I see that Sean the Blogonaut scooped me on this one by dint of being awake past midnight on a school night. That’s dedication for you! But now I’m up stupidly early (by accident) and most of the people I want to squee with are still asleep!

So here it is. Um. UM. Let’s just say I’m not sure I’m going to be able to discuss this one sensibly on Galactic Suburbia. (Which of course won’t actually stop me).

Congrats to everyone on the ballot, with some especial squeeage for Jo Anderton who is represented by her debut novel. Thank you everyone who nominated & all the people doing the work to produce this ballot. I am staring at it with giant anime eyes. Just so you know.

The Ditmar subcommittee are pleased to announce the ballot for the Australian SF (“Ditmar”) Award for 2012. Voting is now open, and will remain open for at least 30 days. [Follow the link for voting info]

The 2012 ballot is as follows:

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

Best Novella or Novelette
* “The Sleeping and the Dead”, Cat Sparks, in Ishtar (Gilgamesh Press)
* “Above”, Stephanie Campisi, in Above/Below (Twelfth Planet Press)
* “The Past is a Bridge Best Left Burnt”, Paul Haines, in The Last Days of Kali Yuga (Brimstone Press)
* “And the Dead Shall Outnumber the Living”, Deborah Biancotti, in Ishtar (Gilgamesh Press)
* “Julia Agrippina’s Secret Family Bestiary”, Tansy Rayner Roberts, in Love and Romanpunk (Twelfth Planet Press)
* “Below”, Ben Peek, in Above/Below (Twelfth Planet Press)

Best Short Story
* “Breaking the Ice”, Thoraiya Dyer, in Cosmos 37
* “Alchemy”, Lucy Sussex, in Thief of Lives (Twelfth Planet Press)
* “The Last Gig of Jimmy Rucker”, Martin Livings and Talie Helene, in More Scary Kisses (Ticonderoga Publications)
* “All You Can Do Is Breathe”, Kaaron Warren, in Blood and Other Cravings (Tor)
* “Bad Power”, Deborah Biancotti, in Bad Power (Twelfth Planet Press)
* “The Patrician”, Tansy Rayner Roberts, in Love and Romanpunk (Twelfth Planet Press)

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Nicole Murphy has a regular series up on her blog, interviewing writers about their habits and their processes. I am her star of the week, talking about my habits here, and my processes here.

It’s a while since I have checked in with myself about what I’m doing and how I do it, so it was kind of fascinating to me to roll out these answers.

“I usually have one primary and a couple of secondary projects. This is the first year in a very long time I have allowed myself to have multiple projects, none of which are headline acts. I can write half a chapter of a novel, or 200 words each across 5 short stories if I want. Later in the year, as my projects consolidate, I intend to be a bit firmer about prioritising certain novels, but right now I’m letting myself write quite freely which is – terrifying and enchanting at the same time.”

I knew I was doing something completely different this year, but it hadn’t sunk in quite how much I have changed the way I work for 2012. It could be scary, except that I’ve been doing this long enough to know that my methods are always fluid, always changing. What works for me now is not necessarily what will work even one book from now, let alone three.

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The Getting of Wisdom by Henry Handel Richardson (one of the pantheon of female authors who took a male name to publish during that period of literary enlightenment known as the olden days) is one of those novels that I have heard mentioned here and there, but given my general allergy to Australian classics, I have not pursued it before now. But more recently, as I’ve been looking with greater interest at the history of women writers (or as I say on Pinterest, Lady Novelists) I became intrigued by Richardson.

I then realised that the movie I thought I had watched as a kid based on this book was actually My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin. Whoops! I am WAY better on the history of feminist science fiction novelists, I promise.

Anyway, in my research I saw reference to the fact that The Getting of Wisdom, as well as having that dreadful Australian Classic label, was a boarding school story. And I LOVE boarding school stories with a fiery passion. Apparently there were queer themes too, and there I was, ordering the book from the library like a boss.

Possibly it’s time to start reassessing what the ‘Australian Classic’ title means to me, or maybe it’s the benefit of reading as an adult rather than a child, but where has this book been all my life? Why was it not given to me with a ‘you’ve read Anne of Green Gables, Little Women, What Katy Did and the Little House on the Prairie books, plus all the Enid Blyton boarding school stories, and this is basically a cranky bitch version of all those books, set in Melbourne.’

Why do people not point twelve year olds towards the cranky bitch at boarding school books?

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One of the books I most want to get my hands on right now is Bitter Greens by Kate Forsyth, a historical retelling of the Rapunzel myth. Sean interviewed Kate for Galactic Chat (which was down for a while this weekend for reasons that make us very cranky with Podbean).

Meanwhile, Rowena Cory Daniells hosts a guest post with Kate talking about the history behind the fairy tale that inspired Bitter Greens:

“Sixty years later, the story appears again, this time in France. It is told in 1698 by Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de la Force , who has been banished to a convent after displeasing the Sun King, Louis XIV, at his opulent court in Versailles. Locked away in a cloister, much like Rapunzel is in her tower, Charlotte-Rose was among the first writers to pen a collection of literary fairy tales and also one of the world’s first historical novelists. Published under a pseudonym, Mademoiselle X, Charlotte-Rose’s tales became bestsellers and she was eventually able to buy her release.”

It feels like Rapunzel has been in my life a lot recently! Raeli adores the movie Tangled, which she saw at the cinema with friends, so I haven’t seen it yet. But I have read the book of the film many times, and played through the pretty awesome Wii game with her so much that it feels like I’ve seen the movie itself. I kind of want to see it now, just to compare! (but the game is most excellent)

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I have fallen completely for this cute web video series – and so have a whole bunch of other people! There are only four vids so far but I am assuming that the whole story of Pride and Prejudice is going to be retold. And I do love a new version of Pride and Prejudice…

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Is it me, or are these weeks coming around REALLY FAST? 2012 is prancing by, and what do I have to show for it? Well OK, one published novel, four completed short stories, a novel in progress that seems to be working and a handful of awards nominations, but apart from that??

The soccer season has started, and for once I’m not talking about Arsenal, which has been elating and frustrating me in equal measure since last September, but about young Raeli, kicking off for another season, this time in the Under 7′s. The good news is, her spikes still fit, which was something of a relief because I don’t have the cash to buy her new ones.

In the mean time, I have LINKS for you.

My honey sent me an email this week saying ‘you are a superhero’. Which, OBVIOUSLY. But it turned out he was referring to this, an article about how curating the internet is becoming more and more important, and the people who do this work are, well, superheroes. I have to say, I like the term ‘curators’ as it feels a lot less elitist than ‘gatekeepers’. Though of course, ‘doorbitch’ is still my favourite. HEAR ME, INTERNET? I AM YOUR DOORBITCH.

At the Intergalactic Academy, a great post by Phoebe about a current trend to discredit/challenge the genre credentials of teen dystopia novels because they also have romance in them and thus might SNEAKILY be contaminated with girl germs. Only, of course, she says it better or I wouldn’t be linking to her. I know we don’t read the comments but some important discussion did happen in these – in particular, addressing one of Phoebe’s key points about how you probably shouldn’t be refiling these books as ‘romance’ without knowing something about the romance genre, and it’s actually a bit more complicated than “I SUSPECT THIS IS A KISSING BOOK!”

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The article on gender, genre, publishing & ME in yesterday’s Hobart Mercury is now up electronically. Admire my library, cos it doesn’t always look quite that tidy. Cough. Thanks to Rebecca Fitzgibbon (@becfitzgibbon) for the article, it’s lovely to see some coverage of fantasy-relevant topics (not to mention feminism, gosh!) in our local paper. Bec has been writing some great pieces on culture in recent months, so it’s worth keeping an eye out for her byline.

I linked to this once already but I think it bears repeating: I appear on Jim C Hines’ blog, talking about my first novel publication.

Over on Doctor Her I finished up my series (for now at least) looking at Domesticating the Doctor with Marrying the Ponds.

A half-worked-out story idea about the concept of “lady novelists” and some mad Google fu led to my creation of this Pinterest board: Lady Novelists. I started out looking at 1920′s-1930′s era of women and then went a bit off book to add all kinds of people. I became fascinated with the images that came up for searches of particular authors – and when I only chose one picture to represent each (occasionally I picked a couple) I tried very much to find pictures that showed them at work – at the typewriter, holding books or public speaking. I was quite selective, trying not to automatically pic the most glamorous or smiley picture, but one that represented that writer’s personality. Except Nancy Mitford, of course, for who the glam pictures are just so calculated! And of course, some of them like Margaret Mitchell are glamorous while working. I also tried not to automatically go for an image of the author in her early career when I could put in a picture of a more interesting older woman. Miles Franklin, for instance, is so often depicted as a very young woman rather than the adorable dotty lady she seems to have become in later life.

I also took some new Deepings Dolls pictures that I’ll be putting up over the next week or two. Since my library was all clean and tidy from my photographer visit (heh) I used it as the base for this series of pictures, playing with books themselves as backgrounds. In this case, for Reader, I Married Him I used my aged and beloved copy of Jane Eyre (hate the novel, love the book) as a backdrop for a fake wedding album for a very happy example of our ‘nostalgia bride and groom.

My library (with me in it) was a centrefold in today’s Hobart Mercury, along with a great article by Bec Fitzgibbon on genre, gender and publishing. Is gender equality the next big thing in literature?

This pic courtesy of @beesncheese who achieved something I never have, by capturing a picture of my mother smiling at the camera, rather than diving behind the nearest rosebush to avoid it. All my other pics of her smiling have only been achieved by the judicious application of grandchildren and stealth.

Since Alisa is making book confessions over at her blog, it’s probably time that I made some of my own.

It’s the National Year of Reading here in Australia, and my one big reading challenge to myself is to buy fewer books. Which is quite a confronting thing to talk about publicly, because, well, I do rather spend a lot of my time online convincing other people to buy books, even if only a minority of them turn out to be my own. I am a book pusher. Listeners of Galactic Suburbia know this to be true!

But my teetering To Read bookcase is currently unsustainable, and my quest this year is to bring my book purchases (which are still flying on my pre-children reading abilities) more closely in line with how many books I am capable of reading. So for the National Year of Reading, I’m trying to read the books I ALREADY HAVE.

So my system is that I am only allowed to buy one book for every three that I read, and two of those three have to be from the physical To Read shelf as opposed to, say, my whopping bag of Agatha Christies, or my books for research shelf, or something from my greater library, or actual library books. I first stated these intentions here.

How am I doing, three months in? Not as well as I’d secretly hoped. Accidentally buying a pack of three Agatha Christies in the post office back in January did rather send the system into a tailspin which took some time to recover from.

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The Thor movie made me think.  Yes, really!

It’s a fun popcorn flick, with a charismatic lead, some witticisms, and fun supporting characters. What it doesn’t have is a convincing romance. Natalie Portman and Chris Hemsworth have plenty of romantic chemistry with various characters in the movie, but not with each other. So making romance a primary motivation for either of them is unconvincing, to say the least.

Likewise, Thor’s godly buddies ramble around the movie, in a generally supportive way, and near the end, one of them confesses love for him. Surprise, it’s Sif, goddess of war, the only female member of the gang. Her romantic interest in Thor adds absolutely nothing to the story, and makes her about 200% less interesting.

Meanwhile, Kat Dennings’ cute as a button sidekick character (yes, the lead female character gets a female sidekick, like I said, the movie doesn’t suck!) gets most of the best lines, is fun and entertaining on screen in her limited role, and doesn’t have to kiss anyone. Her character emerges with the best integrity, apart from Frigga (Rene Russo) who is rather awesome, but also Thor’s Mum, therefore does not have to be hot for him.

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