Pete's June 2025 update
Sad Lil Doggies (put a pin in it)
My gosh, what a world we live in. New rule: if your government’s actions would fit into the opening pages of a dystopian YA novel, you’ve got a problem. (Also, maybe a billion dollar trilogy.) Have you looked at your caps, recently?
Megosaurus Update
Is that a dog or a pin cushion?
Our game of pin the tail on the doggie went well. Three people, 13 needles, and lots of treats.
Fiction update
Other than getting a story published in June [read There Are Seventeen Kinds of Smile at Small Wonders] it was a bit of a rocky month. In the same weekend that I received news of not winning a couple of competitions, Lucy heard the same from some art gallery shows she has works in.
But my writing group collectively grizzled and commiserated, and I channeled the energy into a new story that I promptly submitted into the next round of the competition.
I’m still on track to hit my goal of 100 submissions in 2025, with 57 subs by the end of June. But to hit that 100 goal I’m going to need to write more and have fresh stories to submit! I’ve been writing longer stories but that means there are fewer places to submit them.
Want to learn how to get stories published? Check out Angelique Fawns’s substack where she shares where to submit, her own insights + interviews with editors.
Work and Startups update
Lots of excitement in the Cremorne office, with a beta program kicking off in July and some other irons in the fire.
I had to do some marketing stuff last week to set up and promote some webinars. In one afternoon, I counted 10 different apps/software/platforms I had to use to get the job done.
Wanna see something cool? This is me doing my job ‘hands-free’ at work. To prepare out platform for a demo next week I need to add a bunch of new content. I have the text and links in a spreadsheet, and I’m running a Robotic Process Automation (RPA) process so I don’t have to do all the mousing and clicking of buttons and copy-pasting of text myself.
Before I left my job at Sydney Uni we had a team of consultants from EY trying to set up an RPA project, and now I can do the whole thing myself with a Chrome extension.
Read/Watch/Listen
[Read: 4 minutes] My story There Are Seventeen Kinds of Smile was republished at Small Wonders. (Already read it? Okay, read Jen Lesh Fleck’s This Island Toward Which I Row and Row, Yet Cannot Reach Alone
[Watch: 2 minutes] One of the promotional trailers for Steve Martin’s first movie, The Jerk.
[Listen: 7 minutes] Max Richter - On The Nature Of Daylight (Entropy) | 2018 Version. I love this piece so much. Put on good headphones and immerse yourself in it. Take your time. Breathe.
[Watch: 14 minutes] This is a fascinating story about people trying to hire assassins, and what happens when you try to warn their targets.
[Watch/listen: 18 minutes] Coffee man James Hoffman’s 3 rules for life. Rule 2: everybody leaves.
“One F-bomb won’t scuttle your story.” — Guidelines for the Writers of the Future story competition.
I took this as a challenge.
Thank you for the shout out!!!