The current Kill Your Darlings [Issue 16]

I have a story in it, called The Primordial Place, and I promise the story isn't as wanky as the title suggests. Good luck trying to buy it. I don't think it's in the shops (I thought Readings stocked it, but not all of the stores apparently. It seems Carlton store always does, but when I called them Tues or Wed they didn't have it in yet, even though it was 'out' on Monday.) I still haven't seen it! But if you want, and if you can, have a read. It's a good read anyway, even when I'm not in it. Maybe better when I'm not in it taking up pages.

Also, coming up in April is the Sleepers Almanac No. 9, and I have a little poem in that one and it's ABOUT CRICKET, Ramon. So, things are ticking along and it is all pretty good.

My agent is reading over my revised draft of the book and then that will go out to publishers. The same ones who saw it last year, plus one other who wasn't on original list (I think.) And so will begin another excruciating waiting period, slowed down no doubt by Mercury's Fucken Retrograde.

Ha.

What news you? Where's Alex?

Hello

Well, I have no real news other than I get the agent notes tomorrow! Yay. I've been waiting since the middle of December and it's great that they are promised for tomorrow. I haven't been hassling her but she's been running behind and is very apologetic. Tuesday I go away 'fishing' again - we have a heat wave on the way and while I'm always happy to just stay inside, we've been invited down the coast (me and P; Clokes is staying in town with one of the other kids; third child is down the coast with his grandparents.)

So it'll be nice to go away for a few nights; spend some time with family, set up on the beach in my little shade tent and swim and read and eat fruit. And compost what I need to do for the revision.

P and I are working our way through West Wing. I love it that she loves it. We are in Season 6, which is the second-last. It's getting really exciting. I think we'll finish before we go away.

Reading: I'm re-reading Donna Tartt's The Little Friend, which I bought and read after reading The Secret History. I didn't like it much at all, think I wanted it to be like Secret History BUT now that I am a more mature reader (and after reading and loving The Goldfinch, her latest) I decided to try it again. But I'd donated it to the op shop. I rarely get rid of books because they are my good friends/babies/lovers, whatever you want to call them. I've gotten rid of things like Jodi Picoult (sucked in to buying a couple) but other than those, I've kept everything. Including my Sidney Sheldons and Jackie Collinses.

So I had to re-buy it, and it wasn't easy. When I first went online to try to order it, it wasn't available. I checked the op shop, because it wasn't that long ago it was taken down there, but no. Wasn't there. I bought about a dozen other books, of course. And because I'd been in a bit of a rush, I convinced myself I might have missed it, so I went back, and bought more books that weren't The Little Friend. And then I checked online again and it was there. They must have ordered them in because of her latest book being so successful.

So I got it, and started it. It's very readable (I don't think that was the problem last time) so I shall keep on with it.

So apart from all that incredibly riveting information, there's nothing much else to report. The holidays seem long this year, actually. We'll go for a drive later, the L-plater that is, do our walk with the dog in the evening and settle in for West Wing. We've got schnitzel for tea, P is doing her research for her 4,000 word essay on the influence of Italian fascism on nazism, I'm doing my pottering online and waiting for this frigging email and marked-up manuscript and all is well with the world.

2014

Well, it's here. Wonder what it holds? All I know is that next month mercury goes into freaking retrograde at the time that the publishers will be reading my thing.

Last night, I'd been asleep a couple of hours when I thought a net of spiders was floating down onto me. I bolted from the bed, ran to the door in the dark, went to the bathroom and sat on the loo shaking. I have never been so terrified.

What the fuck.

I'm unable to concentrate on fiction so am re-reading some other non-fictiony things. I'm writing a very little. Drifting around the house a bit. Doing lots of clothes washing. Little domestic things, like some cleaning.

I bought a new couch.

I've been re-watching lots of movies again (The Exorcist (doesn't hold up). Adaptation (3rd time, excellent especially if you write). Being John Malkovich (still didn't like it). Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (preferred it this time). Melancholia (really liked it, so different). Also re-watching stuff, like I think I mentioned Girls, but I've also watched all of Chris Lilley from Heroes to Summer to Angry. All excellent. Been singing Mr G's songs and even S.Mouse's around the house.

It's such a waiting game. I should be working on a love story to submit for something end of next month. I should be writing a new short story for another submission for end of May but I don't really have any ideas for that one. I should be working on some essays - one on flying in planes, another on hair, another on Gallipoli. When I think of it like that, it makes me a bit frozen. And I'm waiting, still, for notes for the current one that I will have to read, consider, and then do one more revision. Quickly. Because time is important... did I say that already?

But instead, I waste my time on twitter and other shit.