My Writing Week: Issue 48, Year 4

Hi all,

I had an enjoyable and stress free Christmas: good food, good company, and appreciated gifts. It wasn’t too hot and the neighbours kept the noise down. They were probably too busy watching the huge LCD TV they got for Christmas, the box of which is still on the front porch so the world, including local thieves, can know about their increasing carbon footprint.  

We had prawns, lobster, oysters, and mussels as well as the traditional turkey and roast spuds, and pavlova with blue berries on top. But just about the most delicious food was some home-grown tomatoes that had finally ripened a few days before.  

I hope everyone who celebrates Christmas had an enjoyable time.

Plenty of Aussie Science Fiction to Read

The gifts I received included four books, three of which were science fiction, two of those were written by Aussie authors. Along with books I bought for myself when looking for gifts for others, I now have six new science fiction books by Aussie authors to read. I hope there are some memorable and innovative stories among them.

I find our authors are as good, if not better, than those in the rest of the world. Aussie novels like The Sea and Summer by George Turner, Quarantine by Greg Egan, Genetic Soldier by George Turner, The True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey, Capricornia by Xavier Herbert and Red Queen by HM Brown are among my favourite novels. The Dark Between the Stars by Damien Broderick is easily my favourite one author short story collection.

My Novel Writing Efforts

The pace of my novel has changed from a slow build up of tension to lots of action. I found the change of style for action scenes hard, but my writing began to flow as I wrote more of them.

I achieved my goal of 1000-2000 words on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. I even did some writing on Christmas Day. I wrote around 4500 words for the week. I am beginning to think the novel might greatly exceed 120,000 words because at 65,500 words, I think I am yet to reach the halfway mark.

Now its time to try and remember if there were any decent science fiction movies apart from Rise of the Apes, and television apart from Miracle Day and Fringe for my year’s best lists in my next post.