Notes from New Sodom

... rantings, ravings and ramblings of strange fiction writer, THE.... Sodomite Hal Duncan!!

Sunday, May 29, 2005

Random Fragments

As ye may have noticed, I've been pissing about with the blog again, rather than actually updating it with actual information about what I've been up to for the last couple of weeks. It's partly because I've been busy being Best Man for my mate Nick who just married my cousin Kerry (and it was a great pleasure to give the happy couple a hearty roasting -- sorry, toasting). Three less suitable people for organising a wedding would probably be hard to find; I mean, there's Nick, who I actually had to remind to get dressed 20 minutes before we were due at the registry Office, Kerry, who quite happily admits to living in her own wee Kerryworld rather than consensus reality, and me, whose second most-used phrase (after "fuck that shit") is "Was it more than a minute ago?". But somehow -- God knows how -- everything went without a hitch. And a good time was had by all. Me on dance floor:

Yes we're going to a party party!
Yes we're going to a party party!

Then there's also the fact that I've been busy scribbling out replies for an interview for Outland, Ottakers' in-house SF magazine. And doing the edits for a wee story of mine that should be appearing in Strange Horizons some point soon. And falling in love with Rufus Wainwright (I blame it all on Paul Bloody Cockburn for piquing my interest then evilly lending me Want One & Two). And discussing yet another future novel idea (current count: 7) with my mate and military advisor, Jim. And doing preparatory research after getting my preliminary schedule for WorldCon, where I'm on two cool panels -- one on Slipstream (with a smashing line-up including Kelly Link and Elizabeth Hand, whose stories in Conjunctions #39 I just finished reading) and one on Queer SF (with the afore-mentioned Mr Cockburn and Jed Hartman of Strange Horizons, funny enough).

But as well as the time thing, I have to admit, it's just the anticipation of WorldCon that has me by the short and curly attention span, dragging me off into a constant:

Yes we're going to a party party!
Yes we're going to a party party!

See, I'm looking forward to blathering on about the whole criss-cross-genre, interstitch-up, slippery-streaming fiction that interests me the most on one panel. And, better still, on the other panel I get to rant about the bloody bisexploitation nonsense that is Anne Rice's "ooh, aren't we such prettyboys with lusciously long lashes; let's gaze longingly at each other" fucking glorified slash fanfic. And on both panels -- hoorah! -- I get to go on and on and on and on about Delany's Dhalgren until the moderators tell me to shut the fuck up now! With both panels on the Saturday, thankfully the first isn't till two in the afternoon, because -- and this is what's got me really excitapuppy -- Friday is the Pan Mac author's party which I intend to get very, very drunk at, partly because IT'S A PARTY! And partly because Friday, being the 5th of August, is the day that Vellum is officially launched. Yes. Back to wee happy dance with song:

Yes we're going to a party party!
Yes we're going to a party party!

Yup, I'm really starting to get to that kid in a candy store level of excitement now, what with people wanting interviews or saying really rather nice things about the book (really rather ridiculously nice things, in some cases). Of course, one down-side to this antsinpanticipation is an utter inability to concentrate for more than five seconds on --

Yes we're going to a party party!
Yes we're going to a party party!

-- things like finishing fucking Book Two, Duncan!

Hence the ADD-stylee faffing and fiddling with the blog, and the addition of a "Random Fragments" section of links, for various bits and bobs of writing I've posted up here in the past. It's basically a wee sampler for folks what might be interested -- some stuff from Vellum and Ink, and some scraps of prose or poetry. Random Fragments from an increasingly random and fragmented brain. Man, I need to switch off the phone, disconnect from the internet, ignore all emails and get on with some bloody-

Yes we're going to a party party!
Yes we're going to a party party!

1 Comments:

Blogger paul f cockburn said...

Hey, folks... Al ASKED me for the loan of Want One and Two. I didn't force him into the shops to buy them... ;-)

5:53 pm  

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