There’s a new episode of Verity up – not featuring me but still awesome & featuring a great deal of discussion about The Name of the Doctor. We’ve made it through our first season (well, half season) of weekly recording sessions and reviews! It will be quite odd to go back to the more measured pace we were managing before, and sometimes only speaking to the other Verities every month.

You can read ‘My Two Cents’ on The Name of the Doctor and the most recent Verity episode at the Verity blog, along with Erika’s ‘Last Word’ post. Join the discussion in the comments!

But the really super super exciting Doctor Who THING this week is that the next Splendid Chaps Live Show Podcast is now open for bookings. And I am in it!

If you haven’t been following them, Splendid Chaps is a mostly Melbourne-hosted phenomenon by John Richards, Ben McKenzie and Petra Elliott – every month they host a live show discussing one era of Doctor Who and a theme in front of a live audience, and then release a podcast of the show on the 23rd. The most recent episode, Five/Fear features my friend Narrelle Harris (who tells a Raeli anecdote, omg) and they have all been great listening.

So in a few weeks when I go to Melbourne for the Sisters in Crime dinner, I’ll also be appearing on Splendid Chaps: Six/Clothes, in which we talk about the marvels and challenges of the Colin Baker Years and issues to do with clothes, costume and fashion across the entire run of the show (I am assuming both on and off the screen).

So excited! They’re also requesting that audience members come along in cosplay or other Doctor Who clothing items (It’s not compulsory) so it should be a very fun event.

Hosts Ben McKenzie, John Richards and Petra Elliott are joined by writer and podcaster Tansy Rayner Roberts (Galactic Suburbia, Verity!), and another guest to be announced soon. We’ll also have a special musical performance, prizes, surprises – and a fashion show! Yes, we want to see your best cosplay and Doctor Who related sartorial creations – and there will be prizes on offer.

Space: Agent 284, 284 Smith Street, Collingwood
Time: Saturday, June 15; recording starts 4 PM
Accessibility: We regret that this venue is not wheelchair accessible.
Tickets: $15 (plus booking fee where applicable)
Bookings: via trybooking.com or at the door (subject to availability)
Podcast: not yet available; released 23rd of June, 2013.

The homework for this episode, should you choose to accept it, is:
Colin Baker era: Revelation of the Daleks, Vengeance on Varos, The Mysterious Planet
Clothes: The Chase, the Talons of Weng-Chiang, The Robots of Death, Black Orchid, Gridlock (I don’t get that last one either!)

Kirstyn McDermott’s collection Caution: Contains Small Parts is about to become the new volume in the critically acclaimed Twelve Planets series – it will be launching at Continuum in a couple of weeks!

Meanwhile the very talented and hard-working Amanda Rainey, who is responsible for the gorgeous Twelve Planets covers, talks with David McDonald about how writers can get the best out of working with a cover designer.

Everyone’s talking about Kindle Worlds this week, the plan to monetise (some) fanfic for registered media properties. My thoughts: so… you’re going to offer fanfic authors the chance to make money off their product, but tell them what is and isn’t appropriate content, and control their intellectual property? Wow, that’s going to spark off some Internet smackdowns that will make the Harry/Hermione-Harry/Ginny wars look like gentle conversations. Fanfic is a heavily self-regulated community, and they have SYSTEMS, people. This is… well. It’s gonna be interesting.

The posts I’ve most enjoyed on this topic for their critical thoughts are those by Diana Peterfreund and the Angriest.

Kameron Hurley has written a spectacular essay about the portrayal of women in fiction as well as history, and how damaging and problematic narratives are sometimes the easiest to write even when you know better: We Have Always Fought: Challenging the Women, Cattle and Slaves Narrative.

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So, I have finally come to the end of my several-month-long quest that is the five books of the unfinished A Song of Ice and Fire saga, AKA A Game of Thrones The Books.

I’m not feeling the entitled outrage that GRRM hasn’t finished writing them yet, but I’m sure it’s gonna kick in any day now.

I’m still digesting it all, but wanted to start processing some of my thoughts about this series, its incredible popularity and acclaim (even before the TV series started, but way more now) and its role at the centre of so many discussions about what’s right and wrong with the fantasy genre when it comes to the representation of women, gender issues, and sexuality.

What intrigued me most, to tell you the truth, is that whenever the big discussion about female characters in epic fantasy fiction starts up again, ASOIAF (Game of Thrones is SUCH a better series title, just saying) is frequently cited on both sides of the argument – that is, as an example of a male writer writing a variety of female characters in a rich, nuanced and substantial way, AND a male author writing female characters in an extremely problematic way.

Looking at the books from the other side, I have to say – well, yep. Both those things are true.

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So it’s my 35th birthday! It was a pretty chilled out day. My presents so far have mostly included chocolate and tea which is most pleasing and appropriate, though I’ve also received a couple of rather lovely pieces of crockery for my new (super old) kitchen dresser: a gorgeous Persephone Books bowl featuring a pomegranate design from Alisa, and a TARDIS teapot from my honey.

Raeli gave me a beautiful piece of artwork – a sketch depicting our family in the Trojan War, playing Sparkly Monopoly, napping together (that is, me and the girls piled on top of each other reading books while their Daddy naps deeply beside us which is ENTIRELY ACCURATE), and a family portrait of us as fairies.

Lunch, some actual reading time (shock!) and I also probably spent more time than I should have working on a post about A Song of Ice and Fire. I got a single lovely child free hour thanks to my honey taking Jem for a walk to buy CAKE.

Jem went through a slightly frantic and stressful (for me) art period in the afternoon – MUST MAKE ART MUMMY – which involved clue and paper curls and cutting random bits of paper and oh gah, artistic children. Lovely but also messy and inconvenient. I am proud of her love of art but there are times when I just want her to go watch some nice tidy television instead.

But the really cool thing is that before dinner, my whole family gathered together and watched all 5 episodes of The Mind Robber (1968) with me! I’d always thought that the ‘books and fairy tales’ theme of this story would make it a Classic Who my girls were likely to enjoy despite the whole black and white thing, and I was right! Not only my three-year-old Hartnell fan Jem watched rapt but after one episode of casually playing Minecraft while glancing up occasionally, Raeli was hooked too.

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In which we chew over shortlists, awards winners, book covers and gender issues, all of which pales in comparison to the FIRST QUILT IN SPACE.

Download or stream the episode here, or get it direct from iTunes.

Hugo Packet! What are YOU going to read? Would password protected freebie novels put you off reading them?

Locus Award finalists

Sturgeon finalists

Campbell Memorial Award finalists

Mythopoeic Award finalists

Nebula winners

Aurealis Awards winners

Comments: Tansy on “winning too many awards” & Keith Stevenson on why the awards are just fine and don’t need to be ‘sorted out’. To add some positivity (which more accurately reflects most people’s experience of this awards night!) check out Sean’s Storify of the AA’s night and Tehani’s post on attending at the last minute with lovely frockage pics. For even more gorgeous pictures, Cat Sparks’ Flickr feed is the way to go!

The coverflip experiment, started by Maureen Johnson’s piece on Huffington Post.

The artist behind the Georgette RR Martin cover discusses her imaginary brief.

Hawkeye Initiative Coda – using humour & art to get the gender point across in the workplace.

THE FIRST QUILT IN SPACE! Frontier craft for the final frontier.

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The 1990’s were an important era for me as a Doctor Who fan. They represent my teen and early adult years, when I was building on my fannish love.

This decade – and in fact the entire period from 1990-2004 (with a brief holiday in 1996) is often referred to as ‘the Wilderness Years,’ coined by the team who worked on the eternal Doctor Who Magazine during this era and feel the need (quite rightfully) to point out their valiant efforts in maintaining a quality media tie in publication without a regular show to support. For more than a decade.

In truth, the 90’s were full of Doctor Who – just as the Target novelisations came to a natural end, the VHS releases of classic stories took off with a vengeance, bringing new audiences to old stories. The original series of adult New Adventures and Missing Adventures novels began in 1991 and produced an enormous quantity of stories over the next six years, only to be replaced by the similar-but-different BBC Book range of Eighth Doctor Adventures and Past Doctor Adventures which continued well into the new Millennium. There were comics and radio productions (okay not many, but some). Here in Australia we had even Doctor Who repeats on the ABC, often in the crazy early hours, which gave me the opportunity to see some Fifth and Sixth Doctor stories for the first time ever.

So yes, there was a lot happening with Doctor Who in this decade, but a lot of it hadn’t started yet in 1990. I freely admit that this at least was a Wilderness Year, though for many it wasn’t entirely clear that Doctor Who had in fact ended…

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So, that crime-writing alter ego of mine has a pretty exciting weekend coming up in a few weeks. Those of you likely to be in Melbourne on 14th June, check out this awesome Sisters in Crime event!

Josephine Pennicott, Poppy Gee and Livia Day have all set their novels in the Apple Isle, but with different and fatal twists. Presented by Lindy Cameron, a Sisters in Crime National Co-convenor and author.

Sydney-based Josephine Pennicott is the author of three fantasy books and now Poet’s Cottage (Pan MacMillan), a mystery novel set in a Tasmanian sea-fishing village in the 1930s and present day. It was sold in a bidding war to Ullstein publishers (Germany), along with Currawong Manor, her current mystery-in-progress.

Poppy Gee, who was born in Launceston, spends every summer with her family at its shack in the Bay of Fires, also the title for her forthcoming debut novel (March, Hachette). The body of a backpacker washes ashore at the idyllic small town in Tasmania and the close-knit community starts to fall apart. As long-buried secrets start to come out, the delicate balance of their fragile lives is threatened. Poppy has nearly completed her next novel, another literary thriller set in the Tasmanian ski village Ben Lomond.

Livia Day has lived in Hobart for most of her life and A Trifle Dead (Deadlines/Twelfth Planet Press) is her first crime novel. The action revolves around Tabitha Darling who has always been a dab hand at pastry and a knack for getting into trouble – not a useful trait when she’s trying to run a hipster urban cafe?, invent the perfect trendy dessert, and stop feeding the many (oh so unfashionable) policemen in her life. It all goes pear-shaped when a dead muso is found in the flat upstairs. Livia fell in love with crime fiction at an early age.

DETAILS …
Venue: The Rising Sun Hotel (upstairs – no lift, cnr Raglan Street and Eastern Road South Melbourne)
Dinner: upstairs from 6.30pm (no need to book)
Men or ‘brothers-in-law’ welcome
Sun Bookshop stall: members get 10% discount
Melways: map 57H2
Trams: 1, 55, 112 or St Kilda Road trams
Parking: free on-street parking after 6pm

www.sistersincrime.org.au

For the last couple of years I have attended the Sydney-hosted Aurealis Awards weekend, which is always a blast. Sadly I was reining back on travel this year and couldn’t make it – but it sounds like those who were there had a great time! Check in on the #AurealisAwards hashtag on Twitter to see some of the commentary on the night from those who were there. Sean the Blogonaut also Storified the event which provides the highlights in Tweets and Twitpicks.

Some great results here, and congratulations to all the winners! Special congratulations to Margo Lanagan who had a great night, taking out four awards (each chosen by separate juries!) for Sea Hearts, “Bajazzle” and “Significant Dust.”

I have to say, I found it pretty tiring that so many people (including tons that I love and respect) started trotting out the jokes so early about Margo winning so many awards, or as the jokes implied, TOO many awards. (Note: the jokes started before her first win) It reminds me of the recent commentary about Hilary Mantel in the UK winning “all” the awards and not leaving any for anything else. The jokes might all have been intended as good-natured joshing, but it’s a disappointing aspect of Australian culture in particular that there is such a low ceiling to people (even friends) celebrating your success, before they turn around and start suggesting (in jest or otherwise) that it’s something you should be ashamed of.

Chances are pretty high that Margo found it as funny as anyone else there last night, but as an onlooker on the proceedings the sheer weight and number of those jokes flying thick and fast across Twitter did make me a bit uncomfortable.

Sometimes, as I tweeted last night, an author has a really spectacular year, and awards reflect that. Margo Lanagan is one of our best authors, who happens to have put out a fantastic novel AND a brilliant original collection in the same year, and I know she wasn’t taking those wins for granted.

Margo is aces & I love her as a person as well as for her writing, and I doubt very much she will ever have a night where she goes home with four trophies again, so let her enjoy it, eh?

This might be a good time to link to the article that reworks Helen Garner’s speech for the Stella Prize recently – about how awards can mess with your head as a writer, regardless of whether you win or don’t win.

And now, the Aurealis Award winners! A great range of works being honoured here, very much worthy of a ‘To Read’ list. Too many of the winners are my actual friends so I’ll just say congratulations to EVERYONE. Worth noting that there’s quite a spread of publishers being covered here, from old hands HarperCollins and Allen&Unwin to new kids on the block digital-only publisher Xoum and some Aussies published overseas with NightShade and Clarkesworld. Twelfth Planet Press flew the flag for Australian indie presses with three short stories honoured from two Twelve Planets collections, Through Splintered Walls by Kaaron Warren and Cracklescape by Margo Lanagan. There was even a self-published winner with KJ Bishop’s collection – so, variety!

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Another decade down, and that means it’s time for another WHO-50 round up!

The Eighties was a turbulent time in Doctor Who, beginning with the cancellation of the part-filmed Shada, and ending with the hiatus and final “rest” of the show beloved by so many. The showman sensibilities of producer John Nathan-Turner meant some fantastic guest stars and overseas filming, and script editors Christopher Bidmead (science should not be silly), Eric Saward (if you’re going to have violent stories, let’s make them PROPERLY violent) and Andrew Cartmel (let’s show you just how sneaky and manipulative the Doctor has to be to save the universe) put their stamp on the show, as did the three actors who came in to play the Doctor in the wake of the iconic Tom Baker: Peter Davison, Colin Baker, and Sylvester McCoy.

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Probably the most important blog post I read in the last week is the update from the long-missed Hyperbole and a Half about her depression. As ever, she slices through the hard and complicated issues with a sharp, dissecting knife, using humour and clever artwork to communicate something of deep value and significance. While I am sure that many who suffer from depression will find something powerful in this post, I think it may have particular relevance to those who never have felt the symptoms of clinical depression, and despite their best intentions have trouble understanding how it FEELS.

I have a horrible feeling that I have been, more than once, that gabbling friend trying to give helpful advice about a thing I know nothing about – and this post brought home exactly how little I know about this particular type of mental illness despite having many friends who have suffered from it in their lives. As with all great writing, this piece made me think differently about myself and the universe. Also, it’s horribly hilarious. Highly recommended, and I’m so glad to see H&aH back.

This sweet story is about a mother who decided to go beyond the ‘princess’ motif for her daughter’s fifth birthday commemorative photo, and dressed her up as a selection of feminist historical heroines.

A nice coda to the Hawkeye Initiative – how the genderflipping art project inspired an employee at a gaming company to take a stand and communicate a problem to her boss in a creative, classy way.

How Muriel Spark Saved Mary Shelley – the fascinating story of how “the canon” of literature really can be changed. Because, you know, it’s all about perception of value.

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