salvage by Jason Nahrung. All your other favourite Twelve Planets will be there and we’ll also be making a surprise announcement!

Each book will be lovingly interpreted as a cupcake by master baker, Terri Sellen. Your cocktail choice is entirely your own…

Galactic Suburbia will record an episode live over the weekend,

Embiggen Books Event, 5pm Saturday

A book launch with a difference! Come join host Ian Mond, TPP publisher Alisa Krasnostein and TPP authors as they launch the Twelve Planets into space, via a live podcast from Embiggen Books. Find out what goes in to putting together this acclaimed series of boutique collections. Hijinks will undoubtedly ensue.

A Stitch In Time Travel Preview
Come and help beta test a pattern from the upcoming new craft ebook from Twelfth Planet Press.
Crochet hooks optional.

I’ve been a bit quiet again about these parts but last weekend C and I made a whirlwind trip to Sydney for the Aurealis Awards. I’m so glad C came with me. I’m just not enjoying flying as much these days as I used to and it made such a big difference to have C along. And I’ve found the perfect way to get myself to sleep on the plane – bring enough entertainment (knitting, podcasts, reading) to fill the entire trip. I fell asleep before takeoff from Perth on Friday night at midnight (hadn’t been sleeping during the week) – I even complained to C that they didn’t do the safety demo and he just looked at me like I was odd. On the way back I slept for about half, still not bad for me. But still what use is three hours sleep for me?

After the red eye, we arrived at the hotel at 7am and were unimpressed not to be able to check in. We headed off for breakfast with C’s sister and a couple of friends down to Ripples at Luna Park. So we’d been there an hour and were taking in the gorgeous Sydney Harbour Bridge up close and personal. Breakfast was lovely and it was nice to just hang out and talk weddings and things. And then we headed back to the hotel, via a little chocolate shop to run an errand for Terri. Sadly the shop did not have what she was after but all the chocolates looked so delectable I grabbed a few things for the little party I knew we’d have later that night when Tansy and Alex arrived.

We got back to the hotel at midday and our room was still not ready. By this stage, I was pretty ragged and just wanted my room so I could nap before the awards. We waited in the lobby, I fell asleep a couple of times, watched the staff behind the desk not be there pretty much most of the time. Eventually we got to check in at 1.45pm and I’d just showered and laid down when Tansy rang me to tell me she’d arrived.

We’d booked a suite for the weekend – two rooms and lounge and stuff for Galactic Suburbia to hang out. We knew we’d chat long into the night! I’d organised strawberries dipped in chocolate to be there on arrival as a surprise but the hotel stuffed that up too. Bit of a shame. Tansy and I caught up a bit before Alex arrived and then it was all on! We grabbed dinner, with Emma who we found at some point, before we glammed up for the awards. (I took no photos)

It was fantastic to see everyone start to filter down into the lobby to head off to the Independent Theatre. Lots of hugs and squeals and quick catch ups.

The awards were nerve wracking! I had three speeches I was in charge of … should the occasion arrive! Some of the categories were excruciating when I had several horses in the race – I love all my babies equally! I did get to accept Sue Isle’s Aurealis Award for “Nation of the Nights” from Nightsiders for best Young Adult Short Story.

And then, Galactic Suburbia was awarded the Peter McNamara Convenors’ Award for Excellence. I can’t really capture the feeling of sharing such an honour with Tansy and Alex. We were so blown away for the podcast to be recognised. As we stood there sort of processing it all, Tehani read the most amazing few words about the project:

The Peter McNamara Convenors’ Award for Excellence is awarded at the discretion of the convenors for a particular achievement in speculative fiction or related areas. This award may take into account a body of work or achievements over a number of years; it can also be for a work of non-fiction, artwork, electronic or multimedia work, film or TV, or that which brings credit or attention to the speculative fiction genres. The award was originally known as The Convenors’ Award for Excellence and was renamed in 2002 after Peter McNamara (d. 2004), publisher, editor and the original Aurealis Awards convenor, shortly after he was diagnosed with a terminal illness.

Galactic Suburbia (GS) is an Australian feminist speculative fiction podcast, hosted by Alisa Krasnostein, Alex Pierce and Tansy Rayner Roberts (produced by Andrew Finch). Since March 2010, GS has been providing fortnightly podcasts covering SF news, culture and opinion, and in particular discussing these topics from a feminist point of view. Of particular note is the “Spoilerific Book Club”, which has produce in-depth and critical analysis of books ranging from Joanna Russ’ How to Suppress Women’s Writing, to the hugely popular YA dystopia ‘Hunger Games’ trilogy. The GS team produce serious critical analysis, whilst still keeping the topics entertaining and accessible.

Galactic Suburbia was one of the first Australian podcasts of SF literature and culture, and has inspired many new Australian podcasts, including The Coode Street Podcast, The Writer and the Critic, and Bad Film Diaries, Live and Sassy and The Book Nut. Thus GS has founded a new arena for SF criticism and review in Australia, as well as bringing a new international audience to Australian writing, not only promoting works by Australian authors but also highlighting feminist issues within the global speculative fiction scene and thereby encouraging vital debate and discussion among community members.

It’s still not really sunk in for me, I guess. To be recognised for excellence for our little podcast is just amazing. It just makes us so happy that people tune in every fortnight, and shout at the podcast, and laugh with us and cry with us and eat cake with us and send us feedback. Being part of Galactic Suburbia – not just getting to mull over and dissect ideas and issues with two intelligent, thoughtful women – but seeing a community grow around it has just been one of the most positive and uplifting projects I’ve ever been involved with. Hearing from other people that things we’ve discussed have made them think about how they are in the world, how they read and how they interact with text and film and audio and the world, and in some cases *changed* that  – I mean, that’s the best outcome you can ever hope from the work you do. And it’s shown to me that you *can change* things, you *can make a difference*, even “just” three women talking into their laptops in their bedrooms on a Thursday night. And, that change is possible? I mean, that means *anything* is possible.

If you listen to the podcast, I want to say thank you. Thank you for listening and for hearing. Thank you for reminding me that fighting the good fight is the point. And that one person *can* make a difference – what’s the quote? – that’s the only way it’s ever been done.

After the awards, we went to the after party. I have to admit I didn’t overly mingle. I spent a lot of time catching up with TPP peeps. It’s so rare to see them in person and we have things we’re bubbling on the back burner! And then at midnight, we whisked away for more chatting in the room – intersectionality, awards and all sorts of thing!  Luckily for me, C was watching a rugby game which started at 1am so I was actually in bed before he was done!

And then up at 8 or something stupid with 4 hours sleep. I think I had 10 hours over the weekend. But I was not going to miss the awards breakfast – it’s the point of going, don’t you know! And it was awesome! We had the most amazing chats with Kirstyn and Cat and Kaaron. I forgot to go back up to the room and a grumpy C eventually came down to tell me I had to check out

And then we headed off to do more family stuff. The weekend was a great opportunity for me to meet C’s other side of his family and we spent Mother’s Day lunch with his aunts and grandmother. I had a really lovely time and it was a really nice way to end the weekend. After lunch we caught the bus to the airport and headed home.

I’m not sure I’m a big fan of the whirlwind one day on the other side of the country and back thing, especially when I’ve got a high sleep debt but it was worth it. Great to see everyone in a non con setting, a bit more laid back and a lot of fun.

Tags: aurealis awards, Galactic Suburbia

One of the things I really enjoyed about reading Sweater Quest was the various discussions around knitting and knitting philosophy. I think you can find universal truths everywhere and I am always looking for them. Something that the Knit Harlot said in it was that she loved how nothing really terrible can happen when you knit. She says the worst thing is you set out with a ball of yarn to knit a sweater, and you end up with a ball of yarn (no sweater). You still have your ball of yarn. I like that. And it’s helped me move beyond perfectionism about the first jumper I’m currently knitting. It’s not perfect. It looks handmade. That’s because it is. And it’s not the last thing I will ever knit, I will get better and more than that, the jumper will eventually get worn and then worn out and I’ll part with it. It’s the circle of (knitted) life.

But I liked the idea that … you know … if you never do anything because you’re so scared of it not being perfectly executed, then you will never do anything. And how is that better? And this turns out to be a really good way to break through paralysis or roadblocks. Or in other words, sometimes a decision is better than the right decision, especially when you no longer fear failure. What’s the worst thing that can happen when you execute an idea (especially when it’s not a life or death one) and it doesn’t work out?

I’m starting to feel like I’m making headway on things that have been hard to conquer in the past. And it turns out, that with progress on any of these, the most effective thing has been consistency. So I’ve been very slowly, every day, working on culling and decluttering. And some days it might only be one or two things but will power is a muscle – it gets stronger the more you use it. It gets easier to cull and part with things the more often and regularly you do it. And I used to know this, I just got out of practice. I have now almost completely cleared out the “to donate or sell” corner of stuff I had piled when unpacking. I have slowly been taking it in small shopping bags, now and again, to charity bins (there aren’t many near our place so I have to do it when I go up to Perth). Today, I made the decision that selling my culled books on eBay was not worth it and, after the discussion with the secondhand bookstore owner yesterday, I decided to donate them. Today, I took all those not currently up on eBay, and also some craft kits that I was planning on selling, and donated them. And it felt AWESOME!  I parted with stash and I parted with book collection and the world didn’t end and I feel more free! I am loving the cleared space – the space that I know used to be filled with things that made me feel bad and guilty.

And I went a step further. Whilst I was procrastinating on making a decision about something else (I did, in the end, just make one and moved on), I decided to sort my To Be Read bookcase in my bedroom. I decided to shelve the books by genre since I feel like I am more of a reader who feels like genre (so I might feel in the mood for YA, a short story or nonfiction). I took them all out to sort and as I did so, I did the kind of “airing of the stash” thing that knitters do. I looked at each book. And I decided that some of them I didn’t actually want to read, that if I was in the middle of one and hadn’t gone back to it in over a year, then it was ok to not force myself to finish it just to say I had but rather to just … NOT! OMG I feel AWESOME having given myself the permission to not finish books I’m not enjoying. I kind of want to (and am) start looking at reading like Simon from The Readers Podcast – he’s reading like it’s the Apocalypse. And seriously, if you think, hey I might only have this year left to read, do I want this book to be one of those?, it’s amazing how much easier deciding not to finish or read something becomes. Guilt free!

And I decided to cull my TBR bookcase to only contain books I honestly see myself reading in the next year or two. And the rest  I took out. That makes this bookcase much less guilt making with the books I feel I *should* be reading and more with the enticing here’s the books I *want* to read, which shall I read next? excitement. Aka how reading should be. And I’m going to be totally ok now with shelving unread books back into my general collection – that is, books that I want to read *at some point*. If I genuinely want to read something, and I feel in the mood for it, then I am perfectly capable of going and finding that book to read. So now I feel happier about sorting and culling the general collection and then having everything shelved by genre etc. Read and unread mingled. Because what is definitely worse than read and unread books co-mingling, is not being able to find any of the books you own exactly at the minute you want to find them. It especially applies to books like short story collections or nonfiction, which I really see as “own with intent” – books I want to own and intend one day to read, or to refer to.

And all of this has had me thinking about craft stash. And other perishable things (like gift soaps etc). I think I have gotten to a place where I don’t know what happens if you use the stash. I was rummaging in the stash on Saturday night (where, OMG I think I found evidence of moths OMG) and happened upon a very delicious hank of yarn I had forgotten I’d bought – Socks that Rock in Stormy Weather (it’s a gorgeous spectrum of greys). And I thought, hey that might be great for a new scarf – I need some lacy, lovely scarves now that I work back in the city, total scarf wearing for decoration type attire requirements. And my next thought was, but I bought that for socks and I also really want a pair of socks in that colourway. And I think that’s where an obstacle comes up for me. I could knit the skein and buy a new one. Or I could knit the skein and knit myself a pair of socks in a different colourway. Or whatever. But I literally couldn’t think past the idea of actually using up my stash. That I like the stash and don’t know what I would do if I actually worked through it – this concept is not one I am comfortable with. When in reality, working through the stash would make me happy by a) knitting, which I love b) turning lovely skeins into lovely wearable possessions for me or for gifts and c) free me from guilt about buying new yarn. Yet this is still not something I feel comfortable with.

And I wonder if this is a similar thing at play with my TBR. Working through it would mean I would have to go out there and find new books to read (note, I have no problem impulse buying books). There is something comfortable at being familiar with what you have yet still to do. That and, I always feel like I need brain energy to switch into reading a new book – new writing, new concepts, new worlds to get used to. I suspect though, that this is just a reading muscle that needs to get flexed to build strength again. Hence the encouragement of reading what I feel like reading and maybe reviewing them here to a) mark the read books b) validate book choices beyond the peer pressure and c) getting back comfortable at review

I mentioned on last episode’s Galactic Suburbia that I’m reading a lot of nonfiction at the moment. It’s quite weird for me as I haven’t really read nonfiction for fun in a few years. It’s going through a bit of a reassessment of aspects of my life and my reading is one of them. Basically, I’ve discovered you don’t have to force yourself to do or like things and that (revelation ahead) if you choose not to, you are much happier. Sounds obvious, and yet, not actually how I was running my life for the last decade or more. And so I realised that the reason I’m not finishing books is I am not reading the books that I need to be reading right now – are you a mood reader like me? I have to be in the right frame of mind for certain books and it’s why I tend to travel with more books than I can read in case I’m not in the mood for some. And right now, nonfiction, and nonfiction about craft, seems to be really appealing to me.

In Sweater Quest, Adrienne Martini spends a year trying to knit an Alice Starmore jumper. If you’re a knitter, you already know about the complexity of the fair isle and the holy grail that is the Alice Starmore projects. And if you’re not, you probably don’t really care. So suffice to day, in some ways this challenge is akin to the Julie Julia cooking project. And I kinda like me a craft related quest. Maybe if epic fantasy involved some kind of quest across country for maiden silk yarn, I’d like relate more?

This book is written in a very friendly tone – similar to the way online knitting blogs are written. Again, if you’re a knitter, you know what I mean, and if you’re not, well, knitters are pretty tech savvy and have many an online community. Because of course, knitting is deeply fascinating but noone said knitters didn’t love to bond over more than just the gorgeous yarn and pattern you’re working on right now. In Sweater Quest, we get to know Adrienne and a bit about who she is as a knitter and a person.

I enjoyed the quest to knit the Starmore but what I enjoyed even more were the truly crunchy questions Adrienne’s journey threw out. The thing about the Starmore is, according to Alice Starmore, you can only knit a Starmore if you use her specified yarn and colour combinations. If you deviate, she (and her lawyers) might just ask you to not call it a Starmore. And the problem is, they don’t actually make the yarn for many of her older patterns anymore. If you aren’t aware of the Starmore controversies and you like yourself a bit of internet drama, then this book is a great introduction to some of the goings on from the early 2000s and will point you in directions to chase up a bit more of that story.

Adrienne goes on a journey, both in writing her book and physically as she visits lots of the big name online knitters, asking the question, if she isn’t using Starmore yarn (she had to substitute one or two as she couldn’t chase down all of them), is she knitting a Starmore at all? I don’t know that I every really felt like I got an answer to that question. But I loved the thinking beyond that – a designer dreams up a knitted item and writes the pattern, knitters tend to pick that up, change the colour and/or the yarn brand, maybe change the cable here or there, add length, reduce length, change the collar or the sleeve… at what point does the end product no longer resemble the intent? When is it no longer the pattern? And more than that, what does a designer own?

I loved thinking these ideas over in terms of how they translated to writing and publishing and plagiarism. But I also loved the ideas as they applied to knitting. For years, I have been laughing at new knitters online who would never even have thought that you could look at a pattern and knit it in red instead of yellow – that they would hunt around for red jumpers if that’s what they were intending to knit, rather than find a pattern they liked and then just change the colour of the wool. Here in Australia, it’s only been really recently (and even more recent here in WA), that the yarn brand specified in the patterns was available to buy, let alone the colour. We are used to substituting not just the colour but the yarn and thus swatching before knitting is obviously a must (nonknitters – first you must work out how the yarn knits out – in terms of tension and so on – by knitting a square of a set number of stitches and then comparing the resulting dimensions to those of the pattern to figure out if you have to add or subtract stitches to be able to knit the resulting size garment). Basically, we are used to *not* using the same colours or yarn brand for knitting. So for me, the idea of Starmore’s, that to knit her jumpers you had to use her wool, was mindboggling. And before the internet and ebay, basically meant you would never be able to knit her work at all.

I dunno that I’ve finished thinking through a lot of the ideas from this book. I really enjoyed the food for thought. Recommended to my knitting geek friends.

Wow, this last week has been full on. I’m back in that whole finding a new routine, getting overwhelmed with a whole new normal and doing all that background reading to get up to speed. That’s right, I started my new job this week. And I also might have written my car off on Monday in the most understated, not dangerous accident one could ever have.

After the car bingle, I discovered that I can cross the street right outside my house and get on a bus that is 10 minutes from the train station, get on the train, get off the train, go up the stairs, walk round the side of that building, get in the lift, walk to my desk all in under an hour. I have absolutely no complaints about the public transport to my new job and back. It’s actually MUCH easier than driving (finding a spot to park at the train station is a pain). AND I get to sit on the train and read. A Book! Fabulous!

And I’m pretty much loving the new job. My new team is great, I feel like I fit in pretty well. The office space is pretty good and it’s inside a building designed to avoid sick building syndrome – it’s new and it doesn’t have that new building smell! It’s pretty awesome. No headaches. No feeling lightheaded by the afternoon. No fatigue when I get home. Not bad! It’s designed to make you walk around a fair bit so going to the bathroom or kitchen means you get some good movement in. I get two computer screens, to encourage paperless working. The job itself is going to be full on as the project is already behind schedule. And it’s going to be challenging. Which I’m kinda really looking forward to. It’s also kind of weird to come into a new job and be all over a lot of the issues and history. It’s a bit of a brain adjustment for me as I am taking a step back from the approach I’ve been requiring in my day job for the last 7 years and am now being more of a straight water engineer, if that makes sense? I don’t much like to talk about day job stuff here so I’ll just say that this is taking me more back to the nuts and bolts of my training as I learn to apply that in a new philosophical approach/role. It’s cool in that it feels like a breath of fresh air through my brain.

Then I’ve been coming home and pulling late nights for Twelfth Planet Press. Leaving little time for much else. Hopefully that won’t last too long, once I have the last few things done for Natcon, things should ease off a bit. But I’m kinda having fun and that is the point, I think!

Today I found myself floating around a bit and ended up tagging along with my mum to her secondhand bookshop where she wanted to exchange some books. As we were browsing whilst the books were being valued I noticed a sign which said that due to the current climate in bookselling, she was no longer offering held credit. This piqued my interest and so I wandered over to talk to her about what she and her business were experiencing in the wake of ebooks.

She told me that times were hard, that she thought they’d be able to ride it through but that she’d had 4000 books in and no books out – I didn’t ask her specifically what timeframe that was but she clarified that she’d really been feeling it in the last 12 months. On probing, she felt that it was the ereader that was the main factor. She said that people were coming in and telling her they were getting rid of all their books and would never buy a paperback book again. I thought that was interesting and wondered aloud to her as to whether that would be a long term, permanent thing, noting that I had heard that (particularly in Australia) a lot of people were getting a Kindle and then downloading the free ebooks online and not much else. I have read elsewhere that classics are being downloaded the most because they are free and the Kindle offers a nice way to get that “should have read” reading done but that other parts of the book industry were not feeling it as much. She also told me that some people were coming back and citing that they missed reading physical books. She told me that the worst problem was that she felt people were cleaning out all their books at home, racking up like a $200 credit with no intent to ever by a book from her in exchange at all. That she felt like she was being used as a dumping ground.

It was a really sad conversation. Her secondhand bookshop is small but has always been a good one. It’s the one my mother frequents  – she’s a voracious reader and was bringing in some really good condition, recently released books to swap. And the owner of the shop was well read and wandering around recommending books and answering questions – I threw a few at her as well. And there were some great customers who came in and shared a few recs and talked to me a bit about a few writers too. It’s a great little bookstore.

It’s easy to talk about the predicted future of the book industry and how brick and mortar stores and secondhand bookshops will die but it’s another thing to look at an experience that you genuinely love and realise that that too will go. Secondhand bookstores are a great meeting place, a great place to find recommendations and to chat over books and writers. And I know online you can get forums, and reviews and recommendations, and it’s not like I don’t buy books online or find my way to new titles via online means (or run a reviews website for that matter). But I don’t want one to be at the total expense of the other. I love bookstores too.

I bought some books – she has a pretty good Australian science fiction/fantasy section. And I made sure to push our expenditure over the required credit usage. Because I don’t want bookstores to die.

Tags: bookstores, publishing industry

So a while ago, a long long long while ago, I used to discuss issues on my blog relating to feminism and the gender disparity in SF. Lots of those conversations would get derailed and pulled back into what we coined “Feminism 101″ – that’s like when we all are mid conversation and then have to stop and convince someone that sexism exists. And those of us who were mid conversation and kept getting stopped just at the interesting bits, got frustrated. Stopping to explain Feminism 101, prevents the rest of us from moving beyond that conversation and into the crunchier bits, the more interesting parts of the conversation. That’s kind of where the idea of Galactic Suburbia came out of. A place where we could have a one or two hour conversation and not get derailed and prevented from delving.

In and amongst the blog posts at the time, we would note the gender disparity in anthologies, in which authors were being collected and in awards shortlists and winners. And at the time, people would say “oh it’s just this one” or “it’s not as often as you think” or … bleurgh go find the feminist bingo (women aren’t there cause they aren’t any good, I read for quality, I read for reasons other than gender but happen to only read/like male authors, not as many women get published/write/submit etc etc etc etc *yawn*). We had all those conversations. For years. It got boring. And so for the record, I don’t engage anymore not because those view points are right and I lost but because I’m over there –> *elsewhere* <– doing more interesting things. But the one thing I was determined to do then, and remain doing on Galactic Suburbia, is to continue to point out gender disparity on ToCs and on awards lists so that it doesn’t go unsaid and it doesn’t get pushed away and under  a carpet somewhere. When an award or a ToC bucks that trend, we point that out too because 1) yay and 2) isn’t that interesting! and 3) doesn’t happen all that often.

Mondy has crunched some recent numbers for gender breakdown for the Ditmars this week and shows an interesting change of more women, overall, in fiction being nominated for Ditmars. Interesting to note is that this number wraps up novels, novellas and short stories into 1 number. Whilst I’d be interested to see what the breakdown across these three categories is, it’s still an interesting graph. It shows in the last three years, more women than men (in total, for these 3 categories) have been nominated for Ditmars.

The question of course is, what does that mean? Did we go too far? Are we now looking at further disparity? Are men being persecuted and experiencing sexism by the voters? Are more women suddenly being published than men?

I think that these questions are hard for me to answer given that I have more than 1 horse in the races here (both in terms of the works nominated and the commentary being made on the awards). I have not made it any secret that an objective of mine is to showcase Australia women short story writers.

I don’t, though, think there is need for us to panic that the menz are in trouble just because an odd year or two show shortlists dominated by female writers. Noone panicked for decades when they were male heavy, afterall. And I don’t think the quest is for every category to have equal numbers of men and women, every year. I think parity in fact could be seen in years of all female, or even all male, shortlists. *As long as* those years are the outliers and not the norm. And that’s really the point isn’t it? The sky isn’t falling down just because more women were shortlisted this year. It’s the greatest number on the ballot in these categories, probably, for the lifetime of the award (no numbers crunched to support this statement). Doesn’t really say anything. It doesn’t correct for the long term trend.  And unless we have 50 years of only women making the shortlists, I don’t think we need to panic, just yet, about the reverse injustice.

A big shoutout to Sim who knows me and how I think. It was her comments on a previous post about this stuff that really helped me move past my paralysis and guilt relating to my crafting/not crafting/stash/huge number of WIPs. She suggested I put away the charm quilt that was squelching my crafting mojo, be cool with the project lying on hold for a while, and then audit my entire WIPs.

So this took me a while, both due to limited time and also having to actually face both the mess and the unfinished objects. But as one of my tasks I have tackled in my 5 day break, I actually spent a good couple of hours on this. I both created order and more serenity with my craft WIPs and space and I also found the spare bedroom bed. (I then was encouraged to sort out all the clean washing in that room the following day and found the bedroom floor for bonus points. A couple more smaller tasks to go in that room and I can sign it off as Completed. It’s funny how once you break through the paralysis, you just keep eating away at the elephant. And it’s all so much less insurmountable).

I took photos of everything. All my knitting works in progress have been uploaded to my Ravelry page. And yeah, I can see how in that form it’s all a lot less scary and horrible and a lot more encouraging to work through. My name over at Ravelry is girliejones if you’re then and want to be friends.

There doesn’t seem to be an equally useful quilting equivalent so I opened a spreadsheet and loaded all my quilt projects before folding them neatly up and putting them away in my craft cupboard. I also put all related bits and pieces for each project in its own labelled box. This killed two birds – 1. everything is neat and grouped and easy to pick up and put down and 2. it put use to all the little boxes I can’t part with.

Here’s an overview of the quilt projects. You’ll be able to see the gradual reduction in mess on the bed underneath as the task progressed.

The only thing I have left is to sort my fabric scraps. I’ve been picking up a few scrap quilt books and it turns out, saving every last morsel of fabric is ok and perfectly normal and you can make really stunning quilts from them. And you don’t have to only have one scrap quilt for all your scraps. Thus my dreaded scrap quilt which was getting me down can be finished off with the blocks made, I can feel good about drawing a line under it and feel excited about looking into other possible quilts. But first I have to sort them. So – more boxes to be put to work as I sort these according to colour. Another ongoing project but easy to go into the room and do a few and then move on.

Now I just have to decide if I feel up to cataloguing the rest of my yarn stash into Ravelry …

But I feel *so* much better now! And everything is far less daunting and confronting and doable again. And I have a few finished pieces to show! I am interested to see if my catalogues will be used by me – it can be really easy to file that stuff away and then it’s out of sight so you don’t feel bad and then you never go looking for it so you can continue to not feel bad. But the interesting thing in all this decluttering has been to let go of the guilt of having to finish something – a book, a project, whatever – just because I bought it or started it. It’s very freeing to say, “actually, I don’t like this” or “I’m not enjoying this” or “it doesn’t work for me” or “it’s not what I thought it would be” and to then act by giving yourself permission to … gift or donate the book or unravel a started project. So much future time freed up for new and other things!

What you want is the dramatic – you want to flash from the before to the after photo with maybe a montage of yourself flipping back your fringe, wiping sweat off your brow, balancing a pencil on your thumb, laughing at a joke and sipping a bottle of water. You want to go from A to B, from being past you to future you without having to sojourn for long in the present or the between times. To get the A+ in the exam without actually having to put in all that hard work studying.

Would that that was how it worked.

And what a revelation that it’s not. Not.

Or maybe that’s the real reason that it’s taken me this long. I’m starting to wonder if maybe it’s that I’m inherently lazy. I know what you’re going to say to that, so let me stop you there and say, actually I *appear* productive because I *procrastinate*. A. Lot. You see publishing company. I see how that was supposed to be a masters degree, phd if I’d really dug deep, in environmental engineeering. Sure, I prefer the publishing company but is that really the point?

My transformation has been going on a lot longer than the 12 weeks that I’ve been doing the 12 week body transformation. It was part of the reason I signed up at all. But I think this program kicked me into top gear on addressing my physical transformation (still in progress) as well as teaching me how to think differently which has accelerated a lot of the mental one (also still in progress).

I’ve learned a lot in the last 3 months that I’ve been able to apply to other things I’m still grappling with. Number 1 is – no more excuses. It turns out for me, that excuses are my number 1 reason for not doing things and when you check yourself and become aware that something is an *excuse* and not a *reason*, it’s much harder to let that play out. When you start removing your ability to accept excuses from yourself in one area of life (like, I can’t exercise today because it is raining), you start to stop accepting them elsewhere.

Blocks. I’m learned to look through them, around them and vaporise them. So the above, I can’t exercise because it’s raining, becomes – well I know I don’t like to exercise in the rain, so here is a DVD I can do inside at home. Damn! Excuse identified, solution provided. Annoying! But then you start to look elsewhere at why you aren’t doing things – so in part I think it’s cause I’m lazy. (I should say, obviously I know I work hard and for long hours and that I want to read a book or knit for fun and I am *entitled* to do this, but I also have things I want to achieve, and if I want that, if I really want that, then I have to work harder. It would be simpler to just not want it, then this wouldn’t be an issue.) But ok. The other thing is, I get blockages when it’s something I don’t want to do or say – like, I struggle with keeping my inbox in shape because a lot of my emails will have to be telling people no for something or that I don’t want to do what they want me to, or asking for more postage or sending rejections etc. And I don’t want to do that, I don’t like how it makes me feel. But .. those are just excuses! And so it goes … ain’t nothing but to go forward, say no as best and kindly as I can, and move on.

I discovered that a plan, a realistic plan, works. I’m worried that was such a surprise to me. I make plans all the time and I achieve things. But a couple of weeks ago, I reached the goal weightloss I had set myself for these 12 weeks and we were looking at the goals I was setting for the next 12 weeks. And I looked at C with real incredulity as I said, “but … it really *works*, I mean, you say you want to lose X kg, you execute the plan, and… and … then you get the goal at the end?” and he was really puzzled by that. (I spose his day job revolves around such thinking.) But I’m not sure I’ve ever really done that before – set a plan, break it down into tiny steps of how you’re going to do it, and then follow it to the letter and then get where you wanted to go. And a lot of it has to do with the fact that I did set myself a realistic goal. And I know that. But it also makes me wonder if all I need is a more detailed plan for my life

But this has also reinforced something that I did know – it’s all about consistency. It’s about following the plan, keeping your eye on the prize in the distance and not letting the ebb and flow of individual days get in the way. It’s about chipping away at it every single day no matter what. But this is actually quite huge. I’ve discovered as long as I lose about 200g a day, I’m going to reach my weightloss goals. I don’t always lose 200g a day, oddly thurs through sat/sun I’m pretty light and then I’m not from then to weigh in on a weds. I know this now about my body and I don’t freak out if I bob around the goal of the week. Eye on the prize.

But consistency is unbelievably important for any large or long term goal. I always knew this about publishing. I work on TPP every single day. Every day I do something to move something along. My rule of thumb has always been to edit/proof something every day. If I do that, the book gets done by deadline. But now I include that – do something every day – to a bunch of others aspects about running the press. As long as you keep things ticking over, it will all get done. And make sure you do it with consistency (always give good customer service, always be prompt, be professional etc).

I’m starting to see how this applies to other things. Like big, seemingly insurmountable things – like the big house declutter and big craft projects. I’m learning to see things like these as dynamic, ongoing projects. That if I chip away at them every day, they will eventually get done. And I need to find the equivalent of the 200 g daily milestone rather than looking at the whole thing and getting upset I didn’t build Rome in a day. I often watch the Hoarders Buried  Alive show to reassure myself I’m not like that, and to kick myself into not being that. It’s the best way to get me to look at the last dregs of my house move stuff still to sort out. So much emotion wrapped up in this last declutter. But I’ve been starting to see progress finally and it’s from just continuing to chip away at things and also at finding ways to go around roadblocks. For example, I finally started addressing the book collection issue last week. If I have less books to shelve, then that will help in deciding how to shelve them. I started culling. And I started donating what I didn’t think I could sell and I started eBaying what I thought I could. I removed three shopping bags of books from my house last week and have sold 10 books so far online (I’ve made $7). I keep in mind the hoarders who successfully overcome their being buried alive – it’s a long process, it’s not won in a day – if they got their houses bulldozed away in one day, that would deal with the mess but not the issues that got them there. There is something really vital about actually working through the problem. By being in control – by setting a plan and carrying it out – by talking yourself through the excuses, the panic ,the roadbloacks and the emotions, you can not only achieve the goal but be freed when you finally reach/overcome it.

I also learned something so important and so freaking obvious it’s not funny that this is a revelation. You can’t undo hardwork. If I go off the nutrition plan and have something “bad for me” – I haven’t ruined my diet, I have eaten one thing with a bunch of calories. That *could* mean that I go on to exceed my calorie intake for the day, but it might not. One thing is for sure, eating more “bad things” is only going to *add* to the exceedance. It’s not like you restart the next day at a nil balance. And it’s not like you have a tick or a cross for your day performance and if you do 1 bad thing you go from a tick to a cross. And in fact, if you eat one thing that was off plan, most likely, you can wiggle around and accommodate it. You know, if the rest of the time you are consistently on the plan. One chocolate bar does not make you fat. I have no idea, now, how the logical course of action in my head to having one “treat” was to say “oh well, ruined it now, may as well tuck in and eat whatever the hell now, there’s no point.” Which of course means that now, having one treat is no longer associated with a feeling of “badness” or being naughty. It’s a choice. And it’s amazing how often, when given the choice, I don’t want what’s on offer.

It’s the getting used to most of the time saying no to things I normally said yes to so that I can say yes sometimes and it be ok. And the only way I don’t mind doing that is when I look at how many times I said yes to things I either didn’t care one way or the other about or didn’t even necessarily like. I said yes because it was there or because it was offered to me. Not good reasons to say yes about anything. And guess what? When you get used to say no in one aspect of your life … it gets easier to say it in others …

The transformation continues.

I watched me yet more reality TV this weekend. Last weekend I was avoiding things, or relaxing, whichev. This weekend I was sick. The kind of sick where I’m too sick to even think about work let alone feel bad for not doing any. We ended up spending 3 hours in Emergency on a Saturday night to find out that they don’t know what was going on. C says I take him on the best dates and apparently the TV had on Marley and Me which was the movie we saw on the day we met. I was mostly outside, not watching it,  due to the OCD panic attack and the not enjoying the whole ED vibe.

Anyway, I spent a lot of the weekend watching stuff I’d recorded on Foxtel for just this kind of day – Tori Spelling’s latest reality show, The Real Housewives of Atlanta, Tabitha Takes Over and Bethenny Ever After. And it only just occurred to me tonight that whilst Hollywood is still struggling to find roles for older women and for powerful women in lead roles, reality TV has no issue with it. And not only that, but in these shows we find complex women from a diverse array of backgrounds and living real lives – trying to balance being good mothers and partners with still following their personal dreams and all the guilt and difficulties that go with that. Well except for Tabitha, that’s not what her show is about. But I realised that when I’m looking around to see other women doing what I am working towards, I find a lot of awesome women in shows like this.

Take Tabitha for example – an Aussie in America, she’s strong and confident and knows a lot about business. She comes into struggling hair salons (though in her new series, I just saw her take over a bar), sizes up why it’s losing money, deals with staff issues, makes over the place and gives advice to the owner about what they’re screwing up. She does present herself as the Bitch, in her own words, and she owns that. But she knows a heck of a lot about running a business, both on the floor and behind the scenes, and I’ve learned a lot that can be applied to any other kind of business too. I even discovered my Dad watches that show (he used to run MBA programs) and he says that he learns a lot from her. And she’s gay – that’s actually not relevant, though she’s openly so on the show and often interacts with the gay community, but this speaks to the diversity of women role models on offer.

The Real Housewives of Atlanta is an interesting one. In this version of the franchise, only one of the “wives” (right now only 2 of the women are actually married) is white. So you have almost a whole cast of black women and it’s not often that that happens and what it does is it allows black women to play all the roles – in reality TV shows they edit the season so that there is an overarching narrative and usually different people end up being the good and the bad guys over a season. Sometimes one person acts as the agitator and next season they might be the peacemaker or everybody’s friend. I think there must be something in those contracts that demand drama of the women cat fighting variety and also some of those women don’t appear to be actual friends so they must have to have a set number of social events that all of them must attend etc. So you get the big fight somewhere in the season and then lots of episodes of groups of women gossiping and plotting and whatnot. But your sympathy towards characters seems to change over the course of the series. Aside from all that stuff – which I don’t really enjoy because they always seem to be such petty things that they’re fighting over and people never seem to have the whole conversation that you’d need to actually resolve the original conflict – I’m really interested in the women. They are socially powerful, some of them come from the socialites scene. Most of them are very wealthy – like I can’t comprehend the wealth of these wealthy (collections of $15k handbags and shoes) – and I’m fascinated how they came to it. Some married into it. Some seem to move from wealthy man to wealthy man and accumulate it and that’s not very interesting. Though some of those women then take the money and start businesses and so on, and that, I think can be empowering. If it’s sustainable. But some of those women really did make the money themselves – one is a successful song writer and music producer (though the only work I’ve heard of was the album she wrote for TLC). And another was a model. I enjoy watching their struggles to juggle parenting and life and work. And the choices they make about all of those and how they feel about them. Cause there’s no right answer in that stuff and mostly, I think, you/women end up feeling bad.

I have to confess that, though it took me a while to actually watch it, I’ve discovered that I really admire Tori Spelling after watching her ridiculous reality TV shows. She has a very bad rap, every one assumes she is rich cause of her father and that she is stupid because Donna was in 90210. But actually, her father left her almost none of his fortune and she got paid very poorly for her work for him, and got almost nothing in the syndication of that show. In watching her on her reality shows I’ve discovered she is smart and really really funny (I think you need to be smart to be funny) and she’s very ambitious. She works hard and she mucks in and raises her kids herself, well she has a nanny too because she still actually works full time. She is a very caring, compassionate and down to earth person, very aware of her identity in the public eye but also really solid and real. And she is constantly working on business deals and so on. I am enjoying watching and learning from her, both in how to deal with your real self versus your perceived self, and how to not let it get to you, and also in balancing work/life.

And Bethenny. I think I love her the most and was so hanging out for the next season of her show, which I’ve just discovered is now airing. She was originally on The Real Housewives of New York but it soon became clear she needed her own show. She was single, mostly, on the Housewives and then she met Jason and got a show for her wedding and then life after her wedding. She’s a chef who worked for celebrities, making them organic, nutritional, calorie controlled food and then she developed her own line of sugarfree and all the other free (gluten, dairy etc) baked goods. And then she invented the Skinny Margarita which became a whole brand and then she sold it to Jim Beam for a LOT of money. In the meantime, she was still doing speaking events and writing books on the back of her success of both the cooking and the Housewives stuff. But what’s to love about her is she is unbelievably hilarious, she will not miss an opportunity to make the joke, even if doing it will cost her (you know, making light of a bad situation etc) and she is smart, ambitious and successful. She had a baby straight after her wedding and so taking care of her baby has been thrown into the mix. And she just turned 40. So she’s you know, kind of where I would like to be (I don’t feel I need to be THAT rich!) and she’s still struggling with what we all struggle with – how you can fit that much into this little time and still give everyone what they need and want, and still do what you need to do for you.

There should be more women like any and all of these women written into the fictional TV and movies that are made. These women exist. Women exist across a whole spectrum other than just virgin and crone / girlfriend and mother. But until then, I think I’m going to feel less guilty about watching my reality TV.

We launched 2012, the very first anthology I ever edited (I coedited this with my good friend Ben Payne) at Swancon in 2008. It was the first book title under the Twelfth Planet Press banner. It seemed fitting to give away a bunch of copies of this in the Swancon con bags this year. It also feels like that book was an eternity ago. I was in such a different place at that time – I was freshly out of my long term relationship and still a bit delicate. But I loved working on that book so much that I knew this publishing thing was for me and that I wanted to give it a very real go. Funnily enough, C picked up a copy of that book at that Swancon though he swears he didn’t go to the launch – we had it in the underground car park of the hotel and it went really well, I met Rob Shearman there and made a firm friend for life.

I’d tried a few things before this book – started the ASif! review website back in 2004. We stopped counting when we hit 1000 reviews on the original site and we’ve since published 378 reviews on the new one. It’s funny to think back to when this was the only project I had on. It used to take up all my time what with the books coming in, contacting and requesting review copies, which I had to do a lot in the beginning, and then getting the books to reviewers and editing and publishing the reviews. Every review has been edited by me. And now it just happens. Sometimes I get a bit behind in editing and publishing the reviews and I’ve had others come on board to help me with administration in the back end of it – G for a couple of years and now Tehani. I’m proud of the site. We try to review as much Australian specfic as we can and we review a lot of female authors. I’ve not done the stats but at a guess, it feels like we review more women than men.

Before 2012, I had also tried a few online projects. I kinda laugh now by how many people told me at the time that they liked the concept of New Ceres but they would prefer it in print form cause they didn’t like to read on the computer screen. How times have changed! I’m proud though that I tried something that hadn’t really been done much before, certainly there weren’t many online Aussie specfic publications back then. And we tried a few different things like paying pro rates and using a subscription model and interactive content. It wasn’t a successful idea but I don’t really have a problem with that. I would rather try something new, not ever done before, and fail than not try it at all. I’d rather fail from action than not succeed because  I didn’t take the risk to try it out.

I much prefer to push the boundaries and do something new. I’m far more interested in looking for unoccupied niches. Doing different things enables diversity and the opportunity for writers and artists to experiment. It really excites me when someone pitches something to me that is just out there and original and fresh (and good!).

I’ve spent the last 5 years really learning a lot about small press publishing. I could tell you with every project I’ve done the mistake I made It’s given me a great checklist going forward of what to look out for. And as I sit here with a bunch of exciting plans for the coming 2 to 3 years, I suspect I have a whole lot more learning curve to go. But that excites me! It’s challenging and invigorating to try to do something noone else has ever done before. I love the problem solving that’s required – researching what’s been tried, what worked and what didn’t and why it didn’t and then looking at how I can try to move around the obstacle in another way.

It’s so strange to sit and look at the 16 books I’ve published so far – 16 already?! And I have 3 more almost off to the printer’s. Maybe I’ll finish the year off with my 20th book?! Who knows! But I love it. I love every part of publishing. And I feel so honoured to have had the opportunity to work with the amazing writers we’ve published so far. For me, the synergy of working with a writer or writers and just letting the creative sparks fly is why I’m in it. It’s the rush for me. I love it. And I love it when the book pulls together – when you say yes, these words in this order, they work. And then Amanda will send me a cover that just nails the book’s tone and feel. I get goosebumps. Every book she creates, I love better than the last. And for me, that’s the goal – to make every book better than the last one. If I do that, then I’m doing ok. And then I love letting this precious thing that we’ve created out into the world to see what readers and critics think of it. We’re so lucky to have the support base we have, that grows every year, readers who buy our books and get what it is we are doing. I love our customers too – I love processing orders, maybe communicating with our readers or a bookstore and packaging up the books and sending them out.

I love publishing. And if I don’t succeed, in the end, it’s hard to look back on what we’ve done so far and think it didn’t mean anything. I don’t think I could ever say it hasn’t been worth it. I’m blown that I won the World Fantasy last year. I mean, I really feel like I’m just getting started – like I just made it to the first rung of the ladder. And, for what I want to achieve, in the long term plan (yes there is one but I don’t write it down because it scares people), that’s where I am – rung 1. But what a ride it’s been to get there!

I can’t wait to see what happens in the next 5 years. We’ll be talking a bit more later this year about some of the projects we’re working on! But it feels good to look back at what Twelfth Planet Press has done, how it has grown in titles and staff. Our little seed of a dream that keeps growing and growing.

I’ve loved reading all your comments on how you shelve your books, whether you have reading queues and what books you keep and why. You’ve given me lots to think about. I also loved Tansy’s post which it sparked – Book Karma and the To Be Read Shelf. She covers lots of things that I was wanting to get to, after my first confession. I like the idea of slowing down on book accumulation to give myself a chance to catch up. But alas, 1. I read really slowly – we’re talking 12 novels a year if I try hard these days and 2. I still want to believe I can keep up with the shiny zeitgeist. Do you see how 1. and 2. conflict? (It’s not that I don’t know.)

The other problem is that I really want to get to the whole Hugo list before  I vote. That’s going to take me all the time between now and the deadline. It will also mean I will behind on 2012 reading for the 2013 ballot.

But that means I’m probably not going to actually get to my To Be Read shelf til well into the latter part of the year even if I miraculously picked up reading speed.

Which means I am pondering more the idea of getting read of the queue completely. I’m seriously considering just merging all my bookcases and shelving everything by genre/category and then you know … just whatever. If I really want to read a book, it’s not that hard to walk two rooms down to the bookcase and getting it out. And if out of sight means out of mind and I never read it, did I really want to?

This year I’m experimenting, well it’s gone beyond trials into action and changing in thought process, with freeing myself of self imposed guilt, negativity and general bad feelings. There’s enough crap *out there* to fend off without self sabotaging from in here. And so it turns out, the world doesn’t end if you cull stuff/people/ books/emails/clothes/blogs you don’t like or actually want. It’s ok, liberating even, to start to identify what I don’t like, outside of what I might think you’re *supposed* to like. It’s letting me carve out a sense of myself and I’m really starting to like it. Firstly, it reduces down what I consume to things I’m excited about or interested in or make me happy. That makes a vast amount of difference to my mood. Remove the things that bore, disinterest, irritate. Pretty nice. Secondly, it’s giving me space to figure out who I am in a way that I’m not sure I’ve ever really done before. For example, I’ve discovered I have a completely different taste in clothing than I thought. More on that another day.

Relinquishing where I can self imposed anguish seems like a good thing to do. Which brings me back to my book guilt and my reading guilt. I have a reading block at the moment (I just can’t seem to focus on anything and am not finishing anything I start. I don’t really enjoy reading at the moment.) and it might not get fixed real soon. And even if it does, I am not going to be working my way through my To Be Read queue at any pace. I’m not joking about its expanse. So … what use does the burgeoning bookcase leering at me with books not read do me? On the other hand, I’m not sure I could just let go of the commitment to read these books. If I assimilate them in, there’s no going back. Well, worse, if I go back later to pull out all the unread books, more will be pulled out than got assimilated in. Which is also the problem – it’s completely random what is in the To Be Read bookcase and what is not.

ARGH!

The other day something I had been avoiding for a while now smacked me in the face. Well actually, it knocked one of my Ditmars off a shelf and broke it (it’s one that was probably glued together in the first place so can be easily fixed, I hope). I’ve been in denial about it but the truth is – I have never actually unpacked my books and put them away in this house. Terri came to borrow a couple of books that I *know* I own but when I went looking for them, I couldn’t find them. Normally I am really pedantic about my books. They are the first possessions that I pack and move when I move house and I always always have a very specific way to shelve them.

Alas, I moved in with C in June last year and all I did was *unpack* my books. And locate them kind of in the study. I had lost bookcases in all my various house moves and all the bookcases here were full. So there was nowhere to unpack them into it. I did go and buy myself four bookcases from Ikea. Two are in the study and are filled hapazardly with my books. One got pilfered for C’s games in his man cave. And the fourth is in our bedroom and is filled with my To Be Read books. But there is no order or reason to any of my bookcases at the moment and worse, they nowhere near fit all of my book collection, some of which are stacked in front on the shelves (leading to Ditmar fatalities) or piled under my desk and just around.

I was really upset that I couldn’t lend Terri the books she was looking for. I did lend her some books she didn’t *know* she was looking for and I think that worked out ok. But I am really really unhappy that I don’t know which books are where and have just abandoned this part of settling in. I think maybe, I can’t really be properly settled in if my books aren’t.

On the weekend, I finally started to confront this issue. I started to sort my books into some grouping order – everything was just everywhere. As I started to sort them, I started to realise I could actually cull some books. This could help with the storage issue. And something else too. As I’ve continued to declutter, both in my physical and my electronic world, I’ve found a great sense of freedom and removal of weight from letting go or letting myself off the hook or out of the guilt of wanting to want to read or do or like certain things. I think this might also be part of settling into your late (eek!) thirties. I’m caring less about doing things to fit in. And I know we as a community pride ourselves on not doing things to fit in but even in this community, there is still pressure to read (and like) certain books or blogs or whatever. And I’ve started to notice that I force myself to try to like some things and then I ignore or don’t allow myself to just not. And lately, I’m kinda starting to let that go. Who cares if I don’t like something? Life is pretty short, too damn short, to spend it reading books you don’t like or doing something you don’t care for just because everyone else is. And as I start to let go, I’m actually finding I’m discovering ore of me in the process. But that’s something for another blog post.

So I realised that I didn’t need to keep books, to let them take up shelf space, just so I can impress someone else. If I don’t own a book any more, does that mean I didn’t read it? How would you know? And if I do own a book, does that mean I *have* read it? How would you know? So I started being ok with removing books from the collection. And some of that is about letting go of possessions I have dragged with me for the last 15 years and somehow contribute to defining me for that reason alone. I’m not done. I’m not nearly done. But I’m ok with having started.

I am still going to need more bookcases. But I have to first figure out where they would go.

But I’m actually posting about this to ask a question. I have more than one To Be Read area. My bookcase in my bedroom is my recent (last 2 to 3 years) accumulation of books to be read. I have another little bookcase (15 cm wide and only three shelves) in the study which is an overflow To Be Read bookcase, probably of books with a similar book stashing timeframe, possibly a bit longer. Kind of books I’m somewhat less wanting to read. This case can probably be properly sorted and perhaps weeded. But in my main book collection, I noticed I have a lot of books that I haven’t read but still want to own and at some point, not in the immediate future, intend to read. Some are classics and I never really feel bad about buying those and then popping them in the main collection. But not all are. And for some reason, I’m ok with them being there and not in the To Be Read and feel confident that when I feel like reading those specific titles, I will go looking for them. BUT … why don’t I feel that way about the main To Be Read books? And further, those books take up an entire bookcase. At some point, I intend to read them and then shelve them in the main collection. So … that means that I need another whole bookcase just for the To Be Read alone, assuming I continue to accumulate at a constant rate.

Do you keep your To Be Read books separately? How do you tell the difference between books you really intend to read and books you feel you should just own?

I have been remiss by not showing this to you sooner. Here is the gorgeous cover by Amanda Rainey for Kaaron Warren’s Twelve Planets collection, Through Splintered Walls.

Kaaron’s collection is Book 6 in the series. It’s the half way point. How are we already here? And Amanda has done an absolutely outstanding job capturing the mood and the theme of this collection. This is Kaaron Warren at her best. From the back cover:

Country road, city street, mountain, creek.

These are stories inspired by the beauty, the danger, the cruelty, emptiness, loneliness and perfection of the Australian landscape.

There is a fabulous introduction by Gemma Files who says,

Every Warren story is a trip with no map… If you are bent on opening this book, therefore, remember: Keep your eyes open, accept all of what it has to offer without qualm, and beware the only thing I can promise you is that you will be taken where you may not want to go. For Kaaron Warren, while many things, is very much not your Mum; she owes you nothing except the words on the page, this open door into four very different someplaces else through which she will escort you, then take her leave, without a single glance back. And it will be entirely contingent on you to get yourself back out.

Through Splintered Walls will be launched at Continuum in early June and I promise to reveal more details about what we’re planning for Natcon soon!

I spent the time from 8.30 am til 10 am today panicking because there was only 3 weeks between now and June 8th aka Natcon. And I have books still to complete and send to the printer’s for this con. I feel proud that at least at some point in the panic, and oh there was heart stopping, then restarting, sheer panic, I figured out that I had again (yes not the first time) completely blanked on the month of May. I have no idea what that is about but I seem to completely FORGET a WHOLE MONTH of the year. Poor Amanda and Tehani got crazy lady emails. Because yes, even when faced with the impossible (there is no way those books could have been at Natcon if there really were only 3 weeks left), I still formulated a plan that I got stuck into executing. Never say die, I guess.

So you see, I gained FOUR WEEKS this morning at 10am. And this is how one can create time. Though personally? I do not care for it.

I can’t believe I forgot May. Twice.

Anyway. I have about 3 blog posts drafted here to finish and I think they all start out with some words on a bit of a funk that I’ve been in. I haven’t been able to get myself to blog even though I have several, probably a week’s worth, of posts sketched out. I just hadn’t been able to get myself going. On anything. You can always tell because my craft output cranks up. This weekend I fell into a hole and watched an entire season (Season 3) of Real Housewives of New Jersey and worked on a jumper I’m knitting. I didn’t even watch the previous 2 seasons of that show. I found the whole season recorded on my Foxtel from like last October. I inhaled it like it was oxygen. OMG I loved it. And I got a lot of knitting done. But not much else. And I had no idea how I was going to winch myself out of this funk.

Apparently FORGETTING MAY works! Got my heart pumping and my brain racing and my focus on. And I got THINGS DONE today, yo! So, ah, yeah, that worked.

Anyway. Someone kindly nominated this blog for The Best Australian Blogs Competition 2012. I’m hoping to get those posts I’ve got sketched up onto the blog through this week to regain my blogging chops. But if you like my blog (Champagne and Socks), I’d appreciate your vote! You can also vote for more than one blog so totally consider giving some love to Tansy (Stitching Words, One Thread at a Time), Sean (Adventures of a Blogonaut) and the Australian Women’s Writing Challenge blogs as well! You don’t have to be an Aussie to vote.

You can check out the new Galactic Suburbia episode on our website or at iTunes. You’ll notice we were really subtle about the Hugo nomination, because we didn’t want to be tacky.

In which this Hugo nominated podcast is Hugo nominated and discusses the Hugo nominations while being Hugo nominated. Also, the internet is full of things. Some of those things discuss gender, feminism and equality, some have wide ranging implications for the future of SF awards, and some of them are nominated for Hugos.

HUUUUUUUUUGO SHORTLIST

Hunger Games Hunger Games Hunger Games

Build up to make a hit
The reviews are in:
Topless Robot
Forbes
Our Alisa

But in the real world, the character Katniss Everdeen faces an even greater challenge: Proving that pop culture will embrace a heroine capable of holding her own with the big boys.
It’s a battle fought on two fronts. First, The Hunger Games must bring in the kind of box office numbers that prove to Hollywood that a film led by a young female heroine who’s not cast as a sex symbol can bring in audiences. And second, for Katniss to truly triumph, she must embody the type of female heroine — smart, tough, compassionate — that has been sorely lacking in the popular culture landscape for so very long.

The Clarke Award Shortlist:
Christopher Priest’s original post
Cat Valente responds:
“Because let’s be honest, I couldn’t get away with it. If I posted that shit? I’d never hear the end of what a bitch I am.”
And further she responds

Outer Alliance discussion on Gay YA Dystopia & Paolo Bacigalupi

Qld Premier cancels Premiers Literary Award
“Before the election, the LNP pledged to cut government “waste” as part of its efforts to offer cost-of-living relief to Queenslanders.”
Response of Queensland Writers Centre

The Fake Geek Girl at the Mary Sue

Eisner Award shortlist

Kate Elliott on the portrayal of women in pain & fear

Ashley Judd on the media’s attitude to women and their bodies

Valente on the war against women in the real world

Philip K Dick Award

Chronos Award Ballot

Tehani on Aurealis Awards stats, gender

BSFA stuff – Actual winners
The first post that raised the problems with the ceremony.
A response (there for historical sake, though I think since at least partly recanted)
how the Tweets saw it
Cheryl’s take

EDIT: Since recording, the BSFA have issued a full and unreserved apology, along with an explanation of why it took them so long to respond.  That’s how to do it, folks!

Jim Hines works through his privileged dumbassery
Kirstyn McDermott works through whether her feminism is good enough

Vote for Sean the Blogonaut for NAFF

What Culture Have we Consumed?

Alex: Monstrous Regiment, Terry Pratchett; Showtime, Narrelle M Harris, Woman on the Edge of Time, Marge Piercy; 2312, Kim Stanley Robinson; The State of the Art, Iain M Banks

Tansy: So Silver Bright, Lisa Mantchev; Kat, Incorrigible, by Stephanie Burgis; Cold Magic, Kate Elliott

Alisa: The Hunger Games (movie and books), The Readers (podcast)

Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs,, check out Galactic Suburbia Podcast on Facebook and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!

Wednesday I finally managed to get to my post office box. It feels weird after it being the regular detour on the way home every day to only make it once a week or once a fortnight! I kinda hate not knowing what mail has arrived. On the other hand, whenever I go now, I get to stagger out with a huge pile of parcels and ephemera. In this batch, all but one of the boxes of books were not for ASif! and instead were the random book buying purchases I did for a week a while back in a blur of online shopping and then forgetting. I had to actually stop completely when I couldn’t remember which sites I’d visited and what I’d actually bought. Just as well I stopped because I totally didn’t remember shopping at Fishpond at all and the evidence says differently!

Just after I posted my first Creativity Dysfunction post, Amazon sent me a book recommendation that looked gorgeous – Sunday Morning Quilts. It got me thinking about quilts but then I deleted the link. Then I was auditioning some quilt related podcasts maybe two weeks ago now. One of them was American Patchwork and Quilting Radio (still not sure I like this one). The episode I listened to had the two authors of Sunday Morning Quilts on as guests. I was actually more interested in them talking about their blogs and the communities they’d built around them and how. And then they spoke about the book and I realized a) it was the book I’d seen and b) their thing is scrap quilting and in fact, playing with colour and scraps. I was INTRIGUED.

I went straight home and spent *quite some time* on the webs looking at options, their blogs and also some books. It had not occurred to me until that moment that scrap quilts – plural – was a thing. That I could in fact make several. Or that they are ongoing projects rather than one ongoing project and I could finish the one I’m making and then move on. That I need not feel the weight of the ever-increasing- with every other project – pile-of-scraps. That scraps could be a great thing, just like stash. I got excited. And then, for some reason, I did not buy that particular book but these.

I’m really excited by the uniformity that lots of small pieces of non uniform fabrics can convey. I’m ready to get started!! (except for that pesky in progress and queued queues of projects)

And so now I do not know why I didn’t get Sunday Morning Quilts. A look on Fishpond has it quite expensive, which could be the reason but it’s not as expensive on other sites. Hmmm …I also had a great peek around the book online last night. I think I’ll start sorting my scrap stash in the meantime, anyway.

I also got these knitting books. Guess why?

 Yup – 1 point for Knitting and 2 points for LISTS!!

And the other is Elizabeth Zimmerman, who is Knitting. The book inside seems to be The Opinionated Knitter and she’s grumpy and fabulous.

I had a quick squizz through Knitter’s Life Lists last night. It’s a combination of lists of things you should do before you die (love!) and also all kinds of interesting factoids and resources to go chase up. I’m definitely one for setting goals for lists of things I want to do, less on the execution of (you may have noticed …) Though I also quite like the idea of just setting aside a small portion at a time/year to look at.

I hunted through to see how part of the knitting zeitgeist I am – in their research for the book they asked lots of knitters what their goal patterns and stitches and techniques and so on were and that was used to compile some of them. I tend to not really *apply myself in knitting. I like the monotony of known patterns and stitches and I tend to knit to switch off. Except, actually that’s not really true at all. When I looked at, for example, all the yarns you should aim to try at some point in your life, I thought that wasn’t something I was really interested in, flicked down the list and thought, “ooh but bamboo! And seasilk and soy silk!” – materials I’ve been wanting to try for agggges. And then when I looked at sweaters and the holy grail and very long list of things to try there, I saw I’m already working on a couple of them! – the kimono jacket, which is my first ever sweater, and also I have the Baby Surprise Jacket which I bought all the yarn for when my niece was incubating and then didn’t make. I’ve since tracked down the pattern (it was hard to find as basically out of print) and now I have a new nephiece coming so I was intending to whip that up for them. So I’m already working on these and I realise do get adventurous at times. Only need a little bit every year and my lifetime of knitting will always be new and challenging.

And then I noticed that the list has Alice Starmore on it.

And look what also arrived in the same book haul, talk about yet more synchronicity.

I’ve not really ever had a desire to try fair isle other than … maybe if I’m stuck on 6 months holidays somewhere and really had no tv to watch or something… But I came across Adrienne Martini on Cast On a while ago (yes, it’s the same Adrienne Martini, the world is this small and I LOVE it) and she was talking about this book that she wrote which was based on her one year quest to complete an Alice Starmore sweater. That’s all I know about the book but I was instantly drawn to it and wished I’d known about it to follow along her journey of it. I can’t wait to read all about it. I just love these kinds of things (similar to the Julie and Julia blog etc). I wish I could be consistent for a year and commit to one thing that I could obsess about (oh! Nevermind! Stop judging!) Anyway, these sweaters are really hard to make and also, really hard to find the yarn, I think. I’ll tell you more when I’ve read the book which I’m dying to start right now.

And finally, I got Redwood and Wildfire from Aqueduct Press which is very funny because in the morning I’d gotten a refund on postage for a book I’d ordered the night before (Brit Mandeolo’s new book on Joanna Russ) and was swooning about how much I love Aqueduct Press books and then one of the packages had their sticker on it and I thought … huh? What ELSE have I bought! This is the Tiptree winner for this year and Tansy raved about it on Galactic Suburbia as well. I’m thinking if you liked The Freedom Maze by Delia Sherman, you might like this. But I’ll let you know.

So many books and craft and things and so fricking little time!