As my old home state begins picking itself up out of the mire, burdened by destruction across three-quarters of its area and a death toll at 20, my new state of residence faces an ongoing flood menace.
Adding to the woe is the news that two members of legendary Aussie bands died at the weekend: Cold Chisel’s Steve Prestwich and Sherbet’s Harvey James.
I was saddened to hear tonight that the wonderful Ingrid Pitt has died.
Strangely enough, the news came just before Kirstyn and I went into the Joy 94.9 studio for a Sci-Fi and Squeam segment on Hammer Horror with a particular focus on the Karnstein Trilogy. (Dear Christopher Lee, please do take care of your health!)
Pitt starred in one of my favourite movies, The Vampire Lovers, a classic from the Hammer stable and the first of the Karnstein Trilogy, and also the erstwhile Countess Dracula (trailer). Non-horror viewers might know her from war film Where Eagles Dare.
But it was the elegance and fragility of Carmilla Karnstein that I most associate with the Polish actress who made her way to cult stardom in England. Vampire Lovers was one of the first movies to break the lesbian taboo on the mainstream big screen, and it did it with a poignancy that still holds in a day and age of much fancier sets and production values, and of course much greater overtness.
As one of Hammer’s women of horror, she’ll always be remembered.
An interesting forecast from James McQuivey of Forrester Research about the changing face of the book trade and how it will impact on authors, including this key par:
Meanwhile, authors won’t like that advances are going down, marketing spend is plummeting, and royalties are shrinking (especially now that 30% of the eBook price goes to the bookseller in most cases). Suddenly, self-publishing is a real alternative for anybody with even a modest Twitter following, especially when Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) is offering 70% of the retail price of ebooks—paid monthly, not twice annually.
I wonder if this means authors who might be getting a smaller advance might also reap a higher royalty?
I do hope Amazon doesn’t become a publishing behemoth — I distrust monopolies and, besides, as much as I enjoy being able to access their store, it still irks me that their little customer loyalty mp3 vouchers are only available to customers within the US (thanks for shopping with us, Aussie, here’s something you can’t have that others can). I think the breaking down of the publishing regions will be a fascinating and angsty process, something perhaps we are seeing being eroded already with global (well, UK/US/Oz) market approaches from the likes of Harper Collins’ Voyager and Hachette’s Orbit.
I can foresee a time, alluded to by McQuivey, when the hard copy will be a collectable and the ebook will be the equivalent of the modern mass market paperback. I don’t mind that, either as consumer or content producer. McQuivey’s earlier post offered a neat summary of how going digital completely changes the economic model of business:
In the end, once the only channel from which revenue is derived starts to get remodeled, it’s not long before the whole structure gets torn down and rebuilt to accommodate the new dominant distribution model.
If you haven’t checked out the Wheeler Centre’s amazing program of mostly free events, now is a great time to do so. This month, they are hosting much-awarded Shaun Tan, best-selling Kate Morton and tunesmiths Stephen Cummings and Clare Bowditch, amongst others. Not bad diversity, that.
And in other events to keep an eye on, it’s worth noting that an uber expensive Tutankhamun exhibit is on its way to Melbourne next year. Despite the level of crass commercialism suggested by the article, I still *shiver in anticipation*.
A quick pass of the Guardian UK reveals these juicy morsels:
SEEING THE LIGHT: Anne Rice on why she left the Church (again) and still thinks angels are cool
This is crazy. There is no basis in scripture for any anointed hierarchy, let alone a male hierarchy. It’s just not there. And how in the world did this man-god die, preaching against the temple, and then we wind up with St Peter’s in Rome? How did that happen? There were so many issues where I thought the church was flat-out immoral. I had to leave.
CRITICS TAKE FLIGHT: Pigeons, famous for crapping on the Kings of Leon and ending their concert, take aim at recent music in a laugh-out-loud funny review (okay, it’s from July and I’m still catching up, but how can you go past gems such as this?)
Now we’re usually drawn to cheesy music – reggae buskers, organ grinders, Kevin even exploded by flying too close to the speakers at a Ted Nugent gig once – but this is too much even for us. The jaunty upstrokes! The overpowering odour of 1996! The fact that this song insists you think of that droopy-faced streak of piss Neil Hannon having sex! Crap in its mouth! CRAP IN ITS MOUTH!
FIGHTING FOR RIGHT: And this rather timely piece about a bunch of Muslim-inspired superheroes forging an alliance with DC’s heroes. Here’s a taste of the border-breaking article, courtesy of The 99 creator Dr Naif al-Mutawa:
“In Kuwait, it’s so sad, it’s funny. When I was growing up, Animal Farm was banned. At least in the Soviet Union they understood the problem was that it’s about anti-totalitarianism, whereas in Kuwait it was banned because it had a pig on the cover.”
Caught this bunch of tossers on the news this morning — the usual hate and vitriol that does no one any good. You might notice this particularly ugly little branch of ‘Christian’ zealots have venom to spare for gays as well as Muslims. You can almost see them in your mind’s eye, these pathetically scared little people, grasping at their vile belief in some attempt at making themselves feel better. Dictators know very well the power to be gained by getting your flock to hate someone else — we all like to feel that we’re a wee better than someone else, don’t we? That little superiority complex to prop up our inferiority complex. Feeling left out? Economy not so good? Life’s a bit shite? Here, follow me, son, and I’ll make you feel better about yourself by hurting someone else. Jackboots or a crucifix, it’s all the same. I can imagine how they’re relishing the attention, too; lovin’ the self-inflicted martyrdom that comes with uttering such vile inanities. I don’t trust zealots, no matter their creed. I wonder if there’s a way to get them to break out of their little boxes of myopic belief and see the true wonder of everything the world has to offer.
Another day, another list … this one of the Ten Best Screen Vampires at the Guardian was winning me hands down until the very end, where once again the confusion about popular equating to good kicked in. Honestly, if you want a vampire struggling with their nature and trying to practise restraint, wouldn’t you go for one that actually makes you feel the true weight of that struggle rather than just mooching about – at best a cad, at worst a dirty old man? Like, say, Louis in Interview, or eponymous Angel, or even Nick Knight (probably more the TV show than the movie)? Still, nine out of 10 ain’t bad (even if I’d probably have plumbed for Kirsten Dunst’s Claudia in Interview as my child representative).
I was reading this article about a mummy exhibition, sadly in the US so I can only admire from afar, when I was struck by an assinine comment, in relation to the wundertabulous forensic tech Abby (played by Pauley Perrette) in NCIS. A mummy expert is saying how she loves the character, a positive role model for women seeking careers in science. And the journalist added this note of explanation:
“Perrette plays the Goth-looking but genius Abby Sciuto on the top-rated television drama.”
“Goth-looking but genius”.
Why BUT. Why not AND? Why is it even relevant to this piece about mummies that Abby’s gothic? But it’s the ‘but’ that gets me. As if goths can’t be clever.
Phooey to your but.
So I’m just about to say how much I enjoyed Jeff Martin’s gig at Ruby’s last night, and I see that Ronnie James Dio has died from stomach cancer. The little guy had a massive voice — anyone who saw him tour with the Heaven and Hell Sabbath tour had nothing but praise for him (alas, I was elsewhere, and now the opportunity is forever lost).
Maybe it’s fitting, then, that Jeff Martin’s Requiem-Hurt combo was a highlight of last night’s two-hour acoustic set, accompanied by Armada bass player Jay Cortez. This was their third night in a row, and Martin’s voice had taken on a huskiness that added to the impact of the slower tunes, but he didn’t favour it, giving each song everything he had.
This was my first outing at Ruby’s, an easy 30-minute drive from home and plenty of off-street parking, at least at eight on a Sunday night. It’s an atmospheric and intimate club, lots of black and red, and a wicked timber staircase down to the basement loos. Naturally, as it is these days, it seems, the crowd had its share of tossers who got more vocal during the night: I’ve never seen bouncers come to the front of the stage at a Jeff Martin gig before, and it was a relief when the manic-depressive domestic in front of us finally decided to take it outside.
But they managed to contain themselves for the opening songs, Morocco and the aforementioned Requiem. The set canvassed Martin’s career, including Tea Party favourites The Bazaar and Sister Awake rubbing shoulders with solo songs The Kingdom and Stay Inside of Me (a duet with support act, Brisbane singer pear), and Armada tunes The Rosary (written for his dead grandmother) and Line in the Sand, and a stomping encore double of Going Down and Black Snake Blues. Add a second duet (regret I didn’t catch the singer’s name), on the Peter Gabriel/Kate Bush hit Don’t Give Up (a RockWiz hit with Tina Arena), and a cover of Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart, and it was a thoroughly enjoyable, emotionally charged concert. But then, his usually are, which is why, despite the aggravation of arseholes who chatter and elbow and take their flash photographs, I keep going back for more of the same (but never quite the same).
Martin is said to be withdrawing for a few months to work on a new album. Can’t wait for that!
Ticonderoga has released the book cover of its limited edition reprint of The Infernal by Kim Wilkins, her first novel and still one of my favourites.
Ticon has also recently made available two anthologies: Scary Kisses, involving paranormal romance, and Belong, speculative tales with a migration hook.
And in awards news, Jonathan Strahan, Justine Larbalestier (Liar) and Scott Westerfeld (Leviathan) are Aussies all in the running for Locus Awards. This follows the excellent news that Margo Lanagan is up for a Shirley Jackson award for her novella Sea-Hearts, published in X6.
Here’s a cool trailer for Scott’s Leviathan, a very fun take on the outbreak of World War I:
And one for Liar, a compelling if infuriating read!
And not to be overlooked is this new offering from Rowena Cory Daniells, a fancy trailer for her new (and much awaited) trilogy. Rowena has been a stalwart of the spec fic community in Queensland for many a year, helping to found both the Vision writing group (going strong) and the EnVision writers workshop (now defunct, but in a way living on in the Queensland Writers Centre’s year of the novel program): two things that have been of massive benefit to me as a budding author.
KRKhd from Daryl Lindquist on Vimeo.