Howdy, howdy!
Ready to feel special? This newsletter is the very first thing I’m sitting down to write after moving house. Sure, I could be getting back into Till Death Do Us Party or Luminary. I could be writing a new short story or even an article. Hell, I could (and probably should) be focusing on a book review. But, no. I’m putting this together for you, my most loyal readers. Because you’re special and you deserve it.
May’s been a busy month. Not so much on the writing front (I’ll get to my abysmal numbers a little later), but the house move. While I will happily proclaim any move is the move from Hell, this last one was the lowest of the low, an exercise in torture that could teach Guantanamo Bay a thing or two. But the family and I came out of it—maybe not unscathed, maybe not stronger, but we came out of it—alive, now living in a more pleasant home. And my new office is about one and a half times the size of the old one, so let’s face it, that’s what counts.
May was also a busy month for Australia with the election of a new government. I have an unhealthy obsession with politics here, so I’ll ask you to endure some words about it below. Besides, with the move, it’s not like I have a ton of other stuff to write about.
So settle in while we jump right into the June edition of The Wonderful World of Was.
May Writings
If you cast your mind back a month, I was (not so humbly) bragging about the writing accomplished in April. I wrote 83,488 words during the month. May, however, wasn’t quite as brag-worthy. In total, I wrote an entire—wait for it—12,291 words. I’m actually a little surprised that I almost reached fifteen percent of April’s output! That figure includes this newsletter, by the way.
I didn’t work on either draft, and I didn’t write any articles for the site. And though I don’t count them towards my word count, I barely even tweeted.
I did write a few book reviews, however, managing to maintain a weekly publishing schedule (which I’ve followed up with two reviews in the first week of June!), as well as the review summaries I write for Amazon and Goodreads. And that is about the sum of it.
To add insult to injury, I’ll draw your attention to the graph at the top of this section: the bars and text for the time spent writing and editing are barely visible! That’s how shit the writing was this month. On the plus side, I spent six and a quarter hours editing, which is an hour more than I accomplished in April. Let’s just brush off the fact that April’s count was so low because my focus was on cranking words out, not editing them.
Australia Voted
I warned you I was going to share my comments about the election, so settle in. On Saturday, 21 May, Australia voted for a new government. Or, perhaps more accurately, Australia voted out its current (and thankfully, now previous, but regardless, entirely terrible) government. The Australian Labor Party (dropping the ‘u’ from ‘labour,’ apparently forgetting how we spell it in Australia) has managed a small majority with 77 of 150 seats, ousting the Liberal National coalition (‘liberal’ being the most egregious of misnomers in my voting life, where the far right is in control of the party).
Following rorts, corruption and a steadfast refusal to introduce an integrity commission with the power to act independently, a failure to recognise women are human beings, regressive climate change policies, mishandling the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, and then-Prime Minister Scott Morrison disappearing for a holiday in Hawaii as Australia burned, Australia had its opportunity to vote. After Morrison ran a campaign about it being better to vote for the devil you know, then made a late stage pivot to promising to change like an abusive ex-partner, the population took this opportunity in stride, voting the party out and making punk rock fan/DJ Anthony Albanese the thirty-first Prime Minister of our fair country.
While after more than a week of counting votes, Labor just stepped over the line to score its majority. The primary vote for each party was historically low, with more votes than ever going to minor political parties and independent candidates. Labor promised an alternative government that will treat women with respect, introduce an independent integrity commission, and offer a climate change policy which… does more than we previously had, but doesn’t go far enough to accomplish very much at all.
The truest victory, however, goes to independent politicians filling the crossbench in the highest numbers in history as well as the Australian Greens, who have been fighting the fight against climate change since people started thinking about global warming and the hole in the ozone layer. Following a trend in the major parties losing support, there is hope that this could be the beginning of the end of Australia’s two party political system.
Following his crushing defeat, Morrison stepped down as leader of the Liberal Party, to be replaced by He Who Can’t Be Named, on account of his similarities to Lord Voldemort in not only appearance, but also personality, but most importantly, because he likes to sue people who say mean things about him on the internet. Rather than learning from Australia’s repudiation of the far right, they elected the party’s most extreme right wing culture warrior, a man who joked about Pacific countries flooding due to climate change and the architect of a refugee policy so archaic that Donald Trump once admiringly told then-Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, “You’re worse than I am.”
It’s going to be an interesting three years Down Under. Hopefully, the government, Greens and independents bring our climate change policy into the twenty-first century and they introduce an integrity commission that restores some faith in democracy. The media, largely owned by Dr. Evil himself, Rupert Murdoch, is going to have a field day (and they’re already releasing early morning paparazzi photos of Anthony Albanese first thing in the morning, trying to make Australia fear his bed hair), doing everything they can to destroy the government. Let’s hope in three years' time, I won’t be lamenting Australia falling to the Dark Lord.
Rediscovering the Ronin Rabbit
If you’ve been following the website, you may have noticed the occasional post under the wholly unoriginal title, “Unpopular Opinion.” I’ve since renamed that section to the equally unoriginal, but wholly more appropriate, “Ramblings.”
While I’ll endeavour to avoid five month gaps between posts in future (and with taking a couple of weeks off work, I’m hoping to publish one in June), the first of these is Rediscovering the Ronin Rabbit: Usagi Yojimbo Diversions, the first in what will promise to be a series of updates about me reading Stan Sakai’s creation from beginning to end. This part looks at my starting to watch the new animated series Samurai Rabbit, and reading two collections outside of the core series.
Happy Birthday to Me!
When this newsletter goes out, I’ll be a few days away from completing yet another rotation around the sun. It’ll no doubt be a quiet affair with the family, but I’m looking forward to chilling and not moving house for it.
The date’s 7 June. Don’t forget it; I demand birthday love.
Reviews
As you no doubt know, I like to draw attention to some of the independent books out there. I published a few book reviews out there, all of them which delight in their own way. If you’re wanting to read something before I finally release something, the books I reviewed during May are a great place to start:
Havoc by Paityn E. Parque
Tarja Titan by TC Marti
Shiny Metal Boxes by Tim Ruel
Academy Bound by J.C. Mastro
So, What’s Next?
I flagged that I’m hoping to write another Ramblings post this month, but what else is on the agenda for June (other than getting even older)?
I have some books to review, and I’m looking forward to jumping into those. I’m also aiming to write a new short story. Maybe even two, if I push myself. I’ve had an idea for a new smartworld short percolating which I haven’t been able to bring myself to write, but who knows? I might actually get there. I also have a short story set in the world of Till Death Do Us Party that I’ve been itching to write up.
And, fingers crossed, I might start work on the next round of edits for Till Death Do Us Party, but we’ll see…
That’s a Wrap
And in the immortal words of Porky Pig, that’s all, folks! Be sure to join me in a month’s time, when I’ll let you know if I got to editing or wrote any short stories. In any event, I’m hoping to report on a far more productive month than May.
TTFN,
Was