twelfth planet press

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Salvage in Twelfth Planet showcase at Melbourne Writers Festival

twelfth planets press melbourne writers festival showcaseAugust is a big month for Salvage, having an outing in Queensland and now, bobbing up at the Melbourne Writers Festival!

Twelfth Planet Press presents a free showcase event at the festival, with Kerry Greenwood of the Phryne Fisher mysteries fame launching the Twelve Planets series. On hand to present their titles already released and forthcoming will be Kaaron Warren, Cat Sparks, Deborah Biancotti, Narrelle M Harris, Deborah Kalin, Rosaleen Love, Kirstyn McDermott, Lucy Sussex … and me*.

There will be drinkage, and music, and all Twelfth Planet books will be available, including the newest releases of the Twelve Planets range: Through Splintered Walls by Kaaron Warren and hot-off-the-press Cracklespace by Margo Lanagan (previewed at Continuum in June).

I’ve just read these two titles, and they are spectacular: Margo has brought her touch of the fantastic closer to home, while Kaaron raises the chill factor, especially with the longest story of her collection, ‘Sky’: you might want to have a bath after reading it.

Kerry will be joining the Twelfth Planet authors for signings.

The showcase is on Sunday August 26, at 5.30pm, at the Yarra Building in Federation Square. It’s a free, non-ticketed event, which means you can just turn up and enjoy. An ideal pre-dinner outing, neh?

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Writerly round-up: a new book, an award, a farewell

It’s the afternoon after the four days that came before, and what a grand four days Continuum 8 offered. Held at Rydges in Carlton, where the bartenders were, as usual, outgunned by demand, the convention pulled together writers, publishers, readers and knitters (!) from around the country for the celebration of all things fantastical.

Twelfth Planet Press launched new titles by Kaaron Warren — a printing error has meant a recall for those who have already snaffled the enticing collection — and Margo Lanagan (officially hitting the shelves in August) and my novella Salvage (yay!). Keep an ear out for a podcast recorded at the beautifully laid out Embiggen Books(timber shelves! ladders! SECRET DOOR!) about the Twelve Planets series of collections. [update: the podcast is now available here]

Twelve Planets podcast

Twelve Planets podcast at Embiggen Books

There were panels on vampires, e-books, Australian writing and many other things; launches; parties; costumes; crafts; dinners on Lygon St; the nearest Japanese restaurant would’ve seen a pleasing surge in income. And there were awards, with Paul Haines and Sara Douglass both receiving posthumous accolades. A further highlight of the Ditmars was the squeaking octopii, given out as stand-ins when the actual awards failed to arrive in time.

Also awarded were the Chronos awards, recognising achievements by Victorian writers, artists and fans, and how pleasing it was to receive one for ‘best fan writer’. A lovely acknowledgement of my new address! And Kirstyn and co-host Ian Mond landed Ditmar and Chronos awards for their podcast, The Writer and the Critic. The awards lists are below.

Convention pictures by Cat Sparks*

More pix from yours truly

So amidst the catching up, the memorials and general frivolity, a bittersweet announcement has been made: my wonderful boss, Kate Eltham, is leaving the Queensland Writers Centre to take the reins at next year’s Brisbane Writers Festival. Kate is a dynamic woman and talented writer who has made the QWC such an active organisation, reaching out across the state and the nation and overseas through various programs all aimed at not just keeping writers of all ilks in the loop but helping them to be part of the loops. It’ll be interesting to see what new ideas she brings to the BWF. This is great news for Kate and a real shift of gears, but I confess that I will sure miss her. Good luck with it, mate!

Kirstyn McDermott, Ian Mond host Continuum awards ceremony

Kirstyn and Ian host the awards ceremony

Ditmar Award winners:

Peter McNamara Award: Bill Congreve

A. Bertram Chandler Award:Richard Harland

Norma K Hemming Award, TIE: Anita (AA) Bell for Hindsight; Sara Douglass for The Devil’s Diadem

And a new award, the Infinity:Merv Binns

Best Novel

  • WINNER: The Courier’s New Bicycle, Kim Westwood (HarperCollins)
  • Debris (The Veiled Worlds 1), Jo Anderton (Angry Robot)
  • Burn Bright, Marianne de Pierres (Random House Australia)
  • The Shattered City (Creature Court 2), Tansy Rayner Roberts (HarperCollins)
  • Mistification, Kaaron Warren (Angry Robot)

Best Novella or Novelette

  • WINNER: ‘The Past is a Bridge Best Left Burnt’, Paul Haines (The Last Days of Kali Yuga)
  • ‘And the Dead Shall Outnumber the Living’, Deborah Biancotti (Ishtar)
  • ‘Above’, Stephanie Campisi (Above/Below)
  • ‘Below’, Ben Peek (Above/Below)
  • ‘Julia Agrippina’s Secret Family Bestiary’, Tansy Rayner Roberts (Love and Romanpunk)
  • ‘The Sleeping and the Dead’, Cat Sparks (Ishtar)

Best Short Story

  • WINNER: ‘The Patrician’, Tansy Rayner Roberts (Love and Romanpunk)
  • ‘Bad Power’, Deborah Biancotti (Bad Power)
  • ‘Breaking the Ice’, Thoraiya Dyer (Cosmos 37)
  • ‘The Last Gig of Jimmy Rucker’, Martin Livings & Talie Helene (More Scary Kisses)
  • ‘Alchemy’, Lucy Sussex (Thief of Lives)
  • ‘All You Can Do Is Breathe’, Kaaron Warren (Blood and Other Cravings)

Best Collected Work

  • WINNER: The Last Days of Kali Yuga, Paul Haines (Brimstone)
  • Bad Power, Deborah Biancotti (Twelfth Planet)
  • Nightsiders, Sue Isle (Twelfth Planet)
  • Ishtar, Amanda Pillar & KV Taylor, eds. (Gilgamesh)
  • Love and Romanpunk, Tansy Rayner Roberts (Twelfth Planet)

Best Artwork

  • WINNER: ‘Finishing School’, Kathleen Jennings, in Steampunk!: An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories (Candlewick)
  • Cover art for The Freedom Maze (Small Beer), Kathleen Jennings

Best Fan Writer

  • WINNER: Robin Pen, for The Ballad of the Unrequited Ditmar’
  • Bruce Gillespie, for body of work including The Golden Age of Fanzines is Now’, and SF Commentary 81 & 82
  • Alexandra Pierce, for body of work including reviews at Australian Speculative Fiction in Focus, Not If You Were The Last Short Story On Earth, and Randomly Yours, Alex
  • Tansy Rayner Roberts, for body of work including reviews at Australian Speculative Fiction in Focus, and Not If You Were The Last Short Story On Earth
  • Sean Wright, for body of work including ‘Authors and Social Media’ series in Adventures of a Bookonaut

Best Fan Artist

  • WINNER: Kathleen Jennings, for work in Errantry, including ‘The Dalek Game’
  • Rebecca Ing, for work in Scape
  • Dick Jenssen, for body of work including work in IRS, Steam Engine Time, SF Commentary, and Scratchpad
  • Lisa Rye, for Steampunk Portal series
  • Rhianna Williams, for work in Nullas Anxietas Convention Program Book

Best Fan Publication in Any Medium

  • WINNER: The Writer and the Critic podcast, Kirstyn McDermott & Ian Mond
  • SF Commentary, Bruce Gillespie, ed.
  • Galactic Chat podcast, Alisa Krasnostein, Tansy Rayner Roberts & Sean Wright
  • Galactic Suburbia podcast, Alisa Krasnostein, Tansy Rayer Roberts, & Alex Pierce
  • The Coode Street podcast, Gary K. Wolfe & Jonathan Strahan

Best New Talent

  • WINNER: Joanne Anderton
  • Alan Baxter
  • Steve Cameron

William Atheling Jr. Award for Criticism or Review

  • WINNER: Alexandra Pierce & Tehani Wessely, for reviews of The Vorkosigan Saga, in Randomly Yours, Alex
  • Russell Blackford, for ‘Currently reading: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke’, in Metamagician and the Hellfire Club
  • Damien Broderick & Van Ikin, for editing Warriors of the Tao: The Best of Science Fiction: A Review of Speculative Literature
  • Liz Grzyb & Talie Helene, for ‘2010: The Year in Review’, in The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2010
  • David McDonald, Tansy Rayner Roberts & Tehani Wessely, for ‘Reviewing New Who’ series, in A Conversational Life

 

Chronos Awards

Best Long Fiction: The Last Days of Kali Yuga, Paul Haines (Brimstone Press)


Best Short Fiction: ‘The Past is a Bridge Best Left Burnt’, Paul Haines (in The Last Days of Kali Yuga)


Best Fan Writer: Jason Nahrung


Best Fan Artist: Rachel Holkner


Best Fan Written Work: ‘Tiptree, and a collection of her short stories’, Alexandra Pierce (in Randomly Yours, Alex)

Best Fan Artwork: Blue Locks, Rebecca Ing (Scape 2)

Best Fan Publication: The Writer and the Critic, Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond

Best Achievement: Conquilt, Rachel Holkner and Jeanette Holkner (Continuum 7)


 
* It’s possible there might be a photo of me with a bottle of wine and a glass: I was pouring for other people. Honest.

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Salvage launches — tomorrow night!

salvage by jason nahrungA gentle reminder — well, more of a whoop, really — that Salvage is about to be launch. A bottle of red cracked across the bow and sent out into the stormy waters of the marketplace for your — I hope — reading pleasure.

Tomorrow night’s launch at Continuum 8 in Melbourne is part of the Twelfth Planet Hour: a party to celebrate not just Salvage but the latest titles in the rather awesome Twelve Planets range of collections by Australian women writers: Kaaron Warren’s Through Splintered Walls and Margo Lanagan’s Cracklescape. You can schmooze with some of the other TPP authors, too. If that wasn’t enough there’s cupcakes, a juggler and a surprise announcement from the press … oo-err! The party kicks off  at 7pm; entry to the convention is by gold coin donation today.

Can’t make it to the party, nor the convention but still want some seaside love-on-the-rocks with added vampire? Order Salvage at www.twelfthplanetpress.com, and/or enter the Goodreads giveaway for a chance to win a copy.

At Continuum, I’ll be:

  • Launching fellow TPP author Narrelle M Harris’s sequel to The Opposite of Life, Walking Shadows, published by Clan Destine Press, at 6 o’clock tomorrow night
  • Discussing Backyard Speculation — Australian settings in fantastic fiction — on Saturday 10-11am
  • Reading, probably from Salvage, on Saturday 2-3pm alongside Cheryse Durrant, Alison Goodman and Margo Lanagan
  • Discussing e-books: what are they worth? on Sunday 11am-noon
  • Chatting with guest of honour Alison Goodman on Sunday noon-1pm
  • Discussing Vampires: From Horror to Heart-throb on Monday 10-11am
  • Discussing the Awards Debacle on Monday from 2-3pm.

It’s gonna be a grand weekend!

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Snapshot 2012: Robert Hoge

australian speculative fiction snapshot 2012 logoBRISBANE writer Robert Hoge has never had a job that didn’t involve writing. His first job was working on a sports newspaper at the University of Queensland where he spent time interviewing future Olympic gold medallists before they were famous. Since then he’s worked as a full-time journalist, a speechwriter, a science communicator for the CSIRO and a political advisor. Robert has had a number of short stories, articles and interviews published in Australia and overseas. You can visit him at www.roberthoge.com.

You had a beautifully poetic short story in last year’s After the Rain anthology and there’s a similar atmosphere to other shorts: is that a preferred mode or just what best suited those yarns, a space you were in at the time…?
Glad you liked it.

I kind of hit on a series of shorts about the elements – especially water – almost by accident. I certainly didn’t plan it that way but I think I kept coming back to it because it was simple but brutally powerful at the same time.

I like taking the elements we’re so familiar with – water, rain, fire – and throwing them onto the page and seeing what happens.

You’ve got an autobiography occupying your time — where to after that, writing-wise?
Yep, I haven’t finished any new short stories in a while because I’m still really focussed on that. But by the end of the year, I want to knock a few new short stories out and get stuck into a novel about civil disobedience that keeps rattling around my head.

After the awards ceremony at Perth’s natcon last year, you wrote an open letter to the spec fic community about ensuring access to such ceremonies. What was the response?
The response was very heartening – especially from the event organisers themselves. Everyone seemed to immediately understand and acknowledge that we need to do better – as a community.

I think the community has a tremendous capacity to self-organise and self-correct when we need to. We can get an awful lot done when we put our mind to it.

What Australian works have you loved recently?
Well, if I keep it to the last year or so…

The Courier’s New Bicycle by Kim Westwood; the collections by Paul Haines, Angela Slatter (2) and Lisa L. Hannett; and a lot of the really high quality stuff that’s coming out from Twelfth Planet Press.

I’ve also really been enjoying the artwork Kathleen Jennings has been producing – it’s great and you can tell almost immediately that it is a work produced by her.


What have been some of the biggest changes in Australian speculative fiction in the past two years since Aussiecon 4?
That’s a hard one. I think it’s so much easier for everyone to organise now, to communicate, that the changes seem – and probably are – less pronounced. And I think some of these things would have happened without Aussiecon 4 anyway, but I’m really impressed with the development of some of our independent presses. The people running them are doing great but I’m also really impressed with how much it is allowing other creatives like Amanda Rainey and Dion Hamill to develop as well.

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THIS interview was conducted as part of the 2012 Snapshot of Australian Speculative Fiction. We’re blogging interviews from 1-8 June and archiving them at Australian Speculative Fiction in Focus. You can read interviews at:

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Salvage launches on June 8!

salvage by jason nahrungThe time has been confirmed! Salvage will join the Twelfth Planet Press flotilla being celebrated in Melbourne at Continuum at 7pm on Friday 8 June. And the good news: the convention is entry by gold coin donation on Friday. Also on the hot release list: Kaaron Warren’s Through Splintered Walls and Margo Lanagan’s Cracklescape, two of the latest Twelve Planets series by Aussie women writers. Twelfth Planet is a dynamic press with a real commitment to quality: it’s a pleasure to be working with them on Salvage. Come join us: there will be books and there will be … cupcakes!

You can read more about Continuum here!

Meanwhile, I’m down for four panels — Australian settings, vampires, awards, e-publishing — a reading and an ‘in conversation’ with Aussie guest of honour Alison Goodman.

Other launches to keep an eye out for: fellow TPP author Narrelle M Harris’s sequel to The Opposite of Life (I’m launching Walking Shadows, published by Clan Destine Press, on the Friday night — busy and wonderful!), a belated Ishtar party, Felicity Dowker’s collection and an ASIM 10th birthday party bash.

It’s also pleasing to see time set aside to remember our recently lost Paul Haines and Sara Douglass.

If that wasn’t enough, Kelly Link is international guest of honour, and Lucy Sussex gets to practise for her guest turn at next year’s Swancon by being an invited guest this year. It’s gonna be HUGE.

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‘Salvage’ cover unveiled!

salvage by jason nahrung

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.”

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Salvage: words in the seawrack

salvage by jason nahrung

As part of the Wednesday Writers guest post series over at Ebon Shores, I’ve offered some background to the inspiration and development of the novella Salvage that Twelfth Planet Press is publishing this year. The story took four years to appear on the page — that’s about 10,000 words a year — and arrived in response to three years of rather bruising disappointment. Bottom line: keep swimming.

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Writerly news

Catching up after time away and largely off-line at Adelaide Writers Week, and there’s good news:

when we have wings by claire corbettBarbara Jefferis Award shortlist: Claire Corbett’s SF novel When We Have Wings (which I am STILL to read, damnit) is on the shortlist of the Barbara Jefferis Award. Sean the Bookonaut, who I met for the first time in Adelaide, recently interviewed Claire: listen here.

Mythic Resonance: editor Stephen Thompson — how long has it been since he compiled the Vision writers group’s Glimpses anthology? — has a new anthology, Mythic Resonance, which, as the name suggests, riffs off myths. Excerpts are available at the Specusphere.

Thirteen O’Clock: a new aggregator of dark fiction news has hit the interwebs. The blog also posted an excellent piece on the difference between horror and dark fantasy recently.

Narrelle Harris reveals Showtime: The Melbourne author of The Opposite of Life is the latest in Twelfth Planet Press’s Twelve Planets series, offering ghosts, vampires and zombies in a four-story collection that includes an appearance of some old friends.

Aurealis #48 in the ether: Aurealis #48, with stories by Rick Kennett and Greg Mellor, is available from Smashwords.

Ticonderoga living large in 2013: the WA press already has an exciting schedule for 2013, including several collections by both veteran and tyro writers and the continuing Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror.

And Chris Meade on Queensland’s writing future: the if:book pioneer reflects on his experience in Queensland and considers how my home state might leverage itself in the global literary landscape with ‘big sky writing‘. It’s also worth checking out if:book Australia’s 24 Hour Book Project for a hands-on view of how technology is changing the publishing industry.

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‘Salvage’ available for preorder

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

salvage by jason nahrung

“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.”