I have updated the Locus novel sales spreadsheet from July 2004 to April 2009 and made it available from my website, Crossing the Threshold: Locus spreadsheet

If you're looking to see what editors are buying, or which agents are selling, please check out my Locus sales spreadsheet. It covers four years of sales announcements and is designed to help novelists track who sold what to whom, via which agent. (This resource is now listed on Preditors and Editors as a recommended site.)

The pages are available as PDFs or there's an Excel viewer program available at the Microsoft website if you don't have Excel. You can find a link to the viewer on my Spreadsheet page

Please do not redistribute the documents. I welcome links and referrals to my page. No sign-up is necessary and there's no charge, and I love it if you drop a note in my guestbook to say hi the first time you download it. I welcome any feedback.

Note: Not all agents report their sales to Locus - this spreadsheet is one source of information, but you should also check out reputable sites such as Preditors and Editors and the Writer Beware blog

The following gem is by Douglas Adams of "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"fame. It is an amazing insight into Australia for any potential visitor - if you know one this may assist in preparing them, or help you prepare yourself!

Australia is a very confusing place, taking up a large amount of the bottom half of the planet. It is recognizable from orbit because of many unusual features, including what at first looks like an enormous bite taken out of its southern edge; a wall of sheer cliffs which plunge deep into the girting sea. Geologists assure us that this is simply an accident of geomorphology and plate tectonics, but they still call it the "Great Australian Bight" proving that not only are they covering up a more frightening theory but they can't spell either!
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Tips to Surviving Australia:
* Don't ever put your hand down a hole for any reason WHATSOEVER.
* The beer is stronger than you think, regardless of how strong you think it is.
* Always carry a stick.
* Air-conditioning is imperative.
* Do not attempt to use Australian slang, unless you are a trained linguist and extremely good in a fist fight.
* Wear thick socks.
* Take good maps. Stopping to ask directions only works when there are people nearby.
* If you leave the urban areas, carry several litres of water with you at all times, or you will die.
* Even in the most embellished stories told by Australians, there is always a core of truth that it is unwise to ignore.

I don't know if I should be excited or afraid. So many memories waiting to be brought to life or betrayed...

Today's university staff bulletin included such gems as our Astrophysics centre's discovery of amoebic life in the cloud layers of Venus, the TAFE construction students being assigned the job of building our new study centre, and a call for research subjects willing to have acid injected into their eyes. *eyeroll*

If you want to have a look, check out http://www.swinburne.edu.au/chance/staffbulletin/

both by Mark Knight, Herald Sun cartoonist, whose life and home were saved by the Country Fire Authority volunteers and the Melbourne Fire Brigade professionals

It's a very sad time to be a Victorian. Vast swathes of our state and many country communities have been hit by the perfect firestorm. 181 people are known to have died, many suffering in burns units across the state are not expected to make it, and entire villages have been roped off as crime scenes. People and their pets were cremated in their houses or in their cars as they tried to flee. Special police units are hunting the arsonists known to have started some of the fires, while our weather bureau keeps a watchful eye on the intense winds whipping the state. The only saving grace - the winter temperatures that have blown in from Antarctica, rescuing us from the worst heatwave on record.

People aren't the only ones to have suffered. I can't even think about the animals roasted alive in paddocks, their owners having to abandon them or dying while trying to save them. And the bush creatures... Sam, below, is one of the lucky ones.



There's the occasional happy story, about home, people and creatures miraculously spared or saved, but the reality is devastating: towns that look like they've been hit by a nuclear bomb, families dying because there was not enough warning, hearts and souls destroyed.

I'm proud of my state and the Australian community for the speed and generosity with which they have rallied around the survivors. I'm doing what I can, and very grateful that no-one I knew lived in those regions.

It's a very bad time to be writing a novel about a city that burns down because of arson. The reality is too confronting, too close and I'm tired of crying.

I have updated the Locus novel sales spreadsheet from July 2004 to January 2009 and made it available from my website, Crossing the Threshold: Locus spreadsheet

If you're looking to see what editors are buying, or which agents are selling, please check out my Locus sales spreadsheet. It covers four years of sales announcements and is designed to help novelists track who sold what to whom, via which agent. (This resource is now listed on Preditors and Editors as a recommended site.)

The pages are available as PDFs or there's an Excel viewer program available at the Microsoft website if you don't have Excel. You can find a link to the viewer on my Spreadsheet page

Please do not redistribute the documents. I welcome links and referrals to my page. No sign-up is necessary and there's no charge, and I love it if you drop a note in my guestbook to say hi the first time you download it. I welcome any feedback.

Note: Not all agents report their sales to Locus - this spreadsheet is one source of information, but you should also check out reputable sites such as Preditors and Editors and the Writer Beware blog

46.bloody7 degrees C. Or for my overseas friends, 118 F. Hottest day in recorded history. Keep in mind, I live down the bottom of Australia, the cool bit which used to be called the Garden State.

My thoughts are with the fire fighters struggling in nightmare conditions.
Another volunteer firefighter has been arrested for arson. He's under arrest to protect him from the people he was supposedly protecting.

Our garden state has turned brown and crispy - and so have many of the people. There are dozens of fires across the state, and the cool change (to only 28 degrees, which used to be considered hot) is still being driven by very turbulent winds. The wind was so bad, it was like being in a clothes dryer, too unpleasant to even stay in the pool. (wind blasted face - very uncomfortable)

My desktop apparently has a turn-off setting at 30C. Hence the constant shutdowns. I've borrowed a work laptop so that I have some functionality. I've updated the Locus page but must wait until my desktop will turn on again before I can code and upload the pages.

And it's flooding in Queensland. We wish we could pipe all their unwanted water down here, but while we only have a few states, but they're really big ones.

(estimate 2 days at most)

There's an interview with Aussiecon 4 GoH Shaun Tan available at http://drawn.ca/2009/01/29/an-interview-with-shaun-tan/

And particularly for people coming from overseas, consider having two cons while you're Down Under.

The New Zealand Natcon for 2010 has been moved from the usual long weekend in June to August 27 to 29 - the weekend before Aussiecon 4.

It will be called Au Contraire and will take place in Wellington. So if you're coming from elsewhere, why not make your trip to Australia via New Zealand?

Register at http://www.aucontraire.org.nz

I've managed to code in the Nov 08, Dec 09 and Jan 08 Locus sales announcements, but cannot find my October issue. Does anyone have it handy, along with a scanner and the ability to send a good quality PDF? I will keep looking, but haven't located the darn thing for three days :{

We've had the most extreme heat wave in Melbourne's recorded history (since the 1850s, so in a bloody long time.) It's been over 43 degrees three days in a row, and today may make it 4. Yesterday it got to 45 degrees (113 C, which you normally only get out in the desert in central Australia!) There've been rolling blackouts to conserve energy, or if you're really unlucky, permanent blackouts due to transformers melting (!?!) and bushfires.

If I'm lucky, my computer boots up in the morning for about an hour. It's already 26 degrees at 7:00 am so I'm doing some backups before the damn thing refuses to even boot up.

It would have been better to go computer (parts?) shopping two weeks ago when all of the major sales were still on, but guess what I'll be doing once the munchkin goes back to school on Monday? *sigh*

Thank goodness for my folks and their refridgerated air conditioning.

My computer is regularly melting down on me by rebooting in hot weather, losing files, locking out USB ports and giving me occasional blue screens of death. It usually reboots when I am playing Oblivion, which I understand is an immensely demanding program that chews up video cards and computer fans with abandon, even when it isn't 40 degrees C (100+F) outside.

I'm currently running XP on a P4 3.5 GHz with 2 GB of RAM. The DVD drive and hard drive are the only original remaining bits of the old HP desktop I bought about 4 years ago.
I'm running an ATI Radeon HD 3850 video card after burning out a number of Invidia cards.
The fan, replaced a year ago, is supposed to handle just about anything. But Oblivion is clearly kicking its whirring bits.

I want to stay with XP, and with a PC. I have a work Mac and don't like it enough to convert :P
I'm happy to use the existing machine or buy something completely new.

The new setup must be able to cope with Oblivion *g*

Anyone have recommendations?

I've been having this nagging feeling I'd forgotten something... and it turned out to be updating the spreadsheet. Oops. January's issue arrived today. If a magazine could glare... It gave me a papercut instead, and a well-deserved one.

I've input January's data today and hope to catch up with the three other missing issues over the next few days. *guilty compiler sucks papercut*

Yesterday I got up before 7:00 and took the not-puppy for a walk. We saw sulfur-crested cockatoos, corellas (another white parrot), and lorikeets. We heard kookaburras laughing in a nearby tree. It was a lovely, fairly cool way to start the day. It got to 100 by the afternoon, but I was in an airconditioned building and I didn't care.

My computer cacked it from overheating last night :{

This morning, it was already close to 100 degrees F at 7:00 am, the birds were quiet and even the buildings were sweating. Not nice at all. We don't get many 100 degree plus days in summer. Beach bunnies love them. Everyone else (like me)... not so much.

If you get a message on Facebook telling you "your profile pic being displayed at thumpwish/com-check it," ignore it. It's a phishing scam.
Thanks to James Stevens-Arce for warning me.

We've been dog-less for six months now. I've appreciated the break from looking after old poopy puppies, but time moves on and I've started to think it would be nice to have another dog. One was advertised on freecycle. We've ummed and ah-ed about the dog over the past week. Life is so much easier and the house so much tidier without a pet, and yet...

Ken needs to get more exercise and wants a dog that might run beside the bike or chase golf balls or go for evening walks. I can use the impetus to do more walking myself. Josh would prefer a puppy, but I'm not going there. He'll likely be happier with a dog old enough to really play.

After a conversation with the current minder, we're decided to give this fellow a try. He's older than we might have preferred, not neutered and hasn't had his immunisations, but he sounds like a playful, easy animal. I would be the main carer, and we'll have to house train him, but there are a lot of good points to this boy. We're not rescuing him - the minder will keep him until she finds him a good home - and she'd rather we see if we all get on.
We'll be collecting him on new year's day.

behind the cut.... ( Read more... )

Hippo birdie two ewes
Hippo birdie two ewes
Hippo birdie deer Jaime!
Hippo birdie two ewes!

*blows kisses to stillnotbored*