adelaidesean | Entries tagged with deepspace

Once upon a time, I used to think being a writer meant, well, writing. All the time. If only that were true! When between books, as I am at the moment, I don't even attempt to stick to my 1500 words/day target. There just isn't time. Here's what I got up to in the last week (Monday 5 to Sunday 12), for anyone interested in what I actually spend most of my time doing.

I delivered re-writes of all four Fixers books to my editor at Scholastic;
re-wrote outlines for The Resurrected Man and The Crooked Letter TV shows, as per feedback received while in LA;
reread the story notes of Magic Dirt, seeking inspiration for a podcast about my fifteen year-old story "A Map of the Mines of Barnath";
ditto my story "Ungentle Fire" in the forthcoming Dragon Book;
was interviewed live on ABC radio at the Royal Adelaide Show (and ate a large amount of junk food afterwards);
attended the Ruby/ABAF Awards;
had a Skype conversation, transcribed some notes, and looked over an outline for a project I haven't mentioned here yet (ooh, mysterious!);
attended a meeting of the SA Writers' Centre Board;
took Christobel Mattingley's place on the SA Writers' Festival "Fact or Fiction" panel, down at the beautiful Wirra Wirra vineyards in the McLaren Vale, and chaired the "First Book" panel;
read and annotated submissions for a retreat I'll be co-taking in a few weeks;
signed up to sit on a grant assessment panel doling out money for young South Australian writers;
suggested some spec fic titles for the Big Book Club's December/January selections;
caught up on the parallel import situation for the Australian Society of Authors;
revived my LJ and wrote this post. :-)

I also bought the new Steve Roach album, Destination Beyond, and Deepspace's World Ocean Atlas. (That's not really work, I know, but these albums will probably comprise my main writing music for the coming weeks, so it's kinda related.)

This wasn't an exceptional week, but it probably was a little busier than normal, thanks to the awards night and the festival.

How was yours? Did you manage to get some writing done? If so, well done. I am jealous!

Fourplay are touring at the moment, which is a reason for gladness all around the land. I saw them last night and they were awesome. (Pete Hollo: you are a rock god!) There are lots of shows in the tour left, so check the gig guide and grab a ticket. If you're in Perth, you'd better hurry. They're playing there tonight!

Can't get to the gigs? Check out their video page, which includes covers like "Sabotage" and "Killing in the Name of", or just buy the new album, Fourthcoming. Or both. :-)

If, on the other hand, you're looking for something in a more ambient vein, check out the new album by Deepspace, "Glittering Domain". You can listen to it in its entirety over at last.fm. (You might know Deepspace better as Kim Wilkins' husband Mirko, who has scored various Aurealis Awards down the years.) The free album-length track "Another Empty Galaxy" was my favourite writing ambience for about six months. There is no higher recommendation.

I write listening to a particular kind of ambient music. What separates it from other, inferior kinds of ambient music is hard to tell sometimes, but I know the right stuff when I hear it. Mostly I source my fix from emusic (which I strongly recommend), while some comes from artist sites. The search goes on, and on.

Here are the top five most-played albums I downloaded this year, just in case anyone else happens to like my kind of sound:

Arc of Passion, Steve Roach
Glaciation, Patrick O'Hearn
Silver, Thom Brennan
Music for 18 Musicians, Steve Reich
Mysterious Skin, Harold Budd & Robin Guthrie

(Altus and Deepspace were also recurring favourite artists.)

Like laughter, music turns out to be good for the heart, hence the title of this post (from the other Bill Congreve). I really doubt, though, that anything called "Ode to the Misunderstood Potato" would be of much benefit (from the ongoing nightmare of nostalgia).

And speaking of nightmares, last night's dream was spookily appropriate.

Some quick things before I go quiet for a few days:

The Hanging Mountains has been selected as a BookSense Notable Book for July, when the beautiful Pyr hardback comes out in the US. Woohoo!

Echoes of Earth has just reached its fourth reprint here in Australia.

Deepspace's "The Barometric Sea", which you can stream from the link below, is my favourite music to write to at the moment. I used some of this composer's wonderful work during the reading of "The Soap Bubble" last year. Fans of ambient electronic and space music will approve. Go listen!

Current Music: Deepspace - "The Barometric Sea"

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Sean Williams

Entries tagged with deepspace

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notable reprint ambience

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