www.JamieMarriage.com

In which I succumb to my own drivel

2012-06-27T06:22:53Z

http://jamiemarriage.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/writer-vu.html

Moving out

2012-05-25T17:28:35Z

I've moved over to blogspot; http://jamiemarriage.blogspot.com.au/ to be exact.

After a decade here it's time to move out my old stuff and into a bigger house.
See everyone over there, I hope.

May 2012

2012-05-03T09:26:31Z

Going to stick with dates as titles for the moment considering how little I'm using this journal, may move to wordpress.

Two chunks of news for hungry readers:

My little soft sci-fi jaunt In Space, No-One Can Hear You Pillage has been accepted for publication in January 2013. Glad I got that thing out finally.

The other is a first for me; my first re-print. My first piece of smut (technically "lyrical prose" according to my favourite editor) Red, Blue, Green is getting re-printed in the Title Goes Here; Best of anthology in Autumn (my spring).

Trying to work out if a re-print counts as my tenth publication.

That was number eight.

2012-02-29T21:30:49Z

Found a suitable home for my novelette, "Flicker". Collective Fallout, a publication specializing in "Queer" fiction, is taking it off my hands.

That is story number eight out, I'm that much closer to my goal of ten published pieces I want out there before I really get to grips with novel writing.

I'll update when I know the release date.

It Writes!...Kinda

2012-02-02T10:30:31Z

After a self-imposed writing exile for about four months I seem to be finally getting back into the swing. So here's the news.

Published:
In the final quarter of 2011 two of my pieces were picked up and published. Aftermath, a flash fiction piece that is more of a tribute to my home city than anything else, was published in the 2012 Daily Flash anthology at Pill Hill Press.
Have Brains, Will Travel; a piece I had never even hoped would find a publisher as it is kind of...messed up, was taken by my favorite editor out at Title Goes Here; for their Web Edition 1.10.

Projects:
Started up a 100 words a day minimum as of yesterday and so far it's working for me. Put in a comfortable 400 words yesterday and another 800 today. In the process I managed to link two minor pieces together, thus giving me less to need to fill later. Not sure what it'll become; all I know is it's very CyberPunk already.

Other:
Stopped working with the Burn Bright project for the foreseeable future. I love that group to pieces but I've found that trying to run all of my social responsibilities (which may be the subject of writing at some point), writing my own pieces, and doing what was for over a year an almost full time side gig, has turned out to be too much for me to handle.
On top of that it looks like I may be starting TAFE in a few weeks; it's going to take all of my skill not to burn out.

Much love to my beautiful friend chirugal who has recently taught me that writing can go places strange and beautiful. I hope to feel the sting of her red pen soon.

"It wasn't the morality that bothered me so much as the inefficiency"

2011-10-08T05:24:25Z

The title is a quote taken from Maxx Barry's new novel Machine Man. I am completely smitten with all of Barry's work; I've read Company a dozen times and Syrup and Jennifer Government a few times each and every time it's always as good as the first.

Anyway; reading this quote - from chapter seven - reminded me that I have been meaning to write this blog for ages.

I'd like to talk - or maybe rant is a better word - about what we now consider to be acceptable subjects for young adult fiction and its inefficiency in regards to adult fiction.

I've been lucky enough to be on staff on the Burn Bright project for over a year now. In that time I've been given some of the darkest literature I've read in my almost 24 years of life.

I don't use that statement lightly. Half my considerable bookshelf is filled with writing so dark, depressing, mind altering and generally frakked up that those books stay on lists that have "Caution" in big red letters at the top.

In the last year or so I have come into contact with books for tweens/teens that contain not only zombies and vampires - this decade's big money makers - but subjects including: Child and spouse abuse, rape, murder, suicide, genocide, corruption and exploitation, and many more.
In fact the most recent Terry Pratchett novel And I shall wear midnight contains in its opening chapters a father who beats his pregnant teenage daughter so hard she miscarries and then the father tries to kill himself.
My question is when did it become suddenly the in thing to dump a steaming pile of reality on kids?

I'm not saying adult themes haven't been in our young adult media for a long time; I grew up watching The Addams Family and the early Nick cartoons like Ren and Stimpy. But these were isolated pieces of media and not everyone got hold of them unless they actively looked for them.

Ten years ago I was a teenager; to be accurate six years ago I was still a teenager. This sort of writing was almost unheard of for the teenage market back then.
I was reading above my age group for a long time because I had a taste for messed up fiction; it was my decision to find it and mine to deal with the consequences as a result - including some very messed up dreams - I didn't find stories about teenage girls getting gang raped next to the Harry Potter novels.

Are we just trying to prepare the next generation for the harsh realities of modern life? I really doubt it. Are the current authors just trying to cash in on shocking kids into reading their books? Maybe.

The big question is why isn't our Adult literature working on the same scale as the Young Adult stuff? For every gritty novel released to adults three or four come out for the young adults.

Maybe adults just prefer to live in a fantasy world; from interacting with both groups it seems that the teenagers are more likely to see the world as it really is.

Inefficient. It might be the fault of the authors, the publishing companies or the readers themselves. But I don't see why if we are trying to turn kids into adults we should treat the adults like kids.

Bugger it; I'm going back to reading about cyborgs.

The Outbreak begins at home

2011-09-15T08:06:29Z

Things have been quiet on the writing front of late; spending a lot more time engrossed in other activities that may help things later down the line but for the moment are just distracting.

Today I have played Dead Island, dug into Allison Hewitt is Trapped by Madeleine Roux and watched Zombieland. These activities have brought me to two conclusions.

Conclusion the first: If an outbreak ever occurs I will be one of the best people to be teamed up with. I have the plans, the training and the knowledge to deal with any level of zombie infestation.

Conclusion the second: I am getting pissed off with the sheer amount of zombie media out right now. In all honesty it may be said that I'm getting to hate zombies; and not just in the "Oh gods, I now need to kill everyone because they are infested" kind of hate. More of a "If I read one more zombie novel/play one more zombie game/see one more zombie movie or TV series I may be forced to start killing people in a Kill Bill themed katana fight.
I wish I could say that separating myself from undead media was as easy as that, but it isn't.

These days every other Young Adult novel is about zombies of some kind (I think about half my reviews at Burn Bright are in that general theme), every other game has zombies or similar (Dead Island, Left for Dead [not technically zombies as the Australian ratings board will point out], and pretty much every Bioware game), and the cinema and television are no better.

The general message of this rant is to writers of any form of zombie media: Either bring on the zombies or just shut up for a few months so I can get some peace.

Sometimes they love you....

2011-08-04T07:28:48Z

Without intending to I managed to offload one of my more....questionable pieces on one of my favourite publications; Title Goes Here;. It will be gracing the online pages of issue 1.10 in October at: http://www.titlegoeshereonline.com/pages/web-issues

I'm glad that piece found such a good home. It's not in print but it is one of those really hard to place pieces of fiction (kind of like the puppy with the lazy eye) due to the content; and I've been trying to find somewhere suitable for quite a while.
I gave up being able to get it in print because most markets won't touch it (when it comes out I'll let you figure out why), but then I did need a few more available for my web presence.

Maybe if I put together an anthology in a few years it will get in there.

A little is better than nothing

2011-07-31T01:55:18Z

Finally got rid of a story. A pretty recently finished one too, but then flash fiction seems to have a huge market right now.

It's a Sydney based post-impact tale of survival...or as much of a tale as I could tell and still keep it flash. It's going into the Pill Hill Press 366 days of flash anthology coming out next year.

Hopefully this is just a taste of acceptances to come.

Time does indeed fly....life travels by bus

2011-07-28T21:34:41Z

Life has been a little full for me to write these days; I know that's just an excuse but I feel it's justified.

Other than trying to catch up on my reading, reviews and hectic social round my website resulted in a few photo shoots (just my luck; site goes up about my writing and suddenly my photography is in demand)

I think I've just had a few too many rejections in the last few months to feel good about writing more.

Still, quiet weekend ahead so I have a chance to work hard.

Jamiemarriage.com has been launched on the seas of the net!

2011-04-04T06:29:10Z

That's right. After much fussing about the bare-bones site is up!

There is still a lot of design stuff to mess with but I'm pretty happy with how things look at the moment.

JamieMarriage.com

A New Domain

2011-03-24T10:11:43Z

Had dinner with the ever wonderful Marianne de Pierres and the insanely fun Yunyu, much fun was had.

Jamiemarriage.com is offically mine! Which means we should be up and running at the start of the new month.
Watch this space.

Projects

2011-03-11T21:56:42Z

I haven't gotten fully into the swing of writing again yet; seem to have taken on a few too many projects.

One is putting together a proper website (of which I hope to have up by the end of the month).

It's good to be busy, it keeps my mind off how long it takes publishers to get back about work.

Back to the camera

2011-02-17T06:16:43Z

It's been a while since I last wielded my camera with the aim of doing a proper photo shoot.

My new house mate happens to be a beautiful English girl who likes to pose.

Combine two points. Create art.

At this point any creativity is good.

5:30am

2011-02-05T18:31:57Z

It's 5:30am and I'm back from a night of "Research". I use that word in its broadest sense. Almost everything in life I consider to be a research project, which is how I choose to see my military career as well.

Anyway; I'm using the time between getting back and going to bed in a productive way. Sent out a couple of stories, fingers crossed but I've gotten to the point where unless there is a very specific publication I want in on I consider it more of a happy ending if things get picked up.

I really need to get back into a nocturnal lifestyle. I always get so much more done in the wee hours of the morning.

Cover Madness

2011-02-03T09:19:15Z

At AussieCon04 (which was awesome) I went to a great forum that had some really high up editors talking about what kind of covers sell books.
It was a fun little insight as to what the public will or wont buy. For example hooded characters were all the rage for fantasy books until recently, or black books with single objects on the front sold several metric tonnes of books thanks to a certain series.

I was looking around at covers for Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, one of my top ten books, as I had found a rather interesting copy in a second hand book store. When I found this cover.

This cover really annoys me for one main reason. The main character, who is apparently portrayed in this cover, is supposed to be black. ....What the hell is this supposed to be? Will people not buy a book that has an African-American male on the front so they need to put some pasty rapper on instead?

Sad days.

Multi-blogging

2011-01-27T05:46:21Z

Giving over publishing control for my young adult blogs to the Burn Bright staff is a great way to take away the pressure for these little writing stints. It means I can put my ramble down, give it a quick once over and buzz it off without having to worry about formatting issues or rejection letters or insane waiting times.
I have a lot of respect for the admin team there; as much as I love being a bit of a tech-head running a website dedicated to young adults isn't within my power.

Speaking of which; just sent off my Gonzo jounalism blog. I consider my creative mission done for the day.

Duotrope Raid

2011-01-25T04:58:07Z

Back on Duotrope to dig for markets.

After my self-inflicted month-long writing halt I'm ready to start sending a few pieces out, A few from last year and a new one from this.

I really do love this site. It gives you the chance to send to the people that you really want to publish your work.
My priorities are simple. Long pieces I want in a tactile format (Anthology/Magazine...etc), shorter pieces I'm happy to have online. Weird to have that kind of attitude in an electronic era I know, but so far it has worked for me.

Hopefully I'll have another blog for Burn Bright by tomorrow.

Research often surprises you.

2011-01-19T07:52:34Z

I was doing research for a Burn Bright blog and discovered that my sister has Datura growing in her garden.
This is a plant that is the other half of the voodoo formula to turn a person into a zombie.

Random is as random does.

Quite the year

2011-01-11T02:32:06Z

It was one hell of a year. 2010 brought out a lot of changes, opportunities for research and new methods of thought.

Burn Bright has been a fun project to be part of; this coming year I'm planning to push a lot harder with my blogs and reviews.

Title Goes Here; took not only a story I am very proud of but also some of my photography for the cover of Issue 5. (at this point I am their only repeat authour)

Pound Lit Press released one of my stories in their Terminal Earth anthology. I recieved my copy on the same day that the Review was released. And what a review!

I have many plans for this year. I'm going to make it a damn good one.

Apathetic writing

2010-09-28T00:01:15Z

Sitting in my oversized office cubicle sending microscopicly altered versions of the same story to my home email and trying to formulate a reasonable blog post for the Burn Bright site.

Just one of those days.

A little longer than I like...

2010-09-24T03:48:33Z

Pretty much all of my work ends up in the short story catagory; not by intent, I just write until the story comes to a conclusion.
So it came as a bit of a surprise that when I was finishing off a story that had been sitting on the backburner since November ended up dropping into the novelette length before I could get it to end.
In a way I'm happy because I've never written anything decent that got to that length (although I've had a few close calls) on the other hand it's annoying because it makes it that much harder to market.

In other news I appear to have finished every single story in my "To finish" pile and pretty much every idea I've come up with in the last month now has it's own story.
So now I have a pile of stories that won't get looked at till late October at earliest and what promises to be a crazy time tracking down markets for them all.

Standard manuscript format

2010-09-20T02:01:08Z

It's a constant annoyance of mine that there doesn't seem to be any consistency in manuscript formating guidelines. Even the publishers that point to specific examples all point to different places. Thank whoever that there are some publishers that just say exactly what they want. It saves time all-round.

I Shall Wear Midnight

2010-09-19T01:07:40Z

My latest young adult book review is up at Burn Bright. I was lucky enough to be able to review the newest Terry Pratchett book, well worth the read.

Doing research

2010-09-12T11:31:38Z

Yes it may look like I'm just reading mid 90's comics but I have my reasons....For one I seem to have lost the ability to form words correctly. It's taking me three goes at a time to spell anything with more than four letters.