Okay, I’ll blog both here and there. Wildebear will be devoted to science fiction and fantasy and everything to do with Wildebear’s (almost complete!) memoirs. Assorted Nonsense will be for everything else.

Yes, I am a fool, to attempt blogging in two places at once.

You’d almost think I have free time on my hands. Alas, it has nothing to do with that, and everything to do with this cursed passion for writing, which only seems to get worse as I age.

Et maintenant je passe le coq au l’aine.

Something I’ve wanted to mention for some time is a new blog I’ve discovered. Up until today I’ve only ever checked it out on my Blackberry. One day I was waiting at Union Station for the Go Train to carry me home to a lovely home-made chicken broccoli casserole. The train stubbornly refused to come. Bored, I whipped out the Blackberry and did a random search for something, anything, I don’t even remember what. It may have been “something interesting.” And what should pop up but this blog entitled “It’s Our Time on the Edge.”

A young woman (Catherine, let’s call her, what with that being her name and all) blogging about random elements of her life. To me it has come to represent this odd time in our species’ history when we’re able to observe one another’s lives from afar, without ever actually knowing one another, without ever necessarily making contact, just checking in from time to time to see what we’re up to. And not uninvited, because although at times it feels a tad voyeuristic (although there is nothing in the content of her blog to warrant such a feeling), Catherine has explicitly invited me into her life to this limited extent (just the same as I have done here), deliberately sharing with me the circumstances of her single life (a little bit lonely), her subsequent engagement to a gentleman she had previously broken up with (a frequent characteristic of subsequently successful marriages, I’ve observed over the years), and now her young married life, pre- children (which perhaps will be the next thing, although let’s see how many blog posts she gets in then!).

If I’ve made poor Catherine’s blog sound a bit boring, it’s not. I keep coming back, often while waiting for the train, sometimes while waiting to pick my wife up from work. Always on my Blackberry. She is my Blackberry blog. My only Blackberry blog, I might add. I keep coming back because I like her writing. Never juvenile, always clear, usually thoughtful. Judging from the comments, read by a close circle of family and friends, and who knows how many lurkers, like me.

I wonder if Catherine monitors her traffic. Will she notice and wonder about this link that has suddenly appeared in her stats directing perhaps a handful of more potential readers to It’s Our Time on the Edge? Might it prompt her to increase her (recently erratic) blogging rate? Or will she continue to blog mercifully oblivious to the benign yet inane ramblings of this fan from afar?

We will see…

Well folks, while I’m not abandoning this blog entirely, I am redirecting my efforts to assist my good friend Barnabus J. Wildebear over at his new blog. He’s not much of a technophile so he’s going to need a lot of help for a while.

Barnabus plans to write specifically about his passion for all aspects of science fiction and fantasy, and also about certain recent exploits of his that, although difficult to believe, he insists are every bit as real as (ahem) he is.

So I hope you’ll join me in migrating over to Chez Wildebear for awhile.

He promises to post every single day, or at the very least, every eighteen days.

Good luck Barnabus!

And perhaps I’ll see the rest of you back here in the not-too-distant future.

So long…

Last night I was hanging out with some science fiction buddies, one of whom was (and still is) the inimitable Mark Raynor, author of The Amadeus Net and Marvellous Hairy, as well as The Skwib, his irreverent, absurdist, satirical and highly amusing blog, when Mark dropped the following bomb:

“You’re about to become a Malingering Macaque, Mahoney.”

At first this sounded like  something to strive for with its undeniably attractive alliteration, until Mark put it in context.  Turns out he was talking about his blogroll, which is neatly arranged in order of how frequently the folks on his blogroll blog:

“Right now you’re a Bonobo in Space,” he said, which actually didn’t sound anywhere near as appealing as a Malingering Macaque, until he explained further:  “You see Bonobos in Space are people who blog every now and then.  But you’ve been blogging hardly at all.  I’m going to be forced to demote you from a Bonobo in Space to a Malingering Macaque.  The only thing worse than a Malingering Macaque is a Primate of the Past.  And you definitely do not want to go there, good sir.”

Immediately following this threat Mark’s brother Mike launched a nearly lethal volley at his elder brother,  accusing him of squandering his not inconsiderable literary skills on blogging as opposed to crafting yet more of his fabulously satirical novels.

Leaving me utterly confused.

Should I blog more and thus avoid the dubious fate of becoming a Malingering Macaque?  Or should I heed Mike’s advice to his brother and cast aside this folly once and for all in favour of potentially more lucrative literary endeavours?

I don’t know either.

My Scalzi interview scored a link on The Great Geek Manual, but they got the name of my blog wrong: Aborted Nonsense!

Thanks for the mention just the same, guys.

I have to say I was tempted to abort this nonsense over the last couple of weeks. But the server problems appear to have been sorted out, so I’ll hang in there for a least a little while longer.

Things are back up and running. And it’s inspired me to get the most out of this blog. I’ve enabled my audio plugin (which I actually didn’t even realize was disabled… that’s how lax I’ve been lately). So I’ll try to post some audio clips over the next little while. Like this one, featuring my good buddy Matt Watts, whom I haven’t seen in a dog’s age:

That’s Holly Lewis in there as well. The clip is from Steve the Second, one of my favourite drama productions from my previous life as a radio drama guy. Ah, the good old days.

Incidentally, the last time I saw Holly Lewis she said to me, “Still sulking, eh?”

That’s because they were doing Canadia 2056 at the time and I had been reassigned to work on Q instead of producing Canadia. Holly was right, I was still sulking at the time, but I’m smiling these days, as things have turned out pretty well. I actually enjoyed story editing Canadia, and I didn’t have all the pressure of producing it. And I have to admit it turned out pretty well with Greg DeClute at the helm. And in retrospect my time on Q was pretty interesting. Got to meet people like this, for example:

And of course it all led directly to my present gig, which has been one heck of a positive educational experience.

Well that’s enough of a trip down memory lane. Why don’t we close with this clip, just for fun. And at this point I have no idea what clip I’m actually going to post… so it’ll be a surprise for all of us:

Yeah, that works.

Maybe even twice.

I will be good at it again. When the novel’s done. Nowadays I find any spare writing time I find, I apply it directly to the novel. I’m so close to the end I can smell it. And you can bet the writing in the novel is much better than in the previous sentence.

Well, a bit better.

I’m on page 284 of the final draft. About 78 pages to go. It seems doable. I’ve already done 284 pages, haven’t I? 78 should be a breeze.

And yet somehow it still feels daunting. A part of me can’t believe I’ll ever finish it. I cannot IMAGINE how I will feel when I finish the thing, when I write that last word, do that last tweak. I know the thought of starting another novel will feel enormously daunting. It will have taken so long to finish this one! And yet start the next one I will.

It is slightly depressing that it has taken so long. I have long since reconciled myself to the fact that I’m writing this novel for pure personal satisfaction, for my own personal enjoyment, along with an enormous amount of money when I sell it (a little optimism there).

I must console myself with the fact that even though it will have taken me so long to finish this novel while others have been infinitely more prolific, while this novel may not be anywhere near as good as those of other, more prolific authors, while this one may never be published or acclaimed or even finished…

…I still make a mean barbecued salmon.

Remind me to post the recipe someday.

Although many of you might have considered my previous post a stupifying bore, and far be it from me to blame you, I actually found it quite interesting. And not for the reason that you might think.

I found it interesting because I had to make a decision in the course of writing it. I came up with a line that made me laugh, and then had to decide whether to use the line. As I was making the decision I was acutely aware of the presence of my mother looking over my shoulder, and of the good opinions of all my clean living, clean thinking friends, all three of them.

No I don’t live with my mother, although I’m sure such an arrangement would be most pleasant and result in a good deal less cooking on my part. But she does on occasion read my blog and I value her good opinion of me.

If you read over the previous post I’m sure you’ll quickly note which line I’m thinking about. Maybe you don’t find it particularly funny, but when I thought of it I chuckled. Wrote it down. And promptly deleted it and replaced it with something infinitely more boring.

And then I erased that and put the line back.

Robertson Davies has said (or it has been said of him) that he couldn’t write worth a damn until his parents passed on. I don’t want my parents to pass on, I’m all for immortality for the both of them, but I’d love to be able to write like Robertson Davies. His writing was tame before the death of his parents (I believe, not having read his entire oevre), and it was only with their passing that he no longer felt their benign yet nevertheless judgmental presence.

So it was that I felt the need to grow up and allow myself to indulge in one fairly inocuous if crude expression for the sake of a minor chuckle.

Robertson Davies, look out!

Not.

1. Can be read in a single sitting.

2. May or may not constitute part of a fence

3. Stimulates the intellect and/or funnybone or, failing that, the sphincter

4. Bears little resemblance to this one

Warning!

From here on in this blog may contain a great deal more nonsense than it has in the past.  I will be placing less pressure on myself to craft the perfect post in favour of simply crafting ”a” post.  You’re probably thinking “Holy Cow, how can the future quality of this blog be even less than it has been in the past?”

All I can say is, you have been warned.

So after being absent from blogging for some time my stats have plummeted to a low of about eighty hits a day.  Of course, that’s probably mostly incidental traffic, spiderbots and whatnot.  I’m going to try for a post at least once every couple of days, see if I can’t get the numbers back up to a healthy eighty-six or eighty-seven hits a day.  Surely I have that many relatives willing to watch me make a fool of myself on the internet.

(And with the aforementioned assertion Joe abruptly stopped writing.) 

The hiatus is officially lifted.

Unfortunately, my vacation is almost at an end as well.

Rarely have I needed a vacation so badly.  Fortunately, this one was everything I needed it to be.

Except longer.  But I’m not complaining. 

Perhaps I’ll blog about the vacation soon.  Perhaps I’ll blog about a lot of things.  Not sure exactly what I’ll blog about.  But I can tell you this:

I will blog.

Just…

…not so much today.

Too sunny out.

See ya’ll. 

Yes, I am succumbing to the temptation to blog again… but I have an excellent reason (and a caveat). First, the caveat: I will not blog about the CBC. From this day forward, if I continue to blog, it will be a personal blog with no connection to my dayjob.

It’s just safer that way.

And now: on with why I’m breaking my silence.

Last night, on behalf of SF Canada, I presented the SF Canada Lifetime Achievement Award to Phyllis Gotlieb. And it was great!

I managed to get the award to the Merrill Collection in one piece, we
had quite a fair turnout, Lorna Toolis and her gang at the Merrill Collection had the whole place set up wonderfully with a terrific assortment of goodies. Robert Charles Wilson was there, along with Peter Halasz, Allan Weiss, and Fergus Heywood and Hilary Doyle from the CBC (oops, there I go mentioning the CBC) and many others whose names escape me at the moment.

I spent the better part of my commutes this week trying to figure out
what to say upon presenting the award. Here’s what I came up with
(more or less):

***
Everyone here knows Phyllis Gotlieb. You know her work; perhaps
you’re fortunate enough to know her personally. You might know that
she was born Phyllis Fay Bloom right here in Toronto, and that she was
educated in Toronto as well. I don’t have to tell you that she’s
written many fine novels, poems, short stories, and that her work
spans many decades and genres — that it is an outstanding body of
work. You already know that.

Did you know that she’s written radio plays too? Of course you did.

Phyllis is a founding member of SF Canada. Indeed, she is one of the
founders of contemporary Canadian science fiction. She has been and
continues to be a role model and mentor to many of us who consider her
a part of our extended family. In her groundbreaking career Phyllis
has been an editor, she’s been nominated for a Governor General’s
Award, and she’s even had an award named after one of her novels: The
Sunburst Award. And the award we’re presenting today isn’t her first
award – her novel A Judgment of Dragons, published by Berkley, won the Canadian Science Fiction Award in 1981.

You are no doubt familiar with the sheer scope of Phyllis’s work: with
her elegant prose, the gritty reality of her fictional worlds, and the
vibrant, sometimes tragic characters inhabiting those worlds. Such
work has made her a towering figure in Canadian literature, a pioneer
in Canadian science fiction. But her reputation transcends our
borders – her work is respected the world over.

It’s one thing to be accomplished. It’s quite another to be as
accomplished as Phyllis is and remain so darned friendly. As a
recipient of her generosity and warmth — one of many recipients, I
know – I am happy to attest not only to Phyllis’s towering
achievements as an artist, but also to her enduring humility.

All of which is more than enough reason to present our very own Grande
Dame of Science Fiction with this honour here tonight. Phyllis, on
behalf of SF Canada, I am thrilled to present you with the first ever
SF Canada Lifetime Achievement Award, along with my sincere
congratulations.
***

It’s not genius, but it’s sincere. Congratulations again, Phyllis.

Joe (making no promises when another post might appear…)