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^{As possibly the only blogger in the world who actually has readers, Jack loves hearing from them - even when they just want to complain. If you'd like to object to something on his blog, go to the contact page. If you can't think of anything to complain about, check out our list of suggestions.}

Launch speech

The launch was a success! Free food was eaten, free drink was drunk, and lots and lots of copies of Third Transmission were bought and signed and devoured. Literally, in the case of the under-threes. A big thanks to everyone who came along!

For those who missed it, here is an edited¹ transcript of my speech:

I think we can all agree that the third part of a trilogy is always the best. Jurassic Park 3, The Matrix Revolutions, Pirates of the Carribean: At World's End, Spiderman 3, X-Men: The Last Stand, Jaws 3-D - all instant classics earning both mainstream and critical acclaim. Right?

Wrong. The third part usually sucks. The creators get drunk on their own success, they stop listening to criticism, they try to tie ends that should have remained loose - I'm looking at you, Peter Jackson - and they forget what made the first two parts good.

None of this is a secret - as an audience, we've somehow perfected the art of approaching all sequels with optimism, but feeling no surprise whatsoever when they disappoint us.

So why make the third part at all? Why not leave it at two parts? Hell, why not leave it at one? To quote videogame critic Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, "Imagine a world where sequels are banned. Would this not be a beautiful place? With no sequels there are no franchises, so there'd be less fandom, so all the nerds would go off and become doctors and scientists and rid the world of all known diseases, and best of all, endings would have to have some closure! Under this regime, ending the story with ambiguous "to be continued" BS when you have know idea if you'll even make a sequel will be punishable with prison time. Cautions will be issued for recurring themes and metaphors, and remakes will carry the death penalty.'"

The man makes a good point - but there is a reason we turn our duets into trilogies. It's not because we're mad, although many of us are. It's not because we don't learn lessons from history. It's not because there's money in it - while I wrote Third Transmission to work as a standalone, people are still going to be suspicious of it if they haven't read the first two, so it's unlikely to outsell The Lab and Remote Control. It's not because we can't come up with something new. It's not because we're trying to be the next Harry Potter - if you're two books in and you're not already the next Harry Potter, chances are your series just doesn't have enough adverbs.

We do it because with a cast of pre-developed characters in a pre-explored setting with some pre-explained back-story, the artist has more freedom than ever before. You can use everything that came before as a launch pad to reach some strange and crazy places. You can tell a story that's completely different to every other story ever told. Once the audience has already accepted the premise that Indiana Jones is a teaching archaeologist searching for supernatural artefacts during World War Two, it's a lot easier to throw in Sean Connery as his inexplicably Scottish and only-twelve-years-older-than-him father.

So, while part of me agrees with Yahtzee and bemoans the existence of sequels and trilogies, I know that Third Transmission could only have worked as an Agent Six book, and that if I hadn't written it, my head might have exploded like an over-microwaved potato thanks to all the unused ideas.

Hmm. Ideas that make people's heads explode. I should write that down.

I consider it extremely unlikely that anyone will ever write a thesis on the Six of Hearts books - although there is a journal of Buffy Studies, so I guess anything is possible. But if someone did, I hope they'd conclude that The Lab was about was about isolation as an impediment to accomplishment, or, to put it in uni drop-out terms, how it's tough to get anything done by yourself. Remote Control was about how your actions count for more than your intentions. Third Transmission is about how life isn't characterised by happy endings, but by the journey, filled with the people you help along the way, and the people who help you.

I mention these themes not because I hope to be mistaken for a person of sophistication and class - not a huge risk of that, with people who know me this well - but because you're the ones who taught me these things. Without you, these novels would be meaningless, empty shells. I'm not going to pretend that my readers are in it for the hidden moral of the story, but feeling like I have something to say makes this job much more gratifying. So thank you.

This isn't the kind of book you write to win awards - if it were, it would probably be written in fourth-person and set in early 20th Century Russia. What's fourth person, you ask? I have no idea. It's not the sort of book you write to make a million dollars - you need to include vampires for that. Nor is it the kind of novel you write for respect, because the only thing nerdier than a sci-fi author is an author of Young Adult sci-fi set in the future and featuring . . . well, that would be telling, wouldn't it?

You write them for the love of it. So thank you to the fans. I am a write-a-holic, and you are my enablers. By buying my books, reading them, recommending them to friends and relatives, you allow me to keep doing what I love.

Thanks for coming, thanks for listening, hope you like the book. See you next year.

Lost touch

In college (that's "year 11 and 12" in Canberra-speak) this really funny guy used to catch the same bus as me. He had shaggy hair, a goofy grin, and never seemed to be fazed by anything. He might have been the only person who did any work in my media class - each semester he would make at least one film that'd have the class in stitches when it was screened. One was about a student who studied so hard his head exploded. Another was a claymation bar-fight in the wild west. For a while, his answering machine message was "I told you not to call me! Now the girl dies." I can't name a single person who didn't like him.

We sort of lost touch after college. I occasionally passed him on the street and waved, but we rarely stopped long to chat. He was always on his way somewhere, with a skateboard or a video camera under his arm. He did have a big party at his parents place about a year ago, and someone invited me, but I told them I couldn't go. I was tired - I spent the evening on the couch in front of the TV.

He died yesterday.

I can't stop thinking about how much I wish I'd gone to the party that night. I would have learned some things about him that now I'll probably never know. At the very least, I would've heard his jokes and seen his goofy grin one last time. Now all that's left is a fading set of memories, and it hurts to have so few of them.

A lesson that is always learned painfully is this: death happens suddenly, unexpectedly, to people who don't deserve it. And when it does, you wish you had more time. You wish you'd spent what you had better.

I'm writing this just because writing always helps me feel better. But I'm publishing it to help you. Next time you have a choice between a friend and a couch, choose the friend. And if you're going to watch TV, do it with someone you love so the time isn't wasted. Because we all have only so much of it.

My 2-minute career change

I recently auditioned for ABC3. As the gaffer said to the gaffer-fetishist*: "Wanna see my tape?"

^{*Oh, they're out there.}

18 things you won't believe

I now have a webcam, and can therefore make videoblogs! Below is the first of what may be many, or few, depending on how lazy I become/remain.

I'm having a party and you're invited

Hey, you! Yes, you. Yes, seriously. You. With the hair. Got your attention yet?

Want to be part of literary history? Don't we all. Sorry, I'm not sure I can arrange that. But I can invite you to the launch of August's hottest Australian YA action/sci-fi release, Third Transmission. (Disclaimer: in this context, "hottest" means "only", unless K.A. Applegate has started writing Animorphs again, or something.)

If you live in Canberra, the details are:

Thursday the 13th of August, 5.45pm.
Paperchain Bookstore, 44 Franklin Street, Manuka.
RSVP: (02) 6295 6723

But if you're a Sydney-sider:

Friday the 14th of August, 4pm.
Shearers Bookshop, 99 Norton Street, Leichhardt.
RSVP: (02) 9572 7766

If you live somewhere else and don't feel like a road-trip, sorry. It's not that I don't care about you, I'm just not well-known enough to be able to travel further afield. It's not you, it's me. Next year, when I'll no doubt own my own Gulfstream, I plan on expanding to at least as many cities as swine flu has, assuming there are any cities left.

More details, such as who is actually launching the books and whether there will be free food, are forthcoming, but I want to leave the rumour-mill turning a while longer. In the mean time, please enjoy this fun fact I found on a fan site:

Agent Six of Hearts and Michael Jackson were the same height. (178 cm.)

I can neither confirm nor deny this, having met neither of them (which, on the face of it, doesn't seem likely to change) and being too lazy to look it up.

MITIFOTIT:

I forget if I posted this before - and again, I'm too lazy to look it up. Either way, enjoy!

Poor, poor Robert Pattinson

The latest fetid scrap of gossip to masquerade as "entertainment news" has assumed the following headline: Old-fashioned romantic vampire Edward Cullen hit by taxi while disguised as actor Robert Pattinson.

Pattinson wasn't injured in the incident. For sane people, this is evidence that the collision was only minor, but for hardcore Twilight fans, it's further proof that he's really an undead centogenarian with a taste for teenage girls. (Which somehow makes him the hottest thing ever!) He was hit, by the way, while fleeing said fans.

I wasn't being ironic with the title of this blog - I genuinely feel sorry for Robert Pattinson. Women love him, but it's the creepy kind of love that makes them follow him around and shriek whenever he makes eye contact with them. Men hate him, because he's hogging all the women. And as for the supposed consolations of this, like money - well, you don't get rich until you've been in the entertainment industry a long, long time. He's probably spending every penny he's got on bodyguards.

My point is, being an author is great. We rarely have to leave our houses, and when we do, we're almost never recognised on the street - much less chased into oncoming traffic. Ironically, while the taxi thing was ultimately Stephanie Meyer's fault, she never has to put up with that kind of crap.

MITIFOTIT:

This kid's got the right idea - he's ridiculously talented, but in such an obscure area that I can't imagine getting harassed by fans is an issue.

Meet Steven Puruggan, cup-stacking champ:

Transformers 2

Meet Tom Lenk.

He's a really, really good actor. While he's appeared in numerous films, including The Number 23, Boogeyman 2 and Date Movie, he's best known for playing Andrew Wells in 27 episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which was much better than those things. (That's seven episodes more than Eliza Dushku, and she was offered her own spin-off. Equal rights my foot!)

I was delighted to see him in Transformers a couple years back - and then I spent the whole movie waiting for him to say something. Seriously, he gets about eight lines in the entire script, and spends the rest of the time sitting next to Rachael Taylor, nodding, and presumably scratching himself outside of frame. Who hires a great actor like Tom Lenk and then gives him only eight lines?

Michael Bay, that's who. Anyway, today I went to see Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen. Here's what I have to say about it:

Meet Matthew Marsden. He's a really good actor. While he's appeared in several films, including Black Hawk Down, Resident Evil: Extinction and DOA, he's . . . oh dear, de ja vu. Long story short, he gets five lines in Transformers 2. I counted.

I can understand these actors agreeing to be in these movies, where there's no opportunity to shine but at least there's money to be made. But this is exactly why I can't understand Michael Bay using them. You don't need good actors to play those parts. You just need someone sufficiently competent that he won't draw unnecessary attention to himself by fluffing his lines, tripping over parts of the set, and revealing the ending to the press while the main actors are striving for Oscars. I assume good actors cost more, right? So if you just wanted your house painted white, why would you hire Monet?

MITIFOTIT:

I almost never win things - but sometimes I'm a runner-up. Recently I came 9th out of 245 entries in a PhotoShop competition where the theme was If real life was directed by Michael Bay. And since I don't even know how to use PhotoShop, you've got to feel pretty sorry for entrants 10 through 245. Here is my entry:

Where my crazies at?

I've been reading American Psycho, and I love it. Anyone can walk up to a stranger and say "Mass consumerism conditions us to think of other people as objects, thereby diminishing the perceived value of human life!" but it takes a truly great author like Bret Easton Ellis to write a novel in which no-one says that (no-one even thinks it) but the reader nevertheless realises that it's true.

However, not everyone looks upon this masterpiece as favourably as I do. Many people believe it's trash - just violence for violence's sake. It got mostly bad reviews until a film adaptation was made, which cut out all the bits that made the original readers uncomfortable. (You know, the good bits.)

Fun fact: in Australia you can only buy American Psycho shrink-wrapped with an 18+ sticker on the front. (Except in Queensland, where you can't buy it at all. Wow, book banning - I didn't know we still did that.)

I'm writing all this because I found a hilarious essay by Tara Baxter, self-proclaimed feminist who spells America with a "k" for reasons that elude me. Apparently unable to distinguish fiction from reality, she described American Psycho as:

^{. . . just another "How-To-Kill-Women" manual for that ever-growing special interest group: the good ol,' all-Amerikan misogynists.}

Baxter decided the best way to protest the publication of American Psycho was to shout the grisliest passages aloud at other shoppers in a bookstore in Santa Cruz. When asked to leave, she only shouted louder. When told she would be arrested for trespassing, she shouted louder still. Then, to her surprise and indignance, she was arrested.

The headlines the next day read: "I WOULD LIKE TO SEE BRET EASTON ELLIS SKINNED AND TORTURED. -- Tara Baxter, protester." In her essay, Baxter says:

^{My quote was taken out of context. What I actually said was: "There are better ways of taking care of Bret Easton Ellis than just censoring him. I would much prefer to see him skinned alive, a rat put up his ******, and his ******** cut off and fried in a frying pan, in front of -- not only a live audience -- but a video camera as well . . . We can profit off of Ellis' terror and pain, just as he and bookstores are profiting off of the torture and mutilation of women."}

The fact that the women being tortured and mutilated were fictional, as well as the irony that Ellis was condemning violence while she was encouraging it, seemed to elude Ms Baxter. She also failed to notice that her public blathering was only adding to the sales of American Psycho. But to be fair, she was busy destroying copies of it by pouring blood on them. (27 so far, she brags.)

My question is this: where are the crazy people to condemn me? I'm left to cook up my own publicity while all the nutbags are off protesting against the teaching of evolution in schools or the presence of lesbians on Home and Away. And it's not fair.

So, if you're a crazy person, I'll make it easy for you. What follows is a list of ways you could misinterpret my books. Enjoy.

1: Other characters are always attacking Agent Six - Jack Heath's books encourage violence towards clones!
2: Jack Heath thinks it's okay to kill people if you work for the government! Just look at Michael Peachey!
3: Money Run encourages kids to steal! Sure, bad things happen to the thieves, but nowhere near bad enough!
4: Three out of Heath's four books have a male protagonist! Sexism! SEXISM!
5: Agent Six fights ChaoSonic. ChaoSonic is, in a sense, his mother. Jack Heath encourages matricide!

Tara, if you're reading this, shut up about Bret Easton Ellis. He's sold enough books. I need you more than he does!

MITIFOTIT:

Try as I might, I couldn't find anything relevent to this topic that wasn't obscene. So instead, please enjoy Mr Hugh Laurie singing one of my favourite songs:

Don't Stall

You may or may not have noticed that my modus operandi for updates on this site is to take things I made as a child, put up them up for download, and act like they're new. This is all to create the sensation of progress - I don't have time to write one book a year and make one random thing per month. But my readers would get bored if there were no random things in between books. So the solution is to take random things I've already made, dust them off, and put them out there for the world to see.

And so, without further preamble, I present this month's random thing: a parody-rap song I made with a friend when we were teenagers. It's called Don't Stall, and if you're over 18, you can listen to it on the music page.

If you're under 18, don't fret. Have a short story instead.

MITIFOTIT:

Nine words that don't mean what you think. Ouch - even I was misusing a couple of these. (Warning, coarse language, sexual references, etc.)

Formula-ick

So Hollywood has just dumped its latest batch of cash-cow franchise prequels on us: Star Trek XI, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and Terminator: Salvation. To those of you already typing "Terminator Salvation isn't a prequel, you handsome cretin!" into the subject line of an email intended for me, I say this: Yes it was. It may be set thirty years after the original, but since in it the main character's father is a young man who has yet to reproduce, I'd say it qualifies as a prequel.

Damn time travel. If you ask me, anyone who writes about time travel is just asking for trouble.

To my surprise, I enjoyed all of these films. Wolverine was very exciting in a "people maiming one another" sort of way, much like everything else with a soundtrack by Harry Gregson Williams.¹ Terminator may have stolen all its ideas from War of the Worlds, Blade Runner and Resident Evil: Apocalypse (as well as the first three Terminator films, obviously) but those are great sources to steal from, so they made it a lot of fun. John Connor had more personality as a child - in fact, he had more personality as a fetus - but since Christian Bale has already demonstrated that he's capable of brilliant acting (The Prestige, Equilibrium, American Psycho, The Dark Knight) the cardboardness is less obvious than you might think.

And as for Star Trek - well, I'm a Star Trek fan from way back. I watched the original TV show as a child, oblivious to the fact that the Horta monster was just a guy under a blanket, and consistently surprised when the guy in the red shirt got killed. Star Trek: Generations was the first movie I ever asked my parents to take me to see, when I was eight years old. And so I enjoyed the new movie just as much as the old ones.

Having said that, what's all this nonsense about J.J. Abrams "reinventing the franchise"? The stuff that was stupid about the old Star Trek is still stupid about the new Star Trek. The aliens are still just ordinary people with funny ears and eyebrows. The science bits are still mostly mumbo-jumbo. And when Uhura tells captain Pike she speaks all three dialects of Romulan, I couldn't help but think: "Isn't that English with an American accent, English with an English accent, and English with an Australian accent disguised as an American accent?"

Also, like the previous films, the story seemed to put an unnecessary focus on rank (specifically, changes of):

Captain Kelvin: I'll be right back. You be captain for a while.
(Now Captain) Kirk Senior: Got it. See you soon.
Something explodes.
Captain Kirk Senior: Argh, I am slain!
Captain Pike: Spock, I have to go. Your turn at captain.
(Now Captain) Spock: Sweet.
Kirk Junior: Can I be captain?
Captain Spock: Screw off.
Kirk Junior: How about now?
Captain Spock: Okay.
(Now Captain) Kirk Junior: Yay!

So overall, hurrah for blockbuster prequels. But when is someone going to remake Day of the Triffids?

By the way, Tara Moss is currently blogging about a series of "Literary Salons" that I've participated in, which means that three of my short stories are being published her site. One of them you won't find anywhere else on the internet, another you won't find anywhere else in the world. (The remaining one is actually up on jackheath.com.au, but it's hidden, so you probably won't have read it.) Check it out here! (Warning: explicit themes. Do not click if you're under 18.)

^{1 Composer of the soundtracks to Metal Gear Solid 3, Man on Fire, Domino, Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, Phone Booth, Deja Vu, Team America: World Police and so on.}

MITIFOTIT:

My trip to Brisbane

I'm back! My tour is done, and just in time. If I go too long without a serious writing binge I get grouchier than a film award in a dumpster.¹

For those who didn't "follow" my "tweets" on "twitter" (using the "internet") while I was away, here is the summary of my trip.

-followjackheath is 30 seconds into his Brisbane tour and has just found a hole in the crotch of his only pair of jeans. Fan-tastic.
-followjackheath has discovered something more boring than fishing - a TV show about fishing.
-followjackheath is stranded at a bus station where buses never seem to dare venture. Again.
-followjackheath has finished the first session of his tour. The kids are entertained and inspired. Now he has 21 hours to kill.
-followjackheath is working out how much shampoo he has to steal before he breaks even on the hotel costs.
-followjackheath got moved to a different hotel room, after being told the previous one was about to be filled with brick dust. Maybe they know about the soap.
-followjackheath is on a 76 minute train ride, muttering "Short distance from Brisbane, my foot!" while other passengers shuffle away, unnerved.
-followjackheath has finished day 2. Today's audience question highlight: "Is that a belt going through your crotch?" Damn jeans.
-followjackheath was just recognised by a shop assistant - while buying a book about how to improve your writing. Embarrassing.
-followjackheath has a voice that's giving out. Now it's a race against the clock - just two more damn days. Come on, voice! Man up!
-followjackheath can't believe there's a suburb called "Doomben", and wonders if Brisbane also contains Ravenholm and Mordor.
-followjackheath has witnessed one arrest and three interrogations since arriving. The Brisbane police sure are proactive!
-followjackheath is unsurprised to see the newspaper devoting 7 lines to 181 people killed by Cyclone Aila, and 45 to an un-PC remark on The Footy Show.
-followjackheath had no dumb questions today - the teachers actually scripted the kids.
-followjackheath hates travel with the fury of ten thousand suns, and loathes airports at least twice as much.

My username, in case you were wondering, is followjackheath. I would be just jackheath, but the founder of the Inspire Foundation, an organisation that supports young people with mental illnesses, got there first. It's very inconvenient to have the same name as such an upstanding, community-minded guy. (I've been getting emails intended for him since I was eleven.)

I'll be back soon to regale you with the stories of my travels that wouldn't find into 140 characters, along with news about Third Transmission (including launches in Canberra, Brisbane and Sydney) and also what I thought of the latest barrage of Hollywood sequels, including Star Trek, Wolverine, and Terminator. Stay tuned.

Thanks, by the way, to everyone who's entered the competition so far. We'll keep taking entries for at least another five weeks, so if you haven't entered yet, don't freak out. Keep them coming, loyal Agent Six fans!

^{1 I mean Oscar the Grouch. Too cryptic?}

The tension mounts.

We are now 2 months and 6 days away from the release of the third book in the Agent Six trilogy, Third Transmission. I'm super-duper excited about it, so please pardon me if I occasionally start using expressions like "super-duper".

This means that snippets of info about the book are going to start surfacing with increasing regularity. For example, the cover and the blurb have just gone up here. And anyone who's taken the Which character are you? quiz will probably have notice that there are characters they don't recognise - that's because they're from Third Transmission. I've been racking my brain to think of other cool stuff I could do to promote the book, so stay tuned for stuff. Cool stuff. Yeah, that all made sense.

In the meantime, I'm going to Brisbane for a week-long tour, which means probably no blogging until I get back. But, for those of you who've always wondered what a book tour is like from the inside, I shall be Twittering my every move. So if you're not following my Tweets, now would be the time to start.

And if you don't know what my previous two sentences meant, because they had silly words like "Twittering" and "Tweet" and "wondered",¹ then good for you. You probably don't want to know.

^{1 Seriously. Why is "wondered" not pronounced like "wandered", or at lease spelled like "wundered"? Stupid faux-neticks.}

Some people, they got powers, man.

You know how some people say twins have a weird psychic link?

Those people are wrong, and anyone who tells you otherwise is usually either an idiot, a lunatic or someone trying to defraud you. Psychic powers are a load of crap, along with tarot cards, astrology/horoscopes, the healing power of crystals, intelligent design, ghosts, the afterlife/past lives (and any interaction with either), and any kind of hypnosis that forces people to do things against their will.¹

Seriously. I'm not a great magician, but you don't have to be to know a trick when you see one. Anything Alison DuBois can do, Criss Angel can do better.

Anyhow, the other day I called my brother (who dedicated readers will know plays the cameraman in my comedy videos), and said, "Hey, Tom. Guess what I bought at JB Hi-Fi today?"

He said, "Uh, Jonathan Creek."

I had not told anyone what I had bought. In my conversation with Tom, I had not even specified whether my purchase had been a DVD, a CD or a piece of audio/visual equipment. It could have been any of a thousand things. And it was an impulse buy; I hadn't expressed any particular desire to own it beforehand. Tom was in Melbourne at the time, which more or less ruled out him hanging around the store in a false moustache waiting for me to buy something so he could pretend to have ESP.

Admittedly, Jonathan Creek is a BBC mystery/comedy series about a magician who solves inexplicable crimes - i.e. the coolest thing ever, and exactly the sort of thing I would buy. But so are 24, Buffy, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Arrested Development, Dexter, Harvey Birdman, Family Guy, American Dad, House, Bones, Scrubs, and a zillion other shows that I like but don't own all of. Not to mention all the CDs I might have bought. It was a heck of a coincidence.

While Tom and I aren't twins², it got me thinking about the "psychic link" thing that people talk about, and wondering why the theory keeps circulating. My best guess is that if your twin broke his arm on the other side of the world, and you got a sore arm at more or less the same time, you'd be spooked, and you'd tell people. And they would be interested enough to tell their friends, who would tell their friends, and so on. Whereas if you got a sore arm, and your twin had a perfectly ordinary day, you wouldn't tell anyone, because it'd be a really boring story. "Today, right, my arm totally hurt for no reason. And guess what - you'll never guess - I called up my twin, right? And he was totally fine!" Instead, you'd forget all about the pain the second your arm stopped hurting. That sort of thing probably happens all the time.

Case in point - I wouldn't be writing this article if Tom had said, "Uh, the new Dream Theater album?" I would have said "Nope, Jonathan Creek!" and left it at that. Come to think of it, I'm adding to the problem just by writing this article. I should stop before I accidentally convince someone that Ouji Boards really work.

^{1 If I've left your crazy belief off my list and thus failed to offend you, I'm sorry. Please email your complaints to me at my private email address: kyle_sandilands@gmail.com.
2 Although we are identical.}

MITIFOTIT:

In honour of my brother, who loves this game:

No matter how good

Have you ever seen that episode of the Simpson's where Homer gets replaced on the softball team by a professional player?

Homer: He's bigger than me, faster than me, stronger than me, and he already has more friends around the plant than I do.
Bart: You make me sick, Homer. You're the one who told me I could do anything if I just put my mind to it!
Homer: Well, now that you're a little bit older, I can tell you that's a crock! No matter how good you are at something, there's always about a million people better than you.
Bart: Gotcha. Can't win, don't try.

Since the airing of that episode sometime in the early nineties, things have changed. Now, no matter how good you are at something, or how obscure your talent is, there's always about a billion people better than you - and you can find most of them on YouTube.

I was reminded of this yesterday when I attempted to search YouTube for my latest video, in which I solve a Rubik's cube while beatboxing. I wanted to know how easily someone could stumble across it accidentally. I typed in "rubik's cube beatbox".

Wow. Turns out there are dozens of videos of people solving cubes while beatboxing. Most are better than me at beatboxing or cubing or both. I haven't watched them all, but I bet one of them is doing it magically while the cameraperson criticises them. Nothing's original.

In fact, one of the beatbox-cubers is only 10 years old. Lucky I'm finding this out now, really. Otherwise Rove McManus might have invited me to go on his new show, Are You Better at Solving Rubik's Cubes While Beatboxing than a 5th Grader? I would have accepted and looked really dumb on national TV.

MITIFOTIY:

Reality has lots of megapixels

I saw an ad online this morning. It was for one of those Second Life-like social websites/programs in which you design an avatar that looks how you wish you looked in real life, and then you go into a virtual world in which you discover that it's impossible to tell who you are, because everyone else's avatars look pretty much identical to yours. So you fly around for a while trying to work out how to talk and listen, and as soon as you do, you regret it, because you discover that everyone else in this virtual world seems to be a cretin.

Well, I assume that's what the ad was for, because it had a picture of a skinny, busty goth avatar and a subtitle: "Now you can chat in 3D!"

I actually caught myself thinking, "Wow. That's pretty cool! I wish I had a computer that could handle it." And then I remembered that I already have an application for chatting in 3D. It's called reality.

Don't get me wrong; I like computer games. I understand the appeal of using virtual reality to do stuff that you'd otherwise never experience, like stealing cars (Grand Theft Auto), ripping winged-demons in half with your bare hands (God of War), or talking in a really gruff voice (Metal Gear Solid).

But the instant you start using games to do everyday things - such as talking to cretinous strangers - I no longer see the point. (Unless the point is to simulate the experience of talking to cretinous strangers who look just like you, with identical washboard abs and tree-trunk thighs and jaw-lines the size and shape of vending machines.)

MITIFOTIT:

I know this is supposed to be funny, but frankly I found it chilling:

The short-sold audience

You've probably heard about the parallel import restrictions thing, right? No? Here's the skinny:

"Here's the skinny." What does that even mean? Maybe it's rhyming slang, but everyone forgot the source, like with "blowing a raspberry".

Anyway, at the moment, Australian bookshops aren't allowed to order books from overseas en masse. Borders can't just buy 10,000 copies of the American edition of The Lab and put them on Australian bookshelves, because that would undercut my Australian publisher, Pan Macmillan. These restrictions were made to protect the Australian publishing industry, who can't make books as cheaply as their overseas competitors because of those pesky environmental and minimum wage laws we have here.

And booksellers are pushing for them to be abolished. (The parallel import restrictions, not the minimum wage and environmental laws.) Ha! Wouldn't want to be anyone in the book-making business right about now!

Wait a second. Uh oh.

If this happens, Australian publishers won't be able to compete with their international equivalents, so they'll start to die a slow, painful death. Soon, the only way Australian authors will be able to be published is by trying to sell their work to American publishers - who, even if they accept it, will make sure all the Australian stuff is stripped out of it.

I'm one of the lucky ones in that regard. Because all my books are set in intentionally vague locations, there's not a lot of Australian stuff to scrub away. Scholastic USA just changed the spelling of a few words, put all Agent Six's thoughts in italics, and that was about it. (Apparently all Americans think in italics. How cool is that?)

Michael Gerard Bauer, for example, isn't quite so fortunate. I met him at the Newington Festival a couple weeks ago, and he told me a rugby game in one of his books was changed to a gridiron match for the American audiences. Fair enough - no-one plays rugby in the USA. But the book was set in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia - where no-one plays gridiron - and that part wasn't changed. I wonder if they'll make it a good old-fashioned Brisbane weekend match of curling when it's released in Canada?

The most famous example of this is, of course, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Known in the US as Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone, because the publishers decided that American kids wouldn't know what a philosopher was.

And they were probably right. But did it occur to anyone that the reason the kids wouldn't know might be because they're continually being patronised talked down to? Australian readers know what a faucet is, because publishers don't change it to "tap" before they go to print. We've learned that a flashlight and a torch are the same thing - it posed no great difficulty was no big deal.

So in all this parallel side-by-side import stuff, it's not the Australian book publishers that I feel most sorry for, even though they'll probably be wiped out. It's not the aspiring authors from Sydney or Melbourne who'll never get a publishing contract because they don't live in the United States. It's not even me, who'll have to watch the beautiful environmentally-friendly-recyclable-paper-grown-in-sustainable-forests editions of my books disappear.

It's the American kids, who are constantly being treated like imbeciles morons, and who don't even realise it.

MITIFOTIT:

Mike Gerber once wrote a book called Barry Trotter and the Shameless Parody, a sequel to Barry Trotter and the Philosopher's Scone (which was released in the USA as Barry Trotter and the Magic Biscuit. Check it out here.

The Five Greatest Warriors

Like every other Matthew Reilly fan in the world, I've spent the last month or so dribbling. This is because Matthew has announced the release date of his next blockbuster, The Five Greatest Warriors - October 20 this year. I could have said "salivating" rather than "dribbling", but that would have lent a misleading air of dignity to the way I look forwards to new Matthew Reilly books.

I can't wait. The last one ended on a hell of a cliffhanger. Literally, in fact.

I ran into Matthew briefly at the Newington College Literature Festival a couple weeks back. I was impressed - very impressed - that he still does speaking gigs. I'm pretty sure every other author at the festival, inlcuding me, was there because they needed to be. We're a greedy bunch. We were compelled to attend either for the money or for the prospect of recruiting new fans. Matthew Reilly has zillions of fans, and (presumably) plenty of money. He could have been anywhere in the world that day, and he chose to be at that school with those kids.

When I asked him about it, he just shrugged and said "It's a good school."

I'm not saying I don't enjoy the public speaking aspect of this job. I have some great sessions, and meet some cool fans. But it's exhausting - my throat gets sore, my legs and feet start to ache with all the standing and walking, my back is stiff after the plane travel, my cheeks hurt from the constant polite smile, and I get dehydrated by the bright lights. (Which, combined with the sore throat, makes me drink several litres of water per day, which in turn, inflates my bladder to the size of a football. Too much information yet?)

And there are mental tolls as well as physical ones. Mustering up the necessary enthusiasm to make a good speech is tough, and it often leads to a mood-crash later. After a couple of days of touring, I'm a zombie. The only thought in my head is, "I wish I were writing right now." Because, like most authors, I'm basically a shy, dorky person who's had to learn the art of shameless self-promotion in order to be successful.

So I'd like to say that if I ever became as spectacularly successful as Matthew Reilly, I'd still tour and talk and dish out high-fives to the fans. But the truth is, I might become weird and reclusive, suspicious of strangers and uncomfortable with speaking aloud. In fact, now that I think about it, if I were in his position I'd probably spend all my time playing with my Star Wars toys, or sitting in my Delorean and making zooming noises with my lips, only occasionally pausing to shout "Great Scott, the flux-capacitor has gone into overdrive," or "Marty, you're not thinking fourth-dimensionally!"

My point is that I hope every other Jack West or Scarecrow or Jason Chaser fan out there is duly appreciative of the creator. (This probably applies to you, since I gained most of my readers by comparing myself, and letting others compare me, to Matthew.) His dedication to his supporters is as incredible as his writing. And if you're looking for a way to repay that dedication, it's easy.

Just make sure you visit your local bookstore on October 20th. You'll probably run into me there.

MITIFOTIT:

I've finished shooting another magic/comedy video, which should be up in the downloads: videos section in a week or two. In the meantime, please enjoy this other magic video I rediscovered.

The royal sword of Damocles

The only blog I frequent is that of Scott Adams, who's not only the author of the mega-successful Dilbert comics, but also a serious contender for funniest and smartest guy in the entire world. (If you'll pardon the oxymoron.¹)

Anyway, he's recently been writing about the process of designing a house. One of the things he said was this thing:

^{Few things are a bigger waste of space than a formal living room. Our new home won't have one. That's the square footage that should be your home office, if you need one, or your home theater. Another big waste of space is a formal dining room that is in its own area away from the action. Our dining room table will be integrated with the kitchen/family room area and casual in design, probably with bench seating. If the Queen wants to visit, we'll throw a tablecloth over it.}

I don't have anything against the house I live in, other than the paper thin walls and the paint that doesn't cover the entire ceiling and the doors that don't stay closed and the omnipresent odour of cat piss, but there is no possible way I could make it good enough for the Queen. So my options would be as follows:

1: Tell the Queen she can't come.
2: Ask her for money so as I can redesign, remodel and refurbish the entire house for her visit.
3: Pretend to be a waxwork of myself when she gets here, hoping the realism will distract her from the squalor in which I live.
4: Give her the wrong address, and spend the rest of my life hiding from MI6.

Fortunately, I'm not likely to be put in that situation. As much as anything else, my books aren't out in the UK yet, so Her Majesty is unlikely to have heard of me. But this train of thought led me to feel sorry for all the rich, famous people who are at risk of a royal visit. They must lie awake at night, terrified of the gilded letter that will herald their eventual decapitation.

And it's not just the Queen you have to be afraid of. It's anyone important and powerful enough that you can't refuse their invitation, and sufficiently classy that your home won't be good enough for them. That's got to be at least a thousand people worldwide, including presidents, Popes, and gangsters.

I think I just decided I don't want to be famous.

^{1 Serious contender? For funniest man in the world? "Serious?" "Funniest"? Not even a pity-laugh? Nothing? Fine, be that way.}

MITIFOTIT:

Comedian Mitch Hedburg once said, "I got a king sized bed. I don't know any kings, but if one came over, I guess he'd be comfortable. 'Oh, you're a king, you say? Well you won't believe what I have in store for you! It's to your exact specifications! I believe I can set up your lady friend, too!'"

His website is here.

Buying the farm

Yes, "Headstrong" was an April Fool's Day prank. Stop emailing me. (I've now moved it to a list of books I will never ever write, which you can find here.) Anyway, have you heard about the Hurlstone Agricultural High School scandal yet?

Basically, Hurlstone is a state, co-ed agricultural high school, with 140 hectares of farmland that the government has decided to sell off. The protesters are claiming that without that land, the school won't be able to teach agriculture anymore (which makes sense). The proponents' counter-argument seems to boil down to: "Hey, look! A distraction!" or occasionally "Sorry, what? I can't hear you over the noise of my bulldozer's engine."

Sorry if it seems like I'm being unfair. I would have liked to get a rationale from someone who was in favour of the sale, but for the life of me, I couldn't find anyone who would admit to it. If you are such a person, and you happen to know that the government plans to turn the farmland into a Milla Jovovich theme park, please email me and I'll change my stance in a heartbeat.

After a significant outcry from the public, the government did agree to hold an inquiry into the necessity of the sale. When asked how they would pay for this inquiry, they said that the funds would come out of the profits from sale of the farmland the inquiry was about. Neat, huh?

I'm not making any of this up, by the way. Here's a newspaper article that goes into more depth. But, to summarise:

Minister: I want you to find out if we really need to sell that school's land.
Investigator: Sure thing. When do I get paid?
Minister: After the sale.
Investigator: I'd prefer an upfront fee . . .
Minister: So would I, but we're using the sale to pay for the investigation.
Investigator: Ah, I see. But what if I decide the land doesn't need to be sold?
Minister: . . . What do you mean?
Investigator: Relax, I'm only kidding! Of course we'll tell you to sell it.
Minister: Crikey, don't scare me like that.

I find this kind of thing really worrying. I imagine getting arrested for a genocide I didn't commit, with the police thinking they can prove me guilty by comparing a piece of my brain to one found at the scene. "Don't worry, we'll do a biopsy after the execution." (An unlikely scenario, but a frightening one nonetheless.)

If you'd like to sign a petition to save Hurlstone's farm, go to the SHEAP website.

MITIFOTIT:

I really like accumulating tiny soaps at hotels. It's been years since I've had to buy soap (or shampoo, or conditioner, or shaving cream) because I go to so many hotels that I'm never out of stock. But this guy hated the little soaps enough to complain, and . . . well, I won't spoil the rest for you.

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