David Kernot

Archive for April, 2008

26/April/2008: Eleven of Australia’s top authors take a guess in 2012. Each story imagines the world as it might be, presenting unique possibilities for the very near future. 118 pages with a forward by Alisa Krasnostien and Ben Payne. Cover, illustrations, design and layout by Cat Sparks.

Writers are: Deborah Biancotti, Martin Livings, Dirk Flinthart, David Conyers, Simon Brown, Lucy Sussex, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Kaaron Warren, Angela Slatter, Ben Peek, and Sean McMullen.

My copy arrived in the post, personally signed by David Conyers – so I had to read his excellent, dark tale first – Soft Viscosity. Dirk Flinthart’s The Last Word, had a nice twist, as did Angela Slatter’s I Love You Like Water. I’m still getting through them all, but it is good to see so many names that I am familiar with put their work into one piece,

If you can get hold of a copy of it, I’d say get one and give it a read.
Well done guys.

20/April/2008: Well, only just finished mentioning that I had all but forgotten about this little ditty – Self Fulfilling Prophesy, when Everything’s Related popped up in the AntipodeanSF Issue 119. Here is the link if you want to give it a read.

Everything’s Related

Yes: I Know its ONLY 50 words, but you try and explain the relationship between the atmosphere and volcanism in less?

19/April/2008: Sounds a bit bizzare! I have this story I have been playing with and on Friday I decided to turn it around so that the beginning became the middle and the middle is now the start – a change of POV was required too and I added a new character. It all makes sense and I hope it pays off – but I had to sit there on the train and do a bit of “mind mapping”, make sure that I could tie the beginning into the ending in the right way. So I had seven scenes which I dutifully drew out and linked as the train bumped along the tracks.

Today (is Saturday) so I converted my “map” into those seven high level scenes that followed the flow of the plot. As it turned out I have now got 15 scenes and have written 500 words of ideas, critical elements and events to stitch it all up.

Now all that’s left is to write the story around all those key events and writing triggers. That’s the fun part, that’s where all the creativity kicks in.

I’ll let you know how it progresses as I ponder over a Fantasy short story.

17/April/2008: Well, I have to say, that it’s gone off to be considered now too.

That makes 8 out there with someone having a look at. Pretty happy with this piece. Yes there’s a bit of, Gary Peterson’s, When Autumn Comes Slowly in it – after all in some ways he was the inspiration – it’s a bit of a tribute / a story about his story, and yes, I am saddened by your death, mate. There’s a bit of H.P. in there too, the great Lovecraft.

I have to say thanks to Patty Jansen for her excellent critique of this piece too.

I’ll let you know how it (and all the rest) go.

Cheers for now.

13/April/2008: Well, I had all but forgotten about this little ditty – Self Fulfilling Prophesy. It’s only 50 words, and is still in the March 2008 (Issue 118) of AntipodeanSF. Here is the link if you want to give it a read.

Self Fulfilling Prophesy

While your at it have a read of the others too. I have Everything’s Related coming up in the Mid May Issue 119.

12/Apr/2008: Not sure what happened today, but:

I finished It Mattered and sent it off.

I finished Phone-etics and sent it off.

I finished Critical Mass and sent it off.

I finished Genesis 168 and sent it off.

I wrote The Moon When Autumn Comes Slowly and sent it to OWW for a critique.

I wrote a new section to Firebox and progressed that story and started my review on Codeword IRIDIUM.

Oh, and I still had time to cook everyone dinner and bake a loaf of bread.

Got to happy with that!

07/Apr/2008: If I could bottle the creative genius of David Conyers and Jason Fischer, their story telling techniques and characterisation, I would do so. The more I read about these of these two guys work, the more humbled I become.

Every now and then both of them sends a piece of work my way to mull over. This time it was David’s “The Entropy Collapse”. Ten thousand words of out of this world story telling, and I loved the twist at the end – I’d tell you more, but no doubt there’s a publisher out there that would sue me. You’ll just have to wait until it’s published – somewhere – go and have a scout around.

Jason’s “Aide Memoir” was 96 pages, and just over twenty one thousand words of characterization in a messed up world – brilliantly done! Don’t know why, but I can’t get the main character, Aide, out of my head – must say something for Jason’s writing ability. Hunt this one down too – you won’t regret it.

2/04/2008: Well, I finally made it to my 100th critique with the Online Writing Workshop people. It has been a fantastic experience, and taught me a lot – both about my writing when people have reviewed my work, and by critiquing other peoples work – I have found out even more about my writing flaws and my style.

The trick is in listening to what people have top say and learning from it – not to get bent out of shape from a bad review.

I should get back to critiquing, there are a few people in my queue that I need to have a look at their work…

But first, there’s a couple of things that I’ve got to do with one of my stories.