Update

Welcome, readers, to this most disused of blog spaces. I looked back at my old posts from 2004 and 2005, and I was much more active then. You could rely on me to say something. Now, it’s ‘check out my book review’, or ‘this is what I’ve been doing lately’. Blech.

And is nothing happening to me?

Well, no. Things are happening. I’m planning a trip. Yay. I received a kind and generous invitation to do something which provoked all sorts of odd thoughts and reactions, not the least my unofficial advice to writers, and what I do or don’t have to offer to writers as advice.

And I’m also reading. I bought Frances Hardinge’s Verdigris Deep yesterday, which looks good. I read a very odd Steven Erikson story too. It’s either very, very good, or not very good at all, and I can’t decide which. I’ll probably have to re-read it to be sure. It has pirates and gods and postmodern trickery. I bet Phil Farmer would have loved it.

I also bought the very first story for next year’s years best, The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume 2, but I’m not going to tell you what it is.

What else? I’m getting all ‘seventies’ with my musical tastes, for reasons I can’t quite fathom. I actually bought a best of Peter Frampton yesterday (why?) and Stephen Stills’ Manassas, which I’d never heard before. Every week day I get up at 5am, and head off to work at around 6am. By 7am, I’m sitting at my desk getting ready to work, and for some reason the sound of the 70s gets the day going better than anything else for me. I don’t know why, except that I was in my early teens, which might mean something.

I also watched Torchwood, which started out poorly, but ended well (except for some visual silliness). I also think Dr Who Season 3 worked out pretty well, though the quality of episodes was vastly uneven.

Hmm. All I need now is, stupid work stuff aside, to find a social life (hi fellow caballeros), plan two trips (one to Canberra and one to the US), and get on with things. More soon!