Well, book#2, a collaborative experimental novel I’m working on in partnership with Preston Grassmann, is past the first draft and into the editing stage. I’m excited about this project. I think it has a lot of integrity, intelligence and heart, as well as a sense of fun. Everything about it is under wraps, I’m afraid. One thing I’m not afraid of is not finishing it. With two writers on board, I’ve found it’s definitely a case of two heads being better than one — and of course you can’t give up on the work or put it aside when it feels difficult.

Since it’s all secret, I can’t say much more. I’ll update again when we’re past the structural edit and into the line edit.

Male crayfish engage in ritualised fights that go through three phases, only in the last, and rarely reached, of which do they attempt to cause each other real harm. To study the effect of spectatorship on other males, researchers at Bowling Green State University set up fights with one crayfish watching. However, afterwards, far from being sharpened up for the old ultraviolence, they didn’t fight as well as crayfish who hadn’t watched a fight. The biologists-turned-Don Kings speculated that this may be because they (the crayfish, that is) pee themselves whilst viewing the combat and thus waste their fightin’ chemicals, or possibly just get confused. Moreover, a study on Australian yabby crayfish has shown that males seem to remember each other’s faces, preferring to fight opponents they’ve taken on before, presumably because they know more about them (which suggests an even greater capacity to remember stuff) - or maybe crayfish are just the kind to hold grudges. In any case, crayfish now have to go on my list of things I’ll think twice about before eating.

In other news, my poem “The Crone Meets Her Son (on a battlefield)”, published in Electric Velocipede #13, has been nominated for a Rhysling Award (short poem). Which is very unexpected, and very nice.

Jeff Vandermeer says the New Weird is dead. I for one am bloody glad about that. He says long live the Next Weird, and so do I, but let’s not call it the Next Weird, eh? Literary taxonomy gives me palpitations and dyspepsia.

Anyway, for anyone who would like to examine the exquisite corpse of the New Weird, representative bits of it are here in this handsomely packaged anthology, called appropriately enough The New Weird, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, from Tachyon Publications. Authors include Michael Moorcock, M. John Harrison, Clive Barker, Jeffrey Ford, China Mieville of course, Steph Swainston, yours truly, and several more. There are also critical essays (one by me, though it’s more of an extended drabble) and a round-robin story.

Despite not being a great fan of the New Weird label, I couldn’t be happier about being in this book in the abovementioned company. Many thanks to Ann and Jeff for their work. I’m certainly looking forward to getting my copy. Oh, and Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review!

(On the subject of weird: When you put ants in the microwave (accidentally, I swear), they are still alive after 1 minute!)

It’s my pleasure to announce that The Etched City has been taken up by Fullon Books in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao, and by Mag in Poland. I really want to thank Gray Tan in Taiwan for his patience and persistence in selling the book to a difficult market.That’s 11 translations now. I feel very lucky to have had so many with a first book.

I look forward to seeing both new translations and admiring the hieroglyphic play of words I can’t read

Edit: Title of post changed from “China and Poland” to “Chinese and Polish”. The “Chinese” refers to the Chinese language, not the political entity of the People’s Republic of China. There is currently no deal for mainland China.

I’ve got a poem in this month’s issue (#13) of Electric Velocipede, called “The Crone Meets Her Son (on a battlefield)”. I look forward to reading EV this week, and thank editor John Klima for publishing my weirdass poem.

In some parts of the world it is still March 3rd, so, though time has ticked on here in Thailand, I shall pretend I’m in Los Angeles and say it’s Ronald Searle’s birthday. The creator of the St Trinian’s girls is still alive at 87. We here at HITO wish him many more birthdays to come.

More about Searle and the girls of St Trinian’s in this article.

And is a bookshelf really complete without The Compleet Molesworth? This book sustained me through 13 years of incarceration in ******* ****, a private girls’ school that in some ways was not unlike St Trinian’s, tho being a good little thing I missed out on most of the fun chiz.

Local Engrish and other oddities, courtesy of Bangkok Bob.

I’m learning a little Thai every day from my friend Pao at tai chi class. I need him to coach me on phrases to use at the hairdresser, especially “stop doing that”. I’ve recently incurred the worst haircut I’ve had in several years. “Same as before?” asks the hairdresser, who has cut my hair three times now without mangling it too much. “Yes,” I say. Which is why, when I am momentarily, fatally distracted by an image of a vintage Talbot Lago in a magazine, she drags my middle-parted fringe off to the left and lops it to fall sideways, and mercilessly thins my thick hair until it looks like all the rats of Bangkok have been chewing on it. Then she cuts way too much off the bottom and doesn’t touch the upper layers, so that it looks, well, fucked. I got her to fix the fringe, at the cost of it being too short, and reminded her to layer it, which she did with all the finesse of a kindergarten child using blunt scissors for the first time. I have to blowdry it straight down or I look like Rexor. Of course, with it straight, I look like Thorgrim. And learning the requisite Thai might not even solve the problem - as we all know, hairdressers are liable to do this kind of thing even when you share a mother tongue. I’ve come to the conclusion that hairdressers hate hair. They want to destroy it. If you have hair, they want to take most of it away from you and abuse what’s left. They are a cruel race, born of utter darkness and the pit of punishment.

So I was practising my Tai Chi fan routine in the living room and Stu says, “Is that the Asian equivalent of the Ministry of Silly Walks?”

The sky is dark. It’s 6 am in Bangkok. The full moon is a dark gold coin, so big and close it looks like you could pluck it out from behind the branches of the trees in Lumpini Park. Lumpini is the biggest park in Bangkok. Notwithstanding that, the young driver of the taxi I flagged down on Sukhumvit didn’t know where it was, which is a bit like a New York cab driver not knowing the location of Central Park. Anyway, we got here and now I’m walking up the main road through the park, past the large lake and little pavilions. At this hour Lumpini is full of people practicing Tai Chi and wushu - in groups large and small, or solo - mostly Chinese Thais, some native Thais, and a (very) few westerners. I join my group, which meets on the road next to a grove of date palms with ornamental boulders on the underlying grass. Greetings are exchanged, the music starts, and Mei Lee, one of the assistant teachers, leads the warmup. The sound of knees cracking ripples gently through the air. Crows cry out. The sky is turning from black to the indigo, which, when serving as a backdrop to palm trees, as it is here, reminds me of old Bible storybook pictures.

After warm-up I go off to practice the Yang style 24 form with Pao, a civil engineer, who’s a fellow beginner. Pao speaks good English and translates what the teacher says when needed. An unusually fresh, even approaching chilly, breeze is blowing across the park - it comes from China, says Pao, where it’s now winter.

I’ve been getting up in the dark to come here every morning for a week. I did some Tai Chi and related things back in Melbourne, but I slacked off and didn’t practice when I came to Bangkok and consequently forgot a lot of what I knew. After more than a year, I realised that Tai Chi was A Good Thing and I ought to start it up again. I wandered around Lumpini on a Saturday and chose this group on the basis of three things - the teacher, Ajarn (means ‘teacher’) Prasit, who was wearing gorgeous pale mint green silk pyjamas (wish I could teach in my pyjamas) and doing beautiful Tai Chi, the presence of farang in the group, and the sight of twenty or so middle-aged to elderly Chinese women doing kickass Shaolin sword routines.

So far it’s been great. The teachers are patient, everyone’s friendly, the atmosphere is informal and the exercise is enjoyable and fascinating. When I decided to give writing a go as an occupation, I didn’t realise how much I was going to dislike sitting still at a desk with mind disconnected from body. Tai Chi gives me a couple of hours a day when I’m not thinking about anything except what my physical self is doing, here and now, which I find beneficial. It’s also rather more strenuous than it looks, and feels like pretty good exercise.

Dawn comes quickly and the park’s wildlife starts to stir - white cranes commute between the bank of the moat and their nests in the trees, and one of the big water monitors that inhabit the moat comes up on the bank, waddling on powerful legs, tongue flicking in and out of the snout of its small wedge-shaped head. A note from Wikipedia: “In Thailand, the word water monitor or actually local word ‘เหี้ย’ is used as an insulting word for bad and evil things including a bad person. Its name is also considered a word bringing a bad luck, so some people prefer to call them ‘ตัวเงินตัวทอง’ which means ’silver and gold’ in Thai to avoid the jinx.: So there you are.

As I wander off (it’s come when you like, leave when you like), I go past one of the younger instructors teaching jumping wushu kicks to a girl, who is wearing ankle weights (so that she doesn’t accidentally launch herself into orbit?) I can’t resist having a go. It’s great fun, though I feel my nearly 35-year old knees protest loudly as I land on the road. If I ever try to learn this I think I’ll be doing it on grass, of which there is thankfully plenty. The other day I tried doing cartwheels, and was pleased to discover that I still can - the day I can’t turn cartwheels anymore, I’m gonna feel old.

So at the moment I’m ironing out details of the Yang 24 form. After I get it right, I can go on to the 42 form. After that I get to play with fans and swords - which is really why I’m doing this. As long as I can keep getting up at 5 am…

Because I’m through with mine. It’s about as much use to me as my tonsils - less, in fact, as my tonsils still probably catch a few bacteria now and then, while my stupid uterus does nothing but bleed every month. As I don’t want children (never have, never will, don’t bother asking), I’d really rather be relieved of it and its inordinate demands on my blood supply. I’m well aware that, as female reproductive systems go, mine is far from the most troublesome out there, but I’m sick of these days each month when I turn beige and can’t think of anything except how nice it would be to take (yawn) yet another nap.

Ugh. I hate being stuck in a female body. Not that I want a male body, either, thanks - not with all the hairy bits and dangly bits. I’d like to put in a request for something in between. And maybe it could be fluorescent, too, like these pigs in Taiwan. Though I’d rather be purple than green.

Oh, wow. Just after I wrote this post, I clicked on Google’s latest headlines and saw this. Well, if they ever want a live donor, I’d put my hand up. They can do hysterectomies laparascopically these days. Maybe the recipient would pay the donor’s medical expenses?