Fantasy

Excellent promo video for Notions Unlimited

May 22, 2012

You may remember a while ago that Chuck McKenzie had a Tuesday Toot slot here at The Word, talking about his new specialist bookshop in Melbourne. The shop is called Notions Unlimited and specialises in speculative fiction – science fiction, fantasy and horror titles, as well as related genres such as paranormal romance, media tie-ins (Doctor Who, Star Trek, Star Wars, etc.), graphic novels, manga, roleplaying supplies, art books, non-fiction, and some esoteric titles. They have a major focus upon Australian small-press, with a great range of titles available, and have a commitment to providing a level of in-store customer service that guarantees the best browsing/shopping experience possible. (That’s from the website, so it must be true.)

This, folks, is the future of the bookshop – Chuck’s a great bloke and he’s setting a brilliant example.

They have a website here and a Facebook page here.

Anyway, Chuck has recently put together a promo video for Notions Unlimited and it’s excellent – worth a watch even if you’re not anywhere near Melbourne and have no intention of ever being there. Here, watch:

2011 Aurealis Awards winners

By alan

May 14, 2012

Australian Spec Fic had its night of nights on Saturday, with the presentation of the 2011 Aurealis Awards at The Independent in North Sydney. As ever it was an excellent event – top marks to SpecFaction for putting on another flawless presentation.

It’s always a great opportunity to hang out with old friends and meet a few people for the first time, or meet the meatbags of friends who had previously only been virtual. I really love the strength of this community and I’m proud to be a part of it. After lubricating at the Rydges bar, we all trooped to The Independent Theatre for more drinks, nibbles and then the presention, brilliantly MCd by the lovely Kate Forsyth.

Slideshow presentations by Cat Sparks and Rob Hood were brilliant (the cow being a particular highlight), but the real joy was watching the tremedous efforts of great Aussie writers get rewarded with shiny trophies, especially as some good friends were among the recipients. I also got to collect the award for Best Sci Fi Short Story on behalf of Robert N Stephenson, who couldn’t be there to collect it himself. I hope I did justice to his speech, which I read from my iPhone after frantically searching it out as I ran to the stage. There are dangers to live-tweeting an event if you suddenly find yourself required to participate.

I’ll repost the full shortlist below, with the winners in bold. Congratulations to all the winners and nominees!

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)

FANTASY SHORT STORY

“Fruit of the Pipal Tree” by Thoraiya Dyer (After the Rain, FableCroft Publishing)

“The Proving of Smollett Standforth” by Margo Lanagan (Ghosts by Gaslight, HarperVoyager)

“Into the Clouds on High” by Margo Lanagan (Yellowcake, Allen & Unwin)

“Reading Coffee” by Anthony Panegyris (Overland)

“The Dark Night of Anton Weiss” by D.C. White (More Scary Kisses, Ticonderoga Publications)

SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL

Machine Man by Max Barry (Scribe Publications)

Children of Scarabaeus by Sara Creasy (HarperVoyager)

The Waterboys by Peter Docker (Fremantle Press)

Black Glass by Meg Mundell (Scribe Publications)

The Courier’s New Bicycle by Kim Westwood (HarperVoyager)

SCIENCE FICTION SHORT STORY

“Flowers in the Shadow of the Garden” by Joanne Anderton (Hope, Kayelle Press)

“Desert Madonna” by Robert Hood (Anywhere but Earth, Couer de Lion)

“SIBO” by Penelope Love (Anywhere but Earth, Couer de Lion)

“Dead Low” by Cat Sparks (Midnight Echo)

“Rains of la Strange” by Robert N Stephenson (Anywhere but Earth, Couer de Lion)

HORROR NOVEL

NO SHORTLIST OR WINNING NOVEL – TWO HONORABLE MENTIONS AWARDED TO:

The Broken Ones by Stephen M. Irwin (Hachette)

The Business of Death by Trent Jamieson (Hachette)

HORROR SHORT STORY – TIE

“And the Dead Shall Outnumber the Living” by Deborah Biancotti (Ishtar, Gilgamesh Press)

“The Past is a Bridge Best Left Burnt” by Paul Haines (The Last Days of Kali Yuga, Brimstone Press)

“The Short Go: a Future in Eight Seconds” by Lisa L. Hannett (Bluegrass Symphony, Ticonderoga Publications)

“Mulberry Boys” by Margo Lanagan (Blood and Other Cravings, Tor)

“The Coffin Maker’s Daughter” by Angela Slatter (A Book of Horrors, Quercus)

YOUNG ADULT NOVEL

Shift by Em Bailey (Hardie Grant Egmont)

Secrets of Carrick: Tantony by Ananda Braxton-Smith (black dog books)

The Shattering by Karen Healey (Allen & Unwin)

Black Glass by Meg Mundell (Scribe Publications)

Only Ever Always by Penni Russon (Allen & Unwin)

YOUNG ADULT SHORT STORY

“Nation of the Night” by Sue Isle (Nightsiders, Twelfth Planet Press)

“Finishing School” by Kathleen Jennings (Steampunk! An anthology of fantastically rich and strange stories, Candlewick Press)

“Seventy-Two Derwents” by Cate Kennedy (The Wicked Wood – Tales from the Tower Volume 2, Allen and Unwin)

“One Window” by Martine Murray (The Wilful Eye: Tales from the Tower Volume 1, Allen and Unwin)

“The Patrician” by Tansy Rayner Roberts (Love and Romanpunk, Twelfth Planet Press)

CHILDREN’S FICTION (told primarily through words)

The Outcasts by John Flanagan (Random House Australia)

The Paradise Trap by Catherine Jinks (Allen & Unwin)

“It Began with a Tingle” by Thalia Kalkapsakis (Headspinners, Allen & Unwin)

The Coming of the Whirlpool by Andrew McGahan (Allen & Unwin)

City of Lies by Lian Tanner (Allen & Unwin)

CHILDREN’S FICTION (told primarily through pictures)

The Ghost of Annabel Spoon by Aaron Blabey (author and illustrator) (Penguin/ Viking Books)

Sounds Spooky by Christopher Cheng (author) and Sarah Davis (illustrator) (Random House Australia)

The Last Viking by Norman Jorgensen (author) and James Foley (illustrator) (Fremantle Press)

The Deep: Here be Dragons by Tom Taylor (author) and James Brouwer (illustrator) (Gestault Publishing)

Vampyre by Margaret Wild (author) and Andrew Yeo (illustrator) (Walker Books)

ILLUSTRATED BOOK / GRAPHIC NOVEL – TIE

Hidden by Mirranda Burton (author and illustrator ) (Black Pepper)

Torn by Andrew Constant (author) and Joh James (illustrator ), additional illustrators Nicola Scott, Emily Smith (Gestalt Publishing)

Salsa Invertebraxa by Mozchops (author and illustrator) (Pecksniff Press)

The Eldritch Kid: Whiskey and Hate by Christian Read (author) and Michael Maier (illustrator) (Gestalt Publishing)

The Deep: Here be Dragons by Tom Taylor (author) and James Brouwer (illustrator) (Gestault Publishing)

ANTHOLOGY

Ghosts by Gaslight edited by Jack Dann and Nick Gevers (HarperVoyager)

Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2010 edited by Liz Grzyb and Talie Helene (Ticonderoga Publications)

Ishtar edited by Amanda Pillar and KV Taylor (Gilgamesh Press)

The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume 5 edited by Jonathan Strahan (Night Shade Books)
Life on Mars edited by Jonathan Strahan (Viking)

COLLECTION

Bad Power by Deborah Biancotti (Twelfth Planet Press)

Last Days of Kali Yuga by Paul Haines (Brimstone Press)

Bluegrass Symphony by Lisa Hannett (Ticonderoga Publications)

Nightsiders by Sue Isle (Twelfth Planet Press)

Love and Romanpunk by Tansy Rayner Roberts (Twelfth Planet Press)

OTHER AWARDS

Peter McNamara Convenors’ Award went to the Galactic Suburbia podcast team.

Kris Hembury Encouragement Award went to Emily Craven of Adelaide.

Ditmar Awards – you MUST vote

By alan

May 8, 2012

I’ve said this before and I’m going to say it again, but let me start out with a caveat: Yes, I am nominated for a Ditmar Award this year, in the Best New Talent category. Of course I would love your vote and, if you do vote for me, you’re a great person and you have my heartfelt gratitude. You’re also one of the cool kids. But this post is bigger than that, so I just wanted to get that out of the way early.

Here’s the meat of this post:

If you are eligible to vote in the Ditmar Awards, you MUST vote in the Ditmar Awards.

The Ditmars are a popular vote award, which means they’re a popularity contest. While we’d love to think that only the best work gets recognised, and while that certainly is a part of it, it’s naive to think that there are not other factors at play. People voting for their friends, or voting against people they don’t like, or getting together with pals and discussing who they’re going to vote for in order to consolidate their efforts and so on. Yes, it’s a type of corruption, to a degree. But it’s exactly how popular vote awards always have worked and always will. That’s just a simple fact. I know the committee in charge does all they can to make the process as fair and transparent as possible, but the very nature of the beast can’t be changed.

The only way to lessen the impact of that kind of activity and increase the likelihood that the awards are a balanced and fair expression of talent and worth is to have as big a pool of voters as possible so the activities of any dedicated and active few don’t dominate or skew anything. Therefore:

If you are eligible to vote in the Ditmar Awards, you MUST vote in the Ditmar Awards.

EDIT: Following this post I got a couple of messages which basically questioned whether it was directed at anyone or group in particular. It’s not. It’s directed at everyone. Myself included. I’ve chatted with friends about the awards and said, “So, you gonna vote for me then?” *wink, wink* They may or may not vote for me, but that’s potentially corrupting the result. We all talk about the awards, talk about voting and so on. That’s why I said above about how that’s just how popular vote awards work and you can’t change the nature of the beast. You can, by adding your voice, make that beast a lot fairer and a better example of merit. If you did think this was all about you, I can only ask: Narcissist much?

Eligibility to vote comes from being a member of this year’s Continuum convention in June (where the Awards will be given) or being a member of last year’s NatCon, which was SwanCon in Perth.

If you weren’t at SwanCon last year and can’t get to Continuum this year, but you want your voice heard, you can buy a supporting membership of Continuum here: http://continuum.org.au/join/ which entitles you to vote, as per the Ditmar rules. (You also get a copy of the convention handbook, your name printed in the members list (optional) and access to the Continuum members email list.)

Voting is incredibly easy, and the preferred voting method is via the online form. I just made my votes and it took less than five minutes. It’s as simple as filling in your name and email, typing a few numbers in a few boxes and clicking Save. You do that here: http://ditmars.sf.org.au/2012

Other voting options are:

The official ballot paper, including postal address information, may be downloaded as a PDF format file from: http://ditmars.sf.org.au/2012/2012_Ditmar_ballot.pdf

And votes will be accepted via email to: ditmars@sf.org.au

I’ll reprint below the full shortlist, so you can study that and think about what/who to vote for. If you’re not sure about any particular category, just don’t vote in that category, but don’t let that stop you from voting at all. If there’s any category that you have an opinion on, vote in it!

No one can complain about the results of a popular award if they were eligible to vote and didn’t. Only as many voters as possible will give anything like a balanced and fair view in keeping with the broader view of the community and fandom. So, hop to it!

Here’s the full shortlist for all categories:

Best Novel
* The Shattered City (Creature Court 2), Tansy Rayner Roberts (HarperCollins)
* Burn Bright, Marianne de Pierres (Random House Australia)
* Mistification, Kaaron Warren (Angry Robot Books)
* The Courier’s New Bicycle, Kim Westwood (HarperCollins)
* Debris (The Veiled Worlds 1), Jo Anderton (Angry Robot Books)

Best Novella or Novelette
* “The Sleeping and the Dead”, Cat Sparks, in Ishtar (Gilgamesh Press)
* “Above”, Stephanie Campisi, in Above/Below (Twelfth Planet Press)
* “The Past is a Bridge Best Left Burnt”, Paul Haines, in The Last Days of Kali Yuga (Brimstone Press)
* “And the Dead Shall Outnumber the Living”, Deborah Biancotti, in Ishtar (Gilgamesh Press)
* “Julia Agrippina’s Secret Family Bestiary”, Tansy Rayner Roberts, in Love and Romanpunk (Twelfth Planet Press)
* “Below”, Ben Peek, in Above/Below (Twelfth Planet Press)

Best Short Story
* “Breaking the Ice”, Thoraiya Dyer, in Cosmos 37
* “Alchemy”, Lucy Sussex, in Thief of Lives (Twelfth Planet Press)
* “The Last Gig of Jimmy Rucker”, Martin Livings and Talie Helene, in More Scary Kisses (Ticonderoga Publications)
* “All You Can Do Is Breathe”, Kaaron Warren, in Blood and Other Cravings (Tor)
* “Bad Power”, Deborah Biancotti, in Bad Power (Twelfth Planet Press)
* “The Patrician”, Tansy Rayner Roberts, in Love and Romanpunk (Twelfth Planet Press)

Best Collected Work
* The Last Days of Kali Yuga by Paul Haines, edited by Angela Challis (Brimstone Press)
* Nightsiders by Sue Isle, edited by Alisa Krasnostein (Twelfth Planet Press)
* Bad Power by Deborah Biancotti, edited by Alisa Krasnostein (Twelfth Planet Press)
* Love and Romanpunk by Tansy Rayner Roberts, edited by Alisa Krasnostein (Twelfth Planet Press)
* Ishtar, edited by Amanda Pillar and K. V. Taylor (Gilgamesh Press)

Best Artwork
* “Finishing School”, Kathleen Jennings, in Steampunk!: An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories (Candlewick Press)
* Cover art, Kathleen Jennings, for The Freedom Maze (Small Beer Press)

Best Fan Writer
* Tansy Rayner Roberts, for body of work including reviews in Australian Speculative Fiction in Focus! and Not If You Were The Last Short Story On Earth
* Alexandra Pierce, for body of work including reviews in Australian Speculative Fiction in Focus!, Not If You Were The Last Short Story On Earth, and Randomly Yours, Alex
* Robin Pen, for “The Ballad of the Unrequited Ditmar”
* Sean Wright, for body of work including “Authors and Social Media” series in Adventures of a Bookonaut
* Bruce Gillespie, for body of work including “The Golden Age of Fanzines is Now”, and SF Commentary 81 & 82

Best Fan Artist
* Rebecca Ing, for work in Scape
* Lisa Rye, for “Steampunk Portal” series
* Dick Jenssen, for body of work including work in IRS, Steam Engine Time, SF Commentary and Scratchpad
* Kathleen Jennings, for work in Errantry (tanaudel.wordpress.com) including “The Dalek Game”
* Rhianna Williams, for work in Nullas Anxietas Convention Programme Book

Best Fan Publication in Any Medium
* SF Commentary, edited by Bruce Gillespie
* The Writer and the Critic, Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond
* The Coode Street Podcast, Jonathan Strahan and Gary K. Wolfe
* Galactic Chat, Alisa Krasnostein, Tansy Rayner Roberts and Sean Wright
* Galactic Suburbia, Alisa Krasnostein, Tansy Rayner Roberts, and Alex Pierce

Best New Talent
* Steve Cameron
* Alan Baxter
* Joanne Anderton

William Atheling Jr Award for Criticism or Review
* Liz Grzyb and Talie Helene, for “2010: The Year in Review”, in The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2010 (Ticonderoga Publications)
* Damien Broderick and Van Ikin, for editing Warriors of the Tao: The Best of Science Fiction: A Review of Speculative Literature (Borgo Press)
* David McDonald, Tansy Rayner Roberts and Tehani Wessely for “Reviewing New Who” series, in A Conversational Life
* Alexandra Pierce and Tehani Wessely, for reviews of Vorkosigan Saga, in Randomly Yours, Alex
* Russell Blackford, for “Currently reading: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke”, in Metamagician and the Hellfire Club

Damnation & Dames in my sweaty paw

By alan

April 30, 2012

tumblr m39zy1LLHm1rry0wno1 500 Damnation & Dames in my sweaty paw Lookit! I got my contributor copy of Damnation & Dames in the post today. It features the story I co-wrote with Felicity Dowker (who you may remember from such posts as the one right before this one). Our story is called Burning, Always Burning and I’m very proud of it. It’s my first published collaboration, and Felicity’s, so it’s a pleasure to not only feature in another Ticonderoga Publications book, but to share that feature with Felicity.

And remember me saying in the previous post about how Ticonderoga are producing some of the best books in Australia at the moment, with some of the best covers? Seriously, check that shit out. That’s another sweet-looking cover. Compared to a lot of stuff coming out these days you could be forgiven for thinking that covers are deemed unimportant and can therefore be bland and unimaginative. But not with Ticonderoga.

I can’t wait to read this book, with sixteen paranoirmal tales from a selection of great authors. It’s available now, from here.

Damnation and Dames (tpb)
[978-1-921857-03-4 ]

edited by Liz Grzyb & Amanda Pillar

The anthology brings you sixteen stories of murder and mayhem, monsters and mysterious femme fatales.

324 pages

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 G. Ross – Hard Boiled

Bread & Circuses available for pre-order

By alan

April 30, 2012

bread and circuses web Bread & Circuses available for pre order My good friend, occasional collaborator and all-round top wordsmith, Felicity Dowker, has her debut collection of short stories coming out soon from Ticonderoga Publications. It’s called Bread & Circuses and it’s brilliant. I know this for two reasons – 1. Felicity is an awesome writer, so all her stuff is brilliant; and 2. I’ve read all the work included. Yes, even the new, as yet unpublished stories unique to this collection. I know, I’m very lucky. You will be too if you get a copy.

Incidentally, how freaking sweet is that cover? Ticonderoga are producing some of the best books in Australia at the moment and they always have outstanding covers.

Felicity’s work is dark and unrelenting, with delicious stories of revenge and consequence. She mixes the fantastic with the horrific and the mundane with a masterful stroke of beautiful prose. Don’t take my word for it:

“She is one of those rare and talented writers of horror who can creep you out while still making you admire the graceful construction of her prose.” – World Fantasy Award nominee Angela Slatter
“Felicity Dowker is one of the all-too-rare writers who really understands both horror and its appeal. She can show the terrifying aspect of things as outre as enchanted dragons or the zombie apocalypse, or as commonplace as dysfunctional families and the Santa Claus army. To borrow her own words, ‘It hurts, and it’s horrible, and it’s beautiful . . . and we might as well enjoy it’.” – Award-winning Stephen Dedman

The book is available for pre-order now, so go get some. The official launch will be at Continuum in Melbourne in June, so get there too if you can.

Emma Newman’s Split Worlds

By alan

April 20, 2012

I’ve got something a bit special for you all today. Emma Newman is a great new voice in speculative fiction, and she’s got an intriguing project on the go. If you think you recognise that name, you’re right. A year and a day ago (isn’t that a nicely fairy tale thing to say) I reviewed her debut short story collection, From Dark Places after the publisher asked me to blurb it for her. I was happy to do so – it’s a great collection and you should get a copy. Anyway, now Emma has this very amibitious new thing going on.

Every week for a year (Tuesday November 1st 2011 to Thursday November 1st 2012), Emma is posting a new short story from her Split Worlds series of connected yarns. Each new story is hosted in a different place, and this week it’s my turn. So I’ll stop crapping on and let Emma explain:

***

This is the twenty-fifth tale in a year and a day of weekly short stories set in The Split Worlds. If you would like me to read it to you instead, you can listen here. You can find links to all the other stories, and the new ones as they are released here.

The Necessary Witness

Martin opened the bottle of beer and passed it to his brother-in-law, studying the bags under his eyes as he did so. He looked awful, and whilst he’d been warned by his sister, he hadn’t really appreciated it until he saw him in the flesh.

“Thanks for coming,” Paul said and took a long gulp of beer from the bottle’s neck. He looked at the kitchen clock, then at his watch. “It’ll be any time in the next hour.”

“What will?”

“The thing I need you to see. The thing I can’t make Helen understand.”

“She said you’re having problems.”

“I think she wants to leave me,” Paul put the bottle down and rested his elbows on the kitchen worktop, letting his head droop. “I don’t blame her. I would leave me, if I could.”

“Why?”

Paul looked over his shoulder at him with bloodshot eyes. “Because I’m a fucking lunatic.”

Martin twisted his own bottle, out of his depth. He was an accountant, not a counsellor. “You um… you want to talk about it?” Please say no, he thought.

“I need to show you,” Paul said, straightening up. “Helen’s away at a conference, and it’s due to happen tonight, I need someone else to be here when it does. I need someone else to see it, because every time I try to talk to Helen about it, I can’t. I… I can’t even tell you.”

Martin put his hand on his shoulder, guided him through into the living room, trying to rein in the mental images of potentially embarrassing things Paul might want to show him, mostly a variety of bizarre growths in the nether regions. He resisted the urge to talk about the football or the latest idiocy the government had come out with, all the comfortable safe topics he usually depended upon with his family. “Something’s bothering you, I can see it,” he said, sitting on the sofa next to him. “Maybe it won’t seem so bad if you just tell me what kicked all this off.”

Paul downed the rest of the beer and dumped the bottle on the coffee table. “It started three months ago. I went for a drink with some friends from work, we’d finished a big project, we were ready for a break.”

An affair, Martin thought. Christ, what am I going to tell my sister?

“We’d been there a while, I’d had a few but not too many, and there was this woman there, she was… God, she was gorgeous.”

Martin began to panic. His sister would be devastated. They’d been together for ten years, married for six of them.

“She came over and said “I know this is a weird thing to ask, but I need a man’s shadow.” And we laughed and she explained she was an art student and that I had the perfect shape for this project she was working on.”

“That’s quite a chat-up line,” Martin said.

“But that’s the thing, it wasn’t,” Paul replied. “That’s not how I saw it anyway. Like I said, I’d had a few, she was hot, I said I’d help. She said the picture had to be taken outside, in natural light, so I left the pub with her.”

“Are you having an affair?” Martin couldn’t help himself, couldn’t listen to the build-up any longer.

Paul’s shock was reassuring. “Good God no! You think I’d do that to Helen? Bloody hell Martin, I’m not the kind of-”

“Sorry,” Martin said, patting the air. “It’s just… that’s what it sounded like. Go on, I’m sorry.”

“She took me to a quieter street, set up this camera on a tripod thing she had with her and arranged me, like a model I suppose. We laughed and chatted about it, it all seemed totally normal. Well, as normal as it could be. Then when she was happy with the way the shadow looked, she pulled out this… I dunno, test-tube full of powder and chucked it all over it.”

“For the picture?”

“That’s what I thought, it was all kinds of colours and it had some glitter in it. She was whispering when she did it, I thought that was arty, then she took the picture, said thanks and left. I didn’t think much of it, but now I look back, I did feel… I don’t know, a bit odd when she chucked that stuff all over the shadow.”

“So has she used your picture for something dodgy?” Martin could see it now; pictures of his brother-in-law all over Facebook, photo-shopped into doing something unspeakable.

“God, I wish she had,” Paul shivered. “Oh no… it’s going to happen soon, I can feel it.”

“What?” Martin gripped the beer bottle as he watched Paul’s eyes snap to his shadow. It was stretched out over the rug and looked completely normal.

“You can see it, can’t you? My shadow.”

“Yes.”

Paul jumped to his feet and moved the two lamps in the room to one side, switched them on and turned off the overhead light. “Keep watching it,” he said, pointing at the shadow, now darker and stretched long by the newly focused light.

“Paul, you still haven’t told me what-”

“Look!”

Martin followed Paul’s pointed finger to see the shadow twitch. He glanced back at Paul who was standing still, sweating and pale faced but definitely not twitching. Then the shadow moved, one leg stretching away from the sole of Paul’s shoe, as if pulling itself away from something sticky. Before Martin had a chance to speak the expletives filling his mind, the shadow completely detached, now looking like it was cast by Paul running out of the room, even when he still stood there, shivering violently.

“Did you see that?” he demanded and Martin nodded dumbly. “I thought I was going mad, it’s the… sixth, seventh time it’s happened. I don’t know where it goes or-”

“Let’s follow it!” Martin said, abandoning the beer and heading for the door. A tiny part of himself felt like he was a child getting older again, frantically believing the fantastical at any opportunity as the world became more dull. Then he stopped thinking and burst out of the house into the twilight, his shadowless brother-in-law behind him.

To be continued!

—

Thanks for hosting Alan!

I hope you enjoyed the story. If you would like to find out more about the Split Worlds project, it’s all here: www.splitworlds.com – you can also sign up to get an extra story and get each new story delivered to your inbox every week. If you would like to host a story over the coming year, either let me know in the comments or contact me through the Split Worlds site.

Em x

Tuesday Toot – Angela Slatter

By alan

April 10, 2012

Tuesday Toot is a semi-regular feature here at The Word. 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. It’s hard to be seen in the digital morass and hopefully this occasional segment will help some of the quality stuff out there get noticed. It should all be things that readers of The Word will find edifying.

Today, it’s Angela Slatter:

angela2 Tuesday Toot Angela Slatter Who is Angela?

Some (okay, many) will say I’m a force for chaotic evil or chaotic good. It all depends on the day. I like to think of myself as a writer of speculative fiction (with two collections under my belt thus far), mostly on the side of dark fantasy and horror … with occasional patches of über-light science fiction (an ‘I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-butter’ kind of science fiction). My short fiction has appeared in venues such as Dreaming Again, Steampunk Reloaded, A Book of Horrors, Strange Tales II & III, 2012, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet and Shimmer, and has had Honorable Mentions in the Datlow, Link, Grant Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror anthologies.

I’m a graduate of Tin House 2006 and Clarion South 2009. I’ve been shortlisted for Aurealis Awards and Australian Shadows Awards. In 2011 my collection The Girl with No Hands & Other Tales (Ticonderoga Publications) won the Aurealis Award for Best Collection, and the story Lisa Hannett and I co-authored, “The February Dragon” (from Ticonderoga’s Scary Kisses anthology), won the Aurealis Award for Best Fantasy Short Story. My other collection, Sourdough & Other Stories (Tartarus Press), was shortlisted for a World Fantasy Award for Best Collection in 2011.

I blog here www.angelaslatter.com about shiny things that catch my eye.

What are you tooting about?

sourdough Tuesday Toot Angela Slatter Well, I guess the reprinting of my collection Sourdough & Other Stories by Tartarus Press. They originally did a limited edition hard cover version in 2010 – a gorgeous book with amazing cover art by Stephen J Clark. When that sold out, Ray asked if I was interested in having a paperback reprint. The cool, professional author response was ‘Oh, yes’. The author response one does at home alone is to Snoopy Dance in one’s underpants, throwing in a few jetés and pliés for good measure. No, really, it’s an essential part of appeasing the Gods of Writing (also known as Fear, Famine and Fuck-you).

The book is a mosaic of grown-up fairy tales, with links between them so that the work can be viewed as more than just a series of unrelated stories. It’s not a linear book and time shifts around in it (bit like a malfunctioning vortex manipulator), but I think it’s a book of surprises and I’m very proud of it. The lovely Robert Shearman wrote the Introduction and the equally lovely Jeff VanderMeer wrote the Afterword, which is like a total bonus!

Don’t read it to children though, the therapy bills will be through the roof.

What’s in store for Angela:

Well, first and foremost there’s Midnight and Moonshine, co-authored with Lisa Hannett, which is, depending on your point of view, either a collection of interlinked short stories or a mosaic novel. M & M will be published in November 2012 under the aegis of Ticonderoga Publications. The blurb reads:

Midnight and Moonshine traces the origins of the icy and dangerous Fae and explores their interactions over the centuries with the Laveaux and Beaufort families. Driven from their realm, the Fae come to America with Viking raiders in the 10th century; when the Vikings discover the nature of their stowaways, they desert them in the new land. Left to their own devices the Fae worm their way through history, largely keeping apart from humanity, but occasionally making connections that come to have long-term effects in America’s alternative Deep South.

This year there’s also: “Winter Children”, which will be appearing in PS Publishing’s Postscripts anthology; “Sun Falls” (originally in Ticonderoga’s Dead Red Heart) will be reprinted in Prime’s Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror; and “Prohibition Blues” (part of the Midnight and Moonshine suite), will make a cameo in Ticonderoga’s Damnation and Dames. In 2013, “Cuckoo” will appear in the Dark Prints Press anthology, A Killer Among Demons. In 2014, Simon Marshall-Jones’s Spectral Press will publish “Hearth and Home” as part of its chapbook series.

I’m also working a follow-up collection to Sourdough and Other Stories, called The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings, and a novel, Brisneyland by Night (with a sequel, Vigil).

You can get a copy of Sourdough and Other Stories here: http://www.tartaruspress.com/sourdough.htm, and a copy of The Girl with No Hands & Other Tales at www.indiebooksonline.com (or Book Depository, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online retailers).

***

Seriously, talk about prolific. Just reading that makes me feel inadequate. Regular readers will know something of Angela and her work from previous posts here. I reviewed Sourdough & Other Stories here and I’m very proud to have one of the limited edition hardcovers. But seriously, beautiful an artefact the book may be, but absolutely essential are the stories within. Go get your paperback copy of this book now – you won’t regret it. Easily one of the best things I read that year. – Alan

Damnation and Dames launching at Swancon this Friday

By alan

April 3, 2012

Just a quick reminder to anyone in the Perth area that Damnation and Dames will be launching at Swancon this Friday. Sadly, I won’t be attending Swancon this year, but if you’re in the Perth area you should really give it a go.

damnation dames ed grzyb pillar web Damnation and Dames launching at Swancon this Friday

Damnation and Dames is a collection of ‘paranormal noir’ stories from the likes of Lisa L Hannett and Angela Slatter, Rob Hood, Pete Kempshall and many more, including myself, in my first ever fiction collaboration. My story is called Burning, Always Burning and was co-written with the hugely talented Felicity Dowker. The anthology is edited by Liz Grzyb and Amanda Pillar, who’ve got stellar records at this kind of thing, and published by Ticonderoga Publications, so you know it’ll be well worth a look.

Usually you’d have to have forked out for convention tickets to attend, but this year – for the Friday only – a gold coin donation is enough to get you in the door. The launch kicks off at 5.30pm at the Pan Pacific Hotel on Adelaide Terrace in Perth city. I’m not completely sure what the format is, but I imagine there’ll be signings and stuff.

So if you’re at a loose end on Friday, pop along – you won’t be disappointed. Say hello to everyone there from me.

(This post stolen almost word for word from Pete Kempshall – thanks mate.)

Tuesday Toot – Kate Forsyth

By alan

April 3, 2012

Today, it’s Kate Forsyth.

Kate by tree sml Tuesday Toot Kate Forsyth Who is Kate?

Kate Forsyth is the bestselling and award-winning author of 25 books for children and adults, translated into 10 languages.

Since The Witches of Eileanan was named a Best First Novel by Locus Magazine, Kate has won or been nominated for many awards, including a CYBIL Award in the US. She’s also the only author to win five Aurealis awards in a single year, for her Chain of Charms series which tells of the adventures of two Romany children in the time of the English Civil War. Book 5: The Lightning Bolt was also a CBCA Notable Book.

Her latest book for adults, Bitter Greens, interweaves a retelling of the Rapunzel fairytale with the scandalous life story of one of its first tellers, the 17th century French writer Charlotte-Rose de la Force.

Her latest book for children is The Starkin’s Curse, a tale of high adventure, wild magic and true love, set in the same world as her bestselling novels The Starthorn Tree and The Wildkin’s Curse.

Kate is a direct descendant of Charlotte Waring, the author of the first book for children ever published in Australia, A Mother’s Offering to her Children. She is also studying a doctorate in fairytale retellings at UTS. You can read more about her at www.kateforsyth.com.au

What are you tooting about?

Bitter Greens

bitter greens Tuesday Toot Kate Forsyth Charlotte-Rose de la Force has been banished from the court of Versailles by the Sun King, Louis XIV, after a series of scandalous love affairs. She is comforted by an old nun, Sœur Seraphina, who tells her the tale of a young girl who, a hundred years earlier, is sold by her parents for a handful of bitter greens …

After Margherita’s father steals a handful of parsley, wintercress and rapunzel from the walled garden of the courtesan, Selena Leonelli, he is threatened with having both hands cut off … unless he and his wife give away their little girl.

Selena is the famous red-haired muse of the artist Tiziano, first painted by him in 1513 and still inspiring him at the time of his death, sixty-one years later. Called La Strega Bella, Selena is at the centre of Renaissance life in Venice, a world of beauty and danger, seduction and betrayal, love and superstition.

Locked away in a tower, growing to womanhood, Margherita sings in the hope someone will hear her. One day, a young man does …

Three women, three lives, three stories, braided together to create a compelling story of desire, obsession, black magic, and the redemptive power of love.

BITTER GREENS will be published APRIL 2012.

“History and fairytale are richly entwined in this spellbinding story. Compulsively unputdownable!” – Juliet Marillier, author of ‘Daughter of the Forest’.

“A must read for lovers of historical fiction. Philippa Gregory watch out!” – Pamela Freeman, winner of the 2006 NSW History Prize.

The Hunger Games, hype and adults reading YA

By alan

April 2, 2012

200px Hunger games The Hunger Games, hype and adults reading YA Like so many people, I’ve just read The Hunger Games. I read it because I wanted to know what all the hype was about. The books on their own were a big success, then big budget movie moguls took them on and the production company engaged in a massive online hype campaign. Also, a friend suggested I read them, as he thought they were pretty good. So I did. Meh.

I probably won’t go to see the movie, but, in case I did, I wanted to read the book first. The book is always better than the film, after all. And so many people have waxed lyrical about The Hunger Games, I thought it must be worth a try. In all honesty, I was underwhelmed at first. The book drags interminably with an unnecessary amount of worldbuilding and backstory. It’s called The Hunger Games, for fuck’s sake – the games really should start before I’m halfway through the book. They do, just, at around the 40% mark or so, but that’s way too late. I was moaning online about it and one person said, and I paraphrase, “Yeah, I read that book. I’m sure there’s a pretty good novella in there somewhere.”

That was a fairly accurate comment. However, when the games got underway, and kids were running around trying to survive and kill each other, my interest was hooked. In case you’re wondering what the hell I’m on about, The Hunger Games is the story of a post-apocalyptic kind of future where the masses are entertained every year with one boy and one girl from each of twelve districts dumped into a wilderness arena where they have to hunt and kill each other for televisual shits and giggles. There can be only one and so on. Also, if you haven’t heard about The Hunger Games, how’s that rock you’re living under?

So, as I said, the games themselves were good. It was interesting stuff, exciting in its own way and I finally found myself enjoying the story. I could understand what some of the fuss was about. It wasn’t brilliant, certainly not worth the level of hype, but it was pretty good. That first 40% of the book, however, should really have been, at most, 10%. The whole thing would have been much better. And as a book for young adults, it doesn’t need to be a huge tome.

So I could kind of understand where the affection for the books came from. Whether I’ll bother with parts two and three remains to be seen. While I ended up enjoying the last half of the book on a very superficial level, it didn’t take away from the many, many flaws. The vast majority of the worldbuilding and the concepts on which the entire story is built are very contrived. There’s a lot of forced convenience in the telling. But this is okay when you’re just having a casual read. It’s not claiming to be anything else.

katniss The Hunger Games, hype and adults reading YA

The dicussion on Facebook also raised another point, when someone said, essentially, “You’re reading a book for children, so you should be bored”.

I was astounded at that. There’s a vast chasm between writing/storytelling that is simpler and less sophisticated than adult fiction and writing/storytelling that is boring. Kids get bored too. To suggest a book for teens should bore an adult is asinine. It would bore a child too. A story aimed at a teen/YA audience certainly won’t have the depth and complexity of an adult novel, but should still be an engaging and entertaining story. When you read something like Harry Potter or His Dark Materials, there’s nothing boring about those. Except the last Harry Potter book, which should have been called Harry Potter And The Interminable Emo Camping*. Seriously, that book should have been half the size and it would have been great. But that’s a whole other rant.

The Harry Potter stories and the Dark Materials books are not boring, even though they’re aimed at a YA audience. They’re interesting and well-paced throughout, and they deal with subjects which challenge the thinking of their YA audience, just like YA fiction should. We should never write down to young people – they’re smarter than you might think. The Hunger Games deals with themes which should challenge YA readers too – kids as young as 12 running around killing other kids as young as 12 for sport, for instance. The whole premise of the book seems well outside a YA purview. Perhaps that very fact alone is what’s made The Hunger Games so popular. And that story, contrived and flawed though it may be, isn’t boring. The first 40% of the book is boring, however, and it shouldn’t be. To suggest we ought to find it boring as adults reading YA is ridiculous.

It should simply have been a shorter book, with all that worldbuilding and backstory tightened right up so that we got into the excitement of the Games themselves sooner. At least, that’s my opinion. And you all know how much I like to share an opinion.

SPOILER AHEAD!

One more thing before I go – I have one MAJOR issue with this story. I’ve saved this for the end, because it’s a real spoiler if you haven’t read the book. So, if you want to read it, maybe you should skip this last bit. I mean, the whole story is utterly predictable from the outset. That’s the lack of sophistication I was talking about earlier, which doesn’t have to be boring in a well-written story. But…

We know damn well that Katniss is going to survive. We know almost certainly that Peeta will survive too, somehow, or die doing something to ensure Katniss survives. From the very opening scenes, we know how this thing is going to play out, but we’re happy to go along for the ride.

There are several problems with it, which I really can’t be bothered to go into now any more than I have already and, in truth, it doesn’t matter. I still enjoyed the book and I’m glad it’s popular and getting young people reading. Top work.

But, right towards the end, there’s a surprise twist thrown in that’s just fucking mental. What the holy god-dancing shit is that thing with the dead tributes all coming back as werewolves? Or something. Seriously, what the shit, Suzanne Collins? All these kids had been killed in various ways. Many of them we don’t know how they died, but they did. Then they’re suddenly all werewolves come out to screw around with the final battle between our heroes and the one surviving tribute. It’s utterly bizarre. Why are they werewolves? How are they werewolves? What the fuck is the point in suddenly throwing that in at the end?

Sure, if you wanted some extra excitement, throw in some random attacker to mess with the balance of things. Even a pack of genetically modified wolves or something. But why the dead kids from before? Dead, remember? No longer freaking living.

And, just as a matter of detail, if Katniss, Peeta and Cato hadn’t managed to get onto the Cornucopia and have their last little scrap up there, that pack of wolfchildren would have torn all three of them to pieces and there would have been no victor, so letting those werekids out at all makes no sense.

Anyway, I’ll stop ranting now.

* I can’t take credit for that title. I can’t remember where I heard it, but it’s perfect.

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