One of my creative areas is all sorts of visual arts. I’ve recently joined a new online community called WetCanvas!

There is a forum called Weekend Drawing Event (WDE) where the host for the session posts reference images and/or challenges that participants use to create a new image. I’m using the term ‘image’ here to cover the whole range, from pencil to paint to digital tools. I decided to get back involved with pencil drawing since it’s a simple medium and can be quite stunning. Here’s the result:

Thoughts?

The planet thing was interesting. How about this one:

What Jan Means

You are fair, honest, and logical. You are a natural leader, and people respect you. You never give up, and you will succeed… even if it takes you a hundred tries. You are rational enough to see every part of a problem. You are great at giving other people advice.You are usually the best at everything … you strive for perfection. You are confident, authoritative, and aggressive. You have the classic “Type A” personality. You are very intuitive and wise. You understand the world better than most people. You also have a very active imagination. You often get carried away with your thoughts. You are prone to a little paranoia and jealousy. You sometimes go overboard in interpreting signals.

Worth a giggle:

Starquiz  - What Planet Do You Come From

Here’s mine:

I’ve just been reading an article posted by RU Syrius on 10 Zen Monkeys

Is The Net Good For Writers:
http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2007/10/05/is-the-net-good-for-writers/

It made me think about the range of views as given by the ‘professional’ writers who responded to that question and the comments following. It all comes down to personal experience, perception, and anecdote as to how one responds.

There were a few comments about the lack of women respondents, the age of the male respondents, and the consistency that most are journalists or have ‘evolved’ to non-fiction in book form, as well as a few who admit to — heaven forbid! — writing for the Internet. [I still think of it as the Internet, not the Interweb as seems to be cropping into the language in the popular media.] But it seems to me that this 2007 article is exposing the paradigm shift that we are all experiencing as globalisation of communication is exploding.

Interestingly, one point that was not mentioned by anyone [that I could find anyway] is the reduction in authoritarian control over that communication, either in writing or in speech now that VOIP has expanded to make ‘long distance operators’ pretty much extinct, not to mention nearly free. Surely the removal of the ‘thought police’, as much as possible at least, is a good thing. Yes, many writers do want to make a living and be regarded for Pulitzers, but is that realistic in this new world? And isn’t it a good thing to open up the world of thought so more and more people can take part instead of only relying on the filtered ideas of the traditional message controllers — those who own the presses? [’The press’ after all refers to the physical means of production as well as the semi-organised print journalism we considered the means of learning about happenings in the world before the advent and pervasion of television (yes, I said pervasion, not perversion, although the latter might be appropriate as well)].

It is only recently that I felt confident enough to introduce myself to a new acquaintance when asked the inevitable question, ‘What do you do?’, to answer, ‘I’m a writer.’ I find that the conversation doesn’t last long after that. The question doesn’t follow - what do you write? It just sort of hangs there. Maybe it’s my responsibility to say instead: I write novels, or I am a novelist. I’ll try that next time and see what happens. Surely the next question would be what the stories are or even are you published. But back to the Internet.

One of the reasons I decided to write this entry is that the article and commenters bemoaned the lack of readers and that they ‘aren’t being found’. I find that astonishing! Even my little postings are accessed [if not read; it’s hard to tell by the statistics presented] and a large number of people make the decision and take the action to add some page they have seen to their bookmarks.  For this year,

1. I get an average of 330 real visitors per month, 40/day. [That excludes robots and other automated accesses.]
2. Most of the readers are in the US [I live in Australia].
3. Most of the readers access on Wednesday and Sunday.
4. Consistently, Jan’s Blog is most accessed page [out of three main entry points: my business and my personal page], and has been for several years now.
5. 18.5% in the month of July added something to their bookmarks! And I have no idea why. [June: 13.8%, May: 18.5%, April: 29.6%!!, March: 24.4%, Feb: 13.5%, and — wait for it — January: 37.6%!]
6. RSS accesses by a specific News reader, NewsGator: January: 89, Feb: 203, Mar: 285, Apr: 166, May: 229, June: 238, and July: 167

I find the above statistics amazing. I don’t blog often [as those of you who read the RSS can attest], but there must be something here that is attracting attention.

Who are you? What do you find interesting to read here? I really could use the feedback if you have the inclination. I must admit that I require registration to comment. In the past, leaving it open was a big mistake. The gambling offers seem to have diminished now, thank goodness! So if you don’t mind registering, I would much appreciate that next effort of registering and leaving a note for me. According to the article bemoaning the impact of the Internet, that’s one of the plusses after all according to some: holding the conversation.

Over to you.

Once upon a time, there was an online bookseller. It started out when the Internet was emerging as one of the major advancements in human communication of all time. As the online bookseller grew, it began to try to change the rules to its own advantage. It was a business after all, with ‘making money’ its main goal. One day, the online bookseller thought, if we can control the production as well as the sales function, we can make even more money. Let’s deny our production competitors access to our sales channel! We will win!!

Sadly, this is not a fairy tale.

For more info about how to slow down the giant and enable more competition in print-on-demand production, see:

http://www.spannet.org/amazonantitrust-home.htm

I’m close to continuing work on the next book in the Sadhu Singh/Taylor Franke series. The new book is called Starving For Life, the story of Pauline Granger, a recovering anorexic who is caught up in the murder of a department store guard.

I was reading a blog, The Fictionistas, and came across a related article, pointing out the range of eating disorders that exist today, not just for girls, but for people in general. It is worth a read:

http://fictionistas.blogspot.com/2008/06/disordered-eatingits-not-just-for.html

I would be interested if you think a novel that has a character who has had an eating disorder is a draw or not. Do you know of any other YA or adult fiction that has such a character? Comments please.

Every once in a great while, someone lays it all out there and lightbulbs go off like you’re in Yankee Stadium. If you are a writer, this post by Nathan Bransford is one of those:

http://nathanbransford.blogspot.com/2008/06/do-you-have-plot.html

He defines, compares and contrasts three of the biggies of fiction:

• theme
• hook
• plot

We all need them, but we often miss the mark when asked to share them with a prospective agent or publishers. At least us newbs do. I’m sure the published authors have them well in hand. The comments by his readers are well worth a look, too.

You know, this techno stuff is starting to show wear and tear. A couple weeks ago, the webhost for this blog seemed to ‘lose’ me in domain space, at least for my website. Then my email wouldn’t work. Then their live-chat help desk was unreachable.

Yesterday and today the network between their servers and the world, at least their hosting servers, disappeared. That was the full set: email, blogs, websites — the whole kit and kaboodle. Their company site was up, though, and their live-chat support desk. Every couple hours, I checked them again. ‘few minutes’ turned into ’several hours’ turned into ‘no eta’. Right now it’s back up. Anyone care to guess the odds on for how long?

Email seems to be trickling in. It’s probably all backed up on sending servers that have now started trying to send again.

[sigh] Just needed to vent.

[Originally posted - 1 February 2008]

What does it mean when you feel guilty laughing in a movie? It means you’re an American who understands the impact of the story’s historical events on the present.

Charlie Wilson’s War (Mike Nichols, 2008) elicits just such mixed emotions. Previewed Monday, 21 January 2007, at the Jam Factory, Melbourne, the based-on-truth story relates the actions of a virtually unknown U.S. Congressman of Texas, Charlie Wilson (Tom Hanks), who built a most unlikely coalition to fund the mujahidin during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the early 1980s. Wilson was the first civilian honored by the CIA for valor in covert operations: getting the Soviets to withdraw from Afghanistan.

Starring Tom Hanks as Wilson, Julia Roberts as his well-heeled Texas matron ‘love’ interest, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman as a mid-level CIA operative Gust Avrakotos, Charlie Wilson’s War exposes the inner wheeling and dealing of Congress, money, and international spy organizations. The banter between Hanks and Hoffman exposed the irreverence with which those in power held (hold?) the fate of the world in their hands.

One scene that leaves the viewer in shock is Charlie and Gust’s sit-down in Jerusalem with a ‘friendly’ Mosad agent. Charlie manages to convince their Israeli companion to release the largest store of Soviet arms for use by the ‘freedom fighters’, and to cooperate with not only Pakistan, but also Egypt and the panoply of Muslim nations, including Saudi Arabia, to support the resistance. Saudi matches the US black ops appropriation dollar for dollar, allowing Wilson to increase an initial $5 million budget to $1 billion. Goes to prove that the enemy of my enemy may also be my enemy - or however that saying goes - no matter what the cost.

The sad aspect of the film is the final Defense Appropriations committee meeting when Charlie asks for continued support of just $1 million to rebuild the country. If you are going to see the film, and I do highly recommend it, suffice it to say that the chickens came home to roost, and 90% of the world is dealing with the negative and short-sighted outcome of that meeting. One could argue that the seed for 9/11 was planted right then. Lessons have not been learned, and perhaps they never will be.

Cinematically, the images are a mix of old news footage of the era, grand vistas and refugee tent cities filmed in the deserts of Morocco, glam and glitter in Washington and Texas power circles. Disturbing shots of Soviet migs strafing and helicopters firing rockets on the defenseless Afghani women and children are confronting, especially since what happened then repeated a mere twenty years later. The impact of the film is intense.

Laughter can break tension. Screenplay writer Aaron Sorkin (West Wing) and legend director Mike Nichols (The Odd Couple, Plaza Suite, Spamalot) have created a sardonic entertainment, not just a re-creation of a little known backgrounder to the current nightmare we are living with today.

[Originally published - 28 January 2008]

[I apologize to those who left comments on this posting. Those are totally gone as far as I can tell.]