Kirstyn and I will be at Brisbane’s Pulp Fiction in Edward St from noon on Wednesday (Sept 15) where she will be signing Madigan Mine. She also has stories in the anthologies Macabre and Scenes from the Second Storey, both launched at this month’s Aussiecon4 (the World Science Fiction Convention). Please do pop in to say hello if you are able 🙂
brisbane
Aurealis Awards head to Sydney
After the Brissie gang lifted the Aurealis Awards to a national event in their own right, the baton has been passed to a Sydney group: three cheers and best wishes!
Details are at the Aurealis website.
Clarion South, set for 2012
A bit of news from the team at Clarion South, the excellent writers (boot camp) workshop run in Brisbane every two years — it’s been put back a year to 2012. I’ve not had the pleasure of attending myself, but I know a bunch of folks who have (and who’ve taught there), and I’ve seen the stories they’ve produced, and wow: if you can muster the time and the money, it’s a hell of a kickalong. For details, check out the Clarion South website.
Daybreakers – what a bloody mess
Oh dear. And it seemed like such a good idea at the time. The vampires have taken over the world and established a night-time society, sadly seemingly stuck in much the same pattern of commerce as ours, but alas, they’ve literally drained their food supplies to the point of extinction (humans be warned: this could happen to you). It’s a race: to track down the last humans, to synthesise a blood replacement, or find a cure. At the end of the day, the future of the planet actually comes down to corporate greed. The leeches!
Daybreakers fails to deliver on its promise. Once the story starts and people start talking, it quickly turns into a bloody mess. Maybe that’s me looking for a shiny new take on vampirism when all that was ever on offer was just more schlock hanging off a neat idea. Nothing wrong with schlock, mind you; it’s just, I wanted more from this. I’m not sure why.
The Spierig brothers’ previous movie, Undead, was gloriously schlocky, even with aliens, and I loved it. So maybe I shouldn’t have expected this to be any different.
But, what the hell is with the bats? I haven’t seen such horrible effects since Hammer Horror (hurray, back online and makin’ movies!) dangled a stuffed one on wires and jigged its wings about. The bats, flitting about both night and day and glorying in swooping the camera, were inappropriate, cheap, tacky.
And where was the logic? Does not drinking human blood make vampires turn into primal bat-things, or doesn’t it? If vampires can survive on pigs’ blood a la Nick Knight, then why don’t they? Why does mixing blood with your coffee (just coffee, we presume, the only foodstuff on-screen – viscera notwithstanding) make it palatable? Why does Ethan (and his little heart-monitoring do-hickeys) not burn but Willem gets toasty scarred? Why does throwing gratuitous buckets of blood and hosting cannibalistic frenzies (really blurring the line between vampire and zombie, there, lads) make boys coo with glee?
And isn’t it a sad day, really, when you have to (presumably to secure funding) throw some weird-arse colour filter over your lens to try to disguise the fact you shot your movie in Australia, not the US of A. Location was hardly a factor in the plot, so why force the crap accents on otherwise wonderful actors? Admittedly, I was familiar with a hell of a lot of the scenery in Daybreakers, it being filmed around my former hometown, but I’m still scratching my head about the massive Moreton Bay fig having pride of place on a ridge somewhere in Nowheresville, USA.
Stupid lookouts who get surprised in daytime when they’re standing in the middle of a massive open space with 360-degree visibility; humans who simply must charge around in convoys at night; a seemingly endless stream of last-minute saves by the handy off-screen ally. And even in 2019 we’re still trying for the (presumably) heart shot with a crossbow. Oh God. And did I mention the bats??
I’m sorry, but ‘because it looks cool’ is not a sufficient answer.
So, Daybreakers for me is a B-grade vampire movie, maybe flitting down around the C+ level, which puts it on a par with the rest of the Aussie crop. Sigh.
[Addendum: What I liked about Daybreakers: the concept; the visualisation of the vampire society; the fact that being a vampire didn’t automatically make everyone a martial arts expert; no wire work; female lead Claudia Karvan not being made into some kind of sex-glamour-combat heroine (but she gets jumped twice, dude, so a little nous might’ve been nice); that the hero’s brother has the actual hero’s arc; Sam Neill]
Here, have some decent bats, care of a certain Nick Cave and his Birthday Party. And someone pass me a copy of Near Dark and a bottle of red. Cheers.
Death Most Definite – WANT
A bounce around the interwebs produced a lovely image of the cover of Trent Jamieson’s upcoming debut novel, Death Most Definite. It’s very pretty. The story sounds awesome, with its Pratchett undertones: a Reaper man trying to keep the lid on the restless dead when the boss goes missing. Given that Trent’s one of the best darn writers I know, I can’t wait to get my little paws on this read. The even better news is, there’s at least two more in the works for the same series. (Note to self: make more room on book shelf.) It should be out in time for September’s Worldcon in Melbourne — huzzah!
Gargoyles of Brisbane
Gargoyles in Brisbane? Who’d a thunkit!
Poor old Brissie aka Brizvegas aka my former hometown of the past 11 years is often criticised for not being city enough, as if a million souls and traffic snarls aren’t requirement enough. As if being a city is something to be desired, some badge of achievement. Hm.
Anyway, on a recent return, I was chuffed to find gargoyles adorning a fine old stone building on George Street — it’s a key administration road, lots of suits and government offices, which is probably why I’ve not noticed this edifice before, or at least not got around to taking pictures. This dude has a buddy, too, a smiling companion keeping an eye on the passersby, and another couple of buddies as well, watching over the front door and windows.
UPDATE: Here is some information about these ‘devils’ at the Government Printer building
There’s another building, a self-proclaimed manor or somesuch, with a fine array of lions and griffins, but alas, my photographic eye didn’t quite roam that far on this trip, though I did snap the weather-beaten cat aloft on a building near my gargoyle find. There might be others? Anyone?
The point of this being, if a place has got theatres and cafes and more ‘foreign’ dining options than a Chinese takeaway and a Pizza Hut, AND gargoyles, honestly, what more do you need?? Anyway, good on ya, Brissie, for keeping the gargoyles aloft. Lord knows you’ve lost enough of your architectural heritage. Long may these dudes reign!
Daybreakers, an Australian vampire movie with bite
I’ve been excited about the forthcoming vampire flick Daybreakers for quite some time, for a couple of reasons, but primarily because it’s made in Australia, including my old hometown of Brisbane, by the Brissie boys who made Undead (an extremely effective small-budget zombie movie, with SF elements). The plot about a world overtaken by vampires sounds engaging, and it stars, alongside Ethan Hawke and Willem Dafoe, some great local talent in Claudia Karvan, Sam Neill and Undead‘s Mungo McKay.
About.com’s Mark Harris has given Daybreakers four stars. His review is here, in which he says, “Daybreakers is a fresh and original take on vampire lore, using its genre trappings to convey an uncommonly conscious, allegorical reflection on society that touches upon class and racial conflict, the ethics of big business, politics, poverty, homelessness and the ravaging of natural resources.”
Got those bases covered, then. He also assures us there’s chompin’ and stakin’ aplenty.
According to IMDB, the movie’s due for release in Australia on January 21. Huzzah!
Addendum to books of 2009: The Infernal and Poppy Z Brite
The little bird twittering about a new release of Kim Wilkins’ debut novel The Infernal has come home to roost — at this online bookseller, to be precise, where you can order a limited edition, rather cool-sounding copy for the princely sum of $100.
At time of writing, the website is giving a percentage of sales to a Western Australia bushfire appeal.
To end the new year, I’m revisiting Lost Souls by Poppy Z Brite. She’s one of my favourite authors. I love her ability to inhabit her characters, to draw that shadowy, downcast world, and her depictions of beloved New Orleans. I’ve uploaded an interview conducted with Brite in 2005, just months before Hurricane Katrina devastated her home town.
I’ve been back to New Orleans twice since Katrina, and found the city tooled up for tourists, but Katrina’s bite is still deep and tenacious for residents, and Fema remains a dirty word.
Keep up to speed with Brite, and her engagement with her home town post-K, as she puts it, at her blog.
Meanwhile, Wilkins, another of my favourite authors, has just returned from a month’s research in England in pursuit of a tasty historical fantasy tale. Something to look forward to on the cusp of a new year.
Have a good one.
Aurealis Awards finalists announced
The finalists for Australia’s premier speculative fiction awards, the Aurealis Awards, have been announced on the website.
Great to see some new names in the mix as well as the stalwarts, and Brisbane’s Peter Ball running for the greatest over-achiever award with his swag of nominations.
The winners will be announced in Brisbane on January 23, which will mark the end of Fantastic Queensland’s tenure as hosts of the awards. No word yet on who will be taking over the prestigious but invidious task.
QWC blog tour
I’m now living in Melbourne, but I’m continuing my membership with the Queensland Writers Centre because it’s a damn fine organisation with plenty to offer, even for an ‘outpost’ member such as myself (a writer who wouldn’t have a book on the shelf were it not for the QWC). The centre has been kind enough to include me in their blog tour, offering a Cook’s tour of writers’ blogs. You can find out more about the blog tour at the end of this post. Meantime, here are the requisite questions answered:
Where do your words come from?
The words themselves probably swim up from a lifetime of reading and study and movie-watching. But of the origin of the ideas that drive them, I’m not sure. Perhaps also in the words that have gone before, adapted by experience and observation, daydreaming and nightmares. I tend to download my stories from the ether of the subconcious, then set about shaping them, making sure the words are the best possible ones to tell the story. And then there’s Roget’s 😉
Where did you grow up and where do you live now?
I grew up on a Queensland cattle property about half way between Maryborough and Gympie, an hour’s drive to either. It was a fertile place for the imagination, fuelled by books of all sorts. I’ve been leap-frogging my way through gradually larger cities since, most recently to Melbourne where I’m still waiting for my blood to thicken and save me from the embarrassment of being the only person on the street wearing gloves.
What’s the first sentence/line of your latest work?
My most recently published story, “Smoking, Waiting for the Dawn” (Dreaming Again, 2008) opens with, “George stood by the bleached skeleton of the Wyandra stockyards, breathing in dust and sun-baked silence.”
The first sentence of the story I’m meant to be working on at the moment is still a work in progress…
What piece of writing do you wish you had written?
Macbeth’s Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow speech. It’s stuck with me ever since I had to recite it in high school.
What are you currently working towards?
I’m planning a new novel, probably a follow-up to The Darkness Within, or yet another iteration of a linked story that just won’t behave. Or maybe something else again. November is my self-appointed crunch time.
Complete this sentence… the future of the book is…
… assured, though its delivery method will expand into the electronic realm with much wailing and gnashing of copyright regions.
This post is part of the Queensland Writers Centre blog tour, happening October to December 2009. To follow the tour, visit Queensland Writers Centre’s blog The Empty Page.