Evil Children in Art (and other tabs I need to close)
I have a terrible habit of leaving about 40 tabs open on my browser at once. Whenever I find something interesting, worth revisiting, or just plain cool, I leave the tab open so that I can look at it again and again throughout the day. Or over the next couple of days. Sometimes over a week. Or more.
Sure, I could bookmark the page, but let’s face it: I’ll click that little star, close the page, and then forget about it. So to ensure that my latest obsessions don’t get obliterated in the Never-Neverland of Lost Tabs, I thought I’d share a few of them with all of you.
First, from Flavorwire, a survey of evil children in art (click ‘view as a single page’ for the best effect). This one has remained open since February 1st because of Ray Caesar’s wonderfully bizarre images:
One day, when there is less writing to do and more time for dilly-dallying on the internetz, I’ll Google him and find out what other treasures he has in store for me, but for now these will have to suffice.
Tuesday Toot… on a Wednesday*
Alan Baxter, warrior scribe, invited me over to his website to participate in his ‘Tuesday Toot’ series, which he describes as: An invite-only series of short posts where writers, editors, booksellers and other creatives have been asked to share their stuff and toot their own horn.
So I blithely headed on over to The Word and chatted about Bluegrass Symphony, the Weird West, Midnight & Moonshine and, of course, Le Novel.
Visit Al’s site to read the whole trumpety thing.
*I tried to share this yesterday, but the internetz weren’t playing nice… Thanks for inviting me, Al!
‘Twice Full’ now up at This Is Horror
Woke up to discover that my short short, ‘Twice Full’, is now up at This Is Horror — accompanied by an absolutely gorgeous illustration by Rich Sampson (a detail of which I’ve included to the left.)
Tonight, they dig a second pit on our beach. Big men, all of them, dark hair and skin slick with sweat. Hands slippery on worn shovel handles. Feet bare, soles scorched and cracking. The sun is a glowing boulder buried deep in the ocean, still baking the sand from below the horizon.
For two days, relentless heat. For two days, the grass mattress in our room was a bed of coals. For two days I laboured, but could not get up. Exhausted, I could hardly breathe. Now I stand, finally cool in the shallows. My curls are matted from struggling, from useless pushing and straining. Salt drips into my eyes. My white linen shift is soaked, transparent. It does not flutter in the sea breeze…
Read the rest here.
The Peripatetic Life of the Freelance Editor: In the Lair with Mr Stephen Jones
Today we have kidnapped the much lauded, applauded and awarded Mr Stephen Jones, editor of such tomes as A Book of Horrors, Zombie Apocalypse!, Shadows Over Innsmouth, and the Mammoth Books of Best New Horror, Vampires, Wolf Men and Zombies, as well as recent collections by M.R. James, Karl Edward Wagner, Charles L. Grant and Basil Copper. He really needs no more introduction than that. We gave him a big tumbler of Jack Daniel’s, but he eschewed the comfy chair and insisted upon standing by the fire, elbow on the mantelpiece …
Welcome, Mr Jones.
Dr Angela: So, firstly, how did you get started as an editor? Was it a first love or a deep-seated desire to correct others?
Mr Jones: As much as I love correcting others (mainly because – in my mind at least – I’m nearly always right!), I never actually expected to become an editor. My family has no literary connections and so, except for a love of books and comics and monster magazines when I was younger, I never really saw myself being any way involved in the publishing industry.
I am, if nothing else, aware of my limitations, and I realised very early on that there were always going to be people out there who would be able to write fiction better than I ever could. Therefore, when I began contributing to fanzines in the early 1970s, I sent them non-fiction columns and articles rather than badly written fan fiction. These articles were invariably based around my love of movies.
From there I moved on to editing my own small press magazines and that, eventually, led to editing books. So, as a person of limited skills, that’s pretty much what I’ve done since.
I should stress now that was never The Plan. In fact, I’ve never really had a “Plan” of any kind. There are things that I’ve wanted to do in my life, and some I’ve been very lucky to achieve. Of course, there are numerous others that I’ve failed miserably at.
Dr Lisa: Are there any current trends in horror fiction you’re keen to see die?
Mr Jones: Where shall I start . . .?
When it comes to current trends in horror fiction, I’d like to see most of them go away – from such pointless sub-genres as “paranormal romance”, “urban fantasy” and the “new weird” to the kind of obscenely violent and misogynistic crap you can find online or in the micro-publications.
I’m not advocating a return to the past – god knows, of all genres, horror should be about what we fear now – but I do think that the field has lost its way somewhat over the past decade. And some of the blame for that has to be laid at the door of the low standards exemplified by various awards systems, low-rent publishers, and the current batch of dumb and derivative movie-makers. (more…)
Clarkesworld interview!
Recently, the most excellent Jeremy L. C. Jones interviewed me for the February issue of Clarkesworld magazine — and it’s now live!
In ‘Wendigo, Waistcoat, Spyglass and Other Words’ Jeremy and I chat about style, the short form, and “the human side of even the nastiest creatures.” Jeremy asked such fantastic questions — it was an absolute pleasure answering them.
Why the short form? What is it that you love about the short story?
Initially, I started writing short stories because I was also working on my PhD, which is a long and often tedious process. I wanted to write something brief, immediate, with a clear end in sight. Also, I had loads of ideas for stories, and no matter how much I tried to ignore them, more kept cropping up. I’d be reading all sorts of dry academic articles or translating passages from the Icelandic sagas while my back-brain was jumping up and down, shouting “There’s a crow stuck in a mechanical carnival! What’re you going to do about it?” or “She’s got to sing while eating corpses! How’s she going to do that without a voice?” Things like that are hard to ignore.
Read the whole interview here.
Tales from the Oubliette: Full time writer, one month in…
This is what my oubliette looks like… No, seriously. I’m not just sitting in my living room writing my book most days, or taking the laptop to bed…
So, it’s been a month since I got my grant. A month of being a full time writer. This has been a completely new experience for me: I’m used to holding down at least three contracts at once, working on my PhD and cramming my writing in on the side. So to have time… Well, it’s been awesome and also a challenge.
The first week of January was a complete write-off. I wrote about four versions of the book’s first chapter, all of which totally sucked, until I finally managed to come up with something I could live with. Some days I’ve achieved as little as 300 words, other days I’ve done over 2,500. I’ve tried to keep the weekends free, but have wound up writing on most days regardless.
All told, this month (well, three weeks) has earned me 26,971 words and The Familiar is well under way! If I can maintain my tortoise pace and make myself comfortable in my gorgeous oubliette, I should have a first draft by May/June… which will give me a couple MUCH NEEDED months to rewrite, edit, delete any crap I’ve written thus far. This, too, is a new experience. I’m used to working on short stories. Agonising over every word. Getting every sentence, paragraph, scene just right before moving on so that, basically, the first draft is pretty much the final draft.
That is so not happening with this book, let me tell you.
Nevertheless, January = 26,971 words.
Woo hoo!
Let’s hope things keep clipping along like this in February!
Tuesday Therapy: Being the Best Magpie
Jason Fischer is a fellow Adelaidean, harmonica-player, sometimes singer of undead camel songs, zombie aficionado, writer of rollicking stories, and all ’round hell of a nice guy. For this week’s Tuesday Therapy, Jason shares some advice that, really, I just adore. Writers as magpies: what a fantastic (and incredibly accurate) image…
Be the Best Magpie You Can Be. Collect shiny things wherever you go, and let them soak into your hindbrain. Read widely, woolgather often, and give yourself permission to fall down the rabbit hole of research. Look at cool maps and old books, watch odd docos, chat to interesting strangers. Having said this, keep only the shiniest of things, and discard everything else. Even the weirdest scrap of stuff can be an absolute game-changer. And above all, know when to climb *out* of the rabbit-hole and actually do some writing.
Jason attended the Clarion South writers workshop in 2007, and has been shortlisted in the Aurealis Awards, the Ditmar Awards, and the Australian Shadows Awards. He won the 2009 AHWA Short Story and the 2010 AHWA Flash Fiction Competitions, and is a winner of the Writers of the Future contest. Jason has stories in Dreaming Again, Apex, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, and Aurealis Magazine. His “After The World” series of zombie-apocalypse novellas are available from Black House Comics, and his fantasy novel “Tusk” is soon to be serialised in Terra Magazine. You can visit him online here.
FYI: Angry Robot and EWF
After the huge success of last year’s open door submissions, Angry Robot Books is once again opening their doors to non-agented, non-solicited manuscripts, from April 16th to April 30th 2012. They’re looking for “classic” fantasy (epic, medieval, magical, etc) and their YA imprint “Strange Chemistry” is also looking for fantasy for YA readers. Get those manuscripts polished up, and good luck! For more info, click here.
Also, the Emerging Writers’ Festival has an open call-out for panellists. If you’re an emerging writer and fancy participating in Brisbane’s EWF in late May, then click here for more info.
If you Google “ceiling shelves”…
…this is some of the awesomeness you will find:
Not at all what I was looking for, but pretty nonetheless. (God help me if I search for “library”… I’ll be on Google images all day!)
An Introduction to Australian Horror
In honour of Australia Day, I was asked to write an article about Australian horror for This Is Horror in the UK — and it’s now up! The article surveys some of the standout horror published in the past two years by Australian independent presses: so much to talk about, so much incredible talent!
Australia is a land of extremes. One minute the country is ravaged by drought and bushfires, the next it’s drowning in devastating floods. The continent is a combination of enormous red deserts meeting sprawling metropolises meeting ancient tropical rainforests meeting endless coastlines. Some of the largest — and tiniest — deadly predators on the planet are hidden out in the wilds, but are also unearthed in suburban backyards. Over it all, the harsh Australian sun beats down. Casting the longest, darkest shadows.
And right there — right where the glaring light gives way to shade — a population of Australian horror writers thrives. It’s a great position to be in. Looking at stories published by independent presses in the past two years, we find that Australian horror can plunge wholly into the black, even more tragic and disturbing by contrast to the brightness left behind; it can be light-hearted but nuanced, love and joy limned in darkness; or it can tread both worlds, supernatural and terrifying and endearing all at once…
Read the rest here — and enjoy!
Damnation & Dames ToC announced!
Lindsy Anderson – The Third Circle
Chris Bauer – Three Questions and One Troll
Alan Baxter & Felicity Dowker – Burning, Always Burning
Jay Caselberg – Blind Pig
M.L.D. Curelas – Silver Comes the Night
Karen Dent – A Case to Die For
Dirk Flinthart – Outlines
Lisa L. Hannett & Angela Slatter – Prohibition Blues
Donna Maree Hanson – Sangue Sella Notte
Rob Hood – Walking the Dead Beat
Joseph L Kellogg – The Awakened Adventure of Rick Candle
Pete Kempshall – Sound and Fury
Chris Large – One Night at the Cherry
Penelope Love – Be Good Sweet Maid
Nicole Murphy – The Black Star Killer
Brian Grant Ross – Hard Boiled
Ticonderoga Publications is pleased to announce the line-up for the upcoming paranormal noir anthology Damnation & Dames, edited by Liz Grzyb and Amanda Pillar. The anthology brings you sixteen stories of murder and mayhem, monsters and mysterious femme fatales.
Damnation & Dames will be launched at Swancon 37, at Easter 2012 and will be available in trade paperback for $30, and as an ebook in Kindle format after this. The anthology will be available from Ticonderoga’s online shop at indiebooksonline.com, and internet bookstores such as bookdepository.com and amazon.com.
Random Words I Kinda Love
Egypt (this one is the best when written in cursive)
Impasto
Medieval
Lacuna
Hacienda
Wendigo
Waistcoat
Spyglass
Tessellated
Mariner
Pitching Novels to Publishers: Spectacular Spectacular
Now, maybe it’s just me, but I was watching this the other day thinking, “This pretty much sums up what a novel synopsis / pitch to a publisher should be like.”
Let’s break this manic performance down.
First, there’s the “hook” in the opening (indescribable wonderment), which is then supported by a list of specific proof of what that general ‘wonderment’ entails (elephants, bohemians, Indians, courtesans, acrobats, electric lights, machinery, romance and so on — all of which, for the story’s period, is Exciting!)
This introduction is followed by a brief, Exciting recap of what the book’s main concepts are (the chorus, presented in a way that is So Exciting, you apparently want to jump up and down on an imaginary pogo stick.)
Several times throughout the pitch, the editor / audience is acknowledged (spun around on a chair, allowed to sing in an awful way, etc) — in other words, showing that the writer knows what market they’re targeting. And, sure, the editor might have questions, and sure, s/he might ask them in a language that is different from yours, but you’ll learn the jargon eventually. But no matter what language they’re speaking, you have to be able to provide the story’s major plot points, and be prepared to provide the ending as well (which is what the dubbed-over Richard Roxburgh keeps asking about.)
So that is exactly what they do: they enact the storyline (the courtesan and sitar man are pulled apart by an evil plan, but in the end she hears his song and their love is just too strong, etc etc etc)
And in conclusion, this is what the book is about (So Exciting!) this is what it looks like (tableau of characters) and Ta-Da! The concept is So Exciting, we’ll sell heaps of books!
Like I said, maybe it’s just me.
Place as Person: River Anthology Guest Post
The lovely Mary Victoria, who shared some words of wisdom for Tuesday Therapy a few weeks ago, is running a series of blog posts on her website as part of the excitement surrounding the River anthology, edited by Alma Alexander. (Which, btw, includes stories by Mary Victoria, Tiffany Trent, Jay Lake, Deb Taylor, Keffy R.M. Kehrli, Jacey Bedford, Joshua Palmatier, Brenda Cooper, Seanan McGuire, Ada Milenkovic Brown, Nisi Shawl, Joyce Reynolds-Ward.)
In line with the theme of this anthology, Mary invited a few of us to explore the idea of “place as person”:
Have you ever become so deeply fascinated with the setting of a book that it lingers on, invading your mind long after reading is done? We all know good world building is essential to any story. But occasionally an author takes that art one step further, creating an environment that enthralls, breathes, lives.
I was delighted to take part in this series, and my post is now up on Mary’s site. Here’s a snippet:
I’ve always been fond of Trickster characters: the sneaky, cheeky buggers who speak in riddles and are so incredibly alluring because they are never quite the stars of the show. They are completely self-serving, appearing in stories when the whim takes them, messing with the other characters’ lives, then vanishing as quickly as they came. We aren’t sure where they come from, and we aren’t sure where they go when they’re finished meddling, but we get a sense that they’ll be there forever. Somewhere, lingering in the background. Just waiting to surprise us again.
And when it comes to settings, I also fall in love with the tricky ones, the elusive ones, the ones left tantalisingly unexplored. Like Trickster characters, the most appealing settings — the ones that have the most personality — are precisely the ones that leave me wanting more.
Read the rest here.
Starving — err, I mean feeding — my book addiction
Getting this ArtsSA grant has been fantastic for my writing — it has given me the means to take several precious months off work to write The Familiar. But no one ever said that writing was a lucrative business, and being a “writer on a grant” reminds me of my really frugal scholarship days… (Which, let’s be honest, I haven’t quite shaken despite a billion hours of teaching at university level. But I digress.)
My point is that I am a book addict without the means to feed her addiction. And yes, library-lovers, I could borrow books — and I do. But there is something pathalogical inside me that simply covets new books. Paperback, hardcover, graphic, YA, children’s picture books — I want them all, and I want to keep them.
So I’ve decided to pretend that I’ve bought lots of books, and I’m going to share my purchases with you here. (And it doesn’t matter that some of these titles haven’t yet been released. This is imaginary book buying, people. I’ll make up the rules as I go.) Here are a few of the ones I’m most excited about:
Nightingale Songs by Simon Strantzas
Simon Strantzas, master of the subtle and the bizarre, returns with a dozen strange tales and eerie mysteries. From the shores of a remote oil-stained sound to deep within the familiar heart of suburbia, these are the songs of broken people who cannot find a way to fix themselves, who must search the dark for salvation. Like a siren, the nightingale sings them onward to face their end. But it sings for you too. A requiem in your honor. Because, for you, it is already too late. (more…)
Ancient Bathrooms
For a couple of weeks, I’ve had this article open in a tab on my desktop, about a 1,600 year-old bathhouse recently discovered in Israel. It’s just a feature piece, but the photo is captivating, as is the whole concept.
"The remains visible in the field include the frigidarium (cold room), tepidarium (warm room) and caldarium (hot room), as well as a courtyard attached northeast of the bathhouse rooms."
It’s discoveries like these that really make me wish I had a time machine. I yearn to go back 2,000 years and see what this place looked like, what the people who used it looked like, how they sounded and, yes, even how they smelled before and after they used this facility. These places are so resonant because they are incredible feats of engineering and ingenuity, but also because they are really rather ordinary. Do you think the people who built this bathhouse thought that, two millenia in the future, people would be marvelling over their plumbing? Probably not. But the fact that this plumbing remains — such a simple, earthy, human piece of construction — and is marvellous is something that just blows my mind.
It also reminds me of the Brough of Birsay, a small isle in the Orkney Islands that can only be reached at low tide, which I had the sheer delight of visiting back in 2008. The isle was dotted with ruins of Norse structures — foundations, mostly, but if you squinted your eyes and used your imagination you could see the longhouses there — along with a few Pictish stones. I was fascinated with the place because it features in Orkneyinga Saga — I was standing in a place from the sagas! I was touching the stones that the characters from the stories had touched!
Hooray! Sale!
By now this news is floating all over the internetz, but HUZZAH! The oubliette streak continues! Spent the day offline, and got back on to discover that ‘Prohibition Blues’, which Angela Slatter and I co-authored, will be appearing in Damnation & Dames, a cool new anthology edited by Liz Grzyb and Amanda Pillar.
Our story is a rollicking run through the bayou, with werewolves and fae creatures and quick-tongued flapper chicks with amazing shoes… And that’s just the beginning!
This story will also appear in our collection Midnight and Moonshine, which will be published by Ticonderoga at the end of this year. We’re so glad to be able to give you all this little teaser-taster from the new book!
And another one…
Who knew it was possible to get TEN (I had to count them, and yes, there were TEN) stars??
Scary Minds has posted their review of Bluegrass Symphony, and, well. I’m gobsmacked. “Glowing” doesn’t quite cover it… It’s more like “incandescent”. ‘From the Teeth of Strange Children’, ‘Depot to Depot’ and ‘Forever, Miss Tapekwa County’ are singled out as particular favourites, but the reviewer has great things to say about the book as a whole:
Hannett throws down the gauntlet to erstwhile readers with a collection of twelve stories that aren’t quite what you would expect from a dark genre collection. The author has her own voice, isn’t afraid to let it sing, and delivers a collection that is remarkably striking…
Full recommendation, Hannett reminds us that the dark gothic short story is still an art form.
Lisa L. Hannett has arrived kicking and screaming on the scene. ScaryMinds has another favourite Author.
Read the rest of the review here.
Wow. I think I should go into the oubliette more frequently. Was offline for three days and came back to three fantastic reviews. I wonder what would happen if I went offline for a week?
(Not that we’ll never know: I’m way too attached to the internet to test that theory…)
“Like reading memoirs of the damned…”
Another fantastic review of Bluegrass Symphony comes hot on the heels of the one I posted about yesterday! Wow!
Marc Nocerino has written a thoughtful and well-considered review of the collection for the most excellent She Never Slept — from which the title of this post is taken. Seriously, how cool is it to have your stories described as akin to “memoirs of the damned”? This is, honestly, an incredible compliment! (Thanks, Marc!)
Some other highlights:
The where is easy enough to pin down, but it is more difficult to put a finger on the when of this book, as Hannett expertly writes of these people and places in shadowy sepia tones that could be anywhere between the turn of last century and some near tomorrow. I enjoyed that ambiguity immensely, especially in the story “From The Teeth Of Strange Children”, where I had felt certain that it took place in the early 1900s until the characters get into an SUV with leather seats and “controls” for the windows...
Hannett’s stories themselves are some of the weirdest I’ve read in a while…
One thing that I enjoyed tremendously about this book is that Hannett’s horror is very personal. From the very first, these tales focus not only on the terrible things that are happening in her stories, but how they are affecting the lives and emotions of her protagonists. There is a hollow sadness suffusing these pages that made me feel like I was reading the memoirs of the damned.
Read the rest here.
Bluegrass Symphony has been Bibliophile Stalked!
Today has been awesome! Finished writing another chapter of The Familiar, and then when I bemoaned my lack of pancakes on Twitter this morning (it seems like *everyone* eats and then tweets about pancakes on Sunday!) the lovely Charles Tan offered me something MUCH sweeter: a link to the fabulous review he wrote of Bluegrass Symphony over on his website.
Here’s a snippet:
When we talk about an author’s style, it’s usually a quality that’s refined and polished over years. Hannett is one of those rare writers who can write using a variety of voices — and does so wonderfully. It’s not simply having an ear for dialog, but possessing the ability to translate what’s spoken into the written word and using it to convey to readers the mindset, upbringing, and culture of her characters…
Also wonderful is how Charles says: Bluegrass Symphony is one of those collections that feels more like an anthology due to the author’s wide range. This is easily a must-read book of 2011, doubly so since most of the stories aren’t reprints.
How cool!
Read the rest here.
The Unsettling Portraits of Oleg Dou
It’s been a little while since I’ve gushed about exciting art on this website, so let me break the drought by drawing your attention to the fascinating photo/Photoshopped portraits of Oleg Dou.
Oleg Dou is a multi award-winning photo artist based in Moscow, who received the Professional Photographer of the Year in Fine Art award at the International Photography Awards in 2008. Other than that, I don’t know much about Dou — just that he is young, imaginative, and creates portraits that both disturb and delight.
There’s quite a selection his website (‘Fawn’, pictured on the left, is one of them) but doing a quick Google images search will bring up a slew of other photos not currently featured there.
Some of my favourites include:
These portraits are simultaneously beautiful and unsettling — the people look like androids, or corpses, or aliens — yet that’s why I find them so interesting.
On his website, Dou comments that he’s interested in “looking for something bordering between the beautiful and the repulsive, living and dead. I want to attain the feeling of presence one can get when walking by a plastic manikin…” and he often achieves this effect. (Sometimes the portraits are a bit too “photoshoppy”, a bit too “look what I can do with these cool tools” rather than successful embodiments of this uncanny aesthetic… But in general the work is more often a hit than a miss.) More, please!
Business cards: Or, On How I am Spoiled Rotten
I’ve reached that stage in my writing career where business cards come in handy. Going to cons, sending contracts, mailing in hard copies of subs — these are but a few of the opportunities we have to share our professional details. So I put some together a few months ago, simple things that were meant to look like the pages of a book, but when they came back from the printer’s I was disappointed. They just weren’t quite what I’d had in mind… so I ditched them, because, well, ew.
Enter: Best Friend of the Highest Order (played by Angela Slatter)
Designer Extraordinare (played by David Pollitt)
Artist of Wondrous Wonders (played by Kathleen Jennings)
Plot: BF conspires with DE and AWW to secretly create a set of fabulous business cards the likes of which I could not imagine. Deals were struck, magic was worked, and beauty was brought to my mailbox in card form.
And behold! CLOCKWORK OWLS!!! Fonts fashioned out of twigs!!! Quotes from mine own stories!!!
Artwork (c) Kathleen Jennings
A treeful of mechanical owls graces the front of each card, and there are also various quotes from my stories (collect them all!) on each card. On the back, the awesome barn owl is featured.
Thank you, thank you thank, dear Brain, Badger, and La Belle Artiste!
xxxx
Speaking of awesome short stories…
…and excellent speculative fiction in general, have you recently taken a look at the list of works eligible for this year’s Aurealis Awards?
OMG THERE IS SO MUCH INCREDIBLE WRITING IN AUSTRALIA AND SO MANY AMAZING AUTHORS.
Honestly, this year’s list is so impressive. I want to read everything on it, in every category. Having said that, I am SO glad I’m not a judge. How on earth are they going to choose?
