Ditmar nominations are open! These are fan awards for the best Australian spec fic awesomeness of the year. I won some of them last year and cherish them dearly – even more so when I went back through the history and discovered that only six women had won Best Novel in the whole history of the award, going back to the 1970′s.

You can run over there right now and nominate as many things as you want – you don’t have to be a member or supporting member of a recent convention, though that’s a helpful thing to cite if you think the committee might not know you. (the whole ‘known to committee’ thing isn’t about elitism, it’s about checking you’re a real person) Otherwise you may need a reference, someone who has attended a recent con who has interacted with you in real life or online and is prepared to say ‘yep, this is a real person.’

If you can’t remember all the stuff you read and liked this year, then there’s a Wiki trying to keep track of Australian spec fic that eligible – it’s not all-encompassing so if you see a gap there, please add the book/person etc. that you know is missing.

If you are keen to nominate any of my work, here for reference is what I published last year:

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Random Alex and I joined Jonathan Strahan for an Australia Day podcast on Wednesday. We discussed the nature of Australian identity, the discomfort of patriotism and colonial guilt, the relationship of people to landscape, cultural cringe and trying to overcome decades of assumption that Everything British is Better, and managed somehow to tie all of that into speculative fiction, and the concept of an Australian literary voice. We talked about how some parts of the genre more easily/comfortably convey their Australian origins (deep space opera, for example, or otherworld fantasy) but managed to come up with some examples that did. We also got a bit squeeful about some upcoming Australian spec fic for 2011. Probably left lots out (I even forgot about my books until Alex mentioned them, duh!) but we did our best.

One thing that really interested me was that we all had childhoods where we felt isolated from the rest of Australia – one in Perth, one in Darwin, one in Hobart. It’s an oddity about Australia that there are so many overlapping ‘us and them’ attitudes to geography. No wonder it’s hard to pin down the Australian Voice!

Mostly, of course, we just talked! If you enjoy Galactic Suburbia you might enjoy giving it a listen.

Malinda Lo, author of Ash and Huntress, talks here about the lack of diversity in YA book covers. She puts forward quite a moderate view, but some very eye opening points about books in general. I was fascinated to hear that the lesbian aspect of the storyline of Ash was entirely invisible on the UK cover, and that this invisibility may have improved her sales, when that was what I perceived as the main selling point. It was certainly why I picked up the book. Lesbian Cinderella retelling!

Sarah Rees Brennan writes marvellously about the limitations some books put on their awesomeness, and how more modern attitudes towards sexuality, disability, race, etc. can reduce those limitations. I always enjoy what Sarah has to say, and she often conceals quite devastating cleverness behind banter and mockery. In particular, I’ve appreciated her regular discussion on Twitter about the comments she receives/hears about her characters, and how gendered that can be – where male characters are adored for their perfections and imperfections quite equally, and female characters are often despised for both. It’s particularly indicative when she compares the comments she receives about the sexual/romantic attitudes of her male and female protagonists (so far in her published novels she has one of each) and how hard readers find it to forgive a girl hero who kisses more than one boy.

Finally, a comprehensive post on the biggest mistakes authors make when querying agents.

In far more cheerful news, Alisa at Twelfth Planet Press has opened for pre-order sales of SPRAWL, a unique anthology of Australian suburban fantasy which will be released next month (aaargh so soon!) at Aussiecon.

It’s one hell of a line up of awesome local writers, and will be the perfect souvenir of the convention for those attending, and those who will be waving folornly to us from afar. I’ve read almost all of the stories and it’s full of weird and wonderful interpretations of that most mysterious and elusive of Australian settings, the humble suburbs.

And you know, there’s a story by ME in it! I’m very attached to “Relentless Adaptations,” my story inspired by the espresso book machine, the literary mashups trend, and the future of bookselling
.

Sprawl is an exciting new original anthology, edited by Alisa Krasnostein and published by Twelfth Planet Press, that will give readers from around the world a unique glimpse into the strange, dark, and often wondrous magics that fill the days and nights of Australia’s dreaming cities and towns, homes and parks, and most of all, its endlessly stretching suburbs.

Table of Contents

* Liz Argall/Matt Huynh – Seed Dreams (comic)
* Peter Ball – One Saturday Night, With Angel
* Deborah Biancotti – Never Going Home
* Simon Brown – Sweep
* Stephanie Campisi – How to Select a Durian at Footscray Market
* Thoraiya Dyer – Yowie
* Dirk Flinthart – Walker
* Paul Haines – Her Gallant Needs
* L L Hannett – Weightless
* Pete Kempshall – Signature Walk
* Ben Peek – White Crocodile Jazz
* Tansy Rayner Roberts – Relentless Adaptations
* Barbara Robson – Neighbourhood Watch
* Angela Slatter – Brisneyland by Night
* Cat Sparks – All The Love in the World
* Anna Tambour – Gnawer of the Moon Seeks Summit of Paradise
* Kaaron Warren – Loss
* Sean Williams – Parched (poem)

Sprawl will be released in September 2010.

For a sneak peek of some of the stories, don’t forget about the Twelfth Planet Cast which has five of them available as podcasts!

I promised myself I would get to this one eventually. I had read most of the individual stories before the release of this, Deborah Biancotti’s first short story collection, and I read all of the new stories last year, as I read most original short stories, in electronic form and in a rush, in order to sift out the best ones for Last Short Story blogging.

But that’s the whole point of a short story collection. It doesn’t matter if you’ve read the stories before. They are being presented anew, forming part of something else, and you haven’t actually read it as a collection unless you have sat down and read it, in order, turning all the pages.

I promised myself that one day I would lounge on a couch, with a box of chocolates or a tall jug of iced tea, and spend a whole afternoon taking in this particular book properly, instead of just waving my hands and telling other people to read it. Of course, my life doesn’t work that way. I consumed it in three parts – one part lying on the bed in my library, glaring at the various members of my family attempting to visit me in there and loudly announcing THIS IS MUMMY’S QUIET TIME, one part perched on my couch while the baby ran ever so slightly amok at my feet, and one part in an armchair today, while eyeing the workmen busily digging holes and swapping power poles outside my window.

Each time, despite my surroundings, I dipped into a source of calm while reading these stories. It’s hard to explain, if you haven’t read Deb’s work. She does creepy and weird and murderous and horrific (and someone *really* has to do a study one day on how many excellent Australian writers also do creepy, weird, murderous tales so very well, a Biancotti-Warren-Lanagan triptych anyone?) and very few of her stories make a complete amount of sense if you stare at them too hard (sometimes it’s better to sneak up on them from the side) but the language is so fluid and lovely, the characters regularly grab you by the throat and make you feel their pain/angst/confusion, and the overall reading experience is simply… well. Calming.

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Happy May everyone! I’ve done my best to read across a range of blogs this month, but as always there are going to be omissions. If you read a post this month that’s relevant to the Australian Spec Fic community that you thought was really awesome, please link to it in the comments.

BOOKS & PUBLISHING

Alisa Krasnostein on Building a Publishing House and on Ensuring Subsequent Story Sales.

Richard Harland on writing steampunk

Kate Forsyth & Belinda Murrell, fantasy writing sisters with books out the same month!

Alison Goodman interviewed about EON (formerly Two Pearls of Wisdom)

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Lovers of paranormal romance may be interested in this new Australian anthology: Scary Kisses, edited by Liz Grzyb for Ticonderoga Publications. There have been a couple of attempts to get a paranormal antho off the ground in Australia. One that I know of fell through due to lack of submissions, and another due to not being able to secure a publisher (right at the time the global financial crisis hit). It’s lovely to see one that’s finally made it out into the public eye.

Featuring authors such as Felicity Dowker, Kyla Ward, Nicole R. Murphy, L.L. Hannett & Angela Slatter, the anthology will be launched at Swancon on 2 April and is available now for pre-order.

(oh and the lovely cover design is by Amanda Rainey, who also does most of the covers over at Twelfth Planet Press.)

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

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.

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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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

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.

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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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

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.