It's been a long eight months or so since I began my Phd in what was originally meant to be Physics, but which over time has revealed itself to be mainly chemistry with some physics, some engineering and some fun social engineering at various conferences and events. It's exhausting, all-encompassing, challenging, exciting and infuriating, all wrapped up in one three-year parcel with a tag that says 'finish me'. I did one month in July with my sponsoring company, Wind Prospect, and then started the PhD work proper in September. I've learned in that time how to use Scanning Electron Microscopes, Tunnelling Electron Microscopes (light and dark field imaging, digital and film cameras), Raman Spectroscopy, X-ray Diffraction, electron field emission and thermionic emission, vacuum chambers and pumps, Pyrometers and thermocouples, electrospray deposition, spin coating, soldering and inkjet printing with silver and diamond. I've learned theory about thermionic emission, field emission, diamond structure and doping modelling, crystal structure, Richardson-Dushman equations and Fowler-Nordheim graphs, as well as writing hundreds of thousands of words about the solar industry as part of the market research proposal. I've taught four hours a week in undergraduate lab sessions, marked 15 formal reports and helped mentor 7 undergraduate final year projects. I've presented ideas on how to change the university to better research for smart energy, offered myself as a guinea pig for a new multidisciplinary doctoral research centre, presented posters of our work at two conferences as well as assisting in the writing of one scientific paper for publication and several drafts of grant proposals and quarterly reports.

Just reading all that makes me feel tired! It's nice to put it out there in writing - aside from Neil, my supervisor, Nat, my girlfriend and my parents, and a few understanding fellow PhDs, I don't feel like anyone in my life is aware just how much I've been doing in the last few months! It's been very hard juggling social expectations with the time and mind-space commitments a PhD requires, with 9-7 days not uncommon. More than anything the hardest thing is getting time to stop and think. I feel tugged at all points of me towards people's expectations, which I can't fulfil. Much of my previous social existence is running thin and some friendships may not survive the process, I fear. I'm having to be anti-social just to survive.

It hasn't been helped by my health, which has been steadily deteriorating through or perhaps because of this stress. I keep getting fevers and bowel problems. Initially I suspected it was Coeliac Disease but tests proved negative on that and a few other things. It may be IBS, or it may be something more scary like Crohns or Ulcerative Colitis. I'm getting more checks over the next few weeks so hopefully a solution will be found.

More than anything I feel I'm moving away from the person I was as an undergraduate and back towards the slower-paced, more introspective intellectual of my youth. I can't party any more (not that I was much good at it before!) and I am unlikely to be the most exciting person for many people who focus their lives around alcohol and big night's out. I want to move back to the things I really enjoy, the things that make me relax, like reading, writing, cooking, watching films and just generally taking life at a bit slower, more thoughtful pace. I want to talk about ideas and debate without bad feeling, the give and take of stimulating conversation, rather than the stilted discussions I frequently find myself in at the moment, full of game-playing, insecurities, gossip and an abundant lack of listening or compromise.

I mark this as a turning point. I am making changes to slow my life down so my work and health don't suffer. I've taken up Tai Chi and am reading more and even starting to dabble back into prose. Nat and I have decided to get a place together in the Spring where we can slow down in order to be closer to what's important to us. I want to devote time to the pursuits I enjoy (Science and Writing) and to do well in them. I want to enjoy good company of my lovely girlfriend and those friends who can accept my change of pace as something necessary to be who I need to be. I want to return to being me.

In the last year I have:

sold two stories to anthologies
was a semifinalist in WOTF 2007 Q3 and honourable mention 2008 Q2
wrote a month-long fictional journal for world without oil
wrote ~100 blog posts for Futurismic
wrote ~25 reviews for SFCrowsnest

Completed a master's research project and associated thesis
Learned C++, Unix, ROOT and CMSSW
Presented a 40 minute presentation on Astrophysics
Sat 7 exams in Condensed Matter, Relativistic Cosmology, Quantum Mechanics, Nanoscience, Particle Physics, Current Topics in Astrophysics and Current Topics in Particle Physics
Secured provisionally a funded PHD place at the university of Bristol to research Nanodiamond thermionic converters for Concentrated Solar Power Generation, in association with Wind Prospect and Bath Uni

Coordinated the National Student Film Festival
Changed the constitution of the film festival and the Union media board
Won Best Script at the university's media awards
damn near collapsed a bunch of times

And now... I'm done. I'm going to go get drunk now.

Revising for Relativistic Cosmology nearly killed me but damn did it pay off. I think at most I lost 12% on that exam and a lot of people seem to have done badly, so that shouldn't get moderated down too much. Which is awesome to know I've got that one in the bag.

Three more until my undergrad days are over and I'm free. All rather on top of each other. Condensed Matter Monday, Current Topics In Astrophysics tuesday and Current Topics In Particle Physics Thursday. I feel good about the current topics papers, they suit my style of revision very well. Just want it over....

3. Suppose that in a standard reference frame the tensor Qαβ has as its only non-zero compo-
nents Q00 = 1 and Qii= q for i = 1, 2, 3. Again with our usual notation, what would be its
components Q˜ α˜ β in a frame moving at velocity v in the x1 direction relative to the original frame?



bu-bu-bu Say what now?

Professor Phillips' Relativistic Cosmology (the expansion of the universe, now with added General Relativity bending your space and time!) exam is on friday. The three exams the week after I'm not too worried about, I should do well enough that at worst they shouldn't affect my average. This one, however... bleaugh. There are four past papers and three problems sheets and you could actually answer all of the questions they contain without using a single real word. Exams like this make me question what the hell i'm doing at the last week of a four year physics masters degree. I can do the maths, if I force it into my brain. But it's not intuitive like writing, it feels very painful and head-stretching to find the Christoffel Symbols for the radial 2D part of the Robertson Walker metric. What does that even mean? I think it's actually more disturbing that I have a general idea. Still, for Friday's exam I'm taking that as a good sign.

The promise of my PhD in alternative energy/nanoscience research is really keeping my spirits up. That and the prospect of a summer spent writing short stories and playing xbox (if i can afford one). Nearly there now... 5th June can't come soon enough.

A final note: if anyone ever invites you to look at anything involving tensor calculus? DON'T.

So I applied for a PhD in nanoscience back in February but various paperwork things meant it disappeared into the ether for a few months. Stuck in the middle of my exams, I'd half-forgotten about it, half pushed it to the back of my mind where it lurked, asking me what exactly i'd do next year if not it?

Happily, thursday I got a lovely email from Neil Fox, the supervisor on the project, informing me that, providing my grades are ok, I've got the PhD. So all things being well, I have my next three years figured out. It's very exciting. The placement is a industry funded project working with nanocrystals of diamond, which act as a thermionic material at far lower temperatures than a normal thermionic (which converts heat to electricity). My role will be to study condensed solar power plants from around the world and design a plugin using this material, which could be as much as twice as efficient as water or photovoltaic based CSPs.

It's exciting to think that not only will I be studying in a field I find fascinating (and being paid for it), I'll also potentially be working on a technology that could make a real difference to society and our energy use. Now all I have to do is pass the six exams remaining of my undergraduate career, starting tomorrow and finishing on June 5th. The stakes are higher than ever before.

I've handed in my project report, finally, clocking in more or less exactly at the 10,000 word advised size, plus references(all 62 of them). It feels good to get it out of the way. All I have to do now is score ok in the six exams left before the end of my course on the 5th June. It's pretty tough going, doing 8 hours of revision most days to keep on top of it, with particle physics and relativistic cosmology really kicking my ass. I feel like I'm making some headway but I'll be underwater for the next three-four weeks.

So for that reason I apologise, for I know some of you are going through a lot of tough times right now. My thoughts go out to all of you. In a month's time I want to return my attention to the other things that matter in my life: my writing and my friends. Hoping to catch up properly very soon, as soon as I've defeated all this tensor calculus...

So I went along to the University Of Bristol Arts and Media Awards tonight, because of my work with the national student film festival, Screentest. We didn't have awards as such as ours were presented in the festival in february. But I went along to show my support for the other media products, the newspaper, film and photography societies and the excellent newspaper and arts magazine.
I was surprised to be awarded best short film script by the filmmaking society for my short script Quarantine. It's a little trophy, but it's still my first writing award. Nice!

I hope you guys are heading out to vote today. The whole world is watching wishing they could be too.

A quick question that's been bothering me for as long as I can remember.

Why do so many people spell 'lose' as 'loose'? as in 'if obama looses pennsylvania it won't change the overall delegate count very much'? (to throw a little political edge into the post)

I've never really understood why this spelling mistake is found so much in people's writing that's otherwise error-free. It's almost as if a big chunk of textbooks had been teaching it wrong.

past 6000 words on the thesis.

Had my first exam of the year, Quantum Mechanics 4, on Friday. It went well, all things considering (I don't think i've ever said that about a quantum exam!) I can't see myself getting less than 65 unless everyone does stupendously well and it gets moderated down.

Which means for the time being, revision is put on the backburner. I have six exams left, between the 20th May and 5th March. Particle Physics 4, NanoPhysics, Relativistic Cosmology, Condensed Matter, Current Topics In Astrophysics, Current Topics in Particle Physics, in that order. Particle and Relativistic are easily the hardest (hello gauge theory and tensors!) which is good because they are the ones with gaps before them - just over a week for Relativistic. Both Current Topic modules are largely essay based which will suit my revision style. Nano and Condensed are third year courses so hopefully they won't stress me too much!

But revision for those will not start in earnest for two weeks as I have a much bigger fish to fry: my research project report (or thesis, dissertation, whatever you want to call it). The max word count is 10,000 words. I'm at 5679 at the moment, with big chunks of the theory and method done but still plenty to do. I'm going to try and get up near the limit this week and then spend a lot of time refining my message and scientific explanations/references next week. I should be able to make a good report but it'll take a lot of time and effort. At this point I feel like I do when I'm writing a first draft of fiction - get the damn thing done no matter how messy it is, then go over it with a fine tooth comb and do massive surgery.

And after June 5th, I'll have all the time in the world to do that with my writing too. 'Tremors' is off to Analog today.

Tomas

I'm intending to use this place far more, to actually get back to day to day blogging and writing. After June 5th. between then and now I have 7 final exams and one 10,000 word thesis/project report to do, in order to get my Masters in Physics. I'm 4.5k ish into the report first draft, with a deadline of May 6th. the writing part of it isn't too bad but it'll need a lot of referencing and a lot of fiddling with my graphical results, which is time-consuming.

As a result, sporadicity in contact with the metaworld that is livejournal/the blogosphere will continue as it has for the last few months. I am doing a little writing on the side, however. A new version of 'A Nation Of Lost Citizens', now called 'Fractured Nation', just got sent out in time for the Writers Of The Future deadline for quarter 2. Sara, who joins me in the forthcoming Aberrant Dreams anthology 'The Awakening', helped me loads in improving it, in exchange for my input on her kickass fantasy submission, 'The Auldhund'. I'm feeling good about 'Fractured Nation', the new version has been ripped apart and reconstructed into a much more dynamic, character driven story and with 'Tremors' being a semifinalist last time I submitted to the contest, I'm hoping this one will catch the eyes of the judges.

So gradually getting back into finishing off some shorts but it won't be until the summer that I can truly devote myself to it. In the meantime, let's kick out the jams and get a 2.1.

The Film Festival is this weekend, meaning the last few months have been way too busy for me to keep up with writing. I'm trying to keep up with my final year physics project at the same time and am managing (just barely) to keep on top of the two.

The next five days will be hectic as all kinds of hell but on Monday I'll have finished with the festival eating my time and actually not have to multitask like a complete maniac anymore. I've been doing 12 hour days most of the last month and with 3 weeks until the end of the the data-collecting part of my project I really need to crack on with it - and on monday i'll be able to, as well as possibly even finishing the three stories in my to do pile that I'm excited about submitting places. In a month's time I may even be able to write regularly again... maybe.

So hopefully a return to life sometime soon for this student who tried to do too much at once.

I wrote six reviews last month but because two of the reviews have already been written for SFCrownest, I'll post the others in here. Shame to waste them.

Here are the links to the four published in this months' SFCrowsnest:

The Ivory And The Horn by Charles de Lint

X&Y by Heidi Cyr

Wastelands: Stories Of Life After Apocalypse edited by John Joseph Adams

Black Static #1

And these are the reviews not in the zine, behind two LJ cuts:



( The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie )

( Review of Infoquake by David Louis Edelman )

Comments are gradually coming in on my story 'The Shogun And The Scientist' at Aberrant Dreams. I like the fact that they've set up a forum to discuss each of their stories - I know Clarkesworld was thinking about doing something similar. I think it encourages more participation with the reader and that can only be a good thing. There's some strong stories in the new update along with mine.

I'm working on a short story that's been bubbling around for six months or so but that I only recently worked out how to finish it. It involves nanotech-werewolves has my favourite title of anything I've ever written - 'Lycanthropy Is Medicine Too'. I have much of the story down on page now and hope to complete it within a week, get some responses and then probably send it to Writers Of The Future. I got a really positive critique back from the contest about Tremors, that I sent into the final quarter of 2007. They said it was one of the last stories cut from the Finalist pile and that they very much wanted to put it forward but felt the ending was too inconclusive. I can totally see what they mean and I plan to write a new few paragraphs finishing it up if/when it's rejected from the market it's currently out at (Abyss and Apex).


I have a lot of short work that's almost finished or that needs an edit. I feel like I understand the character arc of short work a lot better now than I did and that's helping me make more refined and resonant stories - I had a tendancy to leave things too open, like in 'Tremors'. I've 5 or 6 stories I'm really excited about finishing but no time - uni is taking over my life, and the film festival is a month away now. My uni project is sucking up every spare hour into programming. It's very challenging as it's not something I had done before but I'm hoping if I keep plowing away I'll be able to get a good grade.

Nat (my medic girlfriend) is away in a hospital outside of the city during the week so our time is limited to weekends. With things being so busy it's probably the best possible time this could have happened but it's still very strange after two years together to be in Bristol and not being able to see her.

Still posting away at Futurismic, still writing reviews for SFCrowsnest and hopefully will be updating here more as I finish off some short stories to submit to market. I feel like if I can just muster some time every day to do a little, I'm at a stage where I can really push on and get some more work published.

Hi all, my short story 'The Shogun and the Scientist' has been posted at Aberrant Dreams, which you can find here:

http://www.hd-image.com/fiction/shogun_and_the_scientist.htm

The story should also be in the Aberrant Dreams anthology 'The Awakening' on its release sometime in the near future.

Enjoy!

infected from davidlevine

January: Quit my study-destroying part time job and finished 10 travel guides.

February: Wrote some more novel and enjoyed Saturdays with Nat for the first time in ages.

March: Turned 22, didn't do enough work

April: Exams as well as being asked for a new story for Aberrant Dreams' new anthology 'The Awakening'.

May: More exams, finished the aforementioned story, 'The Shogun and The Scientist', wrote a huge fiction blog for World Without Oil.

June: Went to Glastonbury Festival, rocked hard to !!! and the Hold Steady, got very very very wet.

July: Went home to start preliminary work on my computing project and play lots of dead rising with thom and tom.

August: A delightful two week adventure to italy purely by train, with romantic stopoffs in Paris, cool bookshops and a few hair-raising ticket and flooding incidents.

September: Early September played lots of games with Thom and Tom, Late September learned C++ and started blogging for Futurismic

October: Submitted a story to WOTF, started my uber-lucrative part time football scouting job, delved into scary computing.

November: Wrote a story for Mundane SF issue of Interzone, got rejected it, resubmitted to normal Interzone, whilst 'Tremors' was semifinalist at WOTF.

December: Full of uni deadlines, presentations and stress.

From Wikipedia's page on the great depression:

Federal Reserve Chairman Marriner Eccles: Inequality of Wealth and Income

Marriner S. Eccles who served as Franklin Roosevelt’s Chairman of the Federal Reserve from November, 1934 to February, 1948 detailed what he believed caused the Depression in his memoirs, Beckoning Frontiers (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1951):

As mass production has to be accompanied by mass consumption,mass consumption, in turn, implies a distribution of wealth -- not ofexisting wealth, but of wealth as it is currently produced -- toprovide men with buying power equal to the amount of goods and servicesoffered by the nation s economic machinery. [Emphasis in original.]Instead of achieving that kind of distribution, a giant suction pumphad by 1929-30 drawn into a few hands an increasing portion ofcurrently produced wealth. This served them as capital accumulations.But by taking purchasing power out of the hands of mass consumers, thesavers denied to themselves the kind of effective demand for theirproducts that would justify a reinvestment of their capitalaccumulations in new plants. In consequence, as in a poker game wherethe chips were concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the other fellowscould stay in the game only by borrowing. When their credit ran out,the game stopped.

That is what happened to us in the twenties. We sustained highlevels of employment in that period with the aid of an exceptionalexpansion of debt outside of the banking system. This debt was providedby the large growth of business savings as well as savings byindividuals, particularly in the upper-income groups where taxes wererelatively low. Private debt outside of the banking system increasedabout fifty per cent. This debt, which was at high interest rates,largely took the form of mortgage debt on housing, office, and hotelstructures, consumer installment debt, brokers' loans, and foreigndebt. The stimulation to spending by debt-creation of this sort wasshort-lived and could not be counted on to sustain high levels ofemployment for long periods of time. Had there been a betterdistribution of the current income from the national product -- inother words, had there been less savings by business and thehigher-income groups and more income in the lower groups -- we shouldhave had far greater stability in our economy. Had the six billiondollars, for instance, that were loaned by corporations and wealthyindividuals for stock-market speculation been distributed to the publicas lower prices or higher wages and with less profits to thecorporations and the well-to-do, it would have prevented or greatlymoderated the economic collapse that began at the end of 1929.

The time came when there were no more poker chips to be loaned oncredit. Debtors thereupon were forced to curtail their consumption inan effort to create a margin that could be applied to the reduction ofoutstanding debts. This naturally reduced the demand for goods of allkinds and brought on what seemed to be overproduction, but was inreality underconsumption when judged in terms of the real world insteadof the money world. This, in turn, brought about a fall in prices andemployment.

Unemployment further decreased the consumption of goods, whichfurther increased unemployment, thus closing the circle in a continuingdecline of prices. Earnings began to disappear, requiring economies ofall kinds in the wages, salaries, and time of those employed. And thusagain the vicious circle of deflation was closed until one third of theentire working population was unemployed, with our national incomereduced by fifty per cent, and with the aggregate debt burden greaterthan ever before, not in dollars, but measured by current values andincome that represented the ability to pay. Fixed charges, such astaxes, railroad and other utility rates, insurance and interestcharges, clung close to the 1929 level and required such a portion ofthe national income to meet them that the amount left for consumptionof goods was not sufficient to support the population.

This then, was my reading of what brought on the depression.

Does that remind anybody of anything?

last week in the Investor's Business Daily:

The turnaround on Wall Street last week coincided with two reversals in Washington.

First, Federal Reserve policymakers started talkinglike doves, making clear that interest-rate cuts are back on the table.Then the Treasury Department picked up its bully club, setting asideits concerns about a heavy-handed approach to aiding subprime borrowersat risk of defaulting on their mortgages.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said Thursday night thatthe economic outlook has been "importantly affected over the past monthby renewed turbulence in financial markets."

WhileBernanke said the Fed will be "exceptionally alert and flexible" inresponding to incoming data, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has seenenough data to conclude that the housing market needs a strongerresponse from Washington.

Instead of encouraging lenders to provideforbearance to borrowers on a case-by-case basis, Paulson is nowpushing the mortgage industry to provide broad-based relief. Treasuryhosted a meeting with industry officials and financial regulators onThursday, and reports said the details of an agreement could beannounced by the end of the year.

Bank of America estimates that the introductoryinterest rates on $362 billion worth of subprime mortgages arescheduled to reset upward in 2008. The higher rate typically adds 30%to 40% to the monthly mortgage bill.

and from Bloomberg yesterday:

U.S. corporate profits are in a recession, and the entire economy may not be far behind.

Slowersales and higher energy and labor costs are forcing companies from BearStearns Cos. to Pitney Bowes Inc. to reduce spending and hiring. Theirefforts to keep earnings from eroding even further raise the risk thatthe economy, already weakened by the steepest housing slide since 1991,may shrink sometime next year.

``The earnings recession hasalready arrived,'' says David Rosenberg, North America economist forMerrill Lynch & Co. in New York. ``We are going to see an economicrecession in '08.''

Corporate profits, as measured by theCommerce Department, fell at an annual rate of $19.3 billion in thethird quarter from the second, as domestic earnings dropped by $41.2billion. The drag from sagging U.S. sales and huge writedowns offsetrobust earnings abroad, fueled by the weak U.S dollar. The fourthquarter may be an even bigger bust.

``In the third quarter, thetide shifted, and for the worse,'' says Joseph Quinlan, chief marketstrategist for Bank of America Corp. in Charlotte, North Carolina.``The domestic-profits squeeze is in its early stage

Links via Bondad's blog

I'm not saying we're entering a depression, that would be doommongering and silly. However, I do think we need to be careful what we do over the next few months and years. Economy is fascinating for its parallels.

Who needs Christmas songs when you have the hold steady?

I've been reading this PR disaster that is Andrew Burt's appointment as chair to the copyright commitee of SFWA (after a exploratory committee recommended he be limited in future roles follwoing previous problems)

I had a long reply at the livejournal page where Burt started his first action as chair by repeating the actions that caused all these problems originally. I thought it actually had something to say in its own right independently of that conversation, about the genre and writing in general. It's posted below.

The music company is a bad example in this. For what an mp3 is, the price of 99c is unnaturally high because of the large parts of the music company's organisation that require payment. The reason the RIAA and MPAA are being so vehemently opposed to online usage is because as soon as the model changes to a primarily internet one, most of the executives, secretaries, managers and middlemen will be out of a job.

The internet, with its ability to self-promote an artist's work and a very cheap way of spreading content (the cost of encoding then hosting a 5MB ebook is pretty close to nil), the artist can make a similar cut of the takings whilst charging far less than a shop.

Although this will damage printing companies, I think we are the best positioned of any media to come out of this improved. Editors will still be needed (and paid) for their work. Writers can potentially make more money, not less. The short fiction market that has been in decline could be revitalised by the ereader market.

Look at Radiohead's recent foray into the mp3 pay-what-you-like market. You can argue that 66% of people didn't pay, aside from the credit card fee. You can argue that the average paid (about $3) was far less than the cost of the cd. However, that doesn't detract from the fact that Radiohead made an estimated $5-10 Million from what was essentially giving their stuff away.

Piracy will always exist. mp3s, movies and ebooks will always be available for free somewhere. That's irrelevant. Frankly, as a student, most of the people who pirate do because they can't afford it. I have maybe $50 to spend in a month on non-essentials. I review books and use the library because I can't buy them.

The thing the RIAA have messed up so badly and that you're in danger of repeating is that many of the pirates do so because they can't afford to buy the product. Kids under 18 or college students don't have much disposable income, but they are a primary target audience. That doesn't justify illegal downloading but it does explain it. Ads target the young adults of the world, who have the least money to buy the things in the ads.When they do get a job, odds are they will purchase work by many of the artists that impressed them previously.

By approaching them in a heavy-handed manner, you could completely alienate an entire generationof potential readers. Without the bookprint factories, the shipping, the bookstore clerk and manager, the rent on the store, the collection of unsold books and the possibility of stolen or damaged stock, electronic copies can be much much cheaper and still make you profit, even make as much profit. If you price a book at $4 instead of $12, the number of readers goes up exponentially. Those poorer individuals who were splitting their $20 between us writers, the new RHCP album and Zodiac on DVD can now potentially buy all three via the internet, give the artists as much as they would get from a physical product despite spending less.

People will pirate if they can't get hold of a copy. 50% of the time I'd say people will get an ebook because they have no money, or they live in a small town without the book in their local store or library, or they are interested in the book but don't know if they want to spend $12.

Sooner or later an ebook reader is going to get it right, sooner if someone comes up with a good program for the iphone. Epaper and non-backlit screens are decreasing rapidly in price and increasing in ability, and will soon provide low energy screens for long battery life. We have a huge opportunity as writers - we can see the change coming but unlike the music industry, it hasn't arrived ahead of our time.

We can make a new better industry using the internet, if we get the model right before everyone switches. However, treating your target audience as a thief because there's no reasonable alternative online for the ebook they want is counterproductive. Not taking any of the recommendations made to you byan experienced committee of writers isn't just counterproductive, it's foolhardy and arrogant. We have to do this together, not just unilaterally. We need to putting all our efforts into creating a valid cheap and well-made alternative to piracy, not trying to stamp out something which will never go away.

More than anything I think we should be doing all we can because we must. Watching John Doerr's emotional and passionate plea at TED as well as numerous other sources of inspiration leads me to believe we should be changing the way we do business as writers not just because the technology is going that way but because morally we must.

As I detailed in my post yesterday at Futurismic.com There are a lot of growing problems in the world. Climate Change, Peak Oil, Peak Food and the Peak Century, as well as the global credit crunch, all require us to USE LESS. If we carry on consuming as much as we do now we will kill our planet. In ten years time the production of oil might have gone down so much we won't have a choice but to stop consuming. If the economy goes into depression we won't be able to afford to consume as much as we do now.

Economies and business can survive this. The internet is the greatest tool we have ever had for reducing what we produce whilst keeping the products available. If we move as writers towards a new business model where we embrace the ebook and try to make it affordable, we can preempt the inevitable move. If we resist, we risk destroying our livelihood if it suddenly becomes too expensive or not accepted to read paper books. Whether by global neccessity or because someone designs a really smart bit of affordable kit, text will end up going digital. We have time to decide how that'll be, if we work towards it now (like Clarkesworld and other magazines have been doing)

This whole SFWA debacle is just alienating creators and readers alike. We need a new start and we need it soon.

My story 'Tremors' got through to the semifinals (final 17) of WOTF, although it didn't get through to the final 8. That kind of sums up how I feel about my work to date - close but no cigar. I'll be sending another story to WOTF next quarter, though. Tremors will be straight in the mix for a submission elsewhere.

Encouraging news. I feel I'm getting close to cracking a boudnary in my short work. At this stage I actually feel more in control of my novel length stuff (albeit unfinished) than my short stories. But it's close... I have 10 or so stories either in revisions or half-finished that I feel could sell once I get the tweaks right.

Just got to keep plugging away.