This is basically cake (two packet mixes swirled together so some is vanilla & some choc), cut to size & liberally spread with chocolate frosting. The windows and panel are made from roll-out white icing, the details from slices of a metre-long liquorice strap, and the fancy white writing parts from one of those squeezy writing icing things. All bought from the supermarket.

I had a near-disaster when I put gladwrap over the whole thing (having refrigerated the cake for some time I assumed all the icing was set – the frosting WAS but the writing sadly got smeared all over the place) so I recovered by putting a whole piece of liquorice strap over the mess, tidying up with a bit of spare chocolate frosting (always save the last spoonful just in case!!!) and re-writing the text.

It looks like a TARDIS, anyway! Imperfect, but delicious.

[and if anyone, not looking at anyone in particular, hon, thinks I was overreaching myself, I show further evidence that my goals in cakeitude are sensible, rational and achievable, unlike some people who take TARDIS-related cake art to EXTREMES - thanks to @greenspyders for the link]

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that this is Raeli’s second cake of the birthday season – I also made a gluten-and-dairy-free Time Vortex icecream cake for our weekly friends dinner last night, which consisted of mango and lemon sorbet swirled and refrozen in a silicon cake mould, with lolly dinosaurs, musk sticks and not-Lego Daleks stuck every which way into the swirl.

Imagine the kids faces (five of them) when I said “Every kid gets a Dalek.” The birthday girl was magnanimous in the sharing of mechanical monsters, and all 5 children (including the 2 year old Jem) played happily with them afterwards. No one tried to eat one. Happy ending!

Me: How about we watch that animated Batman movie you got for Christmas?
Him: Okay.
Daughter: Yay, Batman!

*family starts Batman Year One*

–Bruce Wayne returns to Gotham
–Lieutenant Gordon gets beaten up in street
–screen fills up with thugs and (underage) hookers

Me: Starting to think this film is not in fact appropriate for nearly-seven-year-olds
Him: Most definitely

*family examines DVD case*

Me & Him: Oh, crap, M Rated!

*lunge for DVD, turn it off*
*daughter wails with disappointment*
*we explain why M rated means not appropriate for nearly-seven-year-olds*
*we put on other animated Batman episode which is far more appropriate, with icecream to help daughter through the transition*

Me (guiltily): I think I just remembered that Batman: Year One was originally written by Frank Miller
Him: That explains a lot.

And this is why checking the film rating is sometimes not a bad idea, the end.

A home-made Adipose from Glammer to Raeli

And home-made cybermats!

I could say that we didn’t give Jemima the pirate hat because of Amy Pond… but it would be a lie.

Shortbread daleks! All now eaten.

And… well, yes. A fraction of the Doctor Whoness that invaded our household this year, as every member of the family received something along those lines. Things. Somethings. Many things.

This is not all the things.

I regret nothing.

My plan is to read from Love and Romanpunk, probably the opening Agrippina story, because seriously that story was made to be read aloud. I’m really looking forward to it. If you haven’t been to a Republic Reading before, they are very fun and relaxed, you can have a drink or something to eat, hang out and listen to stuff. They also have an open reading towards the end of the session – I think they used to put it in the middle but then everyone used to leave straight away and not stick around for the featured readers. Heh.

The event is about as family friendly as stuff in pubs is – which is a whole lot friendlier than it used to be thanks to the glorious smoking ban – and I’m pretty sure my kids will be there. Hmm. Not sure how family friendly what I *read* will be, so if you have smart old-enough-to-get-smutty-references kids you might want to take that into account. Or bring headphones for them. But you can rest assured I will not be reading anything that I couldn’t in front of my six year old.

Oh dear. Maybe I have to re-think the story. Eh, I’ll just let her play with my iPhone, she won’t hear a word I’m reading.

TANSY REPUBLIC READING

DATE: Sunday 2 October
TIME: 3-5 PM
PLACE: Republic Bar, North Hobart, TAS
RSVP: Nope, just turn up.
COST: Free!
WILL COPIES OF LOVE & ROMANPUNK AND SIREN BEAT BE AVAILABLE FOR SALE: Hell yes! Not officially or anything, but I’ll have a stack of both books propped precariously beside my cute children.

Jem turns two today! Sadly she has come down with a horrible virus and is not feeling very festive.

Luckily, to cheer her up, she has a sister and some new friends.

Also, cake.

I find this rather surreal, because I remember watching Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant with her already, experiencing the show through her eyes… but she was three and four years old, and she doesn’t remember thim now that she is a big girl of six. For a little while there, Matt Smith was the only Doctor in her living memory, HER Doctor.

Something I have learned about my daughter over the last few weeks is that she is a) fickle and b) a true Doctor Who fan.

We’ve been making our way through seasons 3 and 4 (Martha and Donna) plus a few classic stories along the way, and she triumphantly announced a week ago that Matt Smith was no longer her favourite – it was now David Tennant! She had been holding out for Rose as her favourite companion, despite not remembering any of her appearances, so I let her watch season 1… and it’s been really fascinating seeing her watch one of my favourite seasons of Doctor Who, as if for the first time.

The big difference between 3 year old Raeli and 6 year old Raeli is that the smaller version of her was pretty fearless about anything she saw on TV. In the last several years, she has developed huge panicky fears about all sorts of things – she’s terrified of dogs and cats, gets freaked out by all manner of sounds, and in the last 18 months in particular developed a deep horror of Sontarans, Daleks and other Doctor Who monsters.

But she’s a determined little thing, and while we’ve had years of her completely collapsing into panic attacks, she’s now starting to take control of her fears and her boundaries. She declared a few months ago that she was no longer afraid of dogs, which was a huge deal (much like her claim not to like pink, it was a total lie, but one we don’t call her on, because it’s one we thoroughly approve of) and a sign that while she is still severely hampered by overwhelming fear and panic, she is actually starting to imagine a future when this won’t be the case. And lo, the Stubbornest of Daughters Made Progress.

Her progress in managing real life fears has gone hand in hand with her science fiction viewing. She started out desperately afraid of the Silurians, but her love of the Ood Cast’s songs tempted her back to watch The Hungry Earth and Cold Blood until she adored them so much she wants to dress up as a Silurian for her birthday. She rationalised her Dalek fear to being okay with stories with just ONE Dalek at a time (ie the Big Bang, and The Five Doctors), as long as there weren’t more than three at a time. She drew the line at Victory of the Daleks, which she only “watched” from behind the couch, peering through a doorway from the other room, and at several points completely hiding her face in her hands.

The change which really surprised me was the Sontarans. Raeli’s fear of Sontarans, based entirely on a few images in a magazine and on a DVD case, was epic in the extreme. The very sight of one would send her into screaming fits. She was once so utterly traumatised by an unexpected Sontaran in an episode of Sarah Jane that she refused to watch the show ever again. But then along came our lovely sympathetic Sontaran nurse in A Good Man Goes to War, and she was over it.

If only her fear of dogs could be cured by a sympathetic TV character!

Today, she officially dumped David Tennant for Christopher Eccleston as her favourite Doctor. She then told me with glee that Matt Smith had been bumped down to fourth, because she quite likes Jon Pertwee too. Oh, and… as of tonight, she is no longer afraid of Daleks. The realisation hit her sometime between Bad Wolf and The Parting of the Ways, but I credit Rob Shearman’s Dalek for the shift in perspective – for the first time, she empathised with a Dalek, and now she’s immune!

One of Raeli’s favourite games last thing at night is for us to ask each other Doctor Who related questions – favourite or least favourite Doctors, companions, episodes, etc. Tonight, she informed me that her favourite episode of the Christopher Eccleston season was The Doctor Dances (she likes ‘everybody lives’) but her least favourite is The Empty Child (“because of Jack and Rose dancing and being romancey, Mummy, you know I’m not a romancey child, I’m an ACTIONY child”).

Then, just before she went to sleep, she remembered that she wasn’t afraid of Daleks any more, so now she can watch the Matt Smith Dalek story all the way through! The look of excitement on her face was like the sun coming out from behind a cloud.

This is totally what daughters are for.

Also, Doctors.

In other news, it is raining. Grim, vengeful rain. How else would you expect rain that holds off all day and then starts while I am EN ROUTE to pick up my daughter for school, with the baby in the back seat, so I don’t even get a head’s up that maybe today was not the day to put the baby in soft slippers? In other news, Jem has grown so much now that her feet entirely stick out of the stroller, and the plastic rain cover for said stroller. All of these facts are related.

Deb Biancotti is interviewed by Alisa at Galactic Chat!

Fabulous roundtable about (global) Women in World SF – every comment is packed with intelligent, thoughtful ideas. I am delighted such a thing exists in the world. Some important questions are asked, like – why is it so easy for urban fantasy to be excluded from any discussion on spec fic? And why is it that crime readers are so much more open to female authors than SF readers?

The roundtable was in response to this original post by Joyce Chng about women outside the English speaking world are doubly marginalised in the science fiction field.

Maureen Johnson takes on the writer of that Wall Street Journal article (podcast), on the topic of whether YA fiction is getting too dark for teenagers to be allowed to read – fabulous radio and it’s cool to see how articulate Maureen is in person. It’s irritating that the final word goes to a caller who is obviously just out to plug his own book and hasn’t actually been listening to much that has been said in the conversation, and I was disappointed Maureen didn’t get to comment on what he said, but for the most part I think her point of view came across clearly and the conversation was absolutely one worth having.

This post by Tricia Sullivan is getting a little long in the tooth now, but I think it’s absolutely worth checking out if you haven’t already. To put it and the conversation it responds to into context, it’s also worth reading these two posts by Cheryl Morgan: Here We Go, and Further Thoughts. There is some intelligent, interesting conversation in the comments of all three of these posts.

I’m still chewing over my thoughts on the upcoming DC reboot, and this is one of the best posts I’ve seen exploring some of the problematic aspects of regressing storylines, particularly when it comes to female and minority characters.

There’s also a Kickstarter project to raise money for Womanthology, a project involving veteran and newbie female comics creators.

There was a very silly article in the Guardian about how romance novels are bad for women and lead to sexual health problems. Smart Bitches, Trashy Books did a masterful takedown of the article, including the vital point that the books used for the survey referenced in the article are in fact very old and in no way representative of the current romance genre. Nicole Murphy also responded with something of a love letter to the romance genre.

Nicole also hosted a series of guest posts on the topic of Dreams and Fulfillment over the last week – you can find my contribution here.

Okay, does anyone else think this movie looks completely awesome? Steampunk Musketeers for the Win!

We went down to the hotel restaurant for a (very) early dinner, correctly guessing it would be our last chance to eat for the night. Some familiar faces were already down there, with the same idea, and we added a table on the end of theirs – and as more and more people arrived, kept doing so, until we had at least 20 people there, and the table had turned into a long L-shape!

Then of course we all had to disappear to frock up, as the new arrivals were looking increasingly glamorous.

The Aurealis Awards were held at the Independent Theatre, a lovely venue only a few minute’s stagger (a bit longer in high heels, but I was wearing flats, hehehe) from the hotel. We met and mingled at the cocktail party (sponsored by HarperCollins), many of us marvelling at how utterly weird it was to be together again so soon after Swancon – when we’re used to an 18 month separation! Of course there were people there who hadn’t been at Swancon, too, so it was a general crowd of happy reunions, gossip and hugging. With champagne. I had lots of lovely conversations with lots of adorable people, though the highlight for me was getting to meet IN PERSON the amazing Nicola, who has edited all three of the Creature Court books with me, one way or another. To get to talk to her in person about the choices we made and how much we love each other’s work was very, very cool.

And oh, the fashions! We are a gorgeously dressed bunch. Tehani referred to it as the ‘night of necklaces,’ and there was certainly some spectacular jewellery on display. Kirstyn wins the prize, of course, for her bird skull necklace that made people go ooh, and then, erkhhhh when they looked more closely…

The theatre itself was the perfect size for an event like this – grand but cozy at the same time, if that makes sense? Tehani and I decided to start a trend by sitting in the front row, since we knew I had to go on stage at some point to present (and we knew Helen would be going up too, but more on that later!). Spec Faction deserve a huge amount of kudos for the event – it ran smoothly, with any dramas rendered pretty much invisible to the rest of us. Cat had put together a hilarious and touching montage of Aurealis Awards photographs (the overall theme was people we knew looking overheated, a bit drunk and terribly happy) which broke the ice marvellously, and there was a really good vibe in the theatre, all that community spirit stuff.

Rob Hood had put together the powerpoint presentation for the awards presentations, with a bunch of quirky images and animations, which added a lovely tone to the whole thing. Garth Nix was a dapper and eloquent MC, and the whole thing went very well I think with a different presenter for each pair of awards. There were some very nice speeches from various presenters, and some lovely ones from the winners. I cannot stress ENOUGH how important it is to prepare what you’re going to say at these things! I felt so much more calmer than my last in-person AA ceremony because I had my little just-in-case speeches there. As I did say eventually in my acceptance speech for Best Fantasy Novel (ahem, because yes, there was that) I think we all learned at Swancon that I in particular lose all ability to improvise when actually winning an award.

I was delighted with all the winners, which seems silly, but isn’t really. I think in most cases there were such strong shortlists that I had many opportunities to be delighted, whatever the outcome. Obviously I knew the results of the Children’s section up front, because I was a judge (and didn’t I panic quietly to myself when Nick Stathopolis, dizzied by the presentation of two tropies, announced it was a tie! But no, in fact there was a trophy for the writer and illustrator of Best Picture Book which was a lovely touch)

Kaia and I lost Best YA Short Story happily to Margo Lanagan, for one of my favourite short stories last year, “A Thousand Flowers,” and it was totally worth it to see Garth Nix (himself Team Unicorn) give both the unicorn salute and the much ruder zombie salute. Poor Tehani was kicking herself she didn’t have her phone ready to snap that particular picture! (you so got off lightly there, Garth) I was also hugely excited to see Karen Healey win Best YA Novel for Guardian of the Dead, not only because it was a book I loved and championed last year, and because Karen’s a friend, but also because I had spent my plane trip to Sydney reading her new upcoming (and amazing!) novel The Shattering, so she was very much on my mind.

I wasn’t familiar with the work or author which won best Graphic Novel, but Helen was squealing beside me, and delighted with the result!

Then it was my turn to present Best Collection and Best Anthology, which was a little nervewracking, especially as I realised at the last minute that my little speech about the importance of indie presses to a thriving short story scene was actually more appropriate to Best Anthology than Best Collection, so I had to extemporise another speech for the first award! I think I was mostly coherent, and was delighted to present Best Collection to Angela Slatter, even if a small part of me would have preferred her to win it for Sourdough because I loved that book so much last year!

Best Anthology was the big one I felt so honoured to present, because I knew Jonathan and Alisa and Marianne were at home together, hanging out for that particular result. And while I was a little wistful for Sprawl, I am delighted that Marianne won her first work nominated for an Aurealis Award! That’s so exciting. Obviously it’s nice for Jonathan too, but he has a lot of trophies at home already Deborah Biancotti gave a very nice speech on behalf of Jonathan and Marianne.

It is a lovely thing about our community that you get to be happy for the winners no matter what, because you end up in a situation where almost everyone on the shortlist is a friend! So I was delighted to see Richard Harland win for Best Horror Short Story (the second ROR win for the night!) and for Kirstyn McDermott to win for Madigan Mine – especially because they were both there to collect, which makes it extra special.

Then we got up to Fantasy and I stopped relaxing again! The short story award was won jointly by Angela Slatter & Lisa Hannett for “The February Dragon,” a gorgeous story that I think was my favourite from Ticonderoga Press last year – dragons and Ancient Rome; and also Thoraiya Dyer for “Yowie.” Now, you all KNOW how much I love Yowie, right? It’s a story I have been raving about for, oh about a year now, so it was hugely exciting to see Thoraiya win for it. She also got bonus points for her lovely speech in which she mentioned how she had been practicing her “Congratulations Angela” face for the last five minutes, and credited Alisa with rejecting several stories from her, without which she never would have written “Yowie” at all!

Then Tehani and Helen started getting all excited about Best Fantasy Novel and I was shushing them to stay cool because you CAN’T get excited about these things, because then if they don’t happen, you look silly. So, you know, I was practicing my best ‘congratulations Glenda/Trent’ face for non existent TV cameras! Hee. So much for staying cool. It was very exciting to have my name read out, and to go up again on stage and see everyone grinning at me! And BOY OH BOY was I glad I had written a just-in-case speech. Extra hooray that Stephanie Smith & Nicola were both there to hear me credit them for their work and support – and Richard was beaming at me from the front row when I thanked ROR for their, lets face it, YEARS of work & support getting this damn book as good as it was.

So yes. That was rather awesome. Thanks everyone who was there to share that with me! It was especially inspiring to have Sean Williams whisper that I was only the second person to have taken out Best Novel Ditmar and Best Fantasy Novel Aurealis with the same book – and he knew that because he was the first. So that’s a rather stylish & exclusive club to be in.

Science fiction was next, and while everyone was laughing at Rob’s exploding robot animation, I still couldn’t relax because I was still nominated in one category! But then I lost gracefully to KJ Bishop (congratulations face), and hooray, I was done for the night! But the Aurealis Awards, weren’t of course. Richard and I still had another ROR flag to fly when Marianne won Best Science Fiction Novel for Transformation Space, the final book in her Sentients of Orion series. This was wonderful, as I know how proud she is of those books, and how they haven’t always received the critical attention they deserve. I think it’s also worth noting how rare it is for the last book of a series to win an award! First and standalone books have a much better chance generally because it’s unfair to expect judges of a particular year to have read all previous volumes… but I liken this one to Return of the King winning all the Oscars. It feels like an award for her entire series, and it’s a magnificent endorsement that she won for this one.

Next up was the Peter Mac – hilariously I had completely forgotten that this award existed and that this was why Helen Merrick had come all this way for the awards. I knew she was the winner because I was one of the convenors who AWARDED it to her, but I was ditzy enough to have forgotten in the mean time. So she legitimately pointed and laughed at my surprise, earlier that afternoon, when I realised. Anyone who knows Helen knows how much she has done, academically and personally, to advance the discussion and critical appraisal of science fiction in this country so yes, she was an obvious winner of this particular award and it was delightful to see her get up and receive it, and know how much it meant to her.

It was also lovely to see the Kris Hembury Encouragement Award continued, from Fantastic Queensland, presented in this case by Kate Eltham to Jodie Cleghorn. I only met Kris a couple of times, but I taught him at EnVision and was so inspired by his commitment to his work, and to the Queensland writing community – very fond memories.

After that, it was party central! We drank the Independent Theatre’s bar dry and then tripped back to the hotel for a very cruisy and relaxed after party. The bar could have done with more staff (HOTELS NEVER LISTEN) but it was really hard to pick any holes in the event at all. As an attendee with little to do but presenting a couple of awards, I have to say that Nathan and Susan and the team did an extraordinary job, and if you didn’t know it was their first time putting on the AAs in Sydney, you would never have guessed. From a professional point of view, I can’t help but think that having it Sydney-based for a while will be excellent as far as increasing the profile with publishers, editors and authors. I know that a big draw for me in coming was a rare chance to see the people I work with in person, and I’m sure that’s the same for many others.

Tehani demanded everyone say happy birthday to me just after midnight!

I crawled into bed at 2am, and rose in surprisingly good spirits for the recovery breakfast – well, Helen and I had to start earlier than most because I had morning plans & had to rush away from everyone (when she FINALLY woke up!). She was an utter sweetheart, though, and as well as getting to chat about Wiscon and academia over eggs & mushrooms, she sneakily got a bunch of people to sign a makeshift birthday card for me, made out of a placemat stolen from the hotel room! I got a present, too, but she has to post it to me because my tiny suitcase was already overstuffed.

Then for the final leg of my whirlwind weekend, I met @zeft for the first time IN PERSON, despite the fact that she’s among the half dozen people I speak most to online, and has been for the last 5 years or so. Since my previous trips to Sydney have always been on the way somewhere and lacking in tourist satisfaction, she took me down to the river and we caught a variety of ferries back and forth, so I could admire the bridge, opera house, Darling Harbour, Luna Park and Circular Quay from a variety of different angles. She also got to laugh at my extreme geographic ineptitude as I repeatedly lost my bearings.

It was a brilliant sightseeing tour packed into only a couple of hours. We also saw giant Lego statues at the Aquarium and failed to steal pieces even though it was RIGHT THERE and so tempting. (Audrey Hepburn would so have walked off with a wodge of Lego horse’s rear in her handbag) Also after we missed one ferry we got to accidentally witness an opening ceremony for a Wall of Welcome at the maritime museum, complete with circus acts and (apparently) celebrity chefs. Oh and entirely by accident, I completed a pilgrimage to the site of the 1996 Aerobics Oz Style episodes, by the fountain in Darling Harbour. Hooray!

A fabulous weekend, but nothing beats that feeling of the plane skimming over the water, coming into Hobart airport. I got home to little girl hugs, stories of family dramas while I was gone (including car disasters and nappy explosions), distributed presents (yes even though I was gone only a day and a half, I’m just awesome like that) and received chocolate, champagne, oysters, pickled octopus and birthday cake.

Raeli’s present to me was a gorgeous Doctor Who picture, which she refused to give me straight away because, spoilers! She and Daddy had already seen The Doctor’s Wife (which went out on the ABC during the Aurealis Awards) but now I got to sit down with them and finally, FINALLY watch it myself. It was worth the wait, as was Raeli’s drawing, which included a little picture of Idris saying ‘hello’ out of the TARDIS as well as pirate Amy (I think Raeli will be drawing her in that outfit for perpetuity and why not?) Rory with cross hatch marks on his hands, River and her gun, the Doctor saying “I’ve got mail,” the Silence and an Ood. Her art makes me happy.

All in all, it was a birthday weekend that will be hard to top in future years!

Pics all by Cat Sparx except the following: Helen & Richard by Tehani, Sydney Harbour & Raeli’s Doctor Who pic by TansyRR

On Tuesday night, the ever wonderful and community-minded Hobart Bookshop hosted a launch for me and The Shattered City, Book Two of the Creature Court. As a delicious bonus, Love and Romanpunk was also available for sale. I had been a little uncertain about whether to launch this book – considering each volume of the trilogy are coming out so close together, I had fretted a bit about whether I was over egging the pudding, or expecting too much of my family and friends. But I was talked into it pretty easily, and as I said recently to someone else – you have to celebrate the wins. After several years of no book to launch, I absolutely need to mark the successes while they are happening.

Also, as it turns out, my family & friends have been developing a bit of a taste for book launches. Bonus attendee points to Isabel, who since the last launch has bobbed her hair, acquired a pink flapper dress, and on the day itself scored herself a cloche hat as an early mother’s day present. Now that’s commitment!

The reliable and mighty-voiced Dirk Flinthart drove for three hours to launch my book, and I was startled to realise afterwards that he had never done so before (the launching thing, not the driving thing) – what with Craig Wellington last year, it looks like I have a habit of giving people their launcher debut! Dirk gave a lovely speech, showing how long we have known each other (TEN YEARS) and how familiar he is with the development of my work, as well as his utter faith in where I’m going next. It was exactly what you’d want from such a speech, and considering that the majority of people in the bookshop knew me, it was nice to have something so personal.

There was wine and book chat, and general loveliness. I am terribly grateful for my rent-a-crowd, who can comfortably fill a bookshop, but are also willing to buy books – not only the pile of The Shattered City, but the pile of Love and Romanpunk was beautifully eroded, and I got to sign many, many books. Thanks to Mel A for giving me a head’s up reminder beforehand that I was going to have to think of new clever things to write in the books! Being witty on cue is terribly stressful.

Then of course there was what has become a family tradition – the dressing up of the children! After several experiments, Jem proved to be less than keen on a costume, so I put her in a jungle t-shirt and a tutu. Raeli meanwhile had known for ages what she wanted to be: having dressed up as a mermaid for Seacastle and a black cat for Power and Majesty, she had her heart set on a lion costume. Unfortunately, what with one thing and another. I ended up having to source the costume on the day itself, and was faced with very limited choices. Luckily she is a creative little thing and was happy to think outside the box for her lion-y look.

I was also excited that there were a few (only a few, admittedly!) people there who I didn’t even know personally! Who also bought books! Bless their little cotton socks. There was even a committed future reader from the US who contacted the bookshop to order Power and Majesty and The Shattered City ahead of time, so I could sign them for him! With so much love & support, it’s no wonder that I’ve been feeling terribly inspired to get on with writing the new book this week…