Tuesday Therapy: Writing as Sudoku
I’m beginning to feel like the fates have aligned so that each week’s therapy session speaks directly to a writing problem I am currently facing. This hasn’t been prearranged — it’s entirely a fluke — but it’s a happy coincidence. I’ve just passed the 1/3 mark of The Familiar and was starting to wonder if I should be concerned that a lot of the book’s final third is yet unclear, plot-wise. And then I read Kaaron Warren‘s fantastic contribution to this series, and now I have my answer…
Kaaron has been publishing short stories for nearly 20 years — ‘All You Can Do is Breathe’, by the way, is on the ballot for this year’s Stoker Awards — and has recently published three novels with Angry Robot Books. What makes Kaaron’s writing so engaging (and such a joy to read) is that it is so twisted, strange, inventive, and utterly unique. She comes at stories from wonderful, unusual angles — as she has this week’s writing advice.
It struck me last night that writing a story is a bit like filling in a Sudoku puzzle.
You start with a grid, dotted with things you know. Maybe a spark of an idea, a setting, a snippet of conversation. The rest of the grid is blank. Daunting. Some spaces you see straight away how to fill, but others? They seem impossible.
Some of the blanks are easily filled; who’s telling the story? Why? And you can describe your scene, build your character.
Once you’ve done that, the spaces that seemed difficult become easier. The story starts to fall into place until you’re left with only one or two of those impossible-seeming spaces, with the answers now obvious, and you know how your story ends and how you’re going to get there.
Kaaron Warren has won or been nominated for the Stoker Awards, the Australian Shadows Awards, the Aurealis Awards and the Ditmar Awards for her incredible short story collections (Dead Sea Fruit, The Grinding House and The Glass Woman) and her wonderfully creepy novels (Slights, Walking the Tree and Mistification). You can find her online here.
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!
Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2010
Liz Grzyb and Talie Helene, editors of the inaugural Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror anthology, have just announced the table of contents — and, I’ve got to say, I’m squeeeeeeeeeeeeing over how many awesome stories are in this book! And squeeing over how lucky I feel! (And how gorgeous is this cover?!?!)
RJ Astruc: “Johnny and Babushka”
Peter M Ball: “L’esprit de L’escalier”
Alan Baxter: “The King’s Accord”
Jenny Blackford: “Mirror”
Gitte Christensen: “A Sweet Story”
Matthew Chrulew: “Schubert By Candlelight”
Bill Congreve: “Ghia Likes Food”
Rjurik Davidson: “Lovers In Caeli-Amur”
Felicity Dowker: “After the Jump”
Dale Elvy: “Night Shift”
Jason Fischer: “The School Bus”
Dirk Flinthart: “Walker”
Bob Franklin: “Children’s Story”
Christopher Green: “Where We Go To Be Made Lighter”
Paul Haines: “High Tide At Hot Water Beach”
L.L. Hannett: “Soil From My Fingers”
Stephen Irwin: “Hive”
Gary Kemble: “Feast Or Famine”
Pete Kempshall: “Brave Face”
Tessa Kum: “Acception”
Martin Livings: “Home”
Maxine McArthur: “A Pearling Tale”
Kirstyn McDermott: “She Said”
Andrew McKiernan: “The Memory Of Water”
Ben Peek: “White Crocodile Jazz”
Simon Petrie: “Dark Rendezvous”
Lezli Robyn: “Anne-droid of Green Gables”
Angela Rega: “Slow Cookin’ “
Angela Slatter: “The Bone Mother”
Angela Slatter & LL Hannett: “The February Dragon”
Grant Stone: “Wood”
Kaaron Warren: “That Girl”
Janeen Webb: “Manifest Destiny”
The editors will soon begin reading for the second volume of The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror — visit the Ticonderoga Publications website for more details. The anthology is scheduled for publication in June 2011 and will be available in hardcover, ebook and trade editions. You can pre-order this book at http://indiebooksonline.com.
Aussie Author Month! Or, What DIMIA *should* have asked…
Last year, as many of you know, I became an Australian citizen. For five years I had to jump through all of Immigration’s hoops in order to prove I was fit to stay here: criminal background checks, character checks, interviews, blood tests, chest x-rays, mugshots… You name it. They’ve got copies of my mail, family photographs, passports. They’ve got statutory declarations from my bosses, my PhD supervisor, my friends. Honestly, I am so on the grid in this country, it’s not even funny. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Immigration has recordings of my weird sneezing habits (I sneeze a lot. Usually in series of 3, 5 or 7. I’m sure if you ask the folks at DIMIA they’ll play you the tapes – after you’ve filled out at least seven hundred forms, and paid a substantial fee.)
But after all the testing – including the multiple choice “Become an Australian Citizen” quiz I had to take last year to finalise the process – there is one thing those wily folks at 55 Currie Street neglected to ask me. And, frankly, this question should’ve weighed heavily on their list:
Who are some excellent Aussie authors?
(Take note, DIMIA. This question is so much more insightful than, “What is Australia’s official language?” or “In this country, do we vote by raising our hands?” How is that supposed to determine whether or not I’m suitable for citizenship?? Err, sorry. That’s a rant for another day.)
Ahem.
April is Aussie Author Month, a cross-genre collaboration that aims to support and promote Australian writing and raise funds for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation* (click here to make a donation to the ILF). It’s such a worthwhile cause, I wanted to be a part of it.
So, in honour of Aussie Author Month, I’m going to answer Immigration’s unasked question and gush a bit about some of the Australian authors that inspire me and make me proud to be among their company. (This isn’t a complete list; it’s an indicative one. I’m bound to add to it as soon as I click ‘publish’ on this post because that’s when I’ll realise I forgot this one and that one and, crap! That one too! Still, here goes.)
All-time fave:
- David Malouf, Complete Short Stories, Ransom, and An Imaginary Life. I love Malouf’s writing with a white hot passion. LOVE. I know I’ve just elicited a round of groans from everyone who was force-fed Fly Away Peter in high school. But I read Malouf by choice; I’d never heard of Malouf until I moved here (which is more a comment on my reading habits at the time than on Malouf’s international celebrity) but I have adored every word of his that I’ve read since. An Imaginary Life changed the way I think about characters – forever – and Ransom is so beautiful it made me sob. And his short stories are superb. Every single last one of them.
Yeah, it’s personal…
- This whole exercise is completely subjective, so it will come as no surprise that Angela Slatter appears on this list. Why try to hide it? Why shuffle her down to, say, #8 or #10, as though to pretend I am more blasé about her writing simply because she’s my dear friend? I mean, sure, we share a Brain and all. But the long and short of it is: her writing rocks. You should all know this by now. And if you don’t, then visit her website poste-haste. Get your hands on her stories. Experience the magic of her worlds, her lovely turns of phrase, her amazing characters all for yourselves. Go’on now: the list will wait.
- While I’m at it, let’s lay all the cards on the table. I’m a fan of Peter M. Ball’s short stories. Horn and Bleed are fantastic novellas, but for me Peter’s shorter pieces are precisely to my taste. Reading ‘On the Destruction of Copenhagen by the War Machines of the Merfolk’ or ‘Saturday Night, with Angel’, or ‘To Dream of Stars: An Astronomer’s Lament’ … Well, it’s like Pete crawled into my head; found exactly the type of prose I find appealing; the bizarre but also familiar settings; the poignant scenarios; and mashed all these elements up and turned them into stories that fill up my inner happiness metre.
Enchanting settings, memorable characters:
- Garth Nix’s Old Kingdom trilogy and Sean Williams’ Books of the Change have stuck with me over the years because I read them within the first year of moving to Australia. They encapsulate my experience of getting to know the landscape, the country, and the wild imaginations people have here! They were, and still are, so refreshingly different to many fantasy trilogies. The bells, the necromancers, the paperwings (to name but a few) in Nix’s series captivated my imagination to such an extent that I wrote about Abhorsen in my Honours thesis; and Sean’s setting! The desert, the sea, the elemental magic – it was South Australia as I want to envision it (and still do, years and years after I read these books!) And aren’t we lucky that these two have paired up to write a series together! Can’t wait to read it!
- Margo Lanagan – umm, everything she’s written. I have to read her short stories in small doses because they are so good I might OD with joy if I tried to read them all in one go. Tender Morsels deserves all the favourable attention it’s been getting – the World Fantasy Awards were designed for insanely wonderful writing like Margo’s.
Recent treats:
- John Harwood, The Séance (Victorian/Gothic ghost story; both chilling and lovely!)
- Eva Hornung, Dogboy (A reinterpretation of the ‘boy raised by wolves’ story, set in Russia; incredibly moving)
- Kirstyn McDermott, Madigan Mine (Supernatural/psychological thriller; such fine writing, and still so visceral at one stage I felt queasy – which, in my books, is a good thing. It’s a sign of how engaged I was in the tale; I couldn’t put it down, even when my blood phobia kicked in!)
- Trent Jamieson, Death Most Definite (Nicest protagonist you’ll have met in a while, plus Bonus! story with rollicking pace!)
- David Sornig, Spiel (Rosa Stumm is real. Rosa Stumm is a fake. Is it all a game? You decide. Some beautiful writing and an intriguing story.)
On the horizon:
There’s still sooooo much Aussie writing I want to read; soooooooo much of it is stacked on my bedside table! To name but a few that have tantalised me, taunted me, and which will be read:
- Jack Dann, The Memory Cathedral
- Tansy Rayner Roberts, Power and Majesty
- Kaaron Warren, Dead Sea Fruit (I’ve got the gorgeous hardcopy! Oooh how it wants to be read!)
- Lian Hearn, Blossoms and Shadows
- Lucy Sussex, My Lady Tongue & Other Tales (picked it up for a bargain a month ago…)
- Scott Westerfeld, Leviathan
- Justine Larbaliester (Um, need to read everything of hers!)
- Alan Baxter (ditto)
Such excellent authors, such excellent books — now all I need is an oubliette in which to hide and real them all!
*The Indigenous Literacy Project aims to raise literacy levels and improve the lives and opportunities of indigenous Australians living in remote communities. It supplies culturally appropriate books to over 200 remote communities across Australia, is trialing an early literacy project aimed at 0-2 year olds, translates books into local language and works hand in hand with remote communities on literacy projects. ILP was established in 2006 by educator and bookseller Suzy Wilson and is an initiative of the Australian Book Industry. It works in partnership with the support of many organisations including the Australian Publishers Association, the Australian Booksellers Association and the Australian Society of Authors.
Awesome Spec-fic, super-cheap!
Indiebooks Online is having a sale!
Now’s your chance to order Ticonderoga Publications titles you might’ve missed out on in paperback — such as Angela Slatter’s The Girl With No Hands & Other Stories, Kaaron Warren’s Dead Sea Fruit, Sean Williams’ Magic Dirt and a heap of other great titles — for a bargain price. (Please note: this sale is for the paperback editions only.)
Even more exciting: you can now pre-order the trade paperback edition of Bluegrass Symphony at a discounted price!! You can also pre-order Ticonderoga’s massive Vampire anthology, Dead Red Heart; as well as Justina Robson’s Heliotrope; and the next installment in the publishing house’s paranormal romance anthology series, More Scary Kisses.
Don’t let me dissuade you from pre-ordering the limited edition hardcovers for these new books. They are gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous signed collectors’ items — only 100 copies of each, so get in quick!
Twelve Planets (and we wants them all, precioussss)
Exciting news from the Twelfth Planet Press website: Margo Lanagan, Lucy Sussex, Rosaleen Love, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Deborah Biancotti, Kaaron Warren, Cat Sparks, Sue Isle, Kirstyn McDermott, Narrelle M Harris, Thoraiya Dyer, and Stephanie Campisi have been announced as the lineup for the Twelve Planets project! I’m a great fan of many of these authors, so I can’t wait to get my hands on all twelve of these books!
I’ve snurched the blurb from the TPP website so that you, too, can see how cool this concept is:
The Twelve Planets are twelve boutique collections by some of Australia’s finest short story writers. Varied across genre and style, each collection will offer four short stories and a unique glimpse into worlds fashioned by some of our favourite storytellers. Each author has taken the brief of 4 stories and up to 40 000 words in their own direction. Some are quartet suites of linked stories. Others are tasters of the range and style of the writer. Each release will bring something unexpected to our subscriber’s mailboxes.
The Twelve Planets will spread over 2011 and 2012, with six books released between February and November each year. The first three titles will be Nightsiders by Sue Isle (March), Love and Romanpunk by Tansy Rayner Roberts (May) and the third collection will be by Lucy Sussex (July).
