Continuum 8 Program
The Continuum 8 program is up, and I’m delighted to be part of some awesome panels and reading sessions. If you’re in Melbourne for the long weekend and are up for some Natcon excitement, swing past the Rydges on Swanston — Friday’s admission is a mere gold coin donation! Bargain!
In case any of you want to drop in and say ‘hi’, or if you want to avoid me altogether, my sessions are:
Friday, ‘Splicing Genres’ 16:00
with Jane Routley, Jenny Blackford, Lisa Hannett, Claire Corbett, Rjurik Davidson
Fantasy murder mysteries, horror spy novels, science fiction romance… do the best stories defy genre boundaries?
Friday, ‘Tales as old as time’ 18:00
with Angela Slatter, Lisa Hannett, Jenny Blackford, Kirstyn McDermott, Jane Routley
Fairytales are in vogue again, all over TV and movie screens and for years collected by Ellen Datlow in retold anthologies. Why are we so fascinated with these stories? And with so many retellings and versions out there how do writers make them new again?
Saturday, ‘Readings’ 16:00
with Claire Corbett, Angela Slatter, Lisa Hannett, Felicity Dowker
The program is packed with lots of excellent sessions, and though I haven’t yet had a chance to decide which panels I’ll attend (other than the ones I’ll be on, of course!) I will certainly be there to cheer everyone on at these events:
Friday, ‘Twelfth Planet Press Hour’ 19:00
Ever wondered how your favorite Twelve Planet collection would taste like in cupcake form? Then come along to the Twelfth Planet Cocktail hour, to celebrate the launch of the newest Twelve Planets, Through Splintered Walls, by Kaaron Warren, and Cracklescape by Margo Lanagan, plus the new TPP novella Salvage by Jason Nahrung and a surprise announcement! Each book will be lovingly interpreted as a cupcake by master baker, Terri Sellen. Your cocktail choice is entirely your own…
Saturday, ‘Ishtar Launch’ 14:00
Launch of Ishtar, edited by Amanda Pillar and KV Taylor (includes novellas by Deborah Biancotti, Cat Sparks, and Kaaron Warren)
Sunday, ‘Bread and Circuses Launch’ 16:00
Ticonderoga Publications launch of Bread and Circuses by Felicity Dowker
And of course the Ditmar / Chronos Awards on Sunday evening — I love a good awards show!
Year’s Best Australian Fantasy & Horror, Vol 2
Hooray! SO happy to see ‘Forever, Miss Tapekwa County’ on this awesome ToC! And the cover art for this volume is so pretty!!!
Liz Grzyb and Talie Helene have compiled 32 fantastic stories and poems first published in 2011, from New Zealand’s and Australia’s finest writers.
The contents are
- Peter M Ball “Briar Day” (Moonlight Tuber)
- Lee Battersby “Europe After The Rain” (After the Rain, Fablecroft Press)
- Deborah Biancotti “Bad Power” (Bad Power, Twelfth Planet Press)
- Jenny Blackford “The Head in the Goatskin Bag” (Kaleidotrope)
- Simon Brown “Thin Air” (Dead Red Heart, Ticonderoga Publications)
- David Conyers and David Kernot “Winds Of Nzambi” (Midnight Echo #6, AHWA)
- Stephen Dedman “More Matter, Less Art” (Midnight Echo #6, AHWA)
- Sara Douglass & Angela Slatter “The Hall of Lost Footsteps” (The Hall of Lost Footsteps, Ticonderoga Publications)
- Felicity Dowker “Berries & Incense” (More Scary Kisses, Ticonderoga Publications)
- Terry Dowling “Dark Me, Night You” (Midnight Echo #5, AHWA)
- Jason Fischer “Hunting Rufus” (Midnight Echo #5, AHWA)
- Christopher Green “Letters Of Love From The Once And Newly Dead” (Midnight Echo #5, AHWA)
- Paul Haines “The Past Is A Bridge Best Left Burnt” (The Last Days of Kali Yuga, Brimstone Press)
- Lisa L Hannett “Forever, Miss Tapekwa County” (Bluegrass Symphony, Ticonderoga Publications)
- Richard Harland “At The Top Of The Stairs” (Shadows and Tall Trees #2, Undertow Publications)
- John Harwood “Face To Face” (Ghosts by Gaslight, HarperCollins)
- Pete Kempshall “Someone Else To Play With” (Beauty Has Her Way, Dark Quest Books)
- Jo Langdon “Heaven” (After the Rain, Fablecroft Press)
- Maxine McArthur “The Soul of the Machine” (Winds of Change, CSFG)
- Ian McHugh “The Wishwriter’s Wife” (Daily Science Fiction)
- Andrew J McKiernan “Love Death” (Aurealis #45, Chimaera Publications)
- Kirstyn McDermott “Frostbitten” (More Scary Kisses, Ticonderoga Publications)
- Margaret Mahy “Wolf Night” (The Wilful Eye – Tales From the Tower #1, Allen & Unwin)
- Anne Mok “Interview with the Jiangshi” (Dead Red Heart, Ticonderoga Publications)
- Jason Nahrung “Wraiths” (Winds of Change, CSFG)
- Anthony Panegyres “Reading Coffee” (Overland, OL Society)
- Tansy Rayner Roberts “The Patrician” (Love and Romanpunk, Twelfth Planet Press)
- Angela Rega “Love In the Atacama or the Poetry of Fleas” (Crossed Genres, CGP)
- Angela Slatter “The Coffin-Maker’s Daughter” (A Book of Horrors, Jo Fletcher Books)
- Lucy Sussex “Thief of Lives” (Thief of Lies, Twelfth Planet Press)
- Kyla Ward “The Kite” (The Land of Bad Dreams, P’rea Press)
- Kaaron Warren “All You Can Do Is Breathe” (Blood and Other Cravings, Tor)
The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2011 is scheduled for publication in July 2012 and can be pre-ordered at indiebooksonline.com. The anthology will be available in hardcover, ebook and trade editions.
Aurealis Awards 2012 (In Which I Smile and Squee and Lose All Words)
What a weekend! I always have a blast at the Aurealis Awards, but Saturday night felt like a dream. SpecFaction NSW put on an incredible show in Sydney; the drinks flowed before and after the awards, the ceremony ran super-smoothly (Kate Forsyth in her AWESOME red leather gloves was a fantastic MC) and the vibe throughout the evening was electric.
This photo of Cat, Liz and I (taken from Cat Spark’s photoset) sums up the mood on Saturday night: happy, boisterous, supportive, and so much fun. Like the Australian speculative fiction community in general, I’d say. Everyone was all dolled up — which is another thing I love about the Aurealis Awards! — and smiling, smiling, smiling. If you look at Cat’s photos, or at Tehani’s set, you’ll be greeted with a collection of people having a wonderful time, and all the smiles are genuine.
Of course, I was walking around on cloud nine all night. I was so surprised to have won the Best Collection award that I fell out of my shoe on the way up to the stage. I felt so lucky just to have been on a shortlist with Paul, Tansy, Deb and Sue that, as much as everyone likes to win, I really was totally stoked with just having my name next to theirs for all the world to see. So I floated up to the stage, dropped my shoe (luckily my dress was long) and then floated back to my seat. And there I was, feeling the adrenaline starting to ebb, feeling so relieved that I’d managed to make a speech that sounded somewhat composed and moderately articulate… and then I heard Kirstyn say that I’d tied with Paul Haines for the Best Horror Short Story award. It was at that point that I lost all composure, and with it All The Words.
Photo by Cat Sparks
I wish I could have had the presence of mind to say what an incredible honour it was to be on the winner’s podium with Paul. And, again, to have been on a shortlist with Deb Biancotti! Angela Slatter! And OMG MARGO LANAGAN! But as everyone saw, all I could muster was a goofy smile, a wide-eyed expression, and about a dozen shocked ‘thank yous’ before I sat back down. I was so happy to see Thoraiya Dyer win for Best Fantasy Short Story — two years in a row! — and loved that Kim Westwood’s The Courier’s New Bicycle won for Best Science Fiction novel (also loved her speech!), that Jack Dann’s Ghosts by Gaslight won Best Anthology, and that the Galactic Suburbia podcast was awarded the Peter McNamara!
The Rydges after-party was a wonderful, champagne-filled romp (note to self: next year, eat dinner first!) and it was so much fun catching up with friends I don’t get to see anywhere near enough, seeing Facebook and Twitter friends in 3D, and chatting and chatting and chatting — until the bar staff kicked us all out!
Guest Post at Booklife: Collaboration
On Friday, the first of two guests posts Angela and I wrote about our collaboration process went up over at Booklife. It was such fun writing these posts (the second one in particular, but you’ll have to wait until tomorrow to see it!) and great to get a chance to share a bit about how we work together.
For the most part, writing is a solitary activity. An idea strikes and you mull it over, jot notes, think about character and setting and plot. You may surround yourself with the company of other people, other writers — go to workshops and critique groups, to coffee shops with your laptop, or travel with notebook in hand — but when it comes to turning vague ideas into a story, when it comes to actually writing, it’s all about you and the blank page. No net.
Writers often prefer it this way. Some of us are natural introverts; we like solitude and the quiet processes of creating narratives, well-turned phrases, and engaging characters. Many of us squeeze writing in between jobs, family life, friends — so we steal a few moments out of our days to retreat into our imagined worlds. Others simply like to keep their work to themselves until it’s completely polished, until all the embarrassing plot-holes are filled and the clunky writing all tightened up. Also, the majority of writers are control freaks — we are gods in our own little cosmos.
Read the rest here.
Six stories on Ellen Datlow’s Year’s Best Honorable Mentions List!
So exciting! Ellen Datlow has just published the full list of Honorable Mentions for Best Horror of the Year, Vol 4 — and she gives the nod to SIX of my stories!
Hannett, L. L. “Gutted,” Shimmer 13.
Hannett, Lisa L. “Carousel,” Bluegrass Symphony.
Hannett, Lisa L. “From the Teeth of Strange Children,” Bluegrass Symphony.
Hannett, Lisa L. “Fur and Feathers,” Bluegrass Symphony.
Hannett, Lisa L. “Them Little Shinin’ Things,” Bluegrass Symphony.
Hannett, Lisa L. White and Red in the Black,” Dead Red Heart.
Wow! Lots of fantastic Australian writers also get mentions, including Angela Slatter, Cat Sparks, Kaaron Warren, Deb Biancotti, Margo Lanagan, Peter M Ball, Thoraiya Dyer, Alan Baxter, Kirstyn McDermott, Joanne Anderton… Hooray for everyone! And thanks to Charles Tan for passing on the link 
Tuesday Therapy: The Art and Obligations of the Favour
I’ve been running these Tuesday Therapy posts since November, when I was inspired by my dear friend Angela’s comment that “you can only eat an elephant one bite at a time.” Man, that is such a fantastic quote! So I blithely started this series, thoroughly enjoying all of the posts about writing we’ve had so far — and looking forward to all the great ones yet to come!
But I wanted to properly invite Angela to participate in the series — after all, the ‘elephant’ advice was completely spontaneous — so I’m delighted to share her Therapy session on The Art of the Favour with you today.
Angela Slatter is the author of so many incredible short stories it’s actually hard to keep track at this stage. In 2010, she had two collections published, Sourdough & Other Stories with Tartarus Press (UK) and The Girl with No Hands & Other Tales (Ticonderoga Publications). Two collections in one year! AND Sourdough was shortlisted for a World Fantasy Award, while The Girl With No Hands took home the Aurealis Award for Best Collection 2010. If you haven’t read these books yet, but love beautiful fairy tale retellings, dark fantasy, and strong female characters, then go track them down immediately. It’s okay — we’ll wait. You will adore them.
Favour [noun] = an act of kindness beyond what is due or usual.
An essential part of building a supportive community – indeed part of getting anything done – is the favour. I don’t mean cash in brown paper bags or Strangers on a Train kinds of favours … no, I mean the favours that help people along in their writing career.
Things like professional advice and critiquing, or letting someone know there’s an anthology their work might fit or if a publishing house has an open reading period. Pass on opportunities because one day someone might do the same thing for you. Higher level favours may take the form of introductions to editors, publishers, agents and other authors. It might be judiciously extending invitations to writerly functions to help people make connections and create networks – the caveat is, of course, don’t drag along an entourage of forty-two wide-eyed newbies, manuscripts clutched in their sweaty hands, who devour the cheap wine and the dollhouse canapés like a plague of locusts (people will remember you brought them).
As the definition says, a favour is an act of kindness. If someone has extended a favour specifically to you (the favouree), it’s really bad form to then pass it on to someone else – someone the original favourer does not know. At least ask permission. Favours are extended because someone met you, liked you, thought you have the potential to go further if only you get a helping hand – favours are personal. Do not re-gift favours.
Writing Habits, Or How Lisa is Addicted to Her Diary
Design by fotografik
In other news, Nicole Murphy is running a fantastic series of interviews on her website, in which she has asked a slew of authors about their writing habits and processes. There have already been such a wonderful responses, from the likes of Sean Williams, Angela Slatter, Joanne Anderton, Kate Forsyth, Justina Robson — and so many more! You can find the complete list to-date here.
There are two posts per writer: one focusing on habits, the other on processes. This week, it’s my turn to give my two cents — and my first post, in which I reveal what an anal-retent I am, is now live. Thanks, Nicole!
Aurealis Awards Finalists Announced!
The internets are abuzz this evening because the Aurealis Award Shortlists have just been announced!
There are so many awesome stories on these lists, I honestly don’t know how the judges narrowed it down. And I’m so stoked to see my work nominated in two categories: Best Collection (for Bluegrass Symphony) and Best Horror Short Story (for ‘The Short Go: A Future in Eight Seconds’). Wow!!!
Without further ado, here are the finalists:
2011 Aurealis Awards – Finalists
FANTASY NOVEL
The Undivided by Jennifer Fallon (HarperVoyager)
Ember and Ash by Pamela Freeman (Hachette)
Stormlord’s Exile by Glenda Larke (HarperVoyager)
Debris by Jo Anderton (Angry Robot)
The Shattered City by Tansy Rayner Roberts (HarperVoyager)
Ditmar Award Nominations Open
It feels like only yesterday that I last mentioned the Ditmar Awards on this website, but apparently a year has passed already! Ditmar nominations are now open — until April 13, 2012.
There is an incredible list of eligible works and potential nominees this year (as is also the case with the Aurealis Awards) — so many great stories for us to read, so much great writing happening in Australia at the moment! You can peruse the list of Ditmar-eligible works here, bearing in mind that this list may need tweaking, and some of the pieces might not be arranged under the right categories at the moment.
People active in Australian fandom and full or supporting members of this year’s Natcon, Continuum8, can nominate works for the Ditmars. The Awards rules are here, and nomination forms are here.
It always feels weird pointing out my own eligible works — it’s a bit of self-promotion I feel awkward doing — but still, here goes. If any of you have liked my stories this year and want to nominate them for an award, here’s the list:
Best Collected Work
Bluegrass Symphony (Ticonderoga Publications)
Best Novella / Best Novellette
‘From the Teeth of Strange Children’ (Bluegrass Symphony, Ticonderoga Publications)
‘To Snuff a Flame’ (Bluegrass Symphony, Ticonderoga Publications)
‘Wires Uncrossed’ (Bluegrass Symphony, Ticonderoga Publications)
Best Short Story
‘Down the Hollow’ (Bluegrass Symphony, Ticonderoga Publications)
‘Fur and Feathers’ (Bluegrass Symphony, Ticonderoga Publications)
‘The Short Go: A Future in Eight Seconds’ (Bluegrass Symphony, Ticonderoga Publications)
‘Carousel’ (Bluegrass Symphony, Ticonderoga Publications)
‘Depot to Depot’ (Bluegrass Symphony, Ticonderoga Publications)
‘Forever, Miss Tapekwa County’ (Bluegrass Symphony, Ticonderoga Publications)
‘The Wager and the Hourglass’ (Bluegrass Symphony, Ticonderoga Publications)
‘Them Little Shinin Things’ (Bluegrass Symphony, Ticonderoga Publications)
‘Gutted’, Shimmer, Issue 13
‘White and Red in the Black’ (Dead Red Heart, Ticonderoga Publications)
That’s it for 2011!
Now, on a similar but non-self-serving note, I want to nominate Angela Slatter’s ‘Drive-by’ interview series for a Ditmar. Angela ran this series for a couple of years, including all of last year, and the final post went up at the end of December 2011. Have a look at the breadth of interviews, the variety of excellent speculative fiction writers, editors, artists, and fans that participated — such a lot of work! Such a great series for all of us to read and re-read. It would be cool for it to be recognised with an award of some sort.
Any thoughts on what Ditmar category this series might fit into? ‘Best Fan Publication’? ‘The William Atheling Jr Award’? Please leave me a comment if you know which one would be best!
The Week That Was: In Pictures and Words
It’s fair to say that I’ve been a hermit since the Year of the Grant began. January and February have flown by in a whirl of words, chapters, stories… and very little else. Sure, I’ve emerged from the oubliette once or twice — for provisions, say, or to reassure my friends that I’m still alive — but I think I’ve been storing up my energy all these months, stockpiling my non-writing time, so that I could spend it all in one massive exciting hit this week. My computer has grown mighty lonely since Adelaide’s festival season began, and this is why…
Last Friday, we spent the evening outside in Elder Park with Ennio Morricone and the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. The show started right before sunset (see pic on the left) and because I’d booked the tickets about six months ago, we had excellent seats. The weather was glorious — in fact, the breeze was in tune with Morricone’s outstanding music: early on in the concert, when the orchestra was thrilling us with pieces from The Untouchables and Once Upon a Time in America, the wind would gust just as the violins crescendoed, catching the ladies’ hair and tossing it about dramatically in time with the chorus. At least, that’s how it seemed…
Night fell slowly, dropping a luminous navy curtain behind the stage in increments, the clouds hanging low and beautiful above the white dome. Morricone led the orchestra through pieces from Cinema Paradiso, Once Upon a Time in the West, A Fistful of Dynamite, and when the first breathy notes from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly sounded, the audience broke convention, whooping and clapping long before the end of the set. It’s mean of me to say that you had to be there to appreciate how magical the night was, how perfect the setting, how memorable and moving the performance… How, when ‘Gabriel’s Oboe’ from The Mission began playing, people wept. But there you have it.
Saturday morning kicked off Adelaide Writers Week, which ran until Thursday, and I can honestly say that this was the best Writers Week we’ve seen in years. The program was under new direction this year, and it showed: the tents in the Pioneer Women’s Garden were new, the venue’s layout updated, and the guests included a healthy smattering of genre authors — Kelly Link, Robert Shearman, Margo Lanagan (to whom the entire week was dedicated), Garth Nix, not to mention authors of crime fiction, such as Jo Nesbø and Megan Abbott. (more…)
Tales from the Oubliette: Full time writing, month two
This month has flown by. February is a short little month, but still. Where did all those days go?
Anyhoo, things I’ve learned in the past four weeks:
1) Apparently, there will be one week in which all the writing I do is deletable crap. So, as was the case in January, the first week’s worth of work this month went straight into the recycle bin. I am also learning to be fine with this. (March’s week of non-writing will be spent swanning around Adelaide Writers Week — so, true to form, my “month’s” totals will actually only be three-week totals…)
2) 1,500 good words a day is far more satisfying progress than 5,000 words of (deletable) crap.
3) I get much more work done if I avoid the internet — namely, Facebook and Twitter. You may have noticed that my posts are more sporadic this month than they were last, and that’s because I’m doing my best to put words on the page instead of on my status updates…
4) Working on two major projects at once is a blessing and a challenge. Last month, I focused solely on The Familiar, in an attempt to get a good start on the novel before the deadline for Midnight & Moonshine starting creeping up on me. But as of the first week of Feb, Angela and I have been giving a good chunk of our writerly attention to completing this collection — which has been great, in one sense, because when I’ve been stumped on the novel I have another important project to work on, so I can do so without feeling guilty. I procrastinate from one book by working on another book — which is awesome. Shifting mental gears and working on completely different stories in a completely different world has been excellent: I’ve gone back to the novel after a day or two, refreshed and excited about moving forward. Balancing both books at once has also been difficult, though, because I’ve always got the collection’s deadline looming in the back of my mind. So even when I’m progressing on the novel, I have Midnight & Moonshine on the backbrain…
It’s also hard to calculate word-related progress on the collection because I’ve spent days editing and rewriting parts of our stories, which wreaks havoc on the monthly totals. There is new wordage, but it’s not always easy to pinpoint exact word counts…
Even so, I’ll make a stab at this month’s totals.
The Familiar now stands at: 42,135 (15,164 up on last month)
Midnight and Moonshine is now over 50,000 (I’ve added about 5,000ish words in rewrites)
I also wrote and submitted a new short story, which is being held for further consideration (yay!): 6,750
All told, I’m only about 60 words off last month’s total!
January: 26,971 words
February: 26,914 words
In March, I want to break the 30k barrier… (Of course, I’ve just jinxed myself by saying that, but whatever. I’ll give it a shot!)
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.
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!
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
China Miéville: First in the Lair!
Greetings and welcome, one and all, to the inaugural Lair of the Evil Drs Brain, where we “invite” (i.e. conduct virtual kidnappings of) other writers and artists for a chat (which occurs right after they stop demanding to be released and saying ‘Who are you and why I am in a comfy wingback chair?’and ‘These are not my pyjamas!’).
Our first victim, errr, guest is the really rather clever China Miéville, he of such tomes as King Rat, Perdido Street Station, The City and The City, and the most recently excellent Embassytown. We all know he’s got a brain the size of a planet, with an IQ that has more digits than Warren Buffett’s bank statement – random thought: Genius Deathmatch, Miéville versus Stephen Fry? – and so in order to make him appear less intimidating and more approachable we gave him footie pyjamas and a cup of warm cocoa. See? Instantly fluffy and non-threatening.
And so without further ado or incriminating commentary, let us launch the Lair. *shattering of champagne bottle against the hull, sound of two Evil Brains crying at the waste of good bubbly*
Dr Angela: Welcome, China, and thanks so much for joining us in the Lair of the Evil Drs Brain. I’d like you to meet the other half of the Brain, Lisa Hannett. You will note that I am Ralph Wiggam to Lisa’s Professor Frink.
Dr China: I’m delighted and honoured to be invited.
Dr Angela: Lisa, if you’d like to start?
Dr Lisa: Thanks, Brain. China, I thought we’d start with a couple of questions about Embassytown, then move on to a couple general questions about your writing habits.
Dr China: Sure.
Dr Lisa: Ursula Le Guin lavished praise on the book in her Guardian review, which led me to think: are there echoes of The Left Hand of Darkness in Embassytown? Has Le Guin’s writing been a source of inspiration for your own work?
Dr China: Certainly, and certainly. I don’t know that I was specifically riffing off LHOD, but Le Guin has been a very big figure in my mind, yes, for a long time. Her anthropological approach and critical take on colonialism, her use of language, all the things you would expect. In a way, Embassytown was in part a reversed homage to her (I don’t mean an anti-homage, I mean a sincere homage reversing terms) in the sense that one of the most incredibly valuable pieces of furniture she came up with for SF is the ansible, allowing instantaneous communication. I wanted to posit a universe that was profoundly ansibleless, in which communications were the opposite of instantaneous, and the peculiarities of politics — especially colonial politics — rule at a distance and extended lag would mean a return to a kind of maritime empire style of the 18th and early 19th Century, which is why the immer is maritime-esque.
Dr Lisa: I love the concept of the reverse homage. And I’m really interested in the problems of communication — so, without knowing it, you’ve actually anticipated my next question… Which, incidentally, begins with a quote from David Malouf. Have you read any of his short stories?
Dr China: To my shame, no. Time-organisation fail. One of my too-many lacunae.
Dr Lisa: You won’t regret getting a copy of his Complete Stories. Brilliant, brilliant stuff. Anyhow, there’s a line in David Malouf’s wonderful story ‘The Only Speaker of His Tongue’ that goes: “When I think of my tongue being no longer alive in the mouths of men a chill goes over me that is deeper than my own death, since it is the gathered death of all my kind.”
Dr China: That is rather splendid indeed.
Dr Lisa: And I was thinking that this line resonates with the problems of communicating with the Hosts in Embassytown… With that in mind I wondered: do you think the transformation/degeneration of language is a symptom (or catalyst?) of dystopian societies in science fiction?
Dr China: Well, I guess in terms of a traditional trope, yes. The most obvious example to me would be Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban, but also I think of the language especially towards the end of the surpassingly strange and rather underrated (imo) Alfred Bester book, Golem 100. The thing is, that sense of language as a speaking of society, so the collapse of language mirrors and/or causes the social collapse is a strong and interesting idea to riff off in fiction. It is not, however, the way I think actual language works in the real world. (I’ve seen more than one person say Embassytown is a riff on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which I guess to a certain extent it is. But that doesn’t mean I don’t know that the S-W hypothesis is bogus. I do know that, and it is.) So — as a literary tradition, yes. Often brilliantly. But I wouldn’t want that to seem to be mapped out into actual sociolinguistic prescription.
Here’s looking at you, 2011
Last day of the year… so like many of you I’m feeling the urge to commit a bit of retrospective bloggery.
2011 sucked. Then it was awesome. Then it sucked again. Then it got better than ever… And so on. This was the rollercoaster year to beat all others, and it often felt like I was the poster child for the proverbial Chinese curse of “living in interesting times…”
At this time last year, I was staring down the barrel of writing the final three chapters of my PhD thesis. I had January to do it, so I became a hermit and wrote and wrote and wrote. After six years, endless hours of agony, a good dollop of joy, and the hardest work I’d ever done, I finished the draft. HUGE YAY! And then I discovered a Danish scholar’s brand new body of work on a topic that was unnervingly close to mine — so my head exploded. Rewriting ensued, as did tears, frustration, more tears — aka HUGE LOW. But as we know it all worked out, so I’ll move on.
At the same time, I was finishing my first collection of short stories, Bluegrass Symphony. Edits, writing, rewriting all happened while I was freaking out about my thesis… and while my lovely sister and her boyfriend were visiting from Canada (HUUUUGE YAY!!!) It all got done — with time to spare! — and suddenly I found myself with a complete thesis AND a complete book! (YAY!)
Thus armed, I applied for my dream academic job (in English and Creative Writing) — but didn’t get an interview (BOO!). But then discovered that nobody had gotten an interview, and so they would readvertise in a few months (YAY!) and so I still had a chance.
Along with my dear Brain, Angela Slatter, I signed a contract for a second collection of stories, Midnight and Moonshine — which we’re co-authoring (HUUUUGE YAY! We had so much fun collaborating on ‘The February Dragon’!)
I was nominated for three Ditmar awards (YAY! and I had a ball at Swancon) and Angela and I won the Aurealis Award for ‘Best Fantasy Story 2010′ for ‘The February Dragon’ (HUGE YAY!)
Had a massive teaching workload this year — four topics, over 200 students, marking marking marking until I thought my eyes would bleed. Even so, teaching was a bit YAY (because I had some wonderful students!) and a lot BOO (see: marking, eyes bleeding).
The dream academic job was readvertised (YAY!) I applied and had an incredibly strong application (YAY!) but failed to get an interview because of a technicality (not going into details, sorry). Saying ‘HUGE BOO’ here would actually diminish how much this experience affected me. This all happened in June right after I submitted my thesis for examination. So after that great high (thesis finished!!) the whole Job Debacle of 2011 was without a doubt the nadir of my year.
What do they say about reaching rock bottom? The only way is up? Well, that’s pretty much what happened in the second half of 2011. Bluegrass Symphony was published to great reviews and was launched by the ever-fantastic Sean Williams (YAAAAAAAAAAAAY!). My PhD thesis passed with two As, so I didn’t have to change a word (although I did change an accent on one of my Icelandic translations) YAAAAAAAAAAAY!
Then another job-related BOO: I quit my non-teaching job after working there happily for 4 years. Again, not going into detail here, but needless to say, it sucked.
But then another HUGE YAAAAAAAAAAY: writing time! And I got the Arts SA grant I applied for, so that writing time continues on, uninterrupted, well into 2012!
Up, down, up, down, up, down… Here’s hoping 2012 is a bit more even-keeled!
To sum up, in terms of dayjobbery, this year has blown. In terms of writing, however, this has been the most awesome year yet:
Bluegrass Symphony (Ticonderoga Publications, 2011)
Carousel
Down the Hollow
Them Little Shinin’ Things
Fur and Feathers
From the Teeth of Strange Children
The Wager and the Hourglass
The Short Go: A Future in Eight Seconds
To Snuff a Flame
Depot to Depot
Commonplace Sacrifices (first published in On Spec 2009/2010)
Wires Uncrossed
Forever, Miss Tapekwa County
‘Gutted’, Shimmer, Issue 13, April 2011
‘White and Red in the Black’, Dead Red Heart, ed. Russell B. Farr (Ticonderoga Publications) 2011
NEW STORIES SOLD
Midnight and Moonshine, co-authored with Angela Slatter (Ticonderoga Publications, collection of original stories) Forthcoming November 2012
‘Smoke Billows, Soot Falls’ (Chapbook), ed. Simon Marshall-Jones (Spectral Press) Forthcoming
‘Snowglobes’, Chilling Tales 2: In Words, Alas, Drown I, ed. Michael Kelly (EDGE Publishing) Forthcoming
‘A Girl of Feather and Music’, Postscripts (PS Publishing, UK) Forthcoming
‘Rapacis X. Loco Signa’, Bestiary, ed. Ann & Jeff VanderMeer, Forthcoming
STORIES REPRINTED
‘Tiny Drops’, Midnight Echo, Issue 4, 2010 — REPRINTED IN ChiZine, May 2011
‘Soil From My Fingers’, Tesseracts 14, ed. Brett Alexander Savory & John Robert Colombo (ChiZine Press), 2010 — REPRINTED IN The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy & Horror 2010, ed. Liz Grzyb and Talie Helene (Ticonderoga Publications, 2011)
‘The February Dragon’, co-written with Angela Slatter, Scary Kisses, ed. Liz Grzyb (Ticonderoga Publications), 2010 — REPRINTED IN The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy & Horror 2010, ed. Liz Grzyb and Talie Helene (Ticonderoga Publications, 2011)
BLOGGING
I started the Tuesday Therapy series here, which I’m enjoying immensely;
Brain and I have concocted the Lair of the Evil Drs Brain, which kicks off in January with an interview we recently did with China Miéville;
2 guest posts for the Shimmer blog which you can read here and here;
A guest post for Lee Battersby‘s ‘Treacherous Carrots” art series, which you can read here;
An essay on the weird illustrations of Beardsley, Niffenegger and Gorey for Weird Fiction Review, which you can read here;
And a brief piece on the Weird West in fiction for Random House’s Suvudu site, which you can read here.
Bring on 2012.
Happy New Year, all!
As the Weird Turns
Angela Slatter‘s editorial is up at the WeirdFictionReview site, and it’s full of awesome recommendations for weird summer reading. Here’s a little snippet to whet your appetites:
When I was a kid (yes,Virginia, dinosaurs walked the earth then), I read Saki’s “Sredni Vashtar” and have regarded garden sheds with an acute suspicion ever since. M R James was responsible for many restless nights, many dreadful dreams (“Casting the Runes”, “A Warning to the Curious”, “Oh, Whistle And I’ll Come To You, My Lad”, “A Warning to the Curious”, “The Treasure of Abbott Thomas”, “The Wailing Well” were but a few causes of night terrors). If James was the main course, then Stoker’s “The Judge’s House”, Jacobs’ “The Monkey’s Paw”, and Laski’s “The Tower” were the disturbing dessert. Lovecraft’s “The Outsider” still haunts my dreams — I sometimes wake convinced I have been climbing that long, dread staircase only to surface in a place I don’t belong…
Tuesday Therapy: Eating Elephants
So I’ve decided to start a new weekly segment on this website, called ‘Tuesday Therapy’. Basically, I’ve been thinking that Tuesday lacks an identity: in the whole scheme of the week, it kinda falls through the cracks. It’s not abhorrent, like Monday; it isn’t a promising hump, like Wednesday; and few of us celebrate its arrival the way we do Friday or Saturday. Apart from being a cheap night at the movies, Tuesday just sort of sits there feeling useless. Inferior. Overshadowed by more popular weekdays. Not even shocking enough to warrant disdain.
And the more I thought about it, the more I realised that writers — new and established — can often suffer from a case of the Tuesdays when they are evaluating their “success”. It’s not just newbies who sometimes feel like things aren’t moving fast enough, that their writing sucks — or is brilliant, dahling! but overlooked — that everyone else is a Friday or Saturday, universally lauded and showered with caviar and fine champagne, while they themselves are at home churning out words, reheating old pizza for dinner.
It’s hard not to get caught up in the trap of comparing yourself to others, particularly nowadays when we have such immediate access to everyone’s achievements thanks to the incessant stream of updates on Twitter, Facebook, email lists, websites, blogs blogs blogs… So, instead of trying to tell you all that it’s counterproductive to get caught up in such comparisons (even though it is) I thought I’d instead try to pass on a bit of weekly balm for your writing soul.
This first installment of Tuesday Therapy is a piece of invaluable advice that my dear Brain (Angela Slatter) gave me the other day while I was fretting about All the Writing Things That Have to be Done and Dammit They Must Be Done NOW NOW NOW.
“Brain,” she said, ever wise, “You can only eat an elephant one bite at a time.”
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought about this since then, and how much better it has repeatedly made me feel. Totally freaking brilliant.
Please feel free to share brief snippets of advice with me via email (lisa dot hannett at gmail dot com) or DM me on Twitter (@lisalhannett), and I’ll include them in an upcoming segment of Tuesday Therapy. The more, the merrier!
Lair of the Evil Drs Brain…
…immortalised by the uber-talented Kathleen Jennings.
Brain and I are amassing content for The Lair as we speak — stay tuned!
While you’re waiting, check out Kathleen’s website. Her newest illustration, the wind-up tiger, is absolutely frickin amazing.
The Flensing of the Baxter
Over at The Word, Alan Baxter tells the tale of joy and woe of having his story flensed by the Evil Drs Brain:
flense
verb, flensed, flens·ing
1. to strip the blubber or the skin from (a whale, seal, etc.).
2. to strip off (blubber or skin)…
I wrote a short story recently that I was really pleased with. I spent a while going over it, polishing it, getting it just right. I sent it out into the world. And it came back. And again. And again. The rejections stacked up. It’s cool, I’m used to that. Every writer is. We have hides that make rhino skin look like tissue paper and a solid fuck-you-attitude that keeps us working in the face of constant rejection. It’s the only way to work in this game. After all, it’s not necessarily the story – it could be the editor just doesn’t dig that vibe, or the publication ran something a bit similar recently, or the publisher’s cat swallowed a bee and she’s sore at the world and takes it out on a good story. That last one is unlikely, but anything’s possible.
But once something has been bounced a few times in a row, you can start to see the common denominator. It’s the story, schmuck. It ain’t good enough.
So I went to my friends seeking help. In this particular instance I was fortunate enough to get the Evil Drs Brain* on the case. Given that it was a dark and twisted fairy tale vibe, I asked Angela Slatter* to have a look at it for me. She read the story, liked it, but took her flensing knife to it with abandon. I got it back and sobbed quietly for a few minutes, then manned up and listened to her advice. It was good advice. She’d seen flaws I hadn’t, picked up things in the story that needed to work differently. She’d identified character inconsistencies I would never have seen.
The story was greatly improved, but it still needed something; we could both see that now. Angela sent it over to her other brain, Lisa L Hannett*. Lisa added her flensing knife to the mix and my story was further eviscerated, but she saw the things that needed fixing.
Read the complete post here.
Where Do You Get Your Weird?
Weirdfictionreview.com: Your Non-Denominational Source for The Weird
http://www.weirdfictionreview.com
Weirdfictionreview.com launched today, a website devoted to The Weird and created by Luis Rodrigues. The project is the brainchild of editing-writing team Ann & Jeff VanderMeer. Hugo Award-winner Ann VanderMeer until recently edited Weird Tales Magazine and has co-edited several anthologies with her husband. Jeff’s last novel, Finch, was a finalist for the Nebula Award and World Fantasy Award. Together they edited the just-released The Weird: A Compendium of Strange & Dark Stories (Atlantic/Corvus), a 750,000-word, 100-year retrospective of weird fiction.
The site kicks off today with the following features:
—Exclusive interview with Neil Gaiman about weird fiction:
—First episode of exclusive “Reading The Weird” webcomic by Leah Thomas:
http://weirdfictionreview.com/fiction/2011/11/01/reading-the-weird-web-comic-episode-1/
—Translation of Thomas Owen’s short story “Kavar the Rat” by Edward Gauvin:
http://weirdfictionreview.com/fiction/2011/11/01/kavar-the-rat-thomas-owen/
—The full Table of Contents for The Weird compendium, with notes:
—Weird Gallery, Featuring the art of New Orleans artist Myrtle Von Damitz III:
http://weirdfictionreview.com/nonfiction/art/2011/10/31/myrtle-von-damitz-iii-gallery/
Come back later this week and next for: “Weirdly Epic: A Century of First Lines,” exclusive interviews with Kelly Link and Thomas Ligotti, a feature on artist/writer Alfred Kubin, Kafkaesque entertainments, China Mieville’s “AFTERWEIRD: The Efficacy of a Worm-eaten Dictionary,” and a feature on classic Weird Tales women writers. An ongoing “101 Weird Writers” feature will also begin next week.
Weirdfictionreview.com will initially focus on features related to The Weird compendium, but its primary mission over time will be to serve as an ongoing exploration into all facets of the weird, in all of its many forms — a kind of “non-denominational” approach that appreciates Lovecraft but also writers like Franz Kafka, Angela Carter, and Shirley Jackson – along with the next generation of weird writers and international weird. Writer Angela Slatter serves as the managing editor.
Lair of the Evil Drs Brain
So, what is the Lair of the Evil Drs Brain?
Basically it’s Angela Slatter and I talking to each other and other people about stuff. Writing stuff.
Topics will include:
- Steampunkery
- Fairytaleosity
- Phat Phantasy
- Where you write and how you get in the mood?
- Should a muumuu by mandatory for blogging?
- What happens when stuff doesn’t turn out the way you planned?
Think of it as a spec-fic Hamish & Andy’s Gap Year. On second thoughts, don’t.
Stay tuned.
