Round round like a record baby

You know what we haven’t had in months? A multi-topic, general-purpose linkspam-round-up hey-here’s-a-bunch-of-stuff-also-I-like-hyphens kind of post.

I liked those. They were easy to write. Did you? Well, IT DOESN’T MATTER WHAT YOU LIKE whoops sorry channelling The Rock for a second there.

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The 2013 Aurealis Award nominations are up, and they are a cracker collection of Aussie SF/F/H writing, with work by Jason Nahrung, Kirstyn McDermott, Garth Nix, Jay Kristoff, Margo Lanagan (for like a hundred different pieces) and many more. 2012 was obviously a sterling year for local genre fiction, and it’s to my shame that I’ve read almost none of the nominations. (I’ve started a few but not actually finished any.) Slack of me for not getting on it – and slack of you if you’ve not done likewise. So let’s fix this and read the shit out of some Australian books.

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The Melbourne International Comedy Festival starts next week!

I’m particularly excited about Dave Bloustein, Laura Davis, Lisa-Skye, Splendid Chaps, Lawrence Leung and hell damn I dunno like twenty other acts, too many to count or link to.

This year I’ll be writing reviews for Crikey, so keep an eye on their site for my perfect and polished bon mots of criticism and erudite insight. I may also talk about knobs.

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Also coming up – Supanova! Which I am really only considering going to so I can meet Gail Simone. And then I’ll probably go back home.

I don’t really understand comics conventions. What else are you supposed to do once you get bored with collecting signatures and covertly photographing cosplayers?

Sigh. I know. I’m a terrible nerd. Did you know I’ve never watched The X-Files? I should hand in my gun and badge right now.

…you don’t get to know why I got given a gun. Or by whom.

No, fuck you.

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My Chemical Romance broke up.

I’m a 42 year old man, rather than a 16 year old girl, but I’m nonetheless pretty gutted about that.

On the plus side, sure, we’re likely to see more Umbrella Academy and the long-awaited Danger Days/Fabulous Killjoys comic now that Gerard Way has time on his hands, but I’m gonna miss the hell outta their music. That shit was tight.

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We’ve been watching Justified. It’s pretty good.

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A few months ago I said I was moving to a one-blog-post-a-week schedule so that I could stay on target for finishing Raven’s Blood sometime in March.

Well, March ends in less than a week and I still have a shitload of book left to write, so that ain’t gonna fly. So I’m going back to a Thursday & Sunday update schedule. I don’t promise that they’ll be AMAZING updates, but at least there’ll be more of them, and everyone in the fast food industry agrees that quantity is better than quality. Who am I to argue with the McRib?

So anyhoo, come back next Thursday for a post that might have even less content than this one (if that’s possible), followed by a discussion of storytelling techniques (and problems) in 2012’s biggest MMO release. And no, I don’t mean My Little Pony Friendship is $29.95/month Adventures.

…is that a thing? Surely that’s a thing.