37 Comments

Really inspired me to clean out my storage unit. Was immediately distracted and found myself plunging into a rabbit hole and .....f’k it just hit me in the face . My combination of immaturity and proclivity to laziness is truly debilitating.

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Nov 15, 2023Liked by John Birmingham

I need some themed and threatening bumper stickers to add to my laptop and I'm gonna need them before the end of the month, thanks.

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Omg dude. I felt like I was holding my breath for the whole story. What a heart starter!

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author

This makes me happy

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Nov 15, 2023Liked by John Birmingham

Doing NaNoWriMo at the moment. Didn't read their guides. Should be writing right now, or Steinbruckner might come a knocking. And you got me guilty of doing research. Tried to find out if Steinbruckner was real. Loved the story. Back to writing.

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I feel judged.

Honestly, JB, as soon as I return from this month long driving holiday through Qld and NSW, I’ll finish off the novel I haven’t worked on for about four months. Or, start after Christmas, at least. Or maybe after I finish work in February. Or, or.. ow!! That really hurt!

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"I can tell you that with the right grip and enough motivation, a dude with a love of iambic pentameter and Jeremy’s irresistible ass can totally haul you out of bed, screaming, with just a handful of neck skin."

This is fucking poetry. The mental image this conjured is 😘

Also YAY for more Dave and Threshy! This NaNoWriMo horror story has inspired me to dust off the Dave fan fiction I started and then never got around to finishing 😬

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That was great, really enjoyed it. Steinbruckner so pitch perfect noir.

Is this because someone dragged you to, and threw you in the Manuscript Cafe?

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Dave and Threshy! Squeeeee!

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"I used to write technical manuals. Computer stuff, you know. But I gave that up to try my luck as a real writer."

Oi. Those 46 textbooks have done me pretty well and the royalty cheques still come in like clockwork every month ;-)

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I knew that you would not be able to resist this.

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My soul does yearn to add in splodey stuff - instead I have to console myself by inserting example where hyperscale cloud datacenters are running in Wagga.

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I literally tapped the “Comments” icon planning to post that quote with an “angry Orin noises” addendum. But you were faster and angrier than I was ready for.

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I can't help but notice that your Substack started on Australia Day still has no content - How do I get hold of Steinbeck's for you? ;-) (Full disclosure - same same with mine).

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Really? But this is my substack. Maybe I started a trial run with another one. Got a link?

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Sorry JB, I clicked Reply under Orin's comment. Weird. The message was a friendly dig at Orin's empty Substack (Yeah I sometimes dive deep into comment authors - my version of time wasted black holes.... Need to RTFM on Substack methinks?

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Ah. You had me worried

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Necessity is the mother of invention, the father is a deadline. I won't get to 50 books by 50 years old, but I got close ;-)

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Great read and inspiring. Wasn't sure JB was coming out of this one alive. Half expecting the end to have him lying on the floor leaking red stuff thinking about what he should've written. Love the ending...gotta go, stuck on a fantasy epic, and I think I hear a knock on the door.

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Thx mate. Dont answer that door.

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Harsh but fair? Small point - sound suppressors don't work on revolvers. Or much at all but that's according to Mythbusters.

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Funny story. I knew that, or thought I did, so I checked into it. Turns out you can kludge a suppressor onto a revolver. But, I still changed the text to a .45. The image generator gave Steinbruckner a revolver.

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Well dang. I also pictured the .45 as a Peacemaker sort of thing which makes me approximately as smart as a non-sentient image generator.

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Second fun fact. This was the 'research' that story JB was doing when he missed his word count.

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That's because there has to be a gap between the cylinder and barrel so that the barrel can rotate to the next round.

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Yep. I don't know if you saw the Mythbusters episode where a ridiculously powerful revolver could blow a user's finger off through that gap, if held the wrong way?

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Nov 15, 2023·edited Nov 15, 2023

I always thought you just shot the revolver through a thick pillow to dead'n the sound.

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Always works for me

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Just watched “He Died With A Felafel in His Hand” on SBS. An entertaining and attractive work. I’m sure I must have seen it all those years ago but simply have no specific recall of doing so. But do recall it was well lodged in the cinematic and literary scaffolding of Australian culture at the time - it seemed to be ubiquitous. And some recall of the various music tracks. What’s happened to Australian movie making!? It seems the 80s and 90s gave us solar flares of filmic delights.

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A lot of local cinema talent got hired by Hollywood, especially once they started making their blockbusters here because it was cheaper. I think it’s a bit like Australian soccer. Anybody who is any good goes overseas

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❤👍

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Great stuff man, although I can't help wondering if this isn't a side project that's distracting you from your novel...

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Everything tat's not the next page of the novel is a distraction from the novel. But I have to attend to my marketing channels too. And a good way of doing that is a healthy blog, which this contributes to.

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Cheers. I'm happier for it, as commenting here is diverting me from a long afternoon drawing an animation.

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Wonderful JB

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Thanks JB. I don't know what Steinbruckner would have had to say about my last ~5 min - but I suspect they would be painful...

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He's standing right behind you.

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