tansyrr.com » 2010snapshot

Snapshot Etc.

tansyrr — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 07:30:32 +0000

Well, that was an exciting week! The Snapshot is officially over, and you can read an epilogue post over at the blog of Kathryn, our fearless leader this year. It was as ever, frantic and a touch on the crazy side. We battled with a shockingly unreliable gmail address that seemed to randomly eat a good percentage of emails we received, and did our best to cover as many of the active members of the spec fic community as possible.

I was excited to see so many interesting tales and announcements emerging – and to welcome in so many new names. I remember when I was first published, this amorphous entity known as ‘the spec fic community’ was so very daunting, so I was particularly pleased to be able to welcome some new writers to the fold. So many people say that this is a quiet, “fallow” period for Australian specfic, and are looking to the Melbourne Worldcon to set off another ‘golden age’ of manic writing, editing and publishing activity – maybe it’s true and maybe that will happen, but things are looking pretty golden already!

Hopefully many of the international visitors who are coming along to Aussiecon 4 will be able to use this year’s Snapshot as a resource as to what’s going on over here. Heh, probably plenty of Australians can use it the same way – I know I’ve learned a lot from reading all the interviews.

It was enormously pleasing to see so many people cite Siren Beat (as well as the works of many of my friends) as a reading highlight of their year. I’ve never written anything that has attracted such – well, buzz, and general approval. It feels awfully shiny, and helps me through the months of anxiety between now and the publication of my first Voyager novel.

The Australian SpecFic Snapshot 2010: Marianne De Pierres, Richard Harland, Karen Miller, Margo Lanagan, Ben Peek, Narelle Harris, Paul Collins, Damien Broderick, Shane Jiraiya Cummings, Angela Slatter, Dion Hamill, Garth Nix, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Trudi Canavan, Thoraiya Dyer, Keith Stevenson, Juliet Marillier, Gillian Polack, Jason Fischer, Alisa Krasnostein, Tehani Wessely, Amanda Rainey, Justine Larbalestier, Rowena Cory Daniells, Glenda Larke, Adrian (K.A.) Bedford, Kaaron Warren, Nicole Murphy, D.M. Cornish, Deborah Kalin, Jonathan Strahan, Alan Baxter, Gary Kemble, Lezli Robyn, Kate Eltham, Robert Hoge, Will Elliott, Trent Jamieson, Felicity Dowker, Jack Dann, Lee Battersby, Peter M Ball, Nyssa Pascoe, Lucy Sussex, Andrew McKiernan, Amanda Pillar, Deborah Biancotti, Kim Falconer, Gabrielle Wang, Kim Wilkins, Paul Haines, Karen Healey, Stephanie Campisi, Stuart Mayne, Christopher Lynch, Simon Petrie, Alison Goodman, Russell Blackford, Rhonda Roberts, Ben Payne, Christopher Green, Kylie Chan, K.J. Taylor, Robbie Matthews, Kirstyn McDermott, Russell Farr, Simon Haynes, Kate Orman, Cat Sparks, Sean Williams, Penni Russon, Robert Hood, Tracey O’Hara, Cassandra Golds, Dirk Flinthart, Kathleen Jennings, Tessa Kum, Helen Merrick, Jenny Blackford, Martin Livings, Marty Young, Lisa (LL) Hannett, Nick Stathopoulos, Lorraine Cormack, Edwina Harvey, Ian McHugh, Matthew Chrulew, Shaun Tan

Snapshot 2010: Tessa Kum

tansyrr — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 08:13:17 +0000

By day, Tessa Kum is a monkey with a keyboard. By night, she is also a monkey with a keyboard. She is a graduate of the Clarion South Writers Workshop, editorial assistant for Weird Tales, and assistant editor for the Best American Fantasy series. She has recently been published in Last Drink Bird Head and Halo: Evolutions, with forthcoming fiction in Baggage, and her mosaic short story collection 7wishes is currently free to read online. She lives in Melbourne, and would like an elephant to ride to work, please.

1. You recently collaborated on a Halo novella with a certain Mr Jeff VanderMeer. How did the project come about, and how did the collaborative process work for the two of you? Is this your first excursion into media tie-in fiction?

Originally Jeff was invited to submit to the anthology based on his previous work in the Predator franchise. The Halo universe is extensively developed, and given the tight deadline cramping his ability to research, he didn’t like his chances. Before pulling out he threw me a “hey, interested?” email, knowing I was familiar with Halo. Given there was only a month to go from concept to final draft, not to mention the difference in time zones and the fact I’d never taken part in a collaboration before, I’m not sure he expected me to say yes, but I did, and, er, it all went downhill from there.

Being as I knew the Halo universe better than Jeff, most of the initial brainstorming was mine. I looked for concepts that would not require giving over too much of our already limited time to researching the political history and finer technological points of the world, while it still being a Halo story. For me, the quintessential Halo moment is in the first game, when the Flood are first introduced. They scared the bujeezes out of me. The games have moved on since then, but that’s a defining moment I wanted to bring the fans back to.

Once the pitch was accepted, we got down to writing, and…let me just say, don’t ever accept a one month deadline. In a sense, our differing time zones was a great help; I’d finish work on a draft, send it to Jeff, go to bed just as he’d be starting the day, working on it, send it to me just as I was starting the day, etc etc. It meant the story was always being worked on, although it also meant neither of us got a break. Something that was further exacerbated by the fact that the “short story” (it was never meant to be a novella) turned out to be 35,000 words, which made it difficult to turn around a draft in two days. To put it lightly. Fortunately, we worked well together. Writing in a franchise that wasn’t ours and the insane pressure kept us from getting overly precious about our particular darlings, as writers are want to do, but we really did just work well together. Our writing styles, strengths and weaknesses complimented each other. Getting the draft back was always a bit like opening a present to discover what new piece of awesome he’d come up with.

Halo: Evolutions has been out overseas since November and has been very well received, and should be released in Australia at the end of the month. It was a great opportunity and learning experience, but I shall never, never, never, never agree to such a short deadline again. Never. Ever.

2. Where else will your fiction be appearing in the coming months? What other speculative fiction projects are you involved with?

Baggage edited by Gillian Polack will be released in the next couple of months, and features my story ‘Acception’ (yet another “short” story). The anthology concerns itself with the influence of cultural baggage upon Australia, and working on a story with that in mind turned out to be the hardest writing I’ve ever done. It’s such a broad subject by which no one goes unaffected, and is at the same time intensely personal. The political and personal cannot necessarily be separated, and I crossed psychological badlands I didn’t know I had to write about it. It will be an interesting collection, to say the least.

I’m also an editorial assistant for Hugo award-winning Weird Tales magazine, which is quite possibly the best job ever. The stories I read are all unexpected in the paths they take, and some incredible pieces of craft have landed in my inbox. We’re always interested in (as the name says) the weird, the unusual and challenging, the stories that don’t fit neatly into any genre pigeonhole, and I urge all and any writers who have such a story to consider submitting it to Weird Tales, regardless of who or where they are.

3. You’ve been dealing with RSI over the last year – how has this affected your writing life (and you know, your life)? What advice would you give on this to those of us (heh not many, I’m sure) who spend our lives sitting at the computer?

Writing is such an internal process that the physical act of writing is easily forgotten. It will never stop being important for a writer to feed their mind and expand their knowledge base, but all that will be wasted if the writer cannot write.

My day job of the past four years has consisted almost solely of data entry. I hammered away at the keyboard for eight hours a day, five days a week, and then went home and hammered away at the keyboard in my own time. Inevitably, that workload overloaded my hands, and it got to the point I could not finish a shift at work because my hands hurt so. I could not write to any great effect at home because my hands hurt so. I couldn’t sleep, I had trouble gripping things. My doctor ordered me not to type for a fortnight.

Nearly everything I do and choose to do revolves around the physical act of writing. Having that taken from me left a void in my life and possibly my future that terrified me then, and still terrifies me.

The rest did help, and I returned to work with such restrictions in place I may as well have stayed shut up at home brooding. I couldn’t do my job, and the task found as a temporary means of keeping me busy was so trivial I was embarrassed and ashamed of entering the office every day. I felt guilty whenever I worked on my own writing, hyper-conscious of my hands, and my writing suffered as a result. I felt trapped in so many ways, because my hands were so damaged.

Come Monday I start in a new office, in a position that involves no data entry. My hands remain weak, aching things, but I hope. I hope.

Those of you who are writers; you are excellent at imagining. Imagine you cannot write. Imagine that may never change.

It’s such a little thing, to write, to hold a pen, to press the keys, and yet it is the most vital thing, it is the act that turns intention into word, it is what makes the writer.

Most people will not have the same work load as I did. Regardless, take care of your hands. Exercise them, keep them strong. Do not take them for granted. You need them.

4. Which Australian writers or work would you like to see on the Hugo shortlists this year?

I adore Deborah Kalin’s Shadow Queen. In the first chapter everyone dies, and things get progressively worse from there. It is brutal, positively Machiavellian in its political machinations, presents a disturbing examination of Stockholm Syndrome, and is relentless in pushing the plot out of one impossible situation by putting it in another.

I’m quite enamored of Margo Lanagan’s Tender Morsels. Yet another frank and brutal narrative in which absolutely ghastly things happen, yet are delivered through such delicate prose there is no looking away. To do so would be to break the moment.

5. Are you planning to go to Aussiecon 4 in September? If so, what are you most looking forward to?

We all have friends spread across the globe; I’m looking forward to seeing some of them again!

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Previously in Snapshot: Marianne De Pierres, Richard Harland, Karen Miller, Margo Lanagan, Ben Peek, Narelle Harris, Paul Collins, Damien Broderick, Shane Jiraiya Cummings, Angela Slatter, Dion Hamill, Garth Nix, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Trudi Canavan, Thoraiya Dyer, Keith Stevenson, Juliet Marillier, Gillian Polack, Jason Fischer, Alisa Krasnostein, Tehani Wessely, Amanda Rainey, Justine Larbalestier, Rowena Cory Daniells, Glenda Larke, Adrian (K.A.) Bedford, Kaaron Warren, Nicole Murphy, D.M. Cornish, Deborah Kalin, Jonathan Strahan, Alan Baxter, Gary Kemble, Lezli Robyn, Kate Eltham, Robert Hoge, Will Elliott, Trent Jamieson, Felicity Dowker, Jack Dann, Lee Battersby, Peter M Ball, Nyssa Pascoe, Lucy Sussex, Andrew McKiernan, Amanda Pillar, Deborah Biancotti, Kim Falconer, Gabrielle Wang, Kim Wilkins, Paul Haines, Karen Healey, Stephanie Campisi, Stuart Mayne, Christopher Lynch, Simon Petrie, Alison Goodman, Russell Blackford, Rhonda Roberts, Ben Payne, Christopher Green, Kylie Chan, K.J. Taylor, Robbie Matthews, Kirstyn McDermott, Russell Farr, Simon Haynes, Kate Orman, Cat Sparks, Sean Williams, Penni Russon, Robert Hood, Tracey O’Hara, Cassandra Golds, Dirk Flinthart, Kathleen Jennings

Snapshot interviews will be blogged from Monday 15th until Sunday 22nd Feb.

To read them hot off the press, check these blogs daily:
http://random-alex.livejournal.com/
http://girliejones.livejournal.com/
http://kathrynlinge.livejournal.com/
http://www.mechanicalcat.net/rachel
http://tansyrr.com/
http://editormum.livejournal.com/

Will we beat 83 this time? If you know of someone involved in the Scene with something to plug, then send us an email at 2010snapshot@gmail.com.

Snaphot 2010: Jennifer Fallon

tansyrr — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 21:02:19 +0000

Jennifer Fallon is the author of the Tide Lords series, the Second Sons trilogy and the Hythrun Chronicles, as well as writing tie-ins for Stargate and Zorro and has created a superhero for the Chick in Capes Anthology. She also has short stories coming out this year in Baggage and Jack Dann’s Legends of Australian Fantasy.

Jennifer has just moved from Central Australia to New Zealand where she plans to run writer’s workshops (as soon as her furniture arrives).

1. You’ve had a big upheaval recently! What inspired you to move from the Northern Territory to New Zealand and set up the Reynox International Writer’s Retreat? What are you hoping this first year will bring you?

The idea for the writers’ centre has been a dream of mine for many years. I am also fortunate enough that, thanks to writing, I have the resources to pretty much live and work wherever I want. I fell in love with New Zealand when I was over here for the world premiere of the 3rd Lord of the Rings movie in 2003. I made an offer back then, actually, on one of the properties they used in the film but the accountant who owned the place didn’t want to sell.

Ever since then I’ve had my eye on the place. I did some research about the best location to be (you know… no volcanoes or tectonic plate fault lines… that sort of thing) and came up with the Canterbury region in the South Island. It was then just a matter of waiting until the right property came up.

2. The first decade of this century saw you publish 14 novels, which is an extraordinary achievement. What have you learned about writing and the writing life in that time? Would you do any of it differently?

I read an interview once with Alex Hailey, the author of Roots where he was asked a very similar question. His answer was “type faster”.

My answer would have to be… not much. Everything I have done, or has happened to me this past decade, has influenced who I am and what I write. Changing anything would have altered this, and given I’m pretty happy with where I am and what I’m writing, I would be a fool to wish for it to be different.

I have learned that I must have an ending before I begin committing a story to paper. And I would perhaps, given the last ten years to live over, be a little more circumspect on my blog, and try not piss off a powerful and influential international editor whose wrath seems somewhat… disproportionate… to my crime… but hey… I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t put my foot in occasionally.

3. Your next series, the Rift Runners, won’t be published until 2012-14. Is this long delay so you can write the whole series before it begins publication? What stage are you at with the books, and what can you tell us about them?

I’m not sure where you’re getting those dates. My understanding is that book 1, The Undivided, is due out in March 2011. I have to deliver the first book in a couple of months. The delay is so I could have the time to develop the world fully, without cutting corners or having the pressure of a deadline I couldn’t meet. I knew when I signed the contracts that I would be relocating, so that was factored into the timeframe. I won’t start book 2 until book 1 is delivered and accepted.

4. Which Australian writers or work would you like to see on the Hugo shortlists this year?

All of them.

5. Are you planning to go to Aussiecon 4 in September? If so, what are you most looking forward to?

Yes, I’m planning to be there. As for what I’m looking forward to, I’d the only thing I can say for certain is catching up with the other writers I know. The rest of it I haven’t even spared a thought about. I have 4 Supanovas, two books to deliver and a writers’ retreat to organise before then, I don’t even have the furniture in my house yet.

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Snapshot interviews will be blogged from Monday 15th until Sunday 22nd Feb.

Will we beat 83 this time? If you know of someone involved in the Scene with something to plug, then send us an email at 2010snapshot@gmail.com.

Snapshot 2010: Penni Russon

tansyrr — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 11:23:53 +0000

Penni Russon is the author of the Undine trilogy – Undine, Breathe and Drift. More recently, she has written several mainstream YA novels for the Allen & Unwin Girlfriend series, including The Indigo Girls, Little Bird and (with Kate Constable) Dear Swoosie.

1. Dear Swoosie, which you co-wrote with Kate Constable, has just been released. How did the two of you manage the co-writing experience? Would you do it again?

We planned the novel before we started writing. We came up with India’s character first (because like India, Kate used to tell fortunes that sometimes came true), but I honestly have no idea how the rest of the story emerged, it was a truly magical process. We had a google doc that we both added to one chapter at a time, and at the same time we wrote the letters between Mandy and Sarah – strangely the climax of the letters happened at the same time as the climax of the novel. Not everything was planned so we each had to wait for the chapter or letter to appear before we could write the next instalment. It was quite an incredible experience, like reading a novel at the same time as writing it. Would we do it again? Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.

2. I’ve heard it said that it’s easy to move between genres within the confines of YA. You’ve had both fantasy and mainstream YA novels published – has this ever been a problem for you? Do your readers follow you across the borders?

I think that’s true in terms of publishing contracts and your editor encouraging you to write what you want to write – I think its easier because you aren’t changing departments in the publishing house more than anything. I am not sure how many Undine readers are also Girlfriend readers and vice versa (though I sometimes say that Indigo Girls is just Undine, but the chaos magic is replaced with night surfing). I remember Simmone Howell saying once that she wanted to write the kinds of books kids would pick up off the shelves themselves, use their own pocket money to buy, rather than relying on the ‘gatekeepers’ like librarians and teachers and parents to put them into their hands, and I think the Girlfriends are like that – (relatively) cheap and cheerful, great colours, easy to find and swap around between mates. The Undine books – sitting as they do across genres and markets – have to work harder to find their readers. And I acknowledge that they are quite difficult books in some ways, the prose is demanding. But there are people who really, really love and adore Undine and Trout and Lou and Jasper and Grunt. So even if they never sell to the masses, I am more than happy with their place in the world.

3. What’s next for Penni Russon? What have you been working on, writingwise, and are you returning to speculative fiction any time soon?

I have a novel with the publisher at the moment, getting its second round of juicy structural edit. It is indeed speculative, a sort of dystopian fairytale set in alternative universes, probably sharing some common traits with Margo Lanagan’s Tender Morsels and Neil Gaiman’s Coraline, also The Silver Crown by Robert C. O’Brien and The Mouse and his Child by Russel Hoban, though it was actually Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland I was thinking about when I began the planning process, and the idea of the ‘everchild’. In Only Ever Always the eternal child is increasingly unhealthy, the child has to grow up in order to protect the child-self from harm, otherwise the adult world and the child world will dissolve into each other, with bad consequences. All that’s happening under the surface of course. It’s a quest narrative, and the quest is shared between two versions of the same girl. Only Ever Always will be publishing in Autumn 2011.

Kate and I are also cooking up another collaborative novel – fantasy this time – though not sure when writing will commence on that.

And I have two other nebulous ideas, one about the Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart and one about a Thumbelina sized girl, who goes on a quest to search for her full-sized sister with a group of insect companions.

4. What Australian writers or work would you like to see nominated for awards this year?

Oh, all my mates of course! Kate Constable’s timeslip novel Cicada Summer raises the bar for junior fiction, I think it’s truly awesome, an enduring classic for readerly readers in a market dominated by books for reluctant readers – and I think its important that there are books on the shelf that celebrate the joy and wonder of reading a challenging, engaging, not altogether easy, but utterly satisfying book. I also loved The Museum of Mary Child by Cassandra Golds, and would love to see that recognised this year, it was shortlisted for an Aurealis award, which was fantastic. It’s published as YA too, though I think it’s on the younger end of the YA spectrum.

5. Are you planning to go to Aussiecon 4 in September? If so, what are you most looking forward to?

I don’t know, who will I be in September? If I did go, it would be for the sheer pleasure of the company.

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Snapshot interviews will be blogged from Monday 15th until Sunday 22nd Feb.

Will we beat 83 this time? If you know of someone involved in the Scene with something to plug, then send us an email at 2010snapshot@gmail.com.

Snapshot 2010: Kate Orman

tansyrr — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 09:35:55 +0000

Kate Orman is the author of many Doctor Who (and one Bernice Summerfield) novels, novellas and short stories. She lives in Sydney with her husband and co-author Jonathan Blum.

1. You have an essay appearing shortly in Chicks Dig Time Lords, a book I was very excited to hear about! Can you tell us a little about the book, and your contribution?

It is tremendously exciting! A lot has been written about female fans, but not much specifically about female Doctor Who fans. I reminisce about my experiences in Australian fandom and in online fandom. One thing that particularly interests me is the different proportion of women in DW fandoms in different countries; in the Australia and the UK, Who fandom is majority male, so one thing I’m especially looking forward to reading perspectives from majority female Who fandoms, such as the US.

2. Your writing and publishing history is so intertwined with Doctor Who, particularly that long period when the show wasn’t on tv – you had thirteen books published in a decade! What are you most proud of from that body of work?

I would say winning the Aurealis for “Fallen Gods”, but the credit for that belongs much more to Jon than it does to me. So instead, I’ll say I’m most proud of finishing Ben Aaronovitch’s foundering novel “So Vile A Sin” – a book I was so desperate to read, I was prepared to write it myself!

3. What’s next for Kate Orman? What have you been working on, writingwise?

I’ve just had a short story, “Flotsam and Jetsam”, in Torchwood Magazine issue 19 – I had an absolute ball writing that. But the big news is I’ve just sent a sample of an original SF novel, “Strange Flesh”, to our agent. Fingers crossed!

4. Which Australian writers or work would you like to see on the Hugo shortlists this year?

Cat Sparks! (You know, Cat did me an enormous service some years ago by declining to publish a story I’d sent her ‘cos it was rubbish. It was! That made me stop drifting along with my writing and really start working.)

5. Are you planning to go to Aussiecon in September? If so, what are you most looking forward to? (If not, pretend I asked you about Gallifrey instead!)

I have social phobia, and actually find conventions really intimidating, which will probably sound bizarre to people who’ve seen me merrily gabbling away on panels! The most amazing thing at any con is when something I’ve written has had some sort of impact on a reader – maybe they’ve created something in response, or maybe they just really enjoyed it – and I get to meet them. It’s especially gobsmacking when they’re from the other side of the planet!

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Snapshot interviews will be blogged from Monday 15th until Sunday 22nd Feb.

Will we beat 83 this time? If you know of someone involved in the Scene with something to plug, then send us an email at 2010snapshot@gmail.com.

Snapshot 2010: Rhonda Roberts

tansyrr — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 22:25:34 +0000

Rhonda Roberts has a PhD and worked as an academic specialising in the sociology of knowledge systems in different cultures and historical periods. She trained in Aikido in Japan and now learns Tai Chi near her home in the Illawarra.

1. Your book completely leapt out at me when I saw it on the shelves a few months ago – an Australian series about time travel and Ancient Rome is a marvellous combination! What was it about Ancient Rome that made you want to use it as the backdrop of your first novel?

Years ago I tutored in a university course on the rise and fall of female-centred religions. The one that came closest to taking over the modern world was the Egyptian Isis cult, which spread like a glorious virus throughout the Roman Empire. For a few centuries it was uncertain as to whether the Isiacs or the Christians would win the fight for dominance.

Talk about a great ‘what if’…

My series is about a time travelling detective operating in an alternate past and present. I wanted to explore (among other things) what it’d be like if Isis worship hadn’t been stamped out but just gone underground and then risen again to challenge Christianity in the modern era.

Well that’s one of the reasons anyway… J Ancient Rome is such a rich treasure chest for any writer to raid.

2. Gladiatrix is the first in a series – Kannon Dupree Timestalker – when can we expect the further installments in the series, and what time periods are Kannon heading to next?

Hoodwink, the second book, is set in Hollywood in 1939. It’s finished and I’m now writing the third one. HarperCollins is adjusting the release date for Hoodwink and I’ll post it and more details of the book on my website asap.

3. If you could travel in time just once, which period would you choose, and what would you take on your trip?

I’m torn between wanting to meet specific people in history and wondering about cultures that were more entwined with their habitat.

Sure I’d love to talk to the Oracle of Delphi, Buddha, Christ, and Helen Keller about the meaning of life but I’d also love to visit both the great Sioux nation and the Dharawal people of the Illawarra (where I live) before colonization.

In the end I’d have to choose the future – and I’d take a list of questions. What new solutions do you have? What has hindsight shown we could’ve done better? Are shoulder pads back in fashion…and why?

4. Which Australian writers or work have you most enjoyed reading this year?

This is always a toughie. The spec fiction community here is so diverse and so heavily stocked with talent… and I’m always finding new stuff that impresses. The gold mine of writers at www.ripping-ozzie-reads.com has produced some stunning work this last year and Sean Williams is always amazing…

5. Are you planning to go to Aussiecon 4 in September? If so, what are you most looking forward to?

Oh definitely. (Barring acts of God of course!) The world spec fiction community is knocking on our front door – why would you want to miss that?

What am I looking forward to? The diversity, the unexpected, the flavour, the chats over good coffee, the sudden inspiration about my own work while listening to a great writer talk about theirs… How long have you got?

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Snapshot interviews will be blogged from Monday 15th until Sunday 22nd Feb.

Will we beat 83 this time? If you know of someone involved in the Scene with something to plug, then send us an email at 2010snapshot@gmail.com.

Snapshot 2010: Karen Healey

tansyrr — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 06:56:21 +0000

Karen Healey is a New Zealander living in Australia doing a PhD on American superhero comics. Her debut novel, Guardian of the Dead, a YA contemporary fantasy set in New Zealand, comes out in April.

1. Your book already has lots of people buzzing – the blurbs on your website include enthusiastic recommendations from Holly Black, Libba Bray, Justine Larbalestier and Sarah Rees Brennan! I was particularly interested to learn that your teen girl protagonist is neither slim nor conventionally attractive – still a rarity in current YA – and that your magic system is influenced by Maori mythology, which must come with a whole lot of cultural baggage attached to it. Were you ever worried that these factors might hold your book back from publication? That Guardian of the Dead might be too unusual to make it this far? How difficult (or indeed, easy) has your road to publication been?

No, not really, which in retrospect might have been naive, but it all worked out, so perhaps not? I do feel that the premise turned some people off – I got one rejection that thought the book was “too New Zealandy”, which made me laugh – but that’s fine. Editors have so many great manuscripts on submission, they’re answerable to their bosses, and they do have to be really picky about what they feel they can sell and what fits into their catalogues. I’m really happy with both Allen and Unwin and my American publishers, Little, Brown. My editors there like what they feel is the originality of the work, including Ellie’s weight and looks and what I’ve done with Maori mythology.

My biggest fear wasn’t that no one would want the book because it was too unusual, but that I would poorly present Ellie’s experience of being large, misrepresent Maori heritage, or cause harm to potential Maori readers through cultural appropriation (since I’m average-sized and Pakeha). I tried my best to avoid being a jerk through various methods, including a lot of research and cultural consultation, but I’m not really the best judge of whether I managed it, so we’ll see!

My path to publication was actually fairly easy, though it was of course horribly nervewracking! Holly Black saw the first chapters at a workshop and recommended I query her agent, Bary Goldblatt. I did, he signed me up as a client, and then sent the manuscript out, where it collected its fair share of rejections before getting some offers from some great houses. I had to make a few hard decisions, but I’m happy with the results of my choices.

2. I read that you’re doing a PhD on gender issues in comic books, which made me squee just a little bit, because it sounds like a thesis that really needs to be written. What do you want most from a comic, as a woman and a reader? Also, who are your favourite superheroes and why?

I actually am not! I am doing a PhD on superhero comics and fan culture, which tangentially touches upon gender issues and utilizes some feminist theory and a great deal of fan theory from women. I agree that a thesis on gender issues in comics totally does need to be written though! I think a couple of people are working on it.

What I want most from a comic as a reader is a great story and compelling characters, and as a woman, that includes not being insulted or jolted out of the narrative by awful depictions of women, either textually or in the art. There’s nothing to shock you out of an interesting story of blowing stuff up like a female superhero apparently delivering all her dialogue from her ass, and it is just so, so dispiriting and boring to see “she was raped!” as motivation for a female character, good or bad, doing anything. It’s so lazy.

My favourite superheroes are Misty Knight, Barbara Gordon, Connor Hawke, Emma Frost, and Jean Grey – all smart, competent, complex characters with long histories and some great storylines. But my favourite of all time is probably Jaime Reyes, AKA Blue Beetle III, AKA the best person in the entire DC Universe.

3. I’m sure it’s hard to see past that April publication date, but what’s next for you, writingwise? What are you working on right now? Do you see yourself writing works set in Australia now that you live here, or is your heart always going to be in New Zealand?

My second book, currently called SUMMERTON, has sold to Allen and Unwin and Little, Brown. It’s again set in New Zealand, this time in a small, far-too-perfect, West Coast town where three teenagers try to find the real reasons behind their older brothers’ apparent suicides. Besides revising SUMMERTON, I’m working on a few things right now – researching one book (set in Europe), writing another, planning a sequel to GUARDIAN – those two are both NZ-based.

I love Australia, too, though, especially Melbourne, which I think is my favourite city ever! I actually have ideas for a YA sci-fi not-too-distant future story set in Melbourne – I think the city’s environmental challenges and diversity are fertile ground for considering the possibilities of the next century.

4. Which Australian (ha, I should say Antipodean, shouldn’t I) writers or work would you like to see nominated for awards this year? What have you most enjoyed reading?

I’m going to be completely partisan and talk about my friends’ work, so, you know, fair warning of bias.

I think that Deborah Kalin’s SHADOW QUEEN is totally brilliant – a fascinating and often painful investigation of Stockholm syndrome romance in the middle of a court intrigue/adventure story in a quasi-European fantasy setting unlike anything I’ve ever read before. Justine Larbalestier’s LIAR is an amazing work which I can’t really talk about because anything I will say is laden with spoilers, but it’s a psychological thriller set in contemporary New York told from the first person narration of a compulsive liar. If you’re into complex characterisation and unreliable narrators, I recommend both very much.

5. Are you planning to go to Aussiecon 4 in September? If so, what are you most looking forward to?

I am! And I am looking forward to the cocktails. Isn’t everyone?

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Snapshot interviews will be blogged from Monday 15th until Sunday 22nd Feb.

Will we beat 83 this time? If you know of someone involved in the Scene with something to plug, then send us an email at 2010snapshot@gmail.com.

Snapshot 2010: Deborah Biancotti

tansyrr — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 21:20:30 +0000

Deborah Biancotti’s first short story won an Aurealis Award in 2001, and her first collection, A BOOK OF ENDINGS, was shortlisted for the William L. Crawford Award 2010. She is now working on her first novel, working title BROKEN, and has new fiction launching at WorldCon in September.

1. A Book of Endings has been building steam, with many people locally and overseas singling it out as a great collection. Did you achieve everything you hoped to with this book? What did you learn from the experience of putting the collection together with Twelfth Planet Press?

I learned to write under pressure and to forever put aside any hopes I had of being one of those ‘precious’ writers. Editors and friends will just not let me get away with it.

The book-delivery process was incredibly bloody useful, actually, and transformative. I went in a lot more fearful than I’ve come out. I no longer fear deadlines, for example. Though I may occasionally still screw them up. But if I’d had any outstanding issues with the idea of myself as a working writer, those are settled now.

Not sure I achieved everything I hoped to. The world domination still seems a ways off. Editor & publisher Alisa Krasnostein suggested I see the book as a bridge between the writing I’ve done & the writing I want to do next, & for me the book definitely achieves that. There’s a bit of experimentation in the collection, in an attempt to see what would happen if I put some of my more out-there stuff in front of people. The response has been mostly pretty positive, or at least not negative enough that I’ve noticed.

2. Your short stories have always leaned towards the experimental, and you could certainly find an audience among mainstream literary readers – what is it about speculative fiction that draws you in? What does genre have to offer you as a writer?

Well, I hate being bored. That’s really what keeps me reading & writing in genre. I don’t think I’ve ever even really considered working in the mainstream, & my few early forays into mainstream lit (either by reading books from award lists, or joining a non-genre workshop/writing group, or going to poetry readings, etc) all left me feeling like I had a sharp attack of dry-mouth. Maybe I accidentally kept bumping into the pointy, pretentious end of mainstream & missed finding the soft, gooey centre that I’m sure exists.

Nowdays I’m actually reading a lot of crime & thriller writing, & LOVING it! But there’ll always be something genre-like about my writing. The world is too weird NOT to write weirdly about it.

3. You’ve been working on The Novel for some time – how are you finding the transition between writing short and writing long? Are novels where you see your future? What can you tell us about the novel you are working on?

The Novel is 3 years & 1 month old! It’s a near-future psychological thriller – if you’re a mainstream reader. If you’re a genre reader it’s a good ol’ parallel universe urban fantasy — with a Minotaur. It’s getting close to done now, too. This draft is as much fun as the first one was, & a heck of a lot more fun than some of the drafts in-between were.

The transition is tough as hell and advice from novelists is conflicting if it exists at all. Every author has to learn the process for themselves, what works, what doesn’t. It’s bloody hard & you wish there was just one right way to do it so you could get on with the writing.

The best thing I did was stop reading novels I thought I should be reading & start reading novels I enjoy. ‘Cos if you’re going to spend 3 years & a month writing a novel, it really should be one you enjoy reading, right? Right.

It’s so obvious in hindsight.

Yes, I’d love to keep doing novels. They are a bunch of fun! It’s like having invisible friends. You can make up an entire world and live there for a while. Who wouldn’t want that?

I also plan to get faster at it.

4. Which Australian writers or work would you like to see on the Hugo shortlists this year?

All of them!

5. Are you planning to go to Aussiecon 4 in September? If so, what are you most looking forward to?

If I mention ‘the bar’ again people will think I’m an alcoholic. I’m one of the babes born of the 1999 WorldCon in Melbourne, so for me this’ll be a bit of a coming of age. I think what I’m looking forward to is going in as an adult this time, with a bunch of achievements I can point to as ‘this is what I’ve been doing since then’, rather than that really difficult full-of-hope-but-otherwise-untested state pre-published writers have to endure as a first step. Maybe it’s time to do some paying forward.

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Snapshot interviews will be blogged from Monday 15th until Sunday 22nd Feb.

Will we beat 83 this time? If you know of someone involved in the Scene with something to plug, then send us an email at 2010snapshot@gmail.com.

Snapshot 2010: Peter M. Ball

tansyrr — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 07:47:03 +0000

Peter M. Ball is a Brisbane writer who attended Clarion South in 2007. His novella, Horn, was published by Twelfth Planet Press in 2009 and his most recent short stories have appeared in Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, Shimmer, and the Interfictions II anthology. He can be found online at www.petermball.com.

1. Horn has had such great feedback, from reviewers and readers. How
are you following it up, and are we going to see Miriam Aster in full-length novels someday?

The impetus for Horn was essentially a dare that raged out of control, so the question of what comes next has been looming ever since I started talking to Twelfth Planet Press about the possibility of doing more with Aster. Right now I’m working on a second novella that Twelfth Planet has scheduled for release later this year, and there’s a half-finished draft of a third novella floating around my computer as well. My goal is to use the three books to create a kind of triptych of the relationship Aster has with the faerie and the queen-in-exile Anya Titan, making connections for the people who want them to be there while keeping each as a stand-alone story.

An Aster novel may come one day, but there’s an economy to the novella that suits the Hardboiled Detective genre elements I’m playing with in her stories. This means I’d either be writing a very short novel – the kind that publishers tend to shy away from – or I’d need to find another angle on the character that’d give me the scope to expand.

2. Over the last year or two you have regularly appeared in overseas genre magazines such as Strange Horizons and Fantasy, and several high profile anthologies. What advice would you give to Australian writers who want to break into the overseas markets?

Don’t overcomplicate it. I wrote stories, I submitted them to overseas markets, and I repeated the process with dogged persistence until editors started saying yes. It’s exactly the same thing you do when submitting to Australian markets, except the overseas markets have slightly larger slush piles and tend to be in a position to pay a little better.

Befriend some Americans. You’ll need them to send you stamps if you want to submit to several of the more recognised print markets, since they’ll require a SSAE with your submission and International Reply Paid Coupons are generally more trouble than they’re worth.

Duotrope and Ralan are useful, but they’ll take time away from your writing if you let them. Actually, hell, lets be honest: Duotrope will eat your soul if you’re the type to start agonising over response times. Don’t let it. Distract yourself by writing a new story instead of wondering what it means that an editor has held your story for 70 days when the market average if 68. It’ll work out better for everyone involved.

3. What’s next for Peter M. Ball? What have you been working on, writingwise, and what are your goals for the next couple of years?

I’ve got stories coming up in Weird Tales, Electric Velocipede and a few other magazines, plus some projects with Twelfth Planet press that includes the novellas mentioned above. I’m also working on a novel, Black Candy, that I’m hoping to get finished in the first half of 2010.

Beyond that, the plan is basically write, write some more, and keep writing until someone takes the keyboard away and tells me I have to stop.

4. Which Australian writers or work would you like to see on the Hugo shortlists this year?

A bunch of friends have been recommending Australian writers for the Campbell award and I’m surprised by the fact that Angela Slatter wasn’t on their lists. I suspect folks are assuming she’s not eligible for various reasons, but she is (I checked) and she really deserves to be there – the fact she’ll have two separate short-story collections available by the end of 2010 is testament to the quality of her writing. Seeing friends like Chris Green, Jason Fischer, and Lisa Hannett on the Campbell list would bring me similar glee, and Lisa’s story In the Lot and In the Air was one of the stories from 2009 that really seemed like it should get more attention than it did. Rob Hood gets my vote for Best Fan Writer thanks to the Undead Backbrain, and I’d like to see any number of the Australian editors on the list – possibly too many, at this point – so I’ll go with the obvious in Jonathan Strahan and Alisa Krasnostein. I could go on, possibly indefinitely, so I’m going to stop myself there and acknowledge that seeing any Australian on the Hugo listings will bring me joy. Even as I type this I’m getting little pangs of regret about some the names that aren’t on my list (Paul Haines! Sean Williams! Karen Miller!), so it isn’t like we have a shortage of talented folks who deserve it.

5. Are you planning to go to Aussiecon 4 in September? If so, what are you most looking forward to?

Yep, I’ll be there. I’m primarily looking forward to the various launches that have been announced, finding a comfortable spot to chat with old friends who wouldn’t have gathered if the worldcon wasn’t happening, and generally indulging my inner geek for a few days. The usual con stuff, I guess, but since it’s my first worldcon I’m not entirely sure what else to expect.

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Previously in Snapshot: Marianne De Pierres, Richard Harland, Karen Miller, Margo Lanagan, Ben Peek, Narelle Harris, Paul Collins, Damien Broderick, Shane Jiraiya Cummings, Angela Slatter, Dion Hamill, Garth Nix, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Trudi Canavan, Thoraiya Dyer, Keith Stevenson, Juliet Marillier, Gillian Polack, Jason Fischer, Alisa Krasnostein, Tehani Wessely, Amanda Rainey, Justine Larbalestier, Rowena Cory Daniells, Glenda Larke, Adrian (K.A.) Bedford, Kaaron Warren, Nicole Murphy, D.M. Cornish, Deborah Kalin, Jonathan Strahan, Alan Baxter, Gary Kemble, Lezli Robyn, Kate Eltham, Robert Hoge, Will Elliott, Trent Jamieson, Felicity Dowker, Jack Dann, Lee Battersby

Snapshot interviews will be blogged from Monday 15th until Sunday 22nd Feb.

Will we beat 83 this time? If you know of someone involved in the Scene with something to plug, then send us an email at 2010snapshot@gmail.com.

Snapshot 2010: Trent Jamieson

tansyrr — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 02:02:31 +0000

Trent Jamieson lives in Brisbane with his wife, Diana. His first novel Death Most Definite is due out from Orbit in August 2010.

1. Death Most Definite is due out soon! How would you describe the novel to someone who has never heard of it?

It’s a love story about Death set in Brisbane. There is mystery and murder and explosions, and it’s a retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice tale, but with talking knives and zombies. It’s the most fun I’ve ever had writing anything and I hope people enjoy it. Oh, and because I’m terrible at blurbs and synopses here is what Orbit had to say about it:

Steven de Selby has a hangover. Bright lights, loud noise, and lots of exercise are the last thing he wants. But that’s exactly what he gets when someone starts shooting at him.

Steven is no stranger to death-Mr. D’s his boss after all-but when a dead girl saves him from sharing her fate, he finds himself on the wrong end of the barrel. His job is to guide the restless dead to the underworld but now his clients are his own colleagues, friends, and family.

Mr. D’s gone missing and with no one in charge, the dead start to rise, the living are hunted, and the whole city teeters on the brink of a regional apocalypse-unless Steven can shake his hangover, not fall for the dead girl, and find out what happened to his boss- that is, Death himself.

2. The books are being released in the US and UK as well as Australia – obviously this is insanely exciting, but what have the other effects been? Is there a different editing process for o/s books?

Well, I don’t actually have any point of reference so I don’t know if I can say.

These are my first books, and they’ve been edited in Australia, and they’ve really not asked me to change anything much in relation to an international audience. I’ve got a reference to Chiko Rolls in there, though I do explain what they are, and I even ate one recently – just to help create that sense or verisimilitude required in any book.

These books are very Australian, in setting, and the characters’ experience, but I think they’re accessible. Hearts beat, and things explode pretty much the same in any hemisphere.

3. You’re contracted for three books – where are you in the writing/editing/publishing stage with each of them? Would you like to continue the series beyond three books, or are you already planning your next project?

Book One is done. Book Two is just about through the Structural Edits – in fact I should be doing that now. Book Three is a bunch of scribbled notes and scenes, but I should have a draft by the end of April early May.

If these three books do well I already have some plans for new ones, though there is a arc for the first three, there’s plenty of room to move. Hasn’t stopped me working on new things, or a few old ones too. I’m hoping to get some short stories written this year too.

4. Which Australian writers or work would you like to see on the Hugo shortlists this year?

Marianne de Pierres for Mirror Space

Karron Warren for Slights

Paul Haines for “Wives”

Peter M Ball for Horn

And a certain Tansy Rayner Roberts for “Siren Beat”. Oh, and pretty much anything else written by the above last year.

I also think Alisa Krasnostein deserves a nod for all the work she has done with Twelfth Planet Press. So much exciting fiction has come from there in the last couple of years.

Oh, and Keith Stevenson for X6, but I’m biased there. Hell, I’m biased with most of these.

And Jonathan Strahan, who may get overlooked just because he’s been doing such wonderful stuff for so long. The same could be said for Margo Lanagan, and Sean Williams. I’d be happy to see any of these lot in the shortlists, and I’m sure some will be.

5. Are you planning to go to Aussiecon 4 in September? If so, what are you most looking forward to?

I’m looking forward to catching up with old friends. Seeing who wins a Hugo, and enjoying having a book out! I never get to enough cons, hoping this one will start reversing that trend. There are so many wonderful friends I have made in this scene that I hardly ever get the chance to see. Whatever the excuses, Aussiecon 4 is going to be a hell of a lot of fun.

Snapshot interviews will be blogged from Monday 15th until Sunday 22nd Feb.

Will we beat 83 this time? If you know of someone involved in the Scene with something to plug, then send us an email at 2010snapshot@gmail.com.