Wake up at 6am, shower, skip breakfast.
Catch bus at 7am.
Start work at 8am.
Finish work at 5pm, catch bus to uni.
Stay at uni till 10pm, walk to train station.
Arrive at train station 10.30pm, wait for train.
Catch train at 11.30. Disembark at next station. Catch next train. Get taxi.
Arrive home midnight. Post on livejournal.
Rinse and repeat.

 My grandfather, my old Dah, passed away within the last couple of hours. He was 78 years, but he was always extremely fit and active. He walked, rode his bike, yachted when he could. It was only during the last bit that he became "old". 

He was diagnosed with mesothelioma earlier in the year, and the decline was rapid, particularly these last couple weeks,  when the decline was cognitive as well as physical. And he knew it. Three hospitals in two weeks, with the last a stay at the palliative care ward.

As best anyone can tell, his exposure to asbestos came while getting an apprenticeship on the railways, when he was a teenager. Six decades ago.

Recently Shock Totem received a story from one Richard Ridyard. It didn't take the slush reader long to recognise a Stephen King story under the superficial rewordings. Not a particularly obscure one either, it's "The Boogeyman" from Night Shift. K. Allen Wood, editor of Shock Totem, writes about it here, with examples of just how blatant the theft is.

If only this were a lone example. Unfortunately Mr. Ridyard has also ripped off a horror writer named Angel Zapata, and got the story published! And Zapata's net sleuthing uncovered more examples. Apparently Mr. Ridyard (AKA R.M. Valentine) has been busy stealing from the likes of Deborah Biancotti, James Woods, and... H.P. Lovecraft! Read all about it here.

Good news is, apparently most of the online venues Ridyard/Valentine has published in have now pulled his works.

Now, not only is all this clearly unethical, and illegal, it also strikes me as incredibly, stupendously stupid. I mean, honestly, trying to pass off the words of Stephen King as your own... to horror magazine editors and the horror-reading public? And he didn't think anyone would pick up on this?

Count me astounded.

 Have a good one, GrayRose!

 Writerly update- my story, 'The Rainbow Serpent', has been accepted by Shock Totem, them of the "Curious Tales of the Macabre and Twisted".

This is a big deal for me. Pending edits and the signing of contracts, it will be my third story sale, and my first at pro rates. 

Also, at 5c a word for 3400 odd words, that ain't bad either.

It was also a big surprise. They're a bit notoriously hard to get into, and proud of it. I've been braced for Form R the last few days. If you follow the link, you'll read that of almost 400 recent subs, 2 were accepted.

More fun at an auction with someone else's money today. I picked up;

A  Lloyd Rees



and a Garry Shead

 ...  me, with a 10 minute rejection from Fantasy Magazine.

Beat that!

Today was an untypical Saturday. I got to buy art, a first for me, and pay for it with someone else's money, which was both a plus and a minus. Plus, because, well, it wasn't my money I was spending. Minus, because I was spending someone else's money.

And, I have to admit, being the hick that I am this was the first auction I've been to that wasn't selling tractor blades and rusty rabbit traps. There was honest to goodness art on them thar walls, some of it with an estimated price tag of $40,000 or more. No Sotheby's, sure, but it impressed me. 

Country yokel, remember.

My budget wasn't near that of course. I went with almost $3,000 dollars near bursting my wallet's stitching, on behalf of my dad, who seems to be becoming a bit of a collector in his mid middle age. Fancies turning a room of his house into a private gallery, but anywho... I enjoyed myself, once I got over a (intentionally) paralysing fear that the slightest eyebrow twitch or nose scratch would signal a bid to the auctioneer. Hey, it's all experience, maybe one day it will work itself into a story. And when it came to it, bidding turns out to be pretty fun. It's like gambling. Just like you wanna pull that slot on the machine, you wanna raise your hand and nod at each increment of 50, 100, 500 dollars. 

Not that I gamble, it's a mug's game, and not that I got carried away here either - someone else's money - but I did spend nearly all of it, and came back with three pieces, one a Norman Lindsay illustration, which was the main target of the trip. They're hanging on me wall right now, and will stay there until my dad visits town. Again, not a whole lot of money spent I suppose, but I'm someone who agonizes over parting with 50 bucks.

The only real low point of the day was lugging three bulky framed artworks around on public transport for the next 2 hours.

After three or four days I'm finally emerging from a fog of drug  and pain-addled despair. Thanks to the antibiotics kicking in I've decided not to kill myself, instead I'll wait till my dentist can fit me into his too-busy-for-my-liking schedule. And it was a close thing, for a while.

As usual, it's the one bad tooth bringing me pain. A year and a half ago I had root canal done on it. My dentist inserted this little titanium rod to give it strength. Well, without me realising it, part of the filling came away, exposing the tip of the rod, and apparently giving bacteria a highway with which to ride into my jaw. Friday afternoon I felt a tingle. By evening It was a discomfort. By midnight I was in hell. The painkillers were good for one out of every hour hours, and I probably took way too many of them. Certainly by yesterday I was completely looped out of  my mind. At one point I just wanted to hit myself in the mouth with a hammer. I wanted to cry, and I don't like to cry.

But then the antibiotics started working. Has anyone ever said that antibiotics are simply just the best thing ever invented? I was even able to go to my brother's birthday dinner at that Vietnamese place he likes. I was able to eat for the first time in three days.

The irony in all this? I've been writing a story about a vengeful dentist.

This is a sort of continuation of yesterdays post, dealing with some of the musings I've had over my recent theatre experience. It was also an excuse to go back and edit about 100 typos from that post. But come on, it was 5am, I was tired, and I'm barely literate as it is.

Anyways...

This might say more about my own insecurities as a writer than anything else, but after the play, after the applause and the whistles, I couldn't help but... try to listen in. You know what it's like when you leave a show, or a movie, and the dispersing crowd forms back into its component clans, friends talking about what they liked, what they didn't, what's for dinner, etc etc. Not knowing most of them, and most of them not knowing my connection to the play, it was easy to mingle, overhear, interject and feel smug. Vaguely dishonest, but easy.

I'm sure it can be the same for any artistic-type folk, when at a launch, or a convention, even an online writing forum. There's that urge. Maybe I'm projecting, but I sure feel it. To know what they really think. Again, most of that talk was about the spider, but sometimes it steers to what you *really* want to hear. The text. The story. You have keep a sharp ear out for a word, a phrase almost lost to the rumble, then maneuver through the throng.

My ears are apparently not that sharp. I failed. It paid off much better on the shuttle-bus ride to the railway station.

A couple of girls on the seat behind me spent most of the ride talking about Pope Paul, and it's what they said that has prompted this musing. Keep in mind, this first night was mostly students in the audience, a lot of them creative arts and performance students. One of them liked these sorts of "open" texts. What she meant was, scripts that allow the director to easily bring in their own interpretation for performing and staging. And that's true, Pope Paul didn't dictate scene, props (beyond the bottles), actions. Such a play could probably be staged many other ways, carrying with it a different energy, a different mood. The monologue could be broken into multiple actors, of any age and sex. There might be interaction with the audience, or not. I provided a character, with his own hopes, regrets and secrets. Some of those I shared, some I didn't. I provided his words. The rest was up to them. I love that.

If I sound like I'm rambling it's because I am. I'm still trying to figure this out for myself. I'm sure it's all very basic, entry-level theatre stuff. It's stuff I should remember, at any rate.

I also loved to hear them speculate on some of those secrets I alluded to. How Paul got the way he is. One imagined that his daughter, briefly mentioned in the play, might have died. That was cool. Not what I intended, but it was cool.

But yes, those perils of eavesdropping... you also get to hear things you wish you hadn't. Like someone saying "The problem with Pope Paul was-" with the rest of the sentence lost to the groan of the bus. That bugged me all the next day.

What is truth when our information is assimilated from second hand sources? How can we define our identities when our notions of reality and self are unfixed? Should human compassion be assumed?

So asks the program.


Tonight was the third and last for my play, Pope Paul, put together and performed by students of the University of Wollongong. It's not the life I expected for this little script of mine, but I'm glad it got to have one at all- and, I think, they did an amazing job with it.

Pope Paul has had a bit of a roller coaster history. I originally saw it as a short story, an experiment in character and voice, and that's how I wrote my first draft, just page after page of disjointed dialogue- really a series fanciful anecdotes. It didn't go beyond this exercise until late last year, when lecturer and playwright Van Badham encouraged me to enter a sort of competition for emerging writing talent the Newtown New Theatre was holding. I pulled my notes from the drawer and, in a few days, fashioned what I anticipated would be a 20 minute play.  A monologue about a lonely, mentally ill maths teacher drawing on his amazing imagination to give meaning to his life. Against the odds, it was picked up for their new season of plays. I was overjoyed.

Then they dropped me like a hot potato.

I could talk a long time about the dissalusionment and bitterness I experienced from that episode, and the insights I gained, but suffice it to say it came down to a difference of opinion. They decided it was the subject matter was too difficult- even insensitive. Like I was encouraging people to laugh at the ill. It made them uncomfortable. While I think that that discomfort was sort of, you know, kind of the entire point. I wanted people to laugh, before they realised what it was they were laughing at. I wanted that awkward silence to follow.

Anyway...

Word about the episode seemed to spread among the uni's performance faculty, and several student actors and directors started asking to read my script. Nothing came of it, as far as I knew, until a few weeks ago, when I found a voicemail message telling me rehearsals were already underway.

From the dishevelled empty restaurant of The Service to the fragile reality of Pope Paul, the works investigate loneliness, desolation and discomfort, asking should we indulge in or overcome our vices?

Most years the performance students organise their own production, with the blessing and support of the faculty. This year they decided on a double bill, with my script as one of the plays. It's a great opportunity for these students to practice their craft, on stage and behind it. Looking at the program I see they had someone for lighting design, someone for sound design, a stage manager, lighting op, sound op, FOH manager (whatever that is) and a graphic designer.

That last one would be for the posters that are plastered all over the university and dorms. The photo shows the set from Pope Paul- a table and a whole bunch of empty beer bottles. I really wanted to put it up here, but my scanner's not cooperating.

And, of course I was happy to let them have it. I knew the director, Emma McManus, and a couple others in the performance faculty. They're all hard workers with some solid successes behind them, and I get a kick from doing my part in adding another notch of experience to their belts. This is the newest emerging generation in Australian theatre.

I mean, they're all insane, but that's just a given in that industry.

And that's what I did. Let them have it. From the moment I handed the script over, my part was over and it was all them. It's not something I'm used to, as primarily a short story writer with a greater expectation of control over my product, but it was an experience to just sit back and watch. Not that I saw much. Despite having an open invitation, I somehow managed to miss every rehearsal. I heard rumours and hints of what they were planning (like for instance, my middle aged man was being played by a 20 year old girl), but I had no idea how it was going to go, when I turned up a couple nights ago for the opening. Maybe that was for the best. I was just another paying audience member.

Only I got my ticket for free.

Owen Everitt's The Service, directed by Simon Binns, came before mine, and that was fun. I hadn't seen that either, or read the script, despite having it. It was about a love triangle of sorts, set in a closed cafe. It even had bug spray used as a murder weapon... but I'll leave all that to Owen's LiveJournal, if he has one.

From the moment mine started, I had this huge grin plastered on my face that didn't leave until well after I was on my way home. The actress, the very talented Rose Maher as Paul, who reminded me of a young Sigourney Weaver, started dumping garbage bags full of empty bottles all over the stage.  Scores of 'em. My script called for bottles to be used in the set, but they really went to town with it. And went with it. My slow, meandering Paul was now totally OCD, spinning bottles, stacking bottles, building towers, using them as bowling pins. Rolling them, kicking them, looking through them like telescopes. Glass was breaking, shards were flying. It was awesome. It was scary. Ever go to the circus, and see the performer balance spinning plates on poles, running back and forth to stop them falling? It was like that, coming in bursts throughout the 35 minutes of the play, in between and during the running monologue. The lighting was fun too, sometimes focused beams, sometimes diffuse, coloured, or none at all. Oh, and there were sound effects. Music, aircraft sounds, phones ringing, flying saucers buzzing. All implied, but not called for, by the script.

I mean, just... wow!

Of course by the end of it she was panting and sweating pretty hard, especially given how hot and muggy the night was. I was sweating just watching it. But it wasn't just energy she put into the part. There were the slow moments too, more than I thought they could get away with (but they did), with a shy smile, a nervous giggle, a sort of lost, confused glance around her... those moments where you really see that Paul's life ain't so fun and incredible as he makes it sound.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is, the director and actor made this piece work. It would have been nothing without them. They took a framework, my script, and made something fun and sad and exciting out of it. Half a dozen people asked me on the night if I was nervous, and I told them all I was quite relaxed. I was. It wasn't all on me. It wasn't my play anymore. It was theirs.

And now it's over. I hope the crew took home some useful experiences. I hope at least some of the audiences thought about it the next day. Sure, it was a university production, and maybe only a couple of hundred people saw it, and it will probably never be seen again. But that beats no one seeing it, ever, and it remaining a dusty forgotten exercise in my drawer. I've also gotten over some of the lingering bitterness of my previous dip into the world of theatre. I might try my hand at it again.

Oh, and the spider? That came from the first night. A giant huntsman crawled across the stage. This spider was as big as your spread hand, people. The American girl beside me stiffened, probably never having seen a spider like it before. A murmur went through the audience. And Rose worked it into the act. She chased it across the stage with a spatula! Biggest laugh of the night. That's basically all anyone was talking about afterwards, the giant thespian spider. I suggested working him into the script.

Truth be told, those people will probably remember the spider long after they've forgotten the play. Oh well.

Well, I noticed that everyone else in the known universe was now on LiveJournal, so I figured I might as well join the pack too. Call it peer pressure.

What to say? I'm Vincent Pendergast, and that would have been my user name too, but LJ seems to have a policy against long, proud names. I'm Australian, a bit of a wannabe author, with a couple of short story publications under my belt (more on that soon). Now that I've gone and said I like to write... I'm not much of a blogger. I can't say I'll have much to say, and I can't expect anyone to take an interest in what I have to say if I decide to say it.

So why start a LJ account? I already said: peer pressure.

Now it wouldn't be much of a public journal if I didn't at least attempt a bit of self-aggrandizing and self-promotion. Those publications I mentioned? Here's one. It's over at Nossa Morte , part of their November 08 anniversary issue. My first sale, in fact. It's a little horror piece titled Avocado Tree. Relating to, but not exactly about, an avocado tree.

Well, that about wraps that up.

Cheers!