books

by

now listen here

Keith Stevenson has kindly made a podcast of my short story Smoking, Waiting for the Dawn, at Terra Incognita. It’s up now. The story is the latest in a monthly series that includes Sean Williams reading an unpublished short story and Cat Sparks reading her The Bride Price. I’m looking forward to next month’s story, by Trent Jamieson.

Smoking … was published in Dreaming Again last year. The collection won a Ditmar (for best collection) at the National Science Fiction Convention in Adelaide earlier this month. Cat Sparks also won a Ditmar, and Sean Williams was deservedly awarded the Peter McNamara award for being an all-round awesome dude. This year’s Ditmars were hard to fault, in fact, with very deserving winners across the board. I was quite chuffed to see Rob Hood, Margo Lanagan and Kirstyn McDermott land theirs, and took delight in the awarding of the William Atheling Jnr award for criticism or review go to Kim Wilkins for a superb, scholarly article about genre bias. The full list of winners can be read here.

by

Booked in Bundaberg

From left, Stephanie Laurens, Sue Gammon, Jason Nahrung,Kirsty Brooks, Sandy Curtis at Booked in Bundaberg

From left, Stephanie Laurens, Sue Gammon, Jason Nahrung, Kirsty Brooks, Sandy Curtis at Booked in Bundaberg

There really is nothing like country hospitality. I had the good fortune to be a guest at Booked, the first such event hosted by the Bundaberg Library at the weekend. Also appearing were Stephanie Laurens, Kirsty Brooks and Kim Michelle Toft, and what a fascinating group they were. The day began after a coffee with all of us answering questions from our awesome library host Sue Gammon.

I was particularly interested to hear that all of us were inspired to write our initial books by self-interest: interested in telling the kind of story we each wanted to read, rather than as a marketing exercise or commercial venture. The theme of passion for writing and storytelling was one that ran strong through my own presentation later in the day. But that followed a superb presentation by Kim of her gorgeous silk painting of underwater scenes, some she uses in her children’s books, others she sells through her gallery in northern New South Wales. Then Stephanie blew us away with her work ethic and description of her amazing house in Victoria, tailor-made for a full-time writer. Then I was chuffed to field a bunch of questions about horror and vampires and writing in general, before Kirsty charmed the crowd (and it *was* a crowd, what a great turnout!) with her sheer enthusiasm and zaniness.

I have two goddaughters in Bundy, so being able to catch up with my dear friends there as well as rub shoulders with writers and readers really was a lot of fun. And then there was the generous barbecue held by Bundaberg writer Sandy Curtis …

We forget, in the city, just how many stars there are. Even a country boy like me forgets from time to time. A walk on the beach away from the city lights can do wonders for our perspective. Life is a fleeting thing. Best to indulge those passions while we can, methinks.

Me, blabbing on. Pictures: Kirstyn McDermott

Me, blabbing on. Pictures: Kirstyn McDermott

by

parallel importation: aussie books under threat?

Australian writer Garth Nix, representing the forces of light, went shoulder-to-shoulder with Dymocks’ Don Grover, representing the forces of darkness. They started on Triple J’s The Hack and then went video on Lateline (the preamble to the panel can be found at the ABC’s IView if you don’t mind some downloading and wading, until May 20).
. Worth tuning into both to get an idea of the issues involved in proposed changes to Australia’s copyright/importation laws affecting the local publishing industry. The Productivity Commission’s inquiry into the laws is here; worth checking out the submissions to see what writers and publishers are saying about the proposals.

by

Zombies have their day … and night

The indominitable Chuck McKenzie, his glee barely contained by the electrons, points out this piece in Time magazine proclaiming that the zombies’ day has come. If it means less twee Twilight and more actual, you know, horror with something to say, bring it on. Though Chuck, the vampire will never die, my friend 😉

by

Booked in Bundaberg

I’m excited to say that I’ll be joining some excellent writers at Bundaberg Library’s Booked program in May. Stephanie Laurens, Kirsty Brooks and Kim Michelle Toft will be sharing the love and angst at panels, chats and, I believe, over lunch. I grew up in the Wide Bay region and still have good friends in Bundy, so it’s a bit of a return to my old stomping grounds, bringing some Gothic vampire love with me 🙂
Booked is on Sunday, May 17, conveniently dovetailing with Writefest the day before, run by Bundaberg Writers Club. So I’ll be popping in there for a look-see, too. Sue Abbey is among the professionals running workshops at Writefest: I can’t speak highly enough of her skills and friendly advice.
Two other events worth noting: the mob organising the national science fiction convention, Conjecture, in Adelaide in June have extracted their digit and posted more information on the website, allaying mounting fears that the long period of silence heralded a fizzler. Mind you, with that many wineries within cork-popping distance, that was never really going to be an issue, was it?
Another cool event that has got cooler is Continuum, in Melbourne in August, where Melbourne writer Narelle M Harris has been added as a guest of honour. Harris has had a vampire novel published by Brisbane’s Pulp Fiction Press; they make a commendable team 🙂
The other key convention for spec fic writers and readers this year is Conflux, in Canberra in October, but unfortunately I won’t be making that. Rather I’ll be at my Edge writers group’s annual retreat, hoping to make something beautiful come of it.

by

Australian Dark Fantasy and Horror – shameless plug dept

australian dark fantasy and horror #3

australian dark fantasy and horror #3

Tis good to read at the HorrorScope that Brimstone Press’s Australian Dark Fantasy and Horror #3 is on its way to bookstore shelves and cyber shops. The ‘best of’, which has suffered some delays in production, collects the editor’s pick of Aussie stories published in 2007, which I’m chuffed to say includes my story ‘Kadimakara and Curlew’, which first appeared in the excellent Daikaiju #2 Revenge of the Giant Monsters. Being accepted for the Daikaiju collection was a real buzz — it’s pretty cool getting a giant monster story into print, especially one that includes a swipe at our treatment of Aboriginal Australians, my memories of Uluru and the childhood experience of having the curlew’s cry curl the hairs on the back of my neck … Anyway, it’s awesome to see this yarn given fresh legs, again sneaking its way into the company of some very good writers indeed.

by

Queensland writers’ bumper year

Playing catch up after a six-day outage thanks to a spanner in the works at Optusnet HQ … but here’s something fresh, and exciting, and inspiring. Check out the bumper crop of Queenslanders scoring some publicity for having their debut novels published in 2009. Not all the stories are necessarily my preferred cup of coffee, but worth drinking to 🙂

Krissy Kneen, Belinda Jeffrey and Chris Bongers are among the selection, and I’m happy to say they’re folks I’ve had the pleasure of running into, even lifting a glass with, and their stories sound well worth the price of admittance.

You can read more about them and their compatriots here.

by

vampire in Venice

I guess it makes sense that someone with a blog called ‘vampires in the sunshine state’ would have several friends direct his attention to this story about a ‘vampire’ discovered in a plague grave in Venice that has been doing the rounds on the net for the past couple of days.

It reminds me of the excellent, if slow, movie Vampires in Venice starring Klaus Kinski.

Which further reminds me of the plague imagery in his remake of Nosferatu.

References to the shroud in the Reuters article isn’t something you see used much in vampire movies. The most obvious one that comes to mind is The Vampire Lovers, with the unforgettable Ingrid Pitt.

Mention of the shroud reminds me of the band, The Shroud, who do a lovely cover of Alice, the Sisters of Mercy song.

Now, Alice sparks name recognition with my mate, Alice Henderson, who has just released what I believe is a pretty neat book called Voracious, given Alice is right at home camping out in all weather in the mountains, and her book draws heavily on that experience. That and the fact that she’s written Buffy books. Way cool.

All of which is a highly convoluted way of suggesting you check out Alice’s book. 🙂

by

Tron, Depeche Mode and Fox Klein (and SF stuff at the end)

What, I hear your cyberbrains muse, do those three things have in common? No, wait, that’s not you at all, it’s the rickety desk fan making that peg-leg rattle because it’s set on 2 and the little pin that stops it from rotating isn’t working quite right. But it’s a fair question, just the same.

Thursday. Another dull day at the sausage factory. Cut, paste, upload. Repeat. And then Sean Williams, bless his love of 80s electronic music, sent me this. It is essentially a trailer for Tron, set to one of my favourite Depeche Mode songs, Suffer Well. And done very nicely, too.

And where does the comedian Fox Klein fit in? Well, nowhere, except that he, and the two Coronas I had with dinner, were the highlight of the evening at the Sit Down Comedy Club. A charismatic comedian, offering a storyline or at least a consistent theme with moments of absolute cleverness, and lots of relationship/sex talk without resorting to smut.

Which goes to show how music, fantasy and a sense of humour will overcome 🙂

Meanwhile, check out this download from ABC Radio’s Book Show, featuring Aurealis Award winners Jonathan Strahan, Alison Goodman and KA Bedford talking about the importance of the awards, speculative fiction’s ability to compete for attention in the wider market place, and other stuff.

by

Aurealis Awards addendum

I am so completely knackered.

This was, quite possibly, the most fun Aurealis Awards yet. The results I blogged earlier, but here’s a bit of the social stuff:

The Judith Wright Centre was packed — I heard talk of there being only two spare tickets left on the morning of, and the auditorium certainly seemed to support that. When all those folks, dressed in everything from gowns to suits to t-shirts, milled around in the foyer, it was a real feat crossing the room, let alone getting to the bar.

They came from as far away as Perth and Tasmania, and if we include the Clarion South students in there, from overseas as well — the US that I know of for sure.

What a great crowd. What a great mingle. Unfortunately, I had a wee blowout in my schmoozing plans, on account of having left tickets at home. So instead of attending Trudi Canavan’s pre-awards book launch, I was dashing home and getting back just in time for the awards ceremony.

To compound my errors, I managed to leave my camera in the car. The bad news — no photos. The good news — the camera was still in the car when we got back.

So why am I knackered? All of this running around meant I had only a single Carona before the ceremony, and that was at an early dinner with friends. So naturally, all this catching up is thirsty work, and I had lost time to be made up. So from the foyer we moved to the bar to a room party to … and so on, and got home around 930 this morning, in time for a shower and a change of clothes before heading out to brunch. Thank goodness I’ve got tomorrow off!

Anyhoo, the ceremony was a blast with Alison Goodman and Simon Higgins co-hosting with their repartee — Simon, I believe, gave Alison sword lessons as part of her preparation for writing Two Pearls of Wisdom (which won the award for best fantasy novel, pipping my other favourite Aussie fantasy of 2008, Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan). There was no swordplay on the night, but an efficient and enjoyable audio-visual display — Damon owes me bigtime for including the video footage of me talking about my high school musical in which I played Dracula, and no, I cannot sing the songs (I couldn’t then, nothing’s changed!) — and some wonderful speeches and a few surprises as well.

A standout for me was Sean Williams’s acceptance of the inaugural award for best collection. The only competition his collection, Magic Dirt, had in the finalists was Robert Hood’s Creeping in Reptile Flesh. Sean gave a lovely kudos to Rob, as both friend and mentor, that really demonstrated the sense of community in the Aussie spec fic world.

There some lovely expressions of surprise from winners Alison, who hadn’t had time to consider winning let alone a speech during her hosting preparations, and Melina Marchetta, who won the award for best young adult novel for Finnikin of the Rock.

And possibly the loveliest was to see Jack Dann collect the Peter McNamara award for his superb career. Jack has acted as mentor for my Edge writing group, as has Sean and Rob, and Jack also saw some ‘juice’ in my short story, Smoking, Waiting for the Dawn, for his grand Dreaming Again anthology, so I had a very personal delight in seeing him slightly flabbergasted at the announcement. He was sitting behind me, so I heard his expression of surprise.

Another expression of surprise I took devilish delight in was from Kirstyn McDermott, nominated in the horror short story category for her gorgeous and brutal Painlessness. I by chance ended up sitting next to Kirstyn during the dash to find a seat, and having her lean over to me and whisper who she thought was winning was priceless. I earned an elbow in the ribs for my poker face. I had helped judge the category 🙂

Anyway, last year could be the last year the awards are held in Brisbane. The Fantastic Queensland team who have advanced the awards to being a standalone highlight of the calendar have almost used up their contract with the awards founders, Chimaera Publications, and a new team is being sought to take over the running from 2011. We’re promised something special for next year’s ceremony. I have no doubt it will be.