adelaidesean | Entries tagged with juvenilia

Apropos of nothing, here's an extract from "La Suite Acide", which was part of my submission for Music Theory & Composition in my final year at school.

The title ("The Sour Suite") is a fair reflection of the lyrics I wrote for this vocal piece, one of very few I ever attempted. The three movements cover birth, life, and death. This is the third. ( Feel the pain. )

Apologies for the bad recording. On top of bad poetry and bad puns, you'd think I'd spare you the abuse. (Multiple media changes makes auditory time travel from 1984 a very unhappy affair.) At least no recordings exist of some of my (even) more emo efforts, like "Death, Sweet Death" and "This is Life: 'Rejoice'?!" That's something to be mightily thankful for.

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.

Trawling through old movies turned up a cold surprise.

For all my anti-Eurocentric leanings, turns out I have seen snow, after all.

So I discovered last week that bits of roasted cacao beans taste really, really nice when mixed with Old Gold, and ever since then I've been making my own chocolates. But in the meantime, work goes on:

Stephen Baxter, Pamela Freeman, Pat Rothfuss and I compare notes on SF vs F over at The Second Bookgeeks SF and Fantasy Author Panel.

Voyager online has published some of my thoughts on Clarion (here and here) among a host of others, all thanks to the hard work of

jasoni.

My LibraryThing page is up and running, but it needs some work. So many books, so little time!

I discovered a couple of short interviews on YouTube: here, where I talk about how the Writers of the Future contest changed my life for the better; and here, on the Force Unleashed experience.

Bookseller + Publisher liked The Scarecrow, months ahead of its release: "everything you would expect from a good YA book [but] also quite different from most of its contemporaries. ... There is something in this series for both reluctant and confident readers." The review talked about the positive relationship between characters ("sometimes confused, often frightened but never pathetic"), magic ("another positive point of difference") and landscape, which Black also touched on in its review of the previous book in the series: "A short novel that will appeal to a broad spectrum of readership, The Dust Devils is Sean Williams tapping into the naive youngling in all of us. The villains presented here are the stuff of nightmares, and hold up to the strangest dangers being presented in fiction, today. But more appealing is the landscape itself, a scarred wasteland where not only Dust Devils lay in wait for the hapless traveler. The book bristles with a faint gothic undertone reminiscent of his grandest Space Opera..."

Lastly, Ansible published a letter in which complained about the Gender Analyzer, which responded to my request to analyse this journal with the error message: "Sorry, we can only classify web pages written in english." I can't imagine what I've been writing in instead all these years. Klingon, perhaps?

Oh, and I started a new book.

We're gradually coming to the end of my list of ill-advised odes. Another recording soon. Today's is in "The Demesne of the Deaf (a Song Without Words)".

Today, as part of the SA Writers' Centre's week-long "Maximising Opportunities" course for developing writers, I co-presented a seminar on "Taxation, Accounting & Effective Record Keeping"--which really sounds like fun, hey?

Uber-accountaint Simon Graetz handled all the important stuff, while I burbled on about the broader financial picture--the picture that emerges after nigh on two decades of doing this crazy job and a week or two poring over tax records to get some hard figures. Hence:

Not just pretty piccies but pie-graphs showing (L) the different categories into which I divide my expenses, (C) where my income comes from, broadly speaking, and (R) how much of every dollar I earn I get to take home. (The links will take you to individual breakdowns.) Terrifying.

Then there's this:

A roller-coaster made all the more vertiginous when you realise it's the path my income has taken from the first dollar I earned from writing up to my latest tax return. (Ulp. Is it too late to get off?)

In the seminar I projected actual spreadsheets from my "Money" file, to demonstrate (a) what an Excel nerd I am and (b) how important it is to take the job seriously. I thought I'd post these images here, since I'd gone to the trouble of making them and learned a thing or two myself along the way (like: I spend how much on travel???).

In honour of these and other silly numbers, here are some more titles from my dim, dark past: "Yuckipoo No. 1", "Meaningless Scribble No 517 and a bit", "Paraphernalia: 2 (La Limace)" ("la limace" = "the slug"), and "A Bit of Length No. 2: Soldier's Death"

I woke up today with this thought in my head:

"Boba Fett" is just one shift of an a away from "Bob Fetta".

I don't know about you, but now the thought's in my head, it kinda undermines his authority. If we didn't already have his back-story, I'd imagine it starting in some suburban lot on a backward planet--a tale of striving to stand out among the mundanes.

"How about a refill, Bob?" "That's Boba to you, punk." "Helmet off at the dinner table, darl." "A Mandalorian warrior removes his armour only once--when he's ready to die." "I'm afraid that's the best deal I can offer you, Mr Fett, but I can throw in that registration change if you're sure--?" "It's Slave or nothing. Will disintegration make that any clearer?"

I imagine him finally clearing out of that dump, only to fall foul of Vader and Jabba and ending up in Sarlacc's gut, wishing he'd given the whole thing a bit more thought.

The real Bob Fetta is on FaceBook. I hope he has a happier life.

Because these could be songs in the Star Wars universe, today's titles from Vader's party playlist are: "Squip, Tflim, Spuzno", "Mahti Tara" and "Ne Poera Seyeym" (geddit?).

Want an excerpt from The Grand Conjunction? What about reviews, interviews and shameless plugs? I am brimming over with links today, so I'm posting them all at once. Here's your chance to find out what my name looks like in Bulgarian (me, I've been dying to find out) and to learn which novella legendary Lou Anders recommends for the Hugo.

First up, the Book Show interview I mentioned a couple of weeks back is available as an MP3 download here. For readers outside Australia, I should explain that is about as big as non-paid promotion gets for writers down here. Almost literary, you could say.

On the other side of the world, Gary Reynolds at Concept Sci-Fi has been wallowing in Astropolis. The fruits of his labour (to confuse a metaphor or two) are now online. First, there's an excerpt from and a review of Saturn Returns:

"really good space opera that is a joy to read"

Then there's a review of Cenotaxis:

"superbly written...either as a standalone story or as part of the Astropolis series"

In his latest Ezine, Gary has reprinted "The Seventh Letter" with original artwork.

And on his website, right now, is an exclusive preview of The Grand Conjunction, the third and last of the Astropolis novels. Enjoy.

Gary promises a review of Earth Ascendant soon (to sit alongside this excerpt) but for now I have just one to post, and it's a corker.

A couple of weeks ago I received advance notice of a Jan '09 review in F&SF by Chris Moriarty, which I've been sitting on like a wriggly kid. It contains this wonderful line:

"Words like riveting, gripping, and page-turning get tossed around pretty cavalierly, but they all apply to the Astropolis series."

It can't get much better than that, can it? Actually, it can. This is one of those reviews that had me nodding along, going "yes...yes...YES" at every other line. Chris gets what I'm trying to do, and I'm grateful for it. I'll post more of the review next year, or whenever the issue is in print.

Meanwhile Mark Chitty of Walker of Worlds "recommend[s] Cenotaxis without hesitation" and Stuart Mayne in the latest aurealisXpress waxed somewhat lyrical regarding The Dust Devils, saying that it "works on all fronts". Stuart also gave me my first ever review of a workshop, specifically a weekend intensive I ran at the Victorian Writers' Centre while everyone else partied at Conflux. He says: "It was an absolutely fantastic workshop and can whole-heartedly recommend a workshop with Sean Williams as an experience that will help your writing immeasurably." I am blushing at such kind words.

To round out this enormous list of links, Robert Thompson emailed this morning to say that The Grand Conjunction is on his list of 2009 highlights, while Lou Anders, guest blogging on Tor.com, chided everyone in the US for not buying more of my books:

"His stand-alone novella, Cenotaxis, published by independent press Monkeybrain Books, was one of my favorite reads of the year and my personal choice for the Best Novella Hugo in 2008. It ably demonstrates why some people feel the novella is the ideal length for SF, and I say that because it’s true, not because he kindly set the novel’s resolution in my own home town (albeit of the far future.)"

And Bulgaria? I was very pleased to be interviewed by Darth Sparhawk for Citadelata.com. You can see the results here.

I'd end on the exciting news I have to impart, but that can wait until next time. No one will read down this far anyway. :-)

(Today's titles, btw, from the songbook of hell are: "Disconcert 1-6", "Praedeludium 1", and "Disconcerto for Violin, No. 1 (occasionally in G Mixolydian)".)

I've been away again (hence my recent silence) but I'll be making up for it on Tuesday, 10-10.45, when ABC Radio National's The Book Show broadcasts an interview conducted by Fiona Croall shortly before I left. In it we discuss all manner of things, starting with The Force Unleashed and ranging across the other titles I've had out this year. I presume it'll be streamed or transcribed for those who no longer listen to the radio the old-fashioned way. (Or, if you'd rather listen to Ursula Le Guin talk about her novel, follow the link above and scroll down. That's what I'm about to do.)

Because I've been on the road, I have two track titles from the archives of despond: "The Tenant" and "A Song for a Battered Gentleman".

Here's a Venn diagram drawn by Charles Brown (of Locus fame) at the latest Writers of the Future workshop. He was trying to capture how Commerce and Art relate to the professional writer, or at least how we try to position ourselves with respect to each:

title or description

The overlapping area between the two circles represents where we want to be, Charles said, adding that the dot on the left represents Tim Powers, the dot on the right Kevin J Anderson, and the dot in the middle...me.

I take that as a compliment, and a sign that I'm aiming for the right spot. But I add that if you put a vertical axis on the diagram, that gives you a measure of our relative fame. (Not that we do it for fame, but, you know, it helps.) Does this reveal an extra dimension to Charles's theory--like, you can't satisfy everyone?

Today's title is: "C21H23NO5".

Through 1983 and 1984 I tortured John Drake, my music teacher, with a large number of small pieces for piano. I couldn't play and software to play it for me didn't exist (in my house, anyway) so I'd write them out and bring them to school for him to find his way through. Poor guy.

Four of them became a suite for piano that I submitted for examination, the name of which now escapes me. The important thing is that the pile of music as a whole was called "The Overlong Tales of the Manifold Automated Sprinklers" and contained such movements as:

"The Voyage of the Automated Sprinkler"
"The Further Adventures of the Automated Sprinkler"
"The March of the Automated Sprinklers"
"The Dance of the Automated Sprinkler"
"The Search for the Lost Automated Sprinkler"
"Requiem for an Automated Sprinkler"
"The Lonesome Death of the Automated Sprinkler"
"Attack of the Killer Sprinkler"
"Odyssey of the Automated Sprinkler"
"The Dark Side of the Automated Sprinkler"
"The Rise and Fall of the Automated Empire"
"Le Loi Des Machins Automatiques Qui Aspergent D'eau"

You can listen to the first two movements of the finished suite here and here. I detect hints of Bernard Herrman and Tangerine Dream when listening to these things, but only very, very faintly.

(The poor quality of the recording is brought to you by dodgy transfer from an old 4-track reel to cassette in the 1990s, thence to MP3 a couple of years ago. Sorry. It does add to the time-travel ambience, though.)

Following our discussion last week, I stumbled across this interesting piece concerning the distribution of the months in phrases similar to "it's like Christmas in July". More interesting than it sounds. There are graphs and everything.

And a mystery: why is "Christmas in March" more popular than the distribution suggests it should be? If anyone knows, tell Tenser, said the Tensor.

"Frame of Reference", an unreadable mess of squiggles masquerading as a musical score, seems an appropriate track to lift from the the repertoire of the damned.

(Tomorrow: a recording from the depths of 1984.)

Here, hot off the press, is the US cover of Astropolis 3: The Grand Conjunction:

What do you think? Stephan Martinière was unavailable so Scott Grimando has stepped up to the podium. I am excited, and not just because it depicts a setting from the climax of the book.

ETA - Here's the blurb:

Six hundred thousand years after Imre Bergamasc's abdication, the galaxy is barely recognisable. Emlee Copas is the Prime Minister of the Host, and the tyrant's own son Ra MacPhedron is its President. Imre himself has disappeared, and peace reigns where once was only chaos and war.

Underneath the veneer of civilization, however, revolution is fomenting. The murder of Helwise MacPhedron will never be forgiven, and neither will the slaughter of the Forts. With the Luminous still at large and the fate of humanity still very much in the balance, Imre's return may be all it takes to light the final fuse...

Since we're talking about the end of a series, "Tail of the Snake" is today's title of note.

This is the question:

"As non-genre readers become more comfortable with science fictional ideas, where do you see science fiction, in written form, going in the future?"

What's the answer? Maybe there isn't one. Find out more by following the link to the latest SF Signal Mind Meld, where I get to fire off an opinion in company much better than I deserve (including Lou Anders, Elizabeth Bear, Paul Di Filippo, Jay Lake, Chris Roberson, Jeff VanderMeer, Liz Williams, and more).

While I've got my serious hat on, today's blast from the past is: "If That High World", one of the few vocal pieces I wrote, for baritone with piano accompaniment, based on lyrics by Lord George Byron.

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Listening to: Thom Brennan - A View Of Creation

While on honeymoon last year, I bought a superb pair of Bose QuietComfort 2 noise reducing headphones. (Thanks to Scott Westerfeld for the recommendation.) I've used them nearly every day since, while working, walking or just needing to crank something up without disturbing the rest of the house.

I also love them because when the light hits my head the right way, I look like a Cyberman.

(The hieroglyphic cracks in the pavement have a certain appeal too. What could they mean? Are the ants trying to tell us something?)

Meanwhile, today's featured track from the musical dungeon is: "To Sail the Sea of Molten Lard, subtitled "the Voyages of the Laardvark". A solo work for piano, in case you couldn't tell.

The wonderful Fryer Library at the University of Queensland is about to relieve me of another pile of archival material. It's not as big a stash as last time, but it contains some real gems, including the box of embarrassing memorabilia that I found last year (remember the D&D poetry?) and all my old campaign notes, because they had a strong bearing on the kind of stories I went on to write. Such is the rationale, anyway, behind such things.

One element from my past that hasn't previously appeared in the archive is the music I wrote at high school. This material has accrued some value (apparently) and I have decided to let it go.

Going through those mounds of ancient staves, I was surprised most by (1) how damned much there was of it and (2) how hilariously bad the titles were.

(Oh, and (3) the way every assessment I received said something along the lines of "Well, we know that what you've done is technically correct so we have to give you an A, but boy, you are really pushing the boundaries." My younger self was a dreadful show-off (nothing's changed there) and loved rubbing authority figures up the wrong way, musically. Kinda like Flashdance, only nowhere near as cool.)

Anyway, in honour of all that effort, soon to vanish into a vault somewhere, I'll be adding a title to the end of each post over the next month or so. I'll spare you the stock standard Ave Marias, Ave Verums, Kyries, Agnus Deis, Requiescat in Paces, Opuses and so on, and stick to the strange, the surreal, and the wannabe-clever. I'll link to recordings, where they're available.

To kick things off, I give you "The Get of a Gargoyle Pig", which retitled (at my teacher's insistence) "Release of Anger" went on to win the Young Composer's Award in 1984. This was a theme and three variations for string quartet with solo parts by trumpet, oboe and flute. It was performed only once, and recorded by the ABC, but I've never managed to hear it. Probably for the best!

PS. The title of this post is a reference to Frank Zappa's "The Torture Never Stops". I was a big FZ fan as a young 'un (and so I remain). He's probably to blame for some of the stranger titles.

Now, I would normally never rag on an up-and-coming artist, particularly one working, however over-ambitiously, in several fields at once. But I figure it's okay if that young artist is me, and he has been foolish enough to leave a box of juvenilia lying around for future generations to discover--in a box, say, while moving house.

The box somehow evaded the Great Purge of 2005, during which I donated a bunch of early works, drafts and diaries to the University of Queensland's Fryer Library. This latest stash contains all sorts of mortifying snippets that I'd long thought completely lost. Among the reams of bad poetry, intricate, hand-drawn D&D levels, baroque codes, philosophically naïve rambles, and notes for novels that will never, ever be written, were:

. . . an unfinished short story called "DARKNIGHT" (sic), which opened with the following, timeless words:
It was night, and it was very dark.
. . . a certificate entitling me to "administer the Touch and Play organ course" (naughty old Yamaha)

. . . several elaborate (and probably unlistenable) pieces of music with titles like "Yuck (Opus 5)", "Squip, Tflim, Spuzno" and "Get Your Ass On That Crucifix"

. . . a series of doodles from a brief period in my late teens during which I discovered that I could draw, but only when deeply stoned

. . . and an essay on Electronic Music, circa 1983, for which I received 100% (I'm proud of this one).

The poetry really is unbearable--including several epics inspired by my D&D adventures--and to prove it I have one fragment to share. You can actually chart my descent into teen-angst as a graph against my rising aspirations of literary greatness.

( To whit: )

Anyway, I regard this detritus with the same mixture of puzzlement, horror and genuine affection that I reserve for my former self. We all have to start somewhere, as human beings as well as artists. And if revealing the existence of this kind of stuff doesn't prove once and for all that anyone can make it as a writer, then I've done the universe a disservice for which I profoundly apologise. :-)

Countdown to Astropolis: 7 days.