ASSOCIATION for the DISRUPTION of the MEMETIC CONTINUUM.

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I have reached the point where my eyes roll involuntarily and I click away to a safer place.

Reading the webfiction I so enjoyed a few months back has turned into a need to duck for cover as the same old, same old, same old, same old rattles off the bandwagon to smack the trailing readers in the head.

It’s true, I can’t read Romance fiction because I throw the book at the wall as soon as a flame-haired firebrand glares at the tall handsome rake sporting a wry smile, and hisses, “I’ll show you!” Or the intelligent virgin suffers a frisson/brisance [undiagnosed epilepsy?] when the arrogant asshole pushes her up against the garden wall.

It’s true, I cringe when the enigmatic loner with raven hair over one grey eye turns his back on the sweet ingénue and hides his inner turmoil behind a brooding scowl. He’ll wear a cape and a sword and probably have fangs. She’ll have violet eyes and kneel on the grass with kittens.

And now I have had my fill of ghoulies, ghosties and long leggedy beasties. I cannot read zombies again, ever. 'Shaun of the Dead ' was as credible as they get, and I cannot suspend disbelief for another moment. It has reached the point where the subconscious argument that ‘this is well written’ can no longer cut it. Recognizing technical skill just can’t encourage me to follow one more >>NEXT>>.

There must be more to the writing community in here than one idea in twenty forms.

I remember when a gay central character was an encouraging anomaly, and gay relationships were either stereotyped in mass media or unapologetically straightforward and unremarkable in Clive Barker bestsellers. Now, in webfiction the pendulum has swung so far it has caught in its own sprocket and jammed its flywheel. It's a DVD stuck on repeat, loud. The only straight characters who are seen are those hideous narcissists from Romance macerations.

Oh God! Not again, another gay/bi/alternate sexuality character....please. I laughed once at the thought that someone should send Clive Barker some hetero porn, [research purposes only] just so his straight sex scenes weren’t quite so... ‘he slipped down her white cotton panties and licked her slit.’ Write what you know, people.

If one idea works, any idea, it is replicated with the speed of thought, then never changes. How I wish there was an Association for the Disruption of the Memetic Continnuum. Is that my inner anarchist or my recessive autocrat?

It is one of the many ways the dreaded Acquiring Editor can be a godsend. They at least, having ridden the crest of any fad to its fiscally rewarding conclusion, will stop publishing the rhetoric en vogue. They will also ensure a story starts at the beginning - not in Chapter 5 - and hopefully they will require some degree of emotional connectivity from the characters.

Good editorial input is worth its weight.

Maybe I’m just burned out. Not everyone who writes spec fic or gay lit should feel insulted. Good work is good work is good work. Just, stone the flamin’ crows, shake off the dags!

After that, I had better not make any recommendations this week, although I did find some fiction I really enjoyed. One [gay vampire sci-fi, LOL] I liked enough to bookmark for ‘soon TBR’ even though I’ve got Moby Dick and Anna Karenina both open, plus two pulps for days when I’m too blah to read properly.

I did get a link from Web Fiction Guide that you should go have a look at.

WEB FICTION GUIDE [unreviewed].

Sign in and give these works a rating. Those I’ve flicked through so far deserve some cred.

I’ll rest now; have a Bex and a little lie down; listen to Leonard Cohen and contemplate my navel.
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SPRING CLEANING.

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While the rest of the world sighs and winds down after summer, here in the Never Never we are moving into spring. The frosts are that bit less frosty each morning and the fogs over the paddock clear earlier. Washing dries again, hoorah!

Cobwebs and dust have built up and I should be filled with excitement and the joy of nesting, but I decided to indulge in reminiscence instead. I watched Rocky Horror, Velvet Goldmine and JC Superstar to recall the history that never really was, but I fantasized about anyway. Frankie said, 'Don't dream it, be it,' in a small town picture theatre in north Queensland and loaned me dreams above my station.

This bent for melancholy recollection started with Penny Goring's lovely Temporary Passport. We were hippies and students too, so we knew the poverty and the gypsy soul, but it was a decade or two earlier in the twentieth century and the cities in Europe might as well have been on the moon. Those I know who made it to the far off brighter lights were the sensible souls who studied nursing primarily, then did Europe on a dollar a day or backpacked in packs without the obligatory pack, worked bars in London and squats in Brixton.

I vet nursed and file-clerked for drinks money and left them all with catastrophic finality.

I do miss that time.

Before we learned we were all destined to burn in a nuclear holocaust, we knew we should husband the earth and that men didn't have the right to take as long as the planet kept giving. We knew it.

Then the great fear was perpetrated and most of us became yuppies and lived well in glass and chrome and very nice cars. Tried to run ahead of the fear, or celebrated the who-gives-a-fuck-anyway. We remembered life before the sexual revolution and yet we let the media strangle and distort the message so that women were left with the right to say yes. And only yes. To everything.

And all the guys became girls anyway. The straight boys were pretty, the gay boys were macho; we all wore leather and feathers or tartan and painted our hair to match our clothes. When there was plenty of money we dressed in labels and drank all day. When there wasn’t we knew all the best came from op shops [before current affairs shows taught the senseless how to forage].

Now I'm listening to Queen's first album, from back when they were poor. I miss Freddie.

I should be tipping great online reads. What have I found lately....

You could breeze by ALTX. I lost a day or two there this last week. Loved it. Is it ironic to call digital fiction that which relies upon its fundamentally digital presentation, its core of nodes and techno doodads, and yet to offer it for sale in print copies?

I’m still pimping pixelnyx as the best on the worldwideweb, even tho there’s been some need to justify, as I understand it. Odd. Still. Always worth a look. Grab a pizza, a cab shiraz and a comfy seat, settle in and read.

Go to ERGOfiction, of course. Webfic Wednesday brought out some excellent names to peruse at leisure. And Gavin Williams dropped in to chat about Diggory Franklin.

Tonya R Moore has done some renos at her Tremendous Universe – which it undoubtedly is. Check it.

Cat Black has been at work on Blue Dog. New poems, new prose, trying some new forms.

A M Harte has been busy since her hols, jotting, jotting, and giving away J Timothy King’s Romance novel! Good show, that girl. Top hole.

People everywhere have been creating, budding, blooming, fruiting ART – like some magical bush out of a Clive Barker novel. Jump about and roll in it, you won’t even get ink on your fingers or stains on your clothes.
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