Here Be Dragons - April
Round ups, and a hint, and an anthology short.
“So long as one's just dreaming about what to do, one can soar like an eagle and move mountains, it seems, but as soon as one starts doing it one gets worn out and tired.”
― Ivan Turgenev
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This newsletter goes through what I’ve been up to in my writing - I have to account for myself and what I have to show for my efforts recently. Have I been productive, or not…? A map of my brain, so to speak, and here be dragons.
2025 -- appreciate.
Lots of Little Things
The second half of a school term becomes busy for me. There is marking to do, while still teaching, and my new role means I support others in their marking and timelines and what ends up happening is I have a lot of plates spinning. A lot.
I use Google Keep to track it all and have it make sense each day. My percentage of letting people down is probably only 10%, so that’s a huge win, right?
I did read one student piece that really rushed through me, gave me that feeling when you read something clever and really well considered and damn effective. That’s a huge perk of the job.
I kept my reading strong and consistent. I have a French sister-in-law who loves to read so for Xmas we did an international swap. I gave her Hannah Kent’s Burial Rites as an example of great modern Aussie writing and she gifted me Pierre Lemaitre’s The Great Swindle.
I finished it this term and it was fantastic. The writing sings so well, and each chapter seems to end on a brilliant moment/line, but it was the heartbreak of the two main characters that captivated me. Really strong stuff about post-WWI France and the social class divide that still existed.
Aurally, I blasted through Samantha Harvey’s Orbital, which recently took home the Book prize. It has some nice turns of phrase, but didn’t grab me as much as I wanted it to. I also clocked Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and found it delightful enough, and it’s clear why it has endured as the plot is just so well constructed.
Then I listened to Duane Swierczynski’s California Bear and loved it. Just gripping crime, great twists and action, something I could ‘see’ in my head the whole time as I enjoyed all the main characters. Swierczynski always delivers action and fun. My favourite modern writer just delivering electricity on the page every time.
Which was all a way of getting me to land in a recent position of needing to pick new reading material - which I love to do. It’s all based on mood, and the previous books for balance, and what time I am in around teaching/marking/holidays, so I went to my shortlist shelf:
I ended up grabbing Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen. Been about 20 years since my last Austen [Pride and Prejudice and Zombies not really counting, I suppose] and I’m enjoying it so far. The metatextual commentary on novels as a form is delightful.
Then I decided to go for The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler in audio format. Also good so far, and so brilliantly purple in places that it makes me smile on multiple occasions.
Which is probably all to say, it continues to be a good start to the year, though into the fourth month means pretty far from the start, right?
I wrote another short fiction response to the April Furious Fiction Challenge - and as usual, wrote it at the eleventh hour on my phone in my bed and I actually unlocked one interesting and honest little piece in the piece. These challenges are worth it for nothing else than to sometimes just let my brain keep turning something over until a secret little hatch opens up under the scrutiny of my thumb and gives me something new to consider or play with.
I took one of these from last year and pinched a few sentences off, and reworked the ending, and gave it a polish over the past months and now I’d really like to shop it around.
I also took a comic pitch for something that makes me really happy and got two rejections and one very solid “How can we make this work?”
Then I got an invite to pitch on something that came out of left field, but instantly had my attention, and my creativity, and got me very excited about possibilities. It’s something you know, which is kinda cool and terrifying all at once, but it also means more to lose if the company doesn’t end up liking the options I sent through. Ah, well, can’t hang my hat on this stuff, honestly.
So there’s currently nothing else I’d rather be doing and no place else I’d rather be than here and now. Yes, I had a stress dream so hard my neck needed a heat pack for a whole day, and yes there was a frustration so large recently I could have just slammed it all down and walked away, but that’s life. What matters for me is the bounce back. Can I turn my back and look at something else I appreciate or love? Can I choose to do that?
I’ve got two weeks of no classes coming up and plenty to keep me riding this bullet of a rock with a grin on my face. My wife and kids keep me honest and just loving each day. I’m mapping out two weeks of reading, and movies, and some gardening [tearing out the final summer plants and setting the winter crop up for success, maybe trimming one tree way, way back], and I’ll plan out my uni course with whatever tweaks it needs.
I’ll also walk every day, and pick up fallen sticks and debris from the neighbourhood to use in my firepit to toast marshmallows [for the kids] and toast sandwiches [for me] and just sit around and yarn.
Even at my most stressed right now, I still sit back and think…this is all pretty good.
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Greg Rucka - Thank You
Rucka wrote a newsletter about why we should read/write and it was glorious. Honestly, glorious.
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New Anthology Short Story - Oxymoron
I got one of my earliest starts because Tyler James at ComixTribe sent me a cold call email asking if I’d be interested in pitching a short story for the first Oxymoron anthology collection. This random link up became that short story, then Sami Kivela and me doing CHUM over there, then Chris Panda and me on SHE, and Louie Joyce and me on A FISTFUL OF PAIN, and the partnership is nowhere near over. I love doing business with Tyler, and I want to have many more ComixTribe books under my belt in the coming years.
This anthology is the second round of stories about Tyler’s character Oxymoron. I wrote mine quite some time ago, and yet the political nature of it feels like I’m reacting to headlines from the past month. Which is a kind of interesting and strange aspect to fiction sometimes. Like people who thought the THE HANDMAID’S TALE show was just a vicious reaction to Trump [which, just, lol - what a bunch of clowns].
I only have a literal handful of copies of this to sell at cons, so if I see you and you want it, you better snap it up quickly. I’m going to be in Goulburn April 26 and then Wollongong on May 24 - will also have trades of DEER EDITOR and some other things.
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Be one of the good guys, because there's way too many of the bad.
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Who is Ryan K Lindsay?
I’m an award-winning Australian comic writer. I’ve been published by Black Mask, Dark Horse, ComixTribe, Mad Cave, IDW, Heavy Metal, Vertigo, and a few more. Kickstarter has been a home for many short comics. I often get to collaborate with great mates, and this brings me joy.
I write about balancing this creative game alongside a full teaching load [currently College English and University Intro to Creative Writing] and a lovely family load and the forever melting brain that is modern man. I think about a lot of stuff, I still don’t know if it’s the right stuff. ymmv.
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POST CREDITS SEQUENCE
I recently watched the first MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE and after I logged my review on Letterboxd my screen went black and then it started typing out some secret spy message to me.
Genuinely: huge thrill. Ah, sweet nerdy Easter eggs on a sweet nerdy site/app. Fills my heart with joy, and now I just want to find all the other ones [but only organically].
