Ian Astbury and Billy Duffy have embraced their rock ‘n’ roll roots (even riffing off ‘She Sells Sanctuary‘) and delivered a punchy 10-track album. I haven’t had time to dissect it properly — lyrically, there’s plenty of the usual spiritualism and imagery, and I suspect some reflection on the shadowy side of celebrity and society — but it sure does chug along. The rhythm section is massive and Astbury gives his all on vocals.

Adding to the shiny is the packaging of the two-disc version: it’s a wee hardcover book packing an extra disc with four previously released EP tracks — absolutely brilliant presentation that makes the album a splendid artifact with lyrics and artwork.

Allmusic.com said ‘Choice of Weapon is the Cult’s finest moment in 23 years’ — read the full four-star review — and as much as I enjoyed Born Into This, it’s hard to disagree if it’s four-on-the-floor you’re after.

The track ‘Lucifer’ is currently available at the band’s website as a free download. Truly tempting!

The Resurrectionists

by Kim Wilkins

HarperCollins, 2000, ISBN: 073226797 8

THIS is the third novel by Brisbane’s Kim Wilkins, one I’ve criminally and unaccountably not read until now. It’s interesting to look back at this, seeing how accomplished she was even back then: the prose is fairly tight, the narrative spot on, the characters engaging.

The story is told in two time lines, one in 1790s England and the other contemporary. In the past, a pair of daring lovers move into a cottage in a village near, and modelled on, it would appear, Whitby, there to encounter some seriously unnatural goings on in the suitably Gothic basement of the church. In the modern era, Aussie cellist Maisie Fielding journeys to the same cottage in the wake of her grandmother’s death, to find that those goings on are still, ahem, going on.

The setting lends itself wonderfully to the creeping dread: coastal storms, winter snow and isolation, and a village that keeps its secrets close and viciously guarded.

Maisie is going through a rough time personally, filled with doubt about her relationship with her opera singer lover Adrian, at sixes and sevens with her overbearing mother and ineffectual father; a few months sifting through her grandmother’s life — a life she never got to know, her mother and grandmother not having got on — seems like just the ticket for getting her head straight.

But there’s the diary left by Georgette, and there’s her grandmother’s legacy, the attractive gypsy boy down the road and the not small matter of Maisie’s hidden psychic power to contend with. This is no simple holiday … especially when the spooky strangers come a’knocking and Maisie is left to feel very unwelcome indeed.

Told from several points of view, the Aurealis Award-winning story is a compelling jigsaw: Georgette sets the scene, Adrian adds domestic pressure, the unlikely villain offers tension as plans collide … and it all comes together as Maisie faces both her past and her future against a very old magic indeed.

While there are a couple of niggling elements in the plot — the way in which Georgette’s diary is compiled, the absence of a possible ally — they are more than overshadowed by the bold denouement that makes this a truly memorable read.

Previous Challenge reviews:

• Sea Hearts, by Margo Lanagan, fantasy.
• Burn Bright, by Marianne de Pierres, fantasy.
• The Courier’s New Bicycle, by Kim Westwood, fantasy.
• The Road, by Catherine Jinks, horror
• The Shattered City, by Tansy Rayner Roberts, fantasy.
• Frantic, by Katherine Howell, crime.

It’s getting real now! My seaside Gothic Salvage is on its way, and to mark its launch in June, Twelfth Planet Press is giving away three copies at Goodreads! The details are HERE. Entries close on June 15. Good luck, and thanks for your interest!

1. Pick you story.

Dark Shadows ran as a daily serial for how long? So lots of material to sift through. <I tried to watch the 1990s remake recently: it hasn’t travelled well.> What to include? How about not everything? Save the werewolf girl for later, or at least foreshadow her inner hairiness, for instance. No, when presented with so many story ideas, best to pick just one, and add a subplot or two, but make sure you have that narrative drive from beginning to end. So it might be a love story or a love gone wrong/revenge story; it might be a family drama; it might be a vampire trying to deal with society 200 years later; it might be how a vampire helps a boy and his dead mother find a happy ending. It’s probably not all of those things at once.

2. Pick your tone.

So many ways to approach such material… a once wealthy family brought under by a scheming, vengeful witch, and then along comes a vampire from the past to help put things right. Is this a comedy? A kitsch retro bit of fun pie? Is it a horror story, a melodrama, a thriller? Pick one, leaven it with another, and work it, baby. But don’t bounce between them willy nilly, and for pity’s sake don’t suck your few slightly funny gags dry. Alice Cooper’s a girl’s name. Oh my. A family that has the big balls. Oh dear.

3. Characterisation is key.

It’s about the people, innit. So you have a cool cast of characters, each with their own thang, and then you give a glimpse of each and forget about them. Instant or reincarnated love? Two people in one house who believe in ghosts? Two hundreds years of obsessive love? Hm, somewhere along the line, they need to meet. But most of all, perhaps, that hero needs to be heroic, not a cad; or if he is a cad, he needs to realise it. But our vampire hero treats the help wrong and, on this occasion, he picked the wrong gal to use and discard, and hell hath no fury, right? What exquisite blackmail it is to have to make love to the pretty witch — tell me again why she still loves the cad? As Depp’s Barnabas admits, he’s not a gentleman.

4. Story that works for a greater whole.

So you kill the psychologist and you catch the bad dad thieving and there will be ramifications. Won’t there? You kill a bunch of folks and there will be ramifications … won’t there? History repeats with the torch-wielding mob baying for your blood and — they go home when told to. No, when the hero suffers a setback, it has to have an impact. The worst thing happens and it means something, damnit; it doesn’t get swept under the carpet.

5. Make sure your theme is up to date.

So this is probably being overly harsh, but damn.. Dark Shadows seems to have embodied those far simpler times when those with money could get away with anything. Murder is fine as long as the family’s fortunes and social standing is upheld. The staff should know their place and even the most accomplished, self-made witch with 200 years of achievement under her cauldron just wants to be loved.

A case study of how to do it: after we got home, we had a palate-cleansing viewing of The Addams Family movie. Now that’s kooky.

My novella Salvage, a seaside Gothic, is available for pre-order in paperback from Twelfth Planet Press for $15 plus postage.

The novel was primarily written on, and is set on a fictional version of, Bribie Island, over a three-year stretch of writing retreats.

About Salvage:

“Seeking to salvage their foundering marriage, Melanie and Richard retreat to an isolated beach house on a remote Queensland island.

“Intrigued by a chance encounter with a stranger, Melanie begins to drift away from her husband and towards Helena, only to discover that Helena has her own demons, ageless and steeped in blood.

“As Richard’s world and Helena’s collide, Melanie must choose which future she wants, before the dark tide pulls her under … forever.”

I recognised writers and publishers from all states and the ACT in the crowd that pretty much filled the theatre with a veritable who’s who, which once again demonstrated the generosity and openness of the community.

The audience saw a virtual passing of the torch from HarperVoyager stalwart editor Stephanie Smith to the new top ed in the hot seat, the much respected Deonie Fiford.

The late Sara Douglass and Paul Haines were in our thoughts, and it was wonderful to see Haines’s rivetting story ‘The Past is a Bridge Best Left Burnt’ score a win. His widows, Jules, sent a lovely acceptance message read by Cat Sparks which addressed the importance of writing to Paul and the value he placed on the spec fic community.

Sean the Bookonaut provides a storified rundown of the awards

Scott Westerfeld, Kim Westwood and — by iPhone, via Alan Baxter — Robert N Stephenson provided some of the other memorable speeches, and Kate Forsyth was the most delightful host one could ask for.

I think it was a tie between Sean Williams and Marty Young for having the shirt most people wanted to own… but that might just have been at our breakfast table. Robert Hood should be in the running for a Ditmar next year for ‘best use of a cow in a science fiction slideshow’.

I believe the awards will be held in Sydney for a third year next year — bring it on!

Pictures of the night by Cat Sparks

AUREALIS AWARD WINNERS FOR WORKS PUBLISHED IN 2011

Children’s fiction told primarily through words: City of Lies by Lian Tanner (Allen & Unwin)
Children’s fiction told primarily through pictures: Sounds Spooky by Christopher Cheng (author) and Sarah Davis (illustrator) (Random House Australia)
Young Adult Short Story: ‘Nation of the Night’ by Sue Isle (Nightsiders, Twelfth Planet Press)
Young Adult Novel: Only Ever Always by Penni Russon (Allen & Unwin)
Illustrated Book/Graphic Novel: TIE Hidden by Mirranda Burton (author and illustrator) (Black Pepper)
The Deep: Here be Dragons by Tom Taylor (author) and James Brouwer (illustrator) (Gestalt Publishing)
Collection: Bluegrass Symphony by Lisa L Hannett (Ticonderoga Publications)
Anthology: Ghosts by Gaslight edited by Jack Dann and Nick Gevers (HarperVoyager)
Horror Short Story: TIE ‘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)
Horror Novel: No winner or shortlist.
Fantasy Short Story: ‘Fruit of the Pipal Tree’ by Thoraiya Dyer (After the Rain, FableCroft Publishing)
Fantasy Novel: Ember and Ash by Pamela Freeman (Hachette)
Science Fiction Short Story: ‘Rains of la Strange’ by Robert N Stephenson (Anywhere but Earth, Coeur de Lion)
Science Fiction Novel: The Courier’s New Bicycle by Kim Westwood (HarperCollins)
Peter McNamara Convenors’ Award: Galactic Suburbia podcast –- Alisa Krasnostein, Alex Pierce, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Andrew Finch (producer)
Kris Hembury Encouragement Award: Emily Craven of Adelaide

Grants Picnic Ground, the Dandenongs

To start the week on a high, here’s a picture from a recent drive to Grants Picnic Ground near Kallista in the Dandenongs. The picnic ground offers a couple of walking tracks. I chose it with my father in mind, because one track is specifically built for people with limited mobility — it’s about 300m of flat track through the ferns and ash trees if I remember the sign rightly.

More Dandenong pictures

A bonus is the cafe serving coffee and scones, and across the road, the bird-feeding area where you can buy seed for the cockatoos, galahs and other parrots who flock to the tucker. The national parks in the Dandenongs are a spectacular getaway close to the eastern outskirts of the city, and sometimes you really need that breath of fresh air, eh?

This time (in yesterday’s Weekend Australian) it’s Ross Fitzgerald sinking the boot, lambasting writing festivals — or at least a selection of them — for not paying attention to the nation’s up-and-comers; for not selling enough books; for making those garretted writers get out and talk about their work to the faintly curious, non-buying masses.

There are good points he makes about how writers are perceived to have to operate to make a buck. Some enjoy meeting readers, some do not; some like rubbing shoulders with their peers, others do not. Are festivals a cost-effective way to invest in a country’s literary industry? But he’s taken the Newman approach to a problem: if it’s not working, or perceived to be working, don’t fix it; axe it. That’ll learn’em!

If the Australian‘s editor, Chris Mitchell, is right, none of it matters anyway for the young, emerging writers: if they’re ‘good’ enough, those young guns will find their market. Ta-dah!

Fitzgerald wails about a ‘sloppy’ schedule at the Sydney Writers Festival that means he can’t see two people he’d like to — unfortunate, but, you know, diddums. I think he’s right, though, to question the audience the marquee festivals target — he could’ve also mentioned the prices most marquee festivals charge for admission that must impact on the money people are willing to spend on books, for instance, and indeed how many panels and events they can attend.

He questions the validity of foreign writers on the program, but that’s more problematic. Should no one here be interested in how others perceive the world — one of the reasons people read, one would think; those who don’t read selectively to have their world view reinforced, at least. Bob Katter’s book should sell well up Queensland way, for both reasons.

Fitzerald decries the Sydney festival giving Katter and Kevin Rudd a platform — we’ve heard enough from them surely, he suggests. Thing is, maybe we haven’t. Maybe the people who buy their books are looking for something behind the media veneer and pointed headlines. Maybe these pollies have just the same right for consideration to have their written opinions heard and discussed as any other scribe. Maybe.

Fitzgerald doesn’t talk about the Emerging Writers Festival, or the National Young Writers Festival. Genre events don’t get a look in. As Fitzgerald notes, being on a festival program is one of few ways a writer might hope to attract some mainstream media attention, but even then, good luck with that: unless you are someone like Katter, or Rudd, or maybe an award winner, say, a Vogel award winner.

Fitzgerald doesn’t note that the marquee festivals spread their net widely, relying on the headliners to draw an audience that, one hopes, will stay for a taste of the up-and-comers also on the program — a program that, again, hopefully, will work to provide them with that hard-to-get exposure. Exposure by osmosis, not just in front of an audience but in the green room, too.

A recent lit fest I attended was Adelaide Writers Week: I came away with a bag of books and knowledge of two Aussie debut novelists I’d never heard of before; one has just been shortlisted for the Miles Franklin award. A connection has been made. The festival panels were free; grazing was encouraged. Schmoozing was enabled. The signing queues were long. One book I wanted to get had sold out.

Fitzgerald and others decry the rewards given to established writers who, apparently, don’t deserve them, having already made their mark and achieved, presumably, some kind of self-sufficiency, and call for greater focus on the emerging writers — hear hear! — but yet fail to acknowledge that Newman’s applauded stroke has taken out two valuable, career-starting awards for emerging Queensland writers. And surely a university professor like Fitzgerald would have some opinion on Newman scratching the nation’s only prize for science writing. Nah.

Few have talked about the way in which Newman raced to kill off the awards, leaving Queensland the only state without such a program. A unilateral decision that left his Arts minster blowing in the wind like a dag on a sheep’s arse, her standing in tatters before she’d even been sworn in.

Unhappy with last year’s awards decisions, looking to save a buck, Newman’s answer was to scratch the whole thing. Not cut back on the cash, or maybe roll some awards together, which given the economic times most folks would’ve understood. Just kill’em off, taking with them the emerging writers manuscript prize and the David Unaipon award: two rare opportunities for starting writers (not necessarily young ones, mind!) to get a leg up.

How important is an award, really? Well, yesterday at the Williamstown Literary Festival, a panelist speaking to a packed room on ‘the path to publication’ told how she had been shortlisted — shortlisted, not won — for the Vogel award. The award is, ironically, supported by the Australian: yes, the paper celebrates the death of two such awards while sponsoring another, age-restricted one — the word you’re looking for is hypocrisy. Anyway, this writer was shortlisted for the Vogel and it was, combined with her CV of short stories and articles, sufficient springboard to establish a fledgling career in the literary industry.

Anyhow, the Queensland Literary Awards, set up by the writing community to replace the government’s, has extended its submission deadline until May 20. University of Queensland Press has continued its support of the emerging writers and Unaipon prize. A leg up for those with the ‘right’ stuff.

UPDATE: You can listen to the interview portion of the show here.

The timing was cool, because I’d just finished listening, albeit in a distracted fashion, to the novel read by Christopher Lee. Overall, an entertaining and atmospheric reading, enhanced by background music, with Lee investing himself in the telling. All those first-person narratives certainly come to the fore, and his link to the cinematic Dracula just adds to the glee.