I officially finish maternity at the end of this month ie next Tuesday. Can you believe that’s been six months already? I can’t! Except, almost 5 month old baby tries to say differently

I’ve been trying to do a regular catch up day of study with Amanda and some weeks I’ve done better at that (either in the actually meeting up or in the getting significant work done) than others. I figured a really easy place to start researching – easy in terms of being able to pick up and put down bite size pieces – was with the data collection. I’ve done a reasonably thorough scramble around our house to find all the Aussie SF (short fiction) we have as a starting point. At the moment, my sample set is going to be Aussie SF because it seems more doable and I’m probably going to be able to better, and more completely, source all the texts. And my thinking was, just work through the piles of mags, collections and anthols that we’ve got in the house as a starting point.

The problem of course is, I’m not yet sure what and how I want to crunch data so I don’t quite know what and how to capture information. I don’t want to have to come back and get something else from all these titles later. And the way I collect all this data now is likely to affect what I can do with it later. It’s very circular. The other issue is, because I can only pick up and put down small bite size pieces, I never really get the chance to sit and think long and hard about it. Other than the thinking I did for the general objectives and broad methodology I outlined in my candidacy proposal. So this means that every time I do sit down to work, I get distracted by possible tangents to veer off on or rabbit holes to dive into. Though probably that would be the case even if I was sitting in an office on campus in silence for hours at a time too.

Yesterday I sat down and managed to work on some old ASIMs. I’m looking at the gender breakdown of publications in SF in Australia, basically. Originally I was just looking at the fiction. Though I had also planned to look at other methods of performance evaluation ie years best round ups (both the fiction chosen and the way the editors view the year in their editorial round ups) and then also the various awards. These two will likely be more general SF rather than Aus SF in isolation (again because the sample set seems more doable). But along the way I realised that I will also need to look at other features in magazines such as the interviews (who conducts them and who do they interview) and also the reviews (again, who reviews whom).

I’m interested in the way we rewrite and reframe the scene – women have always written SF and yet they mostly have also been written out of (or their roles downplayed in) the history. How does that happen? Looking at the books that get attention, the authors who are spoken about, held up as the finest or the core or the genre shapers of our field may give some hint to that. These are the authors we remember and these are the ones that become easy for everyone to then pull out if they suddenly need a list (try it in your head and then see how many women are on those lists). And I realised today, that along with looking at editorials for gender breakdown of who is most discussed or held in esteem, I also need to do the same within interviews and reviews, if necessary. It’s quite fascinating, and well, then quite angry making followed by downright depressing. But not anything we didn’t know or haven’t discussed before. All I’m doing is collecting the data to make the pretty pie charts later.

I like to play games with it like, will the one woman mentioned be Ursula le Guin? And now I’ve got a list of Australian male writers too. I don’t have a sample set big enough yet for that one but I might have some breakdown on who those authors are at some point. My guess is that the Aussie women will be Sussex, Love and Lanagan but we shall see.

In which we announce the 2013 Galactic Suburbia for activism and/or communication that advances the feminist conversation in the field of speculative fiction.

I’ve been posting these blocks of my current quilting project on Facebook as I finish them but here they are all in one place. These are the individual blocks of the month from 2013 Jinny Beyer block of the month quilt – Solstice. C bought me the kit for my birthday last year and I was so hoping to work on just one block a month as they got emailed out to me. It seemed like such a reasonable goal. Unfortunately, I got carpal tunnel with the pregnancy and ended up not being able to sew at all for most of my confinement. This was very devastating – being cooped up at home with time on your hands and being expected to loll about on the couch watching TV and NOT being able to craft!

The other obstacle with this project which I now know I should have tackled differently is that at the very beginning of the project, before the first block, Jinny sent out the in between block pattern which is a basic log cabin with a fussy cut internal square. You have to make 12 of them and the instructions suggested making them up whilst you wait for the first block. I took that to me, finish these before you make the star blocks. And that would have been well and good had I been machine sewing and not hand sewing because 12 log cabin is actually more than 1 month of hand sewing. And it took me a long time to let go of finishing these before starting the project. (I’m still sewing these damn log cabins!). But I’m very proud of myself for wading in and attempting this project. Yes I made mistakes on the fussy cutting but making mistakes and having a quilt is much better than never starting for fear of failing, I ended up buying some extra fabric for the fussy cutting and now I can cut away with error room to spare.

Block 1

Block 3

Block 4

Block 5

Block 6

Block 7

Here’s a close up of the fabric that is being fussy cut for the details in the stars (colour not quite this purple in real life)

And the fussy cutting – cutting out exactly the same diamonds etc across the fabric to produce the extra patterns when sewn together. I’m thoroughly enjoying this process. It requires precision and exactness but the payoff is amazing. I’m hoping to do this by myself in other projects when I’m finished this one.

And!!! Because the socks in 2014 project plods along, here is Sock Pair # 2!!! A gift, so clearly not my size!

These are made from Blue Moon Fiber Arts, Rocking Sock Yarn, with a Mille End in mediumweight. I’m not sure I’ve knit in medium weight of theirs before and I was surprised by how much leftover yarn I had even with making these socks in a few sizes bigger than mine. I love this colourway so the baby is getting a pair of socks from the leftovers!

When you’re home all day every day, it’s inevitable that every so often you will get someone door knocking to sell you something you don’t want. Yesterday, a very nice young woman knocked on my door and tried to sell me roller shutters. “Not just roller shutters,” she said when I quite clearly articulated I was not interested, “but to be a display home.” Long time readers/followers of me on social media might remember last year some time when we got a similar offer, by the same parent company, for solar panels right before the election and the end of subsidies/and increases in our state electricity for a bunch of other reasons. My husband researched this company after our interactions and found the deal not quite as good, shall we say?, as they claimed. In fact it was a total hustle.

Now, normally, I feel a need to be polite and I let solicitors go through their full spiel before I say I’m not interested. And you won’t be surprised if I tell you that this allows a lot of them to push me into things I actually didn’t want. My husband likes to remember the time I changed internet providers when they weren’t even offering the promised ADSL2 down my street as claimed in the upsell. Or the time on our honeymoon when I okayed a not-actual-taxi-driver to give us a lift from the airport even though I felt bad and wrong about it and there were signs saying not to. It’s not that I’m stupid or that I fall for the scam, it’s that I feel rude saying no. I feel obliged to engage when sales people cat call to me in shopping centres or in malls. I participate in annoying phone surveys even when I don’t have time and am in the middle of my dinner.

I’ve noticed, though, that my husband, who is actually very polite, has no such reservations about such things. He investigated the solar panel business quite thoroughly after deciding on the spot that he wouldn’t be pushed into a deal that was only available whilst the salesperson was at our house. He headed off at the pass the non-taxi-driver at the airport business. And the other day, when a survey person asked to speak to the oldest male in our house for a survey, I handed the phone to him and he hung up, without even speaking to the person! He said, “I don’t have time for this,” as he shoved more laundry into the machine.

Lately, I’ve noticed I have a lot less time and a lot less patience. I’m annoyed when people step in my way, ignore me and bash into my pram as I walk keeping to the lefthand side of the footpath. I’m tired and I don’t have time to fill in surveys or competitions or whatever it is someone is selling that I don’t want. And I’m sick of every charity in the state calling me exactly when my baby is finally asleep for her midmorning nap asking me for money. I found myself telling the door knocker yesterday that we weren’t interested in dealing with her company. Shocked, she pushed to ask why – when I’m fully reformed, I will just shut the door afterf saying I’m not interested – I told her that her company rips people off.

It’s not that I’m not a giving person. I donate money all the time to charities that I seek out to support. And when I want to change phone plans, as an educated female adult, I realise I want to and do my research before making my own decisions about what plans I want from what phone company. But lately I’ve realised that I want to be left alone, not seen as a constant stupid buyer to be sold crap I don’t want. And I want to choose who I let into my personal space.

I’ve had to start to unlearn something in order to be able to do this – that I’m not a bad person for not doing or going along with what someone else wants me to do.

I’ve been doing some reading on how to raise your children to protect themselves from harm – to learn how to establish their own boundaries and that what is private is private and not for anyone else to take or touch or use etc. This is also what I was taught as  a child about sexual predators/stranger danger. It didn’t, by the way, stop me from having my boundaries violated. And I think that’s because of this other thing that we teach girls, in all kinds of ways, that to be a polite and nice girl, you must go along with what other people want you to do.

Ignoring people in high school (or later in life on the bus or train or in a line at a nightclub) – bullies, annoying boys, girls being bitchy – didn’t make them go away. It made them angrier and meaner. And they made it about you being rude for ignoring them. Once, when I was standing with a group of girls at a school camp, a male teacher wanted us to move and do something he wanted us to do but noone in my group moved. So he came up behind me, grabbed me to lift me (and touched my breasts in the process) and shoved me to make me do what he wanted me to do. When a person in authority does that to a teenage girl, they are teaching you that you don’t even get the right to choose to defy them. He taught me that I don’t get to determine my personal boundaries. I don’t get to decide who could and could not touch me. He taught me that someone bigger and angrier than me can make me do what he wants me to do, even if I try and stand my ground. It’s pure biology, isn’t that what they say? Isn’t that why patriarchy?

In all kinds of ways, in all kinds of roles, I’ve been groomed to be polite – that’s what nice, good girls are. So when someone in a public space puts their hand out to shake mine in greeting, I can not just walk past them. Even when they are quite clearly selling me something I don’t want. Last year, I was pregnant and walking from the supermarket with a bunch of flowers and one such salesperson called out to me flirtily, “Oh are they for me?” I’m sure I said something witty back to diffuse the situation but it made me angry. Of course they weren’t for him and he was only trying to engage me to sell me something. At the time, I wished so hard that I could have walked past and not replied. I didn’t invite conversation with him, why should I feel obliged to be in one? Why should I feel *obliged* to diffuse it? Last week, some sales guy stretched his  hand out to shake my hand and called, “Hi Mummy!” – ew! I’m not your mummy!

A few years ago, a friend of mine made me feel uncomfortable and I pulled back from interacting with them. Instead of having a conversation with me about it, they spent about 2 years making digs. As though they could make me feel bad enough that they felt bad and I would acquiesce and put myself back into a situation that I was clearly giving signals about not being comfortable being in. When people do that, they are telling you that you don’t get to make decisions about your boundaries. They also like to pretend that they didn’t know that that was harassment … And many many many men I have known in my life, men most people think are good and nice men,  have pushed and bullied and wheedled and cajoled to move those boundaries in all kinds of ways. I have been in more situations where I feel uncomfortable and thus hate myself for being pushed into being in than I care to recall. And it’s because I feel bad telling someone something that they don’t want to hear. Being honest when it involves telling them no. That I don’t like them.  Because actually, good girls don’t say no. They don’t make waves. They don’t make trouble. They aren’t difficult. Or impolite. They liked everyone. They play by the rules, even if the rules get to bent for other people. They don’t make you feel bad about whatever it is that you are doing.

Screw that. I’m angry that I found it weird when I met my husband and he would ask me to define my boundaries. When he would ask me what it is that *I* wanted – for all kinds of things from what movie to see, to what restaurant I wanted to go to, whatever. I found it *difficult* to make decisions like that without knowing what “the right answer” was. With the right person, there is no “right answer”, there’s only, “your answer.”

I don’t want my daughter to think that being polite and a good girl means doing what other people want her to do. Or not telling them what they don’t want to hear. I want my daughter to choose any and all of her personal boundaries – physical, emotional, financial and intellectual. I want her to know that for “no to mean no” – to *really* mean no – it can’t just be about situations where a stranger jumps out at you in a dark alleyway at midnight, it has to mean no all the time. It has to be ok to say that you don’t want to move when someone (even in authority) tells you to, or that you don’t want to hear about a product you don’t want to buy or be friends with someone who makes you feel uncomfortable or bad or stupid. It has to be ok, polite even, to say no when you feel like saying it. In all situations.

So I’m working on this. Model the behaviour you want to teach, right? Right now, I’ve got it to when people shout out greetings at me in the shops ,I smile and say “Hi, but I’m not stopping.” I’m going to keep working on this so that I’m ok with walking past without even acknowledging them and not feeling bad about it. Baby steps.

I’m rewatching Haven after seeing the finale for Season 3. A lot of information was imparted in the final episodes and I’m interested to see who knew what and how they reacted given I now know a lot more about what they knew (and also, seeing whether the writers were making a lot of this up on the run.) I keep thinking that if you liked Bad Power by Deborah Biancotti, you’d like Haven. But then, we claimed the reverse of that on the back cover

In episode 1 we meet Audrey Parker, an FBI agent who perhaps is a bit out there in her investigation methodology. Her boss sends her to Haven, Maine to bring back an escaped convict. As we get a bit of a view of Haven on Audrey’s drive into town, I realise how much I have fallen in love with Maine, and mostly due to Stephen King. Since a lot of the town and coastal shots throughout the show are the same few, it’s obvious it’s not filmed in Maine. But I still think one of those gorgeous red brick farmhouses nestled sleepily into the rocky shoreline, with the windy sea air is just begging to be rented for a year long writing project. As long as they have internet, I can run my press from anywhere, right? Course, not in Haven. Somewhere less … troubled.

Agent Parker’s convict is found dead the day she arrives, in somewhat mysterious circumstances. And she encounters some other oddities – a crack in the road appears as she’s driving which causes her to have a dangerous accident, a local cop with whom she instantly establishes witty rapport can’t feel pain and an odd fog envelops them – that have her hanging around a bit longer than she expected. Agent Parker solves the episode mystery but it raises more questions than answers.

A random highlight is meeting Duke – “The guy’s not all bad,” she tells cop Nathan, “he saved my life and then he served me coffee.” And it should be pointed out, he made plunger coffee! Can’t be all bad at all. And he laundered her clothes. But … replacing her phone was just weird.

SPOILERS (from up to Season 3) BELOW:

So, now onto the broader picture. We’re left wondering just what is happening in Haven – a town with full translated name is “Haven for God’s Orphans”. I always remembered it as Audrey Parker coming to Haven having seen the picture in the paper with the woman who looks like her mother. But no, Vince and Dave totally plot to keep her there by planting the question in her head by handing her the photo of her the day the Colorado Kid goes missing/is killed. And they pointedly mention it was  “27 years ago”. They  know she appears every 27 years and they know that means the Troubles are back. You can see them, rather than rattled by her appearance, eager to pick up where Lucy left off. They ,issed their friend, and are eager to play again.

The Chief knows who Audrey is too. And I think he’s sort of amused that she’s back as an FBI Agent this time.

Agent Howard is all creepy with watching her from afar and calling, presumably the Chief … but maybe Vince? and saying, “She’s staying, maybe she can help you with your troubles.”

Questions. Howard arrives at Audrey’s place to kinda kick it all off. But where did she, and he, come from? Presumably they came out of the Barn. So why does Haven manage to manifest them both so far away from the town? That’s kinda odd considering the Troubles always seem implied to be a Haven only thing (even though it could be a haven *for* the troubled since people obviously come to Haven via the underground railway of Vince’s.)

Tags: Haven, tv review

Last night we watched the long awaited, Veronica Mars movie. For those who have no idea what the what, Veronica Mars was a three seasons long show on the old WB Network that came just after shows like Dawsons Creek, Buffy, Roswell etc and was a noir detective show with Veronica Mars as the teen private eye protagonist. I know! Right?! And yet it got cancelled after just 3 seasons.

Veronica Mars was a popular kid in Neptune, California and hung out with the rich kids until her best friend is murdered. After that, her life went to hell – her mother left, her father got fired as the local sheriff and she was kicked out of the popular crowd but not before her drink gets spiked and she is raped whilst unconscious at one of those rich kid parties she used to enjoy so much. So we enter the pilot episode. Veronica is now an outsider, loner at school and working in her dad’s private detective agency (Mars Investigations) in her spare time, determined to solve the murder of her best friend.

Veronica is smart and strong. She always has a come back. She always has a plan. And she always manages to wangle the situation to get her way. Despite – or perhaps because of – what’s happened to her, she has a very pragmatic, cynical view of the world and people. She could get depressed about all she’s lost of her old life but instead she uses what she has left (mostly her smart mouth and resourcefulness) to look out for herself. Technically she might be morally dubious but usually it’s in the scheme of helping someone out or exposing someone else’s corruption and that makes it ok, right?

Veronica Mars was a show with a strong female lead that was something other than a pair of angry trousers (Tansy’s TM). Her superpower is that she’s smart, inventive, resourceful and sure of herself. And a woman being the detective, instead of the broad? SO FREAKING COOL.

The first season was all about solving Lily Cain’s murder. And that had us worried that maybe the show would fall over in season 2. But that didn’t happen. It was still awesome. And so was season 3. And then there was the rumour that there might be a spinoff sequel where Veronica joins the FBI. I saw some little clips of her finishing up at Quantico. But then nothing. And there were rumours off an on about how there could be a movie. And this show was so awesome! Every now and then Kristen Bell would rally the Marshmallows and encourage them to lobby Warner Bros. She would do a movie if given the chance. And then last year at first I thought it was just a hoax, but there it was – a Kickstarter to raise the funds from fans of the show to make this movie already! And within 24 hours they’d reached the first million. But alas, they were only allowing US fans to fund it! Eventually they managed to negotiate the rights with Warner to let the rest of the world play and records were broken with the amount raised and the number of backers. And they made the movie.

March 14 was delivery day and (after wayyyyyy too many backer updates) there in my inbox was the download code to download VERONICA MARS!

I didn’t want to just download that and watch it on my laptop late at night by myself. So I invited some friends over, we borrowed a projector and screen and we had a small cinema in our house to watch it!

AND IT WAS AWESOME!

And it has IRA GLASS (from This American Life) in it as well.

Anyway. It’s 10 years after high school, Veronica is a lawyer interviewing for her first job out of college in NYC and she’s happy. She comes home to help a friend out, investigate a murder and attend her high school reunion. It’s Veronica at her best! And Neptune still at its worst.

I was so worried that after everything, the movie would suck. Or that it wouldn’t be everything I was hoping it would be. Or that it would be 90 minute movie with a straight, obvious plot and then the end. But it was so much more. And I don’t mind one bit that they’ve written it with ways to launch off another series or movie. I’m a fan, I want more.

As things go, it was really interesting to see crowdfunding used to finance what should have been a Hollywood movie. And I think they did amazing with the budget that they had. It’s an interesting idea, perhaps a gamechanger, on the way movies might be funded in the future. You either need 1 person or entity to sink a huge investment into your project or nearly 95000 people with just a bit of cash each. But now, even though the movie happened, it could still be considered a flop because – 95000 fans willing to pay for the movie they wanted is still a small crowd when you consider success by the box office numbers. I’m fascinated by this and in seeing what will happen next. I’ve already preordered the first novel which apparently picks up at the end of this movie but won’t get in the way of a second one …

The thing I love, and need to keep revisiting, with GTD is that if you’re on a flow, you stay with the flow and you don’t need GTD. GTD is there for when you fall off the horse, when you’re stuck or blocked and when you’re procrastinating. I’ve been in a slow panic for a couple of weeks with regards to, well, everything. Time management, household chores, running the press, getting my PhD up and going, a bunch of big commitments I signed up for this year. You name it, I think it’s currently out of control. And when completely overwhelmed, I tend to ignore and hide. And, you know, generally make it worse.

I’m still fascinated by how you can be in a rut for days and days and weeks (and months sometimes) and then one day you just wake up and feel differently. Suddenly tackling the big scary pile of whatever it is you’ve been avoiding feels like the only thing you want to do that day. Or getting stuck into solving some problem that seemed insurmountable every other time you vaguely thought about it feels easy. I need to remember, to remind myself, that it’s all ebbs and flows, ups and downs, and that just because I feel a particular way about something doesn’t mean I will always feel that way about it. Just because something seems hard now, doesn’t mean it won’t be easier later.

This year I’m working on putting out into the world what I want to see in the world. No matter what the world throws back. And I’m also working on stepping back from emotion. Not ignoring or denying how I feel about things but stepping back to observe them. I came upon the realisation that the meditation I’ve done in yoga of observing thoughts and feelings as leaves floating past you is the same as the idea of the seated self, that part of you that is immovable and apart from fleeting thoughts and feelings. And when you become in tune with that part of yourself, you can (sometimes) step back when you feel something, and let it pass by you. Not so that you don’t feel anger/hurt/jealousy/pettiness etc but rather that you name it and let it pass you by and then you react.

And what does that have to do with GTD? I forgot that Next Actions don’t have to be the Final Action. That you can work on things and take them to temporary done and come back later to finish them. And that sometimes that’s more progress than waiting to do it perfectly the first time. I had a dire situation in my kitchen that required a massive task of pulling everything out, culling, sorting and cleaning before organising to a better system. Not fixing it was stressing me out. Fixing it was stressing me out. We spent a whole weekend on it, two weekends ago now, and it mostly got done. But you know, not everything fit back in the cupboards. Funny that. But I really want everything to be neat and organised. It makes me happier to actually be in my kitchen and do things. And so I’ve been slowly trying to rejig it all. But I still have a bunch of things that don’t fit. And of course, I can’t move on to the next task until I deal with this one. But it finally occurred to me that since it’s all clean and whatnot, I could out everything back and then reorganise smaller parts that don’t work as they are not yet in the perfect configuration now. That whole, it can be perfect or finished but not both.

I’m slowly trying to climb back on the horse of practicing GTD – I’ve not done a weekly review fora few weeks, I’m struggling to get my email inbox back to zero and my intray empty and I don’t know what many many Next Actions are. But I’m slowly trying to climb back on and that’s more progress than sitting here pretending I don’t even see the horse.

I’m really pleased to announce the following changes to format delivery at Twelfth Planet Press.

Since I’ve had my baby, I’ve been thinking a lot about convenience and maximising time. I’m often held up or waiting for something or sitting with a baby who needs cuddles or settling or feeding and might not have had a chance to prepare myself adequately. I want the book I’m reading to be within arms reach whether that be the print version that’s by my bed or thrown into my handbag on the way out the door or if I’m stuck on the couch or in a carpark or in a dark room at 3am and only have my laptop or iphone or ipad, I want to be able to continue reading that book. I just don’t have the predictability of habits/lifestyle anymore and all I want is to be able to access the book I’m reading no matter where I am when I get the chance to read a few pages. Otherwise, I just won’t get back to it at all. And these thoughts have prompted me to tweak some things at Twelfth Planet.

As of now, direct from our website, all our ebooks will be delivered with both epub and mobi formats. At the point of purchase download, both links will be provided and customers can choose their preferred format or to download both. (Our Twelve Planet Subscriptions have already been providing subscribers with both.)

In addition, we’ve rolled out our long intended paperback and ebook bundle option. Customers now have the option to buy the ebook version of their print book purchase for just an extra $3. And I’ve tidied up the website so that all formats are now available for each title on the one page. Hurrah!

My lack of cafe reviews is purely down to being short of time and nothing to do with being short on visits. Here’s a quick round up of a bunch of places I’ve been to recently.

Taste and Graze

I met Terri here for a TPP publicity meeting – she’d told me they boast having “Melbourne coffee” and I was keen to check the claim. The coffee is indeed very good, possibly the best in a 20 minute drive radius from my house and I admit having considered several times heading out there for another cup. The food is excellent – I had eggs on toast. The service became counter service for some reason (wasn’t clear if it was the time of day or a new thing – I’d been there a week or two before that and it was table service). Located on the Mandurah foreshore, the view is lovely (though broken by the main road). However, both times I’ve been there now have been hot days and there is no aircon. My poor baby slowly wilted.

The Merchant on Beaufort

Met my sister for lunch here – I don’t feel it’s the type of place I would feel comfortable sitting and working for hours. That said, it’s got great pram access and I was able to keep the pram next to the table without it feeling in the way. The table service was excellent, very helpful and our waitperson knew exactly what was in every dish (she was quizzed). The coffee was good. And I had the pan fried gnocchi (above). This is where we begin to notice that at the moment, Perth vegetarian option on the menu is most likely to be gnocchi.

The Daily Planet

OK so, I’m completely torn about the Daily Planet – next to Planet Books on Beaufort St. It’s not a very warm place in that the first of the two visits reviewed here, I thought there was no table service at all because all the staff were hipsters and dressed no differently in any way to the customers. And then the second time I visited, not a week later, table service had gone completely and you had to order at the counter. I don’t *necessarily* mind ordering at the counter *except* when you have to wait for the really cool people to stop their inane conversation to pay you attention. And this of course meant that both times, when I’d gone there to work, it was hard work to get a follow up coffee. Or a glass of water. Or a new menu.

But! The Daily Planet has free wifi, nice spaces to sit and spread out and work. AND a really great baby changing facility in the disabled toilet. It’s not even one of those gross fold out from the wall tables but a proper table with lots of space to put your bag down and change a baby in peace. This leads to happy baby and mummy staying for many more hours than she has done elsewhere. Also cool mural on the back wall.

The food is fine. In fact, the breakfast I had the second time and the lunch panini (above) the first time were really delicious. And the coffee is ok to good. I had a piece of cake the first visit which was stale – that was my bad because I should have known and not ordered it. Very rarely do you get not stale cake at cafes. (Sigh – anyone else remember the outstanding cake that Blakes had? When it was the very original Blake’s Blakes?) But there is also no aircon and lots of windows and doors open which makes for a hot cafe on hot days.

Standing Room Only

It’s only fair that I declare that coffee by which I compare everything else. To me, Standing Room Only serve the best coffee in Perth. It’s clearly not everybody’s cup of … coffee … as I could never get anyone else I worked with on board (they tried once or twice). Located in Piccadilly Arcade (which is all pink marble and art deco ness) makes it fun to visit and they’ve now done some changes to the place. I don’t really like them but I think knocking out the storefront window probably eases some of the congestion at peak times. I miss the wood floors that have been replaced with black and white tiles. Standing Room Only is as advertised and is just a takeaway place. They offer three beans each day – their house blend, a single origin and another blend. The latter two get changed daily. When I used to work in the city I didn’t really like the house blend and I’d try one of the other two every day. I guess though if I didn’t like one of the daily specials, I could come back and try something else. The last couple of times I’ve been in the city, I tried first the house blend and then a recommended blend the next time. Whilst the blend was lovely, it wasn’t *as nice* as the house blend and since it’s so rare now for me to get into the city, I’m just having the house blend and being assured of a really good cup of coffee. It’s a deep, rich, intense blend with several layers of flavour. Everything else, to me, tastes hollow. My work mates think that it was too strong. It probably is. Note: a large cup is three shots of coffee.

The Peasant’s Table

My sister and mum took me for breakfast to The Peasant’s Table at The Mezz in Mt Hawthorn for my birthday. The Mezz has been renovated and given a facelift and has a very nice outdoor seating area complete with a kids’ playground that’s easily visible from coffee tables. Unfortunately for us, they don’t do breakfast on Thursdays which is when we went. I had a muffin with coffee, which were both fine, and probably all I wanted anyway. I took this photo of my mum’s cup of tea cause I thought the little bottles of milk were gorgeous. Again, no table service – is this now a thing in Perth? And no cooked breakfasts. But very accessible for the pram and they had a high chair for my niece. I’ve been there before for lunch with my sister (whilst pregnant and they had good vegetarian, pregnant friendly dips and things for a ploughman sort of lunch). I have a feeling this would be a really nice place to hang out in wintery rainy months (here’s hoping we get some of those in Perth again). The bonus here is the parking is good (park on the roof and take the lift down to the ground floor) and you can do a nice food shop with a few specialty stores too.

Wild Poppy

I met Kathryn at Wild Poppy in Fremantle on a Thursday afternoon for a work session. There are lots of little nooks to sit and be in a quiet space as well as comfy couches and places to park a pram and spread a baby out. The coffee was good. And I had a very nice toasted vegetarian mountain bread roll as well as a delicious caramel slice. Bummer was that they closed at 4pm which was just about when we were settling in to work. There were other people in the cafe who had clearly been there settled in for work sessions so it’s worth another look, I guess. Though for the drive, I think probably for me, somewhere north of the river is more feasible (or closer to K’s place) where I can run a few errands or drop into see people.

Circa

Circa deserves a relook even though it didn’t really get a bad review here. We were back here this week and whilst access into it is really bad – I need a friend to help me lift the pram up the three steps and into the restaurant, especially since I watched a table of men sit there and watch me struggle without offering to help – there is space inside for the pram. The staff are very helpful and pleasant – they rearranged the tables so the pram could slot in next to me out of the way and they didn’t mind bringing several pots of hot water to sterilise certain people’s dummies that kept getting spat on the floor. I had the beetroot ravioli this time which was delicious. And the coffee is good.  It’s a very lovely space though the issue with the lack of changing facilities for the baby means I probably wouldn’t bring her with me to work there again.

Cucina

I met up with Naomi in the Perth CBD for lunch at Cucina yesterday. She knew to enter the side entrance which has easy access. I came in the front (from Hay St) and struggled up the two steps – again, people watched but didn’t help. The service was by and large very attentive, helpful and pleasant, except for the drink server who slammed down my lemon, lime and bitters before sauntering off. Not sure what I did to offend. Both vegetarians, we ordered the gnocchi – goat curd, chilli and lemon butter I think. It was very nice. The space was good for leaving two prams next to our table and they offered us two highchairs which was very nice too. And they coped well with a bub dropping toys and rusks from his chair. Naomi discovered there was no real space in the toilets for a nappy change and I’m still trying to figure out how she did it with her bub standing up. She was raving about the souffle which is no longer on the menu though we heard it might be coming back so we might have to go back and try it.

Cafe Vinyl

This one was totally me taking one for the team. I popped past on the way back to my car to grab a cup to test it out entirely for my blog. Cafe Vinyl is down the West End of Hay St (it’s actually very close to where I park my car) and my brother in law used to tell me it’s the best coffee in the city. It is very very good.

Feminism, Anger and Silicone Dolls

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by Kirstyn McDermott

I’m cruising a forum for owners and devotees of sex dolls, checking out the For Sale board – one of my habitual research haunts – when I spot it. Someone in Australia is selling their Real Doll. She looks to be in fair to fixable condition and the asking price is only a couple thousand dollars plus shipping. An excellent price, I think, considering these ultra-realistic dolls go for upwards of US$5500 new – plus more than a grand on top to get one out to Australia. And it’s rare to be able to get a second hand doll over here. Their owners tend to hang on to them.

As I scrutinise the photographs, I’m already running numbers in my head. I’d get most of it back when I resold her, right? It’s not like I’m going to do anything that would cause further, ah, injury. I just want to touch her. Hold her. Move her. I’ve been researching these dolls for months, on and off. I know exactly how they’re made, what types of damage can be done to them, how repairs – both amateur and professional – are carried out. I know they’re supposed to be slightly tacky due to the way their silicone skin “sweats” and I know their articulated bodies can be posed in almost any natural position. I’ve seen more photos and amateur videos, in various degrees of graphic intimacy, and watched more documentaries about these dolls than I can count.

In theory, I know a lot. In practice, I know nothing.

How exactly does the silicone feel beneath your fingers? Texture? Softness? Resistance to pressure? What does it smell like? Taste like? How does it feel to handle a doll, to bear the full ungainly weight of her in your arms? These, and other less seemly questions, are the kinds I want answered. Via personal, practical experience if possible – in the name of research, of bringing the necessary verisimilitude to my story, I can justify almost anything – and here is a second hand doll just across the country. So close.

It’s too much money, I tell myself. It’s ridiculous. But if I get most of it back … Hell, if I fix her up a little before selling, I might not even lose a single dollar on the exercise … She has got a very pretty face, even beneath the peeling makeup …

You get your hands on that doll, you know you ain’t even gonna give her back.

The voice in my head is sharp, with a vague American twang. It belongs to Beryl, the lead doll in the novella on which I’m working. Beryl, who is always angry and whose commentary I’ve been hearing in my head a lot lately. It’s something I tend to do when I’m in the middle of a difficult project – and none has been more difficult than The Home for Broken Dolls – carrying characters around with me, viewing the world as they would view it, getting a good sense of their voice.

And if you did go and give her back, if you went and sold her back to them what broke her, now what would that make you?

Beryl is right. I would never re-sell the doll. And I wouldn’t know what else to do with her. This is the path that Jane, my doll-obsessed protagonist, started down and look where that led her. I’m not Jane. I’m not Beryl either. (But they are, both of them, me.) I leave the forum. Wander off instead to explore websites both less and more disturbing. In my head, Beryl is silent. I wonder if she is even angrier that I didn’t make the guy an offer on his doll. That I chose instead to abandon her. And maybe she’s right about that as well.

When I started writing The Home for Broken Dolls, the character of Beryl emerged with speed and furious certainty. Much more so than Jane, or any of the other dolls, who all needed to be coaxed and cajoled. Who needed to be found. Beryl, she found me. She became a near constant presence – not just when I was actively working on the novella, or bogged down in research, but in my daily life. I could be reading an article or news story online, reading a book, watching a movie or TV show, even having a conversation with someone, and her voice would chip in with some barbed comment, an observation full of scorn and fury and no small amount of truth.

I confess that I did try – more than once – to tone her down a little as the story developed. To soften her edges, mix in some vulnerability, add emotional – read feminine – nuance. Because no one likes an angry woman, right? Only male characters are beloved for their righteous, unrelenting fury. (Don’t agree? Provide me, please, with the male equivalent for harridan, or harpy, or shrew. Hell, provide me with one for bitch.) Thankfully, the doll resisted my attempts to reshape her. Even-tempered dialogue sounded wooden; sympathetic gestures and signifiers of fragility rang false. I stopped trying. Beryl remained, until the end, unappeasable and utterly true to herself.

And I loved her for it. I still love her for it.

At one point in the novella, Beryl is asked if she ever gets tired of being angry all the time. “Only always,” the doll replies. “But that’s why I been put here, ain’t it? I get angry, so you don’t gotta.”

I do get angry. A lot. And it makes me so very, very tired. As a woman – even as a woman with the privileges of being white, cis, presenting as straight, educated, financially stable and able-bodied – spend any amount of time online or immersed in the dominant cultural output, and you will likely become angry, frustrated and exhausted. In recent years, I’ve had to learn to pick my battles and my allies, to know when to switch off, turn away and retreat. Otherwise, self-combustion.

But I have come to value anger most highly. Both in myself and, more importantly, in those who are usually scorned for brandishing such a volatile emotion. Those who are called harpies and bitches, those who are deemed to be uppity or loud, those who are ever so helpfully chided to be mindful of their tone in polite conversation. I listen to these voices, even when they are angry, especially when they are angry, and I try to learn from them. Because sometimes when they are angry, it means I don’t gotta be. And I thank them from the bottom of my exhausted heart for that, and hope to return the favour on another day, another front.

Beryl still speaks up in my head from time to time, though not as often as she used to. Part of that is me moving on from the novella to other projects, and the natural fading from view of former central characters that accompanies such a shift. Part of it is the (re)assimilation of her self into my own. (I am not Beryl. But she is me.) My acceptance of her anger and its value, an appreciation of the power it can bring to marginalised voices. I’m still learning how to cultivate my own anger constructively, to know how to wield it and when to set it aside.

But I will never abandon it.

Anger is a feminist and feminine emotion. It doesn’t need its sharp and bloodied edges pared away. It doesn’t need to display a vulnerable underbelly, to show fragile bones between its seething skin. It doesn’t need to speak in modulated tones.

What it needs is to be heard, understood and respected.

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Kirstyn’s Twelve Planet collection Caution: Contains Small Parts is listed on Locus Magazine’s Recommended Reading List and shortlisted for the Aurealis Award for Best Collection. The novella “Home For Broken Dolls” is shortlisted for the Aurealis Award for Best Horror Short Story and on Locus Magazine’s Recommended Reading List.

Caution: Contains Small Parts is available here and on Wizard’s Tower Books, Weightless Books, Amazon and Kobo.

I remember the absolute worst day in hospital after the baby was Day 2. Or the night of Day 2, specifically. The day before she was born, I couldn’t sleep so I stayed up watching One Born Every Minute at my parents’ til the house all got up at about 6 am.  (We slept over to be closer to the hospital and avoid peak hour. Might I not recommend several hours of watching women giving birth the day before you do? ) Then we got called in to the labour ward early as my c-section got moved up. We ended up leaving for the hospital at about the same time but it was panicked instead as we didn’t have buffer time to get there on time. We also had to call the cord collection nurse to come in a hurry and she got stuck in a lot of traffic (we banked the cord blood and the experience made me feel a little bit like we were sample collecting in the field). So we were stressed we might not have her there when the moment came. So basically, once we were all systems go for Baby there was not a second to think about anything  because we were go go go. Then the nurse did arrive and kinda annoyed all the labour ward nurses and there was Tension.

Then the baby was born and you’re all swept up in that. Calls to make. Morphine to process. Grandparents visiting. All that jazz. And you expect to be up all night at intervals cause – baby. You know that babies wake up every couple of hours.  Says so on the box. And you’re determined to get it all down pat so you both get up at the feeds, C did the changes. We were a team. And it was awesome. And then the next day comes and you actually haven’t slept for what? more than 50 hours now? And you know the advice – sleep when the baby sleeps. And the baby is actually doing decent 3-4 hour sleeps. In fact, she was doing so well we had to wake her for feeds (midwives are so mean about that! Pulling all their clothes off and turning em upside down til they wake up crying )And OMG! I could not sleep for more than 20 minutes at a stretch without being woken up by someone. Midwives come in to do checks. People keep trying to give you meals. And all these other people keep needing things from you – hearing tests, blood tests, Anti D injections. Noone was remotely apologetic about it either. My room was right near the lifts so even at night there was constant noise and loud conversations.

And by that night I was climbing the walls. All I’d wanted all day was a 2 hour nap. Just 2 hours! And every time things would quieten down I’d quickly grab the chance to sleep too. And no matter what, without fail, 20 mins in someone would come in for some reason. Just 2 hours! In the end, I physically couldn’t stay awake any more for feeds and the baby wouldn’t settle that night. She kept crying and the midwives were saying she was hungry and I would say that I’d just fed her and they were like, she’s still hungry. I had to concede defeat at 3am because I could no longer physically stay awake to trust myself to not drop the baby. That’s when we discovered she loved the dummy (I had really not wanted to use one but you know, after being awake for 72 hours or something and the baby instantly quietens … yeah). I signed over all kinds of clearances to let the nursery feed her 1 formula feed and they took her away. And I sat and cried. Because all I’d wanted all day was just 2 hours of sleep! And I’d chased it, literally chased it with “just do this and then you can sleep”. And C was all well, go to sleep then!

And then at 6am they wheeled back in the most sedate little baby you wouldn’t believe had been a holy terror not 3 hours earlier and the midwife announces, “Here’s your BABY!”. And I guess I got 3 hours sleep so … Win?

Many days now, today included, I feel like I’m playing that game again: I’ll just do [x] and then I can [have my coffee/eat lunch/do some work/ reply to that email etc]. Where X = feed baby/comfort baby/ change baby and wash everything in sight due to lack of baby bodily fluids integrity/ put baby down to nap] And I’ll chase that “and then I can” all damn day. Especially like today when baby’s naps are not long enough to do anything other than go to the toilet and boil the kettle. I’ve realised that I’m drinking far too much coffee because some days all I want is to sit and enjoy just 1 hot cup of coffee. And 6 lukewarm cups aren’t the same thing.

I’ve decided that since I need to figure out how to study fulltime (plus run Twelfth Planet Press) with baby come April 1, I might start tracking just how many hours of work I actually do in a day. I know I’m likely to be undervaluing what I’m actually doing. I figure that the average or the cumulative is probably more than I think. Today, I tracked the time in minutes and it was 24. And I know some people will tell me – hey! You got 24 minutes to do work! And you’re complaining? So uh, yeah. All hail my 24 minutes plus the time I spent writing this post!

Tags: parenthood

In which, the Hugo host debacle online conversation became a many-tentacled AI that wants to steal our souls, and ladies are cranky.

Speaking of Cranky Ladies – check out Tansy and Tehani’s crowdfunding campaign.

News In Depth:
The Hugos v. Jonathan Ross, Safe Spaces & Online Discussions
Foz Meadows laying out the original drama in her usual inimitable style.
Cheryl on the arguments for & against Jonathan Ross as host as particularly on the importance of Intersectionality – how to be a good ally, and why you LISTEN to why people are upset, even if it’s inconvenient to you or your community.
The Chairs of LonCon apologise for the situation – weirdly, this graceful and thorough acknowledgement of their responsibility for how the chain of events went is often not being mentioned in coverage of the discussion.
 

UPDATE, PLEASE READ:
The downside of recording several days ahead of broadcast is that sometimes the conversation we are contributing to moves on without us – in particular with the “Hugos and Jonathan Ross” conversation we recorded on Wednesday night there has been some serious reframing of the narrative, some of it highly gendered.

We wanted to reference some of this further discussion rather than be seen to ignore such an important (and troubling) development.

Some important posts calling attention to the reframing of the narrative to trivialise the concerns of women (and to hide the fact that many prominent men shared and vocalised those concerns):

Kameron Hurley on Power, Responsibility, Empathy and Privilege
Kari Spelling on how the conversation has changed from being about the unsuitability of Ross as a Hugo host to being about how women were “mean” on Twitter – and how those women are continuing to be unfairly targeted.
Natalie Luhrs on “Reframing and Punching Down” – with particular reference to how those posts calling for people to be nicer to each other, or how fandom is too hysterical to deserve nice things, aren’t always as helpful as you think they are.
David Perry questions the mythical concept of Seanan Maguire’s Angry Mob, calling particular attention to how Seanan and her tweets are now being reframed as central to Jonathan Ross’s resignation, due to selective quoting, selective memories and gross misrepresentation of the actual timeline of events.
This is important stuff, people. Our history just got rewritten while we were watching.
[note: we deliberately didn’t mention Seanan by name while discussing the issue in this episode of GS because we could see she was already being unduly blamed and centred in the discussion despite being only one participant – it’s the exchange between Seanan and Jane Goldman mentioned in the Perry article that Alisa also refers to as a conversation that ends in mutual apologies and is later misrepresented by others long after it’s concluded.]

Another important post by Kameron Hurley, Rage Doesn’t Exist in a Vacuum. On why internet rage happens, why someone else might be more upset than you are about a thing, and why it’s important to speak up about upsetting things even if it ruins someone else’s happy party fun times.

Culture Consumed:
Alisa: Game of Thrones S1, Fringe S3, Kaleidoscope ToC
Tansy: Ms Marvel #1 & She-Hulk #1 Fringe S3
Alex: Midnight and Moonshine, Lisa L Hannett and Angela Slatter; A Stranger in Olondria, Sofia Samatar

Pet subject: feedback
Galactic Suburbia Award!! (last call for suggestions)

for activism and/or communication that advances the feminist conversation in the field of speculative fiction

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!

Listen to the Podcast here or Subscribe through iTunes.

Guest Post by Tansy Rayner Roberts

Is Cranky Ladies of History going to be a SF anthology, a fantasy anthology or a historical anthology? I’m hoping all three. Historical fiction is a lot closer to SF/F than you might think – that delicate balance between research/accuracy/realism and imagination/wonder/liberty-taking. My recent obsession with historical romance author Courtney Milan took on a whole different angle when I read this review which pointed out that the heroine discovers the chromosome much earlier than in recorded history – which makes it science fiction, right?

Science fiction has a long history of allowing the alternative history and even more adventurous, the secret history, to “count” as part of the genre. Mary Gentle’s Ash is a brilliant example of this, a novel that looks and feels exactly like real history – as the reader you desperately want it to be real – but feels like fantasy and science fiction too. It’s too close and too far away at the same time – the uncanny valley of historical fiction, and thus it’s ours.

Then there’s that odd tradition we have in the SF genre of allowing historical fiction to “count” if it’s by an author we claim as our own. Karen Joy Fowler’s fiction often works that way, hitting the SF awards shortlists and causing controversy as fans and critics alike argue, does it count? Is it real?

Nicola Griffith’s excellent Hild, a meticulous historical novel based around the young woman who would become St Hildegard of Bergen, was nominated for a Nebula, and critics are already divided on whether it’s science fictional or fantastical enough to “count.”

The truth is that, while we only tend to let the barriers fall for those authors who are seen as “one of us,” most historical fiction is also science fiction, or fantasy. And not just in that ‘all fiction is speculative’ way.

I spent most of my twenties immersed in Roman history, a period so full of gaps and lacunae and great gaping missing bits that you practically have to become a historical novelist to make sense of it all, especially if you want to talk about anything other than the handful of men in power who wrote things down.

And yes, when I did start writing fiction about the Romans, I added werewolves, because honestly they make more sense that way.

All Arthurian novels are closer to fantasy than history – even if they do ignore the blatant magic that runs through so many of the stories. But Marion Zimmer Bradley created a different kind of fantasy in which women had a greater importance and significance to the politics and religion of the day than had previously been assumed. The Mists of Avalon asked really important questions – like who the Lady of the Lake actually was, and why Guinevere and Lancelot didn’t just quietly run away together, and why a mysterious enchantress would even want to capture Merlin inside a tree.

She asked the same questions that social historians have to ask, all the time –  what were the women doing, while all the history was being written about their husbands and sons?

One of my favourite historical novels of all time is The Course of Honour, by Lindsey Davis. Antonia Caenis, the former slave who became the beloved mistress of the Emperor Vespasian, was only mentioned twice in the history books. Davis, who famously brought the Flavian period to life in her Roman detective series featuring the informer Marcus Didius Falco, did a great job of fleshing out a romance between the coin-counting Emperor and the whip-smart woman who could never marry him, which fitted with the few facts we knew about Caenis and the many facts we knew about Vespasian.

My life was also substantially changed by the Masters of Rome series by Colleen McCullough – which I read through my teens and which sparked my first interest in Roman women. Her research was meticulous and thorough, though again it was often based on imagining lives of women based on sparse details.

I always skimmed over the chapters on politics and war, to get back to the womenfolk. And I was a little devastated to discover that, while Marius undoubtedly married the Julia who was the aunt to *our* Julius Caesar, it was a complete fabrication that she had a troubled, self-destructive younger sister who married Sulla.

Kerry Greenwood’s Medea, on the other hand, plays with the notion that we know the end of the story, only to sock it to us at the end with the revelation both through fiction and a historical end note, that actually it was Euripides who was playing the alternative history game, and the real Medea (if she existed) was almost certainly framed for her terrible crime.

It’s one thing to think of alternative history as being the craft of changing the past, but what if you are using your story to bring it back closer to the historical truth? That’s the game that all historical writers play with us – the tease that this version is real, even if it contains magical islands and manticores, alien invasions or characters who never even made it into the footnotes of history.

Kate Forsyth, known in Australia as a successful writer of epic fantasy for adults and children, had an international breakout success a couple of years ago with Bitter Greens, a novel which takes fairy tales, fantasy and women’s history and turns them into a marvellous cocktail of can’t-stop-reading.

The real live Cranky Lady of the story is Charlotte-Rose De La Force, one of the many ladies-who-salon of 17th century France, an author of fairy tales at a time when the genre was at its absolute hottest.

Kate didn’t just write a straight biography of Charlotte-Rose – though she immersed herself in her history even to the point of researching and translating some of her writings which had never before been translated into English – but tangled that story in with the fairy tale of Rapunzel, and an imagined history of the original witch of that tale. From the scandalous affairs of the French court to Italian courtesans, lovers and plague, and into the magical possibilities of fairy tales and witchcraft, the novel never quite lets up as to which layer is fantasy and which is history.

It’s all just wonderful.

I have no idea what we’re going to get for Cranky Ladies of History – you never do until the stories themselves roll in. I am hoping for fiction which illuminates historical women I know quite well, and others I have never heard of. I’m hoping for new perspectives, for stories that bring history to life as Lindsey Davis did for Caenis, and Kate Forsyth did for Charlotte-Rose.

But I would be lying if I didn’t say that I’m also rather hoping that a few witches and manticores and robot doubles slide into the stories too.

This post is written as part of the Women’s History Month Cranky Ladies of History blog tour. If  you would like to read more about cranky ladies from the past, you might like to support the FableCroft Publishing Pozible campaign, crowd-funding an anthology of short stories about Cranky Ladies of History from all over the world.

A Roundup of all the other posts for this campaign can be found at FableCroft.

I have the sad, sorry withdrawal come down that follows a birthday weekend. Luckily for me, I’m going out for a work session this afternoon which means I get to to try out another cafe (I’m behind on those posts too). Course, the come down means I had a great time!

I wasn’t really sure what was happening with my birthday this year. I didn’t organise anything. It’s kinda sad how the older you get, the less shiny and exciting your birthday becomes. I knew that there was a family dinner organised for the Friday night but C kept telling me that my present would be given to me then, not on the day, and in the calendar, he had a mysterious note “Tell Wife a Secret”. No matter what I tried, he refused to give away any hints! I had a meeting with Julia over Skype late Wednesday night and as soon as I hopped off, it was Thursday, and my birthday and he revealed the secret: he’d taken a day of annual leave to give me a day off. He’d remembered that I had a philosophy of not working on my birthday – something I picked up from the crew back in my Wetlands days. We’d all take annual leave on the day and frankly, if you can do that, it’s a really nice thing to say to yourself – I give me the day off! So C gave me the day after off and stayed home to look after the baby on Friday and sent me off “wherever”.

Thursday, my actual birthday, I had breakfast with my sister and mum and then hung out at my parents for the afternoon. I madly rang around local day spa places near my home to see if somewhere could fit me in. I had no idea what to do on my sudden day off and I didn’t want to waste it.

The Urban Day Spa in Rockingham could fit me in at 10am and I got to sleep in (after doing the 6am baby feed!) and then roll out of bed and head out for a full body massage. Hidden upstairs in the cafe strip on the foreshore, it’s a very lovely day spa. The massage was excellent – I was so sore from baby lifting etc – and the mood was dim lights and music and so relaxing. And then afterwards, they served refreshments on a balcony overlooking the ocean. I was still so very sore but definitely more relaxed.

Afterwards, I headed to the Kent St Deli, a street back, and my favourite local place, to have a couple of uninterrupted hot coffees. It was very busy and not the most pleasant place to hang and the service wasn’t really as good as it’s been before, nor the coffee. But nonetheless, I hung out for about 2 hours, drank coffee and juice and ate lunch and worked on my PhD quietly. And even though technically that’s working, it’s been such a long time since I could sit for two hours and just work without stopping, following through processes, jotting down notes and actually developing a methodology for my stats collecting. And not being able to do such things had been stressing me out. I had a really great time working on my PhD.

I was still sore and still had time to spare so I headed home to have a long luxurious bath (this particular bath bomb made the bath look like the pee of someone who needed to badly rehydrate!). I listened to Norah Jones and read a book. Divine!

And then! I still had some time before we had to leave for dinner, so I finally sat down and tackled the stumbling block on my quilt project. I’d stalled back when I was pregnant due to pregnancy brain meaning I could no longer fussy cut without stuffing up and my carpal tunnel eventually stopped me crafting altogether. It’s taken me this long but I finally got back to it. I had to recut one template and then fussy cut those 8 diamonds and then a bit of sewing over the weekend and voila! Done!

Then it was time to head up to family dinner. Everyone came along and they had all pooled my birthday money to get me one giant day spa package omigosh! You know the kind that has EVERYTHING and you have to be there for like half a day! Oh yeah! Now to decide when that day is going to be! I cannot wait! And we had dinner. And Cake:

Because it was a public holiday on Monday, we got a long weekend as well! We checked my post box on the way to dinner and I discovered my swift had finally arrived! So Saturday, I managed to work it, and wind up yarn!

This should keep me going for a while:

That’s a couple of balls of sock yarn for the year of sock knitting, one scarf and the TPP pink shall be a shawl.

Serendipity is the strangest thing. Yesterday I was having this long talk with Ben about combating negativity and personal attacks – reconciling the hateful things people say about you or to you with how you see yourself. Today, I’m sitting here watching an interview that Oprah did with Sheryl Sandberg which aired on Jan 21st but I’ve been putting off watching. She’s talking about her book Lean In, which I vaguely recall got some negative press when it was published but I forget what.

Anyway, they’re talking about the bullshit labels/pressure people put on women – eg  “having it all” and “work life balance”. Noone ever really asks successful men how they manage to have it all or balance work and life (they have wives for that, right?). And work life balance is a privilege that not everyone gets to contemplate anyhow.

Then they get on to the “imposter syndrome” and I start nodding my head. And realising how much this ties into yesterday’s conversation. Sandberg says that whilst some men do suffer from it, more women than men do. And when you ask a woman and a man about their success, a man more often than not will own his success, that it’s from what *he did*, from what he knows and his skills. Whereas a woman will “attribute her success to luck, help from other people and working hard, and not from her own skills. And even if you’re confident enough to own your own success, the world will attribute her success to luck and working hard and not from her own skills.” And then she says, “we do it to ourselves and the world does it *to* us.”

Wow. I have to sit with that for a while. But just Yes. What an interesting discussion to come past me just when I was thinking these things through only yesterday. So many passing snide remarks in my direction over time- it’s my friends who all voted for me, I sucked my way onto that list (I’m very tired now), editing collections is so much easier than anthologies cause they are all the one writer’s work (and I guess I just put the staple on the pages and hand it in with my name on it?), who is she? I’ve never heard of her, I don’t understand why these female run small presses are doing so well. And on and on.

It’s interesting to deconstruct. Isn’t it very telling to assume that working well with others or working hard are the parts of success that hold no value? Imagine having all the skills in the world but never actually applying them. Or not applying them consistently or with perseverance. Imagine having all the skills in the world but being a totally foul person who makes teamwork intolerable. Actually, I don’t have to imagine these two examples at all.

The Olympics are over for another 4/2 years and I must confess to having watched a lot more of it than I thought I would. I was working on an arts grant during the first week of them and pulled a good few late nights (working til 2am and then getting up for the baby’s next feed, that is *awesome* I must say, but it showed me that I *can* get clear, lucid and creative thought when I need to, phew!)

This was the first Olympics that I was home and about enough to actually participate in what used to be called the Knitting Olympics and is now called the Ravellenics. I didn’t sign up for anything official though. I just challenged myself to knit to finish as much as I could in the set time. Since I hadn’t been knitting at all, anything would be an achievement. But I hoped to start and finish a pair of socks, which would be my first pair knit in my knitting challenge for the year. I cast on during the opening ceremony, knit far into the night before going to bed and waking up in the morning to hate the pattern I’d picked. And so it goes! I had to unpick and start over! I also tried knitting two socks together for the first time.

And so, how did I do? Behold the knitting I completed over the fortnight:

That would be: 1 hotwater bottle cover (in my November yarn from KnitCrate, I opted not to go with the boot warmers pattern that they came with), 1 cloche hat (my January yarn from KnitCrate – Zen Yarns Garden – and just needing a button to finish) and a pair of socks in Watermelon by Claudia Handpainted.

And! I cast on and knit to the heels on these:

Mediumweight Socks That Rock by Blue Moon Fibre Arts in a Mill End. These are socks pair number 2 for 2014 and are a gift …

One of my favourite TV shows is Dragons Den. A panel of multi-millionaire entrepreneurs (or businesses in marketing, branding and so on) sit in judgment as they get pitched business ideas, mostly for inventions. Some contestants have done prototypes and small-scale production runs. All are looking for cash investment and mentoring in marketing, branding and taking a start up to a fully fledged viable business. My favourite bit is when one of the Dragons decides there is a good idea that they think they could make fly and then they offer X cash to buy in to the company for Y percentage partnership. Almost without fail, the person will reject the offer of lots of money because the deal is for more than 50% ownership of the company.

Their thinking being that an idea is worth equal or more than its execution. Or that having an awesome idea is enough alone to make it successful. The Dragons usually smile serenely. To them, it’s easy come, easy go. They know that an idea is not enough. That there are more ideas in the world than can be developed. The negotiation also tells them a lot about what that partnership might be like. Are they going to be overly possessive and territorial? Are they going to be open to mentorship? Are they going to step aside to let others with experience handle things like packaging, branding, marketing, promotion and access to delivery channels? Where will they decide the line is between “mine” and “ours”?

I think a lot about this show as I watch the narratives about the evolving models of publishing. Publishing is (as always) in a state of flux, in a reinvention of sorts. Small press models don’t look anything like they did when I started my press back in 2007. And it’s not a risk to say it will look markedly different in five years time. I’m very passionate about speculative fiction and about writers. As a small press, we sit very decidedly outside mainstream/big publishing and our role is very distinct. We try to offer the best and fairest deals we can when we acquire manuscripts and we try to offer a value addition of personal care and interest beyond the publication date. I like to think there is a very clear narrative that runs through the books I acquire that embody the ethos, direction, and yes, branding, of Twelfth Planet Press. I’m gradually building an argument, a response, a discussion point and when I read submissions, I’m looking for pieces that will expand, broaden, deepen or emphasise that narrative.

Of course, the other aspect that I look for at acquisitions is whether I think a work is likely, or has the potential, to sell to break even, or, you know, one day, make profit. I’m running a business after all. So far, I’m still waiting for the long tail to kick in and kick back most of my investment dollars. The thing about the old skool publishing model is that it works across all the titles bought in a year – some you win (make profit), some you lose (make losses) and across the board you cross your fingers and hope you come out ahead. This approach is what enables publishers to invest in books they know won’t ever earn out or end up in the black but that they believe should exist.

It’s a different model to self publishing. And like self publishing, it works for some cases, and not others. But I saw a t-shirt the other day that said “What part of 70% royalties do you not understand?” and it took me back a bit. Sure, there is an element out there with a pretty strong hate on for publishers but it strikes me as a bit naive or deliberately simplistic. It comes back to the Dragons Den and the idea that the only person who works to create a book is the writer. And that the only costs are paying said writer. Or that the writing might be the most expensive/only part of creating a book.

I’ve run the maths of going to digital only publishing to play with the business model. I’ve also tried to look at offering our ebooks at that $0.99 or $1.99 price point. I really hope we don’t see this flux in the business model end up with books only costing 99 cents. It’s such a huge undervaluation of what it costs to produce the product. To think that you deserve 70% royalties means you think that the cover artist, the book designer, the layout, the editors, the proofers, the marketers and promoters, the promotion material including launch events, and overheads like electricity, software, website management, bank charges, fees for online sales transactions and so many other costs, as well as publisher reputation and branding should somehow be covered by that 30%. That’s one helluva turnover of book sales. It also suggests that all those people take almost no role in the success of your book. I mean, as we all know, no book of excellent quality has ever been overlooked or failed to succeed, since cream always rises to the top, all on its own.

Which is not to say that 70% isn’t a great deal. I don’t have anything against self publishing. It’s the obvious choice in some situations. But when considering all those choices, that 70% really needs to be viewed honestly – what costs will also need to be covered by that? Editing costs? Proofing? Ebook conversion? Buying a cover? Spending time learning layout and publicity? Advertising and promotion? How much time will be required to be invested in product awareness? There are outdated aspects of the publishing business model. And the changes we are currently experiencing will force that hand. But the changes that will happen, and need to, will happen within the realm of economics and viability.

On Saturday we had reason to look for somewhere to camp for a while. The baby and I were hanging out in the CBD whilst C was off doing things for about 2 hours. I had in mind a couple of cafes I wanted to hang out in but most of them were closed. Looks like the Milligan end of Hay St is for work hours and not so much a Saturday at lunchtime.

We ended up at the Dome cafe right on the corner of Milligan and Hay St. Dome is an old faithful. It’s not my favourite cup of coffee but it’s fine. The menu feels like it could really use a freshen up. But again, it’s fine. The best bit I guess is there is lots of space to sit for a while and noone really seems to mind.

The aisles are wide and there enough room to maneuver. The staff were affable and very attentive to the baby. However, once you’ve ordered, you really have no interaction with the staff again. Someone brings out your order but must be trained not to catch your eye. I noticed tables being cleared but not once did I see one wiped over. In fact, my table was gross (I sat there because it had a lot of room for the baby and the chair was comfy) and needed a wipe over that never had an opportunity to happen and I worked off my lap rather than the table.

The baby was a bit grizzly in the first hour but the place was reasonably empty and didn’t seem to bother anyone. She slept for the second hour and again, wasn’t really bothered by anyone. Wide aisles meant people could move past her without issue. And I really dug the jazz music.

Pros:

• Comfy seats
• Generous cups of coffee
• I like the music
• Comfortable working space
• Airconditioned

Cons

• Ordinary service – good luck getting offered a second cup of coffee, I had to go up to the counter pushing pram in one hand, holding my laptop, wallet and phone in the other to order myself a second cup.
• I’m bored of the menu
• C said his lunch was not made with love. his serving of squid rings did look awfully meagre and his side salad was simply lettuce (my Mediterranean roasted vegetable wrap was fine; was hot and seemed fresh)

I actually managed to get a lot of work done – it might have only been 20 to 40 minutes or so due to the baby not really settling but it was pretty focussed. I was left alone and the space was comfy, reasonably quiet, airconned on a warm day. I liked the funky music for getting in the mood for working. I would probably work in a Dome again and this one was a good Saturday in the city option.

In which 2014 is officially a thing.

I just really enjoyed listening to the Skiffy and Fanty Show (Shaun and Julia) talk with Marianne de Pierres and Tansy Roberts about Australian speculative fiction.

Small press gets a really thorough recommendation and they say lovely things about Twelfth Planet Press. Also some really great reading lists for Australian fiction and authors, big press and small.

Well worth a listen – here! Or just check out the Show Notes.

The World SF Tour are also raising money to go to Worldcon.