Track Day

Not much writing going on - so I might as well Blog about what is distracting me.

WARNING - This Blog contains graphic car specifications.

I was down at Wakefield Park (race track near Goulburn) for a run in the Lotus today. The embedded photo was taken at another day at Eastern Creek. To the right are some pictures from Wakefield Park - not as good as the  Eastern Creek photos as I took them myself. 

There were some very nice cars at the track including a Ferrari Testarossa 512 TR (4.9 Litre, 12 cylinder, 0-100 in 5.8 secs, max speed 290 km/h), a number of Porsche 911 GT2's (3.6 Litre, 6 cyclinder, twin turbo, 0-100 in 3.7 secs, max speed 329 km/h), a Porsche GT3RS (3.6 Litre, 6 cylinder, 0-100 in 4.0 secs, max speed 310 km/h), a Mitsubishi GT 3000 (3 Litre, V6, twin turbo) and a gaggle of other cars including a V8 Ute!

The Lotus Elise (1.8 Litre, 4 cylinder, 0-100 in 6.1 secs, top speed 205 km/hr) did pretty good - although I spun it 3 times trying to keep up with the Porsche's. One of my spins was at over 100 km/h - lucky there was lots of grass. I had to wash the car again after I got home (and change my underpants). I could keep up with the Ferrari, the Mitsubishi and the standard Porsche (911 Carrera - although I suspect the driver was taking it easy) through the corners but then would lose them on the straight. Luckily Wakefield Park has lots of corners.

The Porsche GT2's and GT3RS were another matter. They totally blew me away and left me eating dust - literally. Still they are 5 times the price of the Lotus.  It was a good day. 

Vintage 2009

The ferment is proceeding to schedule (more or less). We are at 2.0 Baume which is a measure of the amount of sugar in the must. It started at around 12.5 which indicates that the final alcohol level of the wine will be about 12.5%.

Pressing is now slotted for Monday.

The winemaker (Matt) needed to add some acid to the wine. If the wine acidity is too low the wine tastes flabby (and in extreme cases has a slimy mouth feel). The legal wine additives in Australia are listed in Food Standard 4.5.1 (for those really interested).

Vintage 2009

Well I'm back.

We have been tied up with the vineyard lately so no time to write or blog!

To the right are some photos from our first vintage. It all happened so quick that I didn't have time to take many pictures. The pickers turned up at 6:30 am and it was all done by 7:30 am. It would have taken us four days! We were expecting to get about 3 tonne (3,000 kg) of fruit but ended up with about 1.8 tonne. The kangaroos and birds ate the rest. Each one of the white bins that you see in the photos holds 0.5 tonne. I could hardly steer the ute with two full bins on the back and it was a bit touch and go driving up the rows with the amount of rain that we have had lately (both dams are now overflowing again).

We dropped off the bins at Wandin Valley and they will crush and destem the grapes. The resulting must (crushed grapes and juice) is then fermented over the next week. They plunge the cap every three days (ie mix it up as the skins float on the top of the fermenting juice) to extract as much colour and flavour as possible. Next weekend the whole lot goes in the press (big silver thing shown in one of the photos) and the resulting wine is stuck in our barrels (made from French oak - each one of these new is worth $1000. We got reconditioned barrels which are a lot cheaper. French oak is supposed to impart a more subtle flavour than American oak).

We bought 6 oak barrels which are shown in a couple of the photos. They are called barriques and have a 225 litre capacity. Assuming we get enough wine to fill them all that will correspond to 1350 litres or 1800 bottles or 150 cases.

The plan is to leave the wine in oak until the end of the year at which time it will be bottled (and free up the barriques for the next vintage).

We will get our first taste when it comes out of the press next weekend. It is all very exciting, though we will need to sell each bottle for $327 to recover all our costs over the last nine years.

Feedback - Blech!

I've decided that feedback on your stories sucks. You only get it on rejected pieces and so it is normally bad.

Yeah I know - what doesn't kill you and all that malarkey, but I think I would prefer to live in blissful ignorance believing that everything I write is pure gold.

I think I see why Editors don't like giving feedback - it's because it pisses people off!

And another thing - who, gives: a damn" about punctuation anyway!!!! Editors are the only ones who remember all the rules and then take evil pleasure in pointing out the mistakes of innocent writers.

*deep breath*

Managing Woman

I have a new theory about managing woman. I have a fairly big team and in the past tended to treat men and woman the same. I now think that this is a mistake.

You can say pretty much anything to a man and it doesn't matter because they probably aren't listening. More likely they are just waiting for you to stop so that they can speak. This may be a tad harsh but even if they are listening they will have forgotten it 10 minutes later due to our gnat like attention span. Men also don't put a lot of thought into what they say - so analysing our comments for hidden meaning is a wasted exercise.

Woman on the other hand do listen to what you say - and worse - they go away and think about it, analysing every nuance. Then they come back and want to discuss it - long after you can even remember making some throw away comment.

There is probably the makings of a story in that somewhere. In fact check out this short expose - It is very funny and I think it captures my point.

WRITING STUFF - Blog, Website or Both?

I've seen a few people mention that a "proper" writer needs to have a Blog and a Web site. I understand the need to promote yourself and start building a brand - hence this blog!

I went blog rather than website because it is easier and the format encourages you to update it regularly. Websites can often languish due to the effort of updating them.

So I can't work out what a website would do that this blog doesn't already. Anything I could put on a website I can stick on this blog. I could even have additional pages linked to the blog (if I had anything to put on them).

The only reason that I can think of having a website is to reserve the domain (eg davidsuch.com) as another branding mechanism.

So I don't get it.

But I'm happy to be corrected ...

Eclecticism Ezine January 2009 News

BEWARE - Shameless self-promotion follows


Eclecticism E-zine has its 7th issue due for release on Friday 30 January 2009.

The issue’s theme is ‘Twisted Fairy Tales’, and features work from: Rijn Collins, Jim Euclid, Amy Mackiewicz, Holly Painter, Simon Petrie, Susan Rodio, Stacey Roy, Deborah Sheldon, David Such, Pavelle Wesser, and Natalie Shau (Featured Artist).

WRITING & SHORT STORIES

I see that Stephen King has just published another book of short stories. I think he is one of the few main stream authors that still writes shorts (and can get them published). In fact two of my favourite stories are shorts from Mr King ("Stand by Me" and "The Shawshank Redemption").

BT and I had a discussion on the merits or otherwise of writing short speculative fiction. I like this format because I have a short attention span and can finish a story before I get bored and drift onto something else. I also like the sweet thrill of getting a piece accepted. I get more endorphin shots if I up my submission rate. Since my acceptance ratio has stabilised, the lower the word count the more stories I get to submit, which in turn leads to more acceptances.

I also feel like I am not ready to churn out 80,000 to 100,000 words. If I am going to spit out that quantity I want to be sure of the quality. This year I'm going to continue to focus on the short and flash formats. 2010 will be the year of the novel.

WRITING and REJECTION

Quelle Horreur!

Now as a writer I understand that rejection is part of the gig, however does it need to be in bold text and flashing??

Is it just me or is this a bit harsh? Perhaps the AHWA could tone it down a touch, I would suggest a 6pt regular Arial font (white text on a white background preferably).

Notice of Rejection

WRITING QUOTES - From CS Weekly

Bumped up...

See Post Above for updated version.

Back in Oz!

Landed back in Australia today!

The emailing blog update plan obviously didn't work (for a number of reasons) but I will post some interesting snippets from my Christmas / New Year travels over the next week or so.

In other news:

• Go and check out my latest Flash fiction piece "The Hunt" which has just been published at the new look AntipodeanSF.
• Also out now is Dark Fire Issue 37 which contains another Flash story called "How to hide a dead body."

Christmas in Udaipur

Off to Agra again this weekend and then flying to Udaipur for Christmas. This city was featured in the Bond film Octopussy.

I'm trying the email updater feature of Blogger so - should be able to email blog updates on my travel. After Udaipur we head to the desert at Jaisalmer, then to the mountains in Darjeeling (in search of He-Man 9000 Super Strong Ultra Beer) and then to the beach at Orissa before returning to Delhi.

FREE WRITING SOFTWARE - yWriter 5

yWriter 5 has just come out of Beta. This free novel writing software is fantastic. Support from the programmer is some of the best that I have seen with new features added on an almost daily basis. He is also a writer so he knows what he is talking about.

You can read all about it at: http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter5.html

If you a writing Flash fiction then check out yEdit 2 from the same author.

Features include:

• Organise your novel using a 'project'.
• Add chapters to the project.
• Add scenes, characters, items and locations.
• Display the word count for every file in the project, along with a total.
• Saves a log file every day, showing words per file and the total. (Tracks your progress)
• Saves automatic backups at user-specified intervals.
• Allows multiple scenes within chapters
• Viewpoint character, goal, conflict and outcome fields for each scene.
• Multiple characters per scene.
• Storyboard view, a visual layout of your work.
• Re-order scenes within chapters.
• Drag and drop of chapters, scenes, characters, items and locations.
• Automatic chapter renumbering.

WRITER ON THE ROAD - India 2008

Bits and Pieces, some culture and unrelated drivel...

In an earlier post I discussed the meaning of names. Apparently "Such" in Hindi means truth - which i kinda like and it is certainly better than the anglo-saxon derivation which means "tree-stump."

There is a term used often over here - "This Is India" - often abbreviated to TII. It is used to explain everything and anything that does not work as you expect. Power shuts down in the national capital 6 times a day - TII.

Traffic lights are an interesting phenomena in India. The accepted wisdom is - "Green is compulsory, red is optional." TII.

I also think that I have decoded the traffic rules, if you get your nose in front of the other car then you have right of way. It doesn't matter how you do this but once you get a mm in front all rights revert to you!

It has been a fairly quiet weekend so I have managed to pen a couple of Flash pieces which I am trying to place. My current acceptance ratio is 74% - though it can take up to four attempts to find a market, I can usually tell now whether a piece is likely to get up (ultimately). By trial and error I am determining which markets are into the Such style. I think it may be an acquired taste.

I will also try and finish off "Lucky Penny" this weekend - it is a longer horror/suspense bit which was inspired by a trip to Brisbane a few months ago. I'm not saying Brisbane was horrific or the trip for that matter, it was actually quite nice, I got the idea from a few of the odd characters that populate the market adjacent to the Brisbane river.

Time for some more Indian culture ...

On March 30, 1699, Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth Sikh Guru founded the Khalsa - a brotherhood of saint-soldiers. Khalsa is derived from a Persian term which means "pure." The Khalsa Sikh's can be identified by the "five K's." These are (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Ks):

1. Kesh - Uncut hair on any part of the body for men and women is considered sacred. It is mandatory for both Sikh men and women to wear a turban to protect and cover the hair and head, which is also a spiritual crown.
2. Kanga - Wooden comb for hygiene and maintenance of the Kesh.
3. Kara Iron bracelet: - Physical reminder that a Sikh is bound to the Guru.
4. Kachera - Specially designed cotton underwear:- Naturally comfortable and dignified attire reflective of modesty and high moral character.
5. Kirpan Strapped sword: - Worn to defend one's faith and protect the weak, reminding one of his or her duty as a Khalsa. It is worn to show bravery, not a mere weapon.All baptised Sikh's have the surname/middlename Singh (for men - means lion) or Kaur (for woman - means Princess or lioness).

The 10th Guru had an interesting recruitment strategy. He addressed the folks from his tent asking for people who were willing to lose their head for their Guru. He had to ask 3 times but eventually one fellow volunteered. He took him into his tent and then came out with blood on his sword and then asked for another volunteer. He did this 5 times. All five then emerged from the tent unscathed and apparently resurrected. These dudes are called the "five beloved ones" and were the first Khalsa Sikh's.

OPENING MY THIRD EYE ...

Last weekend I indulged in some Shirodhara. This involves trickling hot oil onto the forehead and is believed to awaken the third eye. Now I know that this sounds a bit like the Chinese water torture but it is actually very relaxing. I feel asleep 3 times and woke myself up with my snoring. Perhaps not quite the mystical effect that it is supposed to generate but nice nevertheless.

This trickling is followed by synchronised body massage - a terrifying prospect for the average Aussie male. It involves laying naked on a wooden table with raised edges (imagine a large baking tray), being lightly drizzled with baby oil and rubbed by two husky fellows. This episode will never be spoken of again.

Back to the third eye, this is the ajna chakra (sixth chakra) and is represented by a dot, mark or eye symbol on the forehead (called a Tilak or Tika depending where you are). According to followers of Tantrism, this chakra is the exit point for kundalini energy. The third eye is also called the "eye of wisdom."

In Hinduism, it is believed that the opening of Shiva's third eye causes the eventual destruction of the universe, so let's hope that he doesn't go to a Day Spa and have this treatment.

A variation of the Tilak is called the Bindi. Normally this represents a married woman (but can be just for decoration) and is often accompanied by a vermilion mark in the parting of the hair just above the forehead. The bindi is said to retain energy and strengthen concentration. It is also said to protect against demons or bad luck. Which can't be a bad thing.

There could be a link between the pineal gland and the mystical third eye. It is often referred to as "the atrophied third eye" and is in the right location. Interestingly, cells within the pineal gland are similar to photoreceptors in the eye. Amphibians and reptiles still sense light through a third parietal eye - which is associated with the pineal gland. The pineal gland excretes a hormone which induces dreams, near-death experiences, meditation, and hallucinations.

Some dudes believe that if you can switch on your third eye you will become clairvoyant and be able to see in the dark. Apart from massage, other techniques for opening your third eye include the application of an amethyst cleaned under flowing water or taking LSD.

Want to read more? Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_eye

WRITER ON THE ROAD - India 2008

What is going on???

Last night we go out for a nice meal in Delhi only to find that no licensed premises are allowed to sell alcohol the night before an election (Delhi State elections are on today).

What a travesty. Apparently the logic goes like this: People drink, get pissed and then go and vote for the wrong type of candidate. What idiot comes up with this stuff? It all seems a bit condescending to me.

I'm not sure if this happens in all State elections but people of Delhi you need to rise up and vote for the more beer party.

... or at least exclude people that can't vote!

He-Man 9000 Super Strong Ultra Beer!

Here it is in all its glory!

I give you ... He Man 9000 Super Strong Ultra Beer.

Pity it tastes so bad.

WRITER ON THE ROAD - India 2008

It is the end of week 5 in India and any country that has "He-Man 9000 Super Strong Ultra Beer" can't be all bad. I'm picking up lots of material (keep an eye out for He-Man 9000 in the next Blood story), but not having much time to write.

Last weekend the Team and I went white water rafting on the Ganges - which is a lot more attractive than it sounds. The picture in this blog is of the campsite called 5 Elements on the Ganges (or Ganga as it is called in India). Very nice.

The tents were described on the web site as Swiss luxury tents. It was only when we arrived that we worked out that they must have been called Swiss due to all the holes! The camp site is about 230 km's from Delhi, however the roads are a nightmare and it was a 9 hour drive each way. This makes for a fairly exhausting weekend but nevertheless it was nice to see some wilderness.

One thing that I find wearying in India is that there are always people everywhere - lots of people, making lots of noise. The actual rafting was fairly sedate (nothing over a grade 3) but still fun.

We were sharing the raft with an aspiring Bollywood actress called Bhairavi Goswami and her friend Youvan. They were good company.

I'm quite interested in the whole caste thingy they have going on here. Sounds like a rich seam of juicy writing goodness could be mined from this. I was under the impression that your job defined your caste (i.e. if you were a soldier you were in the soldier caste). Apparently that is not the case. Your caste is defined by your families caste. When a lady marries she becomes her husbands caste.

In Hindu society there are 4 main castes:

1. Brahmins (intelligentsia, priests, scholars, teachers)
2. Kshatriyas (warriors, nobility)
3. Vaishyas (merchants, farmers),
4. Sudras (tradesmen, artisans, craftsmen, workers, service providers)

You can read all about it in Wikipedia.

Of course it is not as simple as this - apparently there are actually thousands of castes which the British compressed down to 4 to make census taking easier. Marrying outside your caste in parts of India is very dangerous - every week people are killed because of this. A Hindu marrying a Muslim is also problematic, it is easier for a Hindu to marry a Christian.

I'm struggling with the whole servant thing. There are 3 house boys looking after the apartment. They cook, clean, wash, iron, go shopping, etc. I have a driver, there is a couple of Butlers in the office and I have a PA. You don't do anything for yourself and it is driving me crazy - It must be an Australian thing. The Brit's seem to cope much better.

Well it must be time for another He-Man 9000. Enjoy your weekend.

REVIEW - The Solution

I came across this review of my story "The Solution" at Static Movement.

"First off, congrats again to Chris and Static Movement on another fine issue. In these times of change, chaos and monumental failure, Static Movement remains an oasis of dependability and steadfastness. Thank you Chris!

And on to the story...

Mainly I just wanted to say I enjoyed this piece of flash, even though horror isn't my cup of tea at all. The ending was very cute, and inventive. Perfect flash - good job David Such!

John Gilbert"

It always amazes me that people actually read my stories and getting positive feedback is great. In fact any feedback is great. I feel that if you write something that stimulates feelings (positive or negative) then you have achieved something. Thanks to John for taking the time to jot down a few words.

Now I'm off to try white water rafting on the Ganges. I think I may attempt to not fall in!

WEBZINE - The Specusphere

Issue 5 is out now!

Editorial
The English Curriculum by Stephen Thompson
Editorial afterthought—The elephant in the room by Stephen Thompson

Features
The quintessential speculative fiction album by Stephen Thompson
3 questions for The Specusphere by Stephen Thompson
Cyborg by Brendan David Carson

Writing and Publishing
The Serendipity of Publishing by Astrid Cooper

Up and Coming
New Books from Gollancz for November-December 2008
New Releases from Orbit

People
Jaine Fenn in conversation with Maurie Breust
Marillier revisits Sevenwaters in latest release

Book Reviews
HEIR TO SEVENWATERS by Juliet Marillier
AWAKENING by Lara Morgan
THE BEAST WITHIN edited by Matt Hults
INFECTED by Scott Sigler
THE NINTH CIRCLE by Alex Bell
PRINCIPLES OF ANGELS by Jaine Fenn
THE BRIDE OF TIME by Dawn Thompson
THE LAST THEOREM by Arthur C. Clarke and Frederik Pohl
NIGHT SHIFT by Lilith Saintcrow
FLOOD by Stephen Baxter
ALL-STAR SUPERMAN Volume One (Comic) by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely
GHOST WALK by Brian Keene
BEFORE I WAKE by Kathryn Smith
A DISTANT MAGIC by Mary Jo Putney

Fiction
Nigel's Evening by David Schembri
Call Waiting by Bill Youatt-Pine
The forever-green by Ashley Hibbert