The Truth About Donuts

Via Sean Williams, an exposé about donut hunting by Robyn Tatlow-Lord 🙂

Lives here.

Why I am awake this early? There is a damnable bird in a tree outside my window twittering -.-; it’s just gone 4.30am. Get a clock, Nature! *grumble*

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Review of Sprawl

… over at Guy Salvidge’s place. Sprawl is the latest anthology from TPP and has some awesome stuff from the likes of Peter M. Ball, L.L. Hannett, Sean Williams, et al.

He says nice things about Brisneyland by Night:

“Brisneyland by Night” by Angela Slatter is an intriguing and complex tale about the Weyrd, and more specifically a kinderfresser or child eater. Worse, it seems unscrupulous sorts are harvesting the tears of young children in the creation of some kind of elixir. Our protagonist, Verity Fassbinder, is half Weyrd and half Normal herself, and is thus mistrusted by both groups. She’s on the trail of some missing children, and her investigations force her to confront the heinous misdeeds of her own Weyrd father, the odious Grigor. I enjoyed reading this so much that I was genuinely disappointed to turn onto the last two pages.

The rest is here.

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And so, retreat #2

Bed the size of a football field

Nature = galah

Nature = private beach thingy

And so, the retreat. The Edge writers group took off for its annual retreat. We subbed writing stuff, we spent a chunk of one day group critting, then the next day everyone had individual crits with our tutors du jour – or in this case, tutors de l’année. Then the next few days are spent writing, percolating, editing, eating, drinking, talking, etc. In our case, there were also canoe-related activities … which brings me to our tutors: this year’s tutors of awe were Jack Dann and Robert Shearman – and we also had a special guest appearance by the inimitable Sean Williams. The natural link between tutors and canoes? Shearman had to be rescued from one by Dann. And Deb, whose injury is documented below. Shearman’s rep as Britain’s Greatest Writer is intact … however, he did have to hand over his medallion from the Cambridge Rowing Eleven … it was promptly given to Jack in reward for his work as lifeguard.

The location was sourced by Kate and Rob and was awesome to the power of rad  – and it shall continue to remain undisclosed coz, quite frankly, I don’t want just anyone finding their way up there :-).

Last known photo of Robert Shearman

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I really *am* working

No, no, no, I really am working!

I finished off the latest collab with Lisa Hannett, Prohibition Blues, on Friday night (faeries, shoes, werewolves, bayous, tie-pins!). Then last night I finished off Sun Falls (talking head in a box). Today I am going to take a tilt at the novella Ragged Run (oh, too complicated), which follows on from the story in Sprawl, Brisneyland by Night.

I’m not just sitting on my backside eating choclit frogs provided by Sean Williams. Really, I’m not.

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Australis Imaginarium – cover and pre-ordery goodness

Oooooh, the cover at last. And the order-ish details are here http://fablecroft.com.au/australis-imaginarium/pre-order-australis-imaginarium

Basically, it’s a book of quintessentially Australian fables.

“Once a Month, on a Sunday” by Ian McHugh

“Night Heron’s Curse” by Thoraiya Dyer

“Hunter of Darkness, Hunter of Light” by Michael Pryor

“A Pig’s Whisper” by Margo Lanagan

“Stealing Free” by Deborah Biancotti

“Suffer the Little Children” by  Rowena Cory Daniells

“Virgin Jackson” by Marianne de Pierres

“The Claws of Native Ghosts” by Lee Battersby

“The Jacaranda Wife” by Angela Slatter

“The Dark Under the Skin” by Dirk Strasser

“Red Ochre” by Lucy Sussex

“Passing the Bone” by Sean Williams

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ToC Australis Imaginarium

Tehani at FableCroft has announced the final table of contents for Australis Imaginarium:

“Once a Month, on a Sunday” by Ian McHugh

“Night Heron’s Curse” by Thoraiya Dyer

“Hunter of Darkness, Hunter of Light” by Michael Pryor

“A Pig’s Whisper” by Margo Lanagan

“Stealing Free” by Deborah Biancotti

“Suffer the Little Children” by  Rowena Cory Daniells

“Virgin Jackson” by Marianne de Pierres

“The Claws of Native Ghosts” by Lee Battersby

“The Jacaranda Wife” by Angela Slatter

“The Dark Under the Skin” by Dirk Strasser

“Red Ochre” by Lucy Sussex

“Passing the Bone” by Sean Williams

And she’s running a competition to celebrate – details live here http://fablecroft.com.au/books/book-giveaway-competition-stories-edited-by-neil-gaiman-and-al-sarrantonio

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Ditmar Voting

(snurched from Jason Fischer)

Looks like it’s time for Ditmar voting again. As this is the year of AussieCon4, it’s a great chance to showcase some antipodean talent.

Tehani Wessely is compiling a list, checking it twice, for eligible Aussies – it lives here https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AhAUWipZqrNWdFljalBZWmJwSnc1cTJVT2s0ZnlMLVE&hl=en_GB#gid=0

It also seems I have four stories eligible:

Frozen
Light as Mist, Heavy as Hope
Words
The Girl with No Hands

Other awesome eligibles include LL (Lisa Hannett), Jason Fischer, Peter Ball, Cat Sparks, Chris Greene, Deborah Biancotti, Felicity Dowker, Dirk Flinthart, Alan, Baxter, Garth Nix, Kirstyn McDermott, Gillian Polack, Kaaron Warren, Laura Goodin, Jenny Blackford, Lee Battersby, Kathleen Jennings, Lezli Robyn (also a Campbell nominee this year), Sean Williams, Steph Campisi, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Thoraiya Dyer, and Trent Jamieson.

Nominations can be made here http://ditmars.sf.org.au/2010/nominations.html and the rules live here http://wiki.sf.org.au/2010_Ditmar_eligibility_list

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Sean Williams: Author, Raconteur, Choclit Connoisseur and Inaugural Drive-By Victim

(Photo by the ever-amazing Cat Sparks, at last year’s Aurealis Awards.)

Sean Williams is a prolific author of fantasy and science fiction – oh, and yeah, he’s talented too. Sean’s series include The Books of the Change, Astropolis, Geodesica, Broken Land … and of course, those Star Wars books. He has a choclit habit. He was also kind enough to consent to be the first victim of a weekly series I’m going to run in the lead-up to WorldCon (and maybe afterwards if anyone is still talking to me). Sean may now regret it. 🙂

The Drive-Bys are a bunch of mini-interviews, 5 questions only, the last question is always the same – I like to think tof it as the control question, where victims valued and adored interviewees show their mettle. Some interviewees will be established writers, some up-and-comers, some will be editors, some illustrators, some agents and some publishers – have I got everyone there?

But enough of waffling! Here, for your reading pleasure and edification, is Sean Williams.

1. If I didn’t write, I would … 
Ursula le Guin tackled this issue best.

Q: “If you weren’t a writer, what would you be?”

A: “Dead.”

Right on. If there isn’t part of you that feels this way, then you shouldn’t be a writer. Maybe I’d also add “Dead bored”, because that’s what I am when I’m not writing. But if I had to choose, if you put a gun to my head and the world banded together to beg me not to write another word, please god, then I’d probably go back to one of my other true loves: music (I studied it at uni and even won a Young Composer’s Award, back when I was young), maths (which is not so different, really, from music or writing), or astronomy (because you can never peer through too many telescopes). Or some awesome mixture of the three. What would that be? I don’t know, but someone should invent it.

2. I love/hate writing to a theme because … 
There are lots of things I love/hate about writing – deadlines, reviews, being my own boss, the endless chocolate binges – but writing to a theme isn’t one of them. I love it. Constraints are good (imho) because they force you to find innovative, creative, exciting solutions to a problem you might never have confronted before. And it’s okay if you can’t find a solution: who would want to write anything other than innovative, creative, exciting? Better to abandon the theme than risk that. I treat themed anthologies as a kind of dare, in order to see what kind of writer I’m able or prepared to be.

It’s probably not entirely safe to mention Star Wars in this context, but I’m going to anyway. I love mucking around in that big ol’ galaxy – the bigger it gets, the more interesting backwaters there are – and writing to theme is very much part of the package. Everyone knows what the deal is with Star Wars, right? So the whole point of writing for a franchise is giving people what they expect while at the same time giving them a book that is surprising, fresh, and challenging. Obviously that’s difficult; obviously individual books succeed or fail to varying degrees on each point because it’s probably impossible to succeed at both; obviously no one should ever see the creative decisions made in producing the final product. But it’s those decisions, juggling those inherent tensions, that make writing for Star Wars a productive thing for me. It’s not just about the money, honest (but how else am I going to pay for all that chocolate?).

3. Who is your favourite fictional character and why? 
You know, I’ve never been asked this outside the Star Wars universe. Favourite books, favourite authors, favourite genre – sure.  But not favourite fictional character. And … hmmm. It’s hard. I’d say the Doctor except I want to give you an answer that comes from a book rather than a TV show so I’ll sound clever. (But hell, that’s actually how I discovered Doctor Who: through the Target novellisations, way back in the 70s. Doesn’t that count? Shhh.) I’ve been thinking through some of my favourite series, looking for smart answers: Ged/Sparrowhawk from Earthsea would be there; so would Aubrey and Maturin of the Patrick O’Brian novels; Louis Wu from Ringworld; Hercule Poirot – where to stop? How to justify them? Why are these all blokes? My brain hurts.

 In the end, I’ve settled on a man who is strong but knows when strength isn’t enough, smart but always interested in learning new stuff, handsome but only in the right light, and articulate but only ever when there’s something to say. In a genre (thrillers) full of muscle-bound shitheads who treat women like dirt, there’s really only one guy who gets my vote, and that’s Lee Child’s Jack Reacher. Long may he reign.

4. Which is your favourite of your own books? Which is your preferred baby? 
The next one. No, the last one. Wait, the first one. What about the one I’m writing right now – or the one I haven’t even started yet? Argh!

Choosing between books is exactly like choosing between your kids. You shouldn’t be able to. No one should ask you to. Why are you doing this to me???

5. Most importantly: donuts (or doughnuts) or danishes? 
Donuts (chocolate), if they’re made well. Otherwise, croissants (chocolate) are the perfect accompaniment to a hot drink (chocolate) on a wintery Adelaide day. I think I’ll have one right now. Thanks for putting the thought in my head. (It might have been lurking in there already.)

 Sean’s website is here http://www.seanwilliams.com/

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Blurby Goodness

Books start to feel real when you send back the final edits and then you get the blurb from your publisher. If I wasn’t so tired from typing up edits and the Most Awesome Wedding of Jason Nahrung and Kirstyn McDermott last night (MC’d by Dr Kim Wilkins, attended by Sean Williams, Alison Goodman and loads of other writers and normal people – why, yes, there was a bit of spec-fic royalty about it), I would be Snoopy Dancing.

Blurb:
Welcome to the beautiful magic, restless passion and exquisite horror of Angela Slatter’s impeccably imagined tales.

In the cathedral-city of Lodellan and its uneasy hinterland, babies are fashioned from bread, dolls are given souls and wishes granted may be soon regretted. There are ghosts who dream, men whose wings have been clipped and trolls who long for something other. Love, loss and life are elegantly dissected in Slatter’s earthy yet poetic prose.

As Rob Shearman says in his Introduction: ‘Sourdough and Other Stories manages to be grand and ambitious and worldbuilding – but also as intimate and focused as all good short fiction should be. . . .The joy of Angela Slatter’s book is that she’s given us a set of fairy tales that are at once both new and fresh, and yet feel as old as storytelling itself.’

ToC:
1. Introduction by Robert Shearman

2. The Shadow Tree

3. Gallowberries

4. Little Radish

5. Dibblespin

6. The Navigator

7. The Angel Wood

8. Ash

9. The Story of Ink

10. Lost Things

11. A Good Husband

12. A Porcelain Soul

13. The Bones Remember Everything

14. Sourdough

15. Sister, Sister

16. Lavender and Lychgates

17. Under the Mountain

18. Afterword: Sourdough and Gallowberries for us All by Jeff VanderMeer

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The Bribie Pack

This is the bunch of reprobates who went to Bribie for The Edge Writers’ Retreat a couple of months back … only the names have been omitted to protect the guilty or slightly culpable … except for Kirstyn McDermott, whose photo it is … and Jason Nahrung who desseminated said photo …

Did I cop it for the plaits? Yes, I did. Did I cop it for the singlet with anchors on it? Oh, yes indeed.

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