It’s basically the three of us chatting, about what’s going on in the spec fic world, what we’ve been reading, and other topics of interest. An excuse to chat on Skype once a fortnight with two people I love to talk to! How awesome is that?

The title came from all the reading of and about Joanna Russ we’ve been doing lately – it was a term used to deride the science fiction women wrote which was a bit too feminine in subject as well as style. All three of us are researching/reading about feminist SF right now, and while that isn’t directly the theme of the podcast… who are we kidding? It’s us. There’s going to be feminist discussion in there along with the spaceships and flash fiction rants.

Warning: episode one of Galactic Suburbia does not contain a flash fiction rant. I suspect this will not be typical.

Anyway, my honey Aifin offered to produce, and we finally found a night we can all talk to each other (only a 3 hour time difference but so tricky to juggle that and children’s bedtimes!). It’s a bit rough around the edges as to be expected for a first ep (I listened to episode one of my beloved Radio Free Skaro to inspire me beforehand, and it was really, really bad) but we are planning to do one of these every fortnight so I expect a steep learning curve.

Check out Galactic Suburbia, episode one!

I am on it, under Novelette, for Siren Beat. This makes me happy. One of those major career goals ticked off the list, then.

Other people I like are on there too. I am happy for them. Especially for Alisa of Twelfth Planet Press (aka  girliejones who has worked so hard to bring Australian authors to an international audience.

I have been a tragic Locus Recommended Reading List fangirl for many years. Among other authors, it is responsible for me discovering the works of Kage Baker, Dan Simmons, Lucius Shepherd, Gwyneth Jones, Michael Chabon, Karen Joy Fowler, Ian R MacLeod, Cornelia Funke, Jeff VanderMeer, Charles Stross, Sean Stewart, Jennifer Stevenson, Leslie What, Holly Black and Kelly Link.

I am quite stupidly pleased with myself right now. That is all. Carry on.

The question that GJ seemed to chew over most often – and it was a question I had about my own story, back when I was writing it – was “is it suburban enough?” The idea of an Australian genre anthology that focuses on suburbia rather than the more often-seen country/bush/outback and even urban settings of Australian spec fic was an important one, worthy of being embraced rather than skirted around as a theme. We ended up having many conversations about Australian identity, and suburbia, as well as the kind of fantasy people are writing in Australia and internationally. The most interesting thing is that there is no single universal experience about suburbia – some are more urban, some more rural, some are stories about drugs and sharehouses, some are stories about families and maternity. Suburban fantasy, in other words, is not something that can be summed up in a single story, but the anthology is the perfect medium for it – building the idea through many stories, many characters, and many settings.

Australia is just so damned big – and so different, from place to place. There may be common themes in stories told about Brisbane suburbs, or Perth suburbs, or Hobart suburbs, but there’s a lot different too. It seems to me that one of the best ways to talk about cultural identity in a wider sense than just an individual’s experience is to gather a variety of stories and hope that the whole is more than the sum of its parts.

It’s a long time since I’ve been this close to an anthology in progress, and it’s been fascinating to watch it unfurl! The rest of you will have to wait until later in the year, of course, to read the book for yourselves. But in the mean time, here is the (possibly not yet complete) Table of Contents:

Liz Argall – 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
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)

If you’re eligible to nominate in the Hugos or the Ditmars, obviously we’d love it if you thought any of the above works were worthy of your nomination. (not sure when the Ditmars are opening for nominations but it’s sure to happen eventually)

Even better, if you enjoy reading your free e-copies, consider buying a hard copy of your favourite Twelfth Planet Press book. Indie press appreciates your support!

Charles Tan at Bibliophile Stalker has put up a list of his ‘best ofs’ for 2009, and as well as showing some very good taste in novels (Slights for the YAY) he has declared Siren Beat/Roadkill as having Best Book Design.

Amanda ( vodkandlime) did a marvellous job of combining the nostalgia-friendly Ace Doubles style of the book construction with a modern, fun look, and her design showed off the two pieces of art by Dion Hamill to great effect. I currently have a couple of big stacks of the books in my spare room, awaiting a public reading that will be happening shortly, and they don’t get any less cute once you get used to them.

 girliejones comments on the book design here, with a new paypal button for anyone who wants to purchase their own copy of this exceptionally cute book.

Dirk blogs about the weekend here and Girlie Jones blogs about it here in the last of her blog series about the entire trip.

Raeli and the Mau Mau experience their first sleepover, not only together but at all, and I’m sure it’s the first of many for them both. Naturally they dissolved into near-hysteria at the prospect and spent hours giggling maniacally before finally losing consciousness. (I thereby won, my prediction that ‘they have to lose consciousness eventually’ beating out Flinthart’s prediction that ‘you know, they may not’)

 aifin, the girls and I put GJ on the plane this afternoon, after seeing the Flintharts off earlier in the day. I’m going to miss her so much! It’s been lovely having here here over the last week and a half, talking in person, crafting together (I started knitting again, while she is piecing a quilt!). It is somewhat bizarre to realise that this was only the third time we have been in the same place – and that we only met in person for the first time in 2007. She feels very much like one of the family, and we would have her back as a houseguest in a heartbeat!

Still, she has departed on her way back to her peaceful child-free life (ha HAR until she becomes an aunt in 3 weeks time) and her newly-crowned boyfriend, the Flintharts are safely back on their idyllic hillside, my honey is back to work tomorrow… and Raeli is on holiday until well into February. Gulp.

I’ve been watching so many of my author friends on Twitter or the bloggerverse talking about doing their copy-edits or proofs over the Christmas break (I think a lot of editors get caught up and send work off to us before they go on holidays) and I have rather innocently been ignoring my own. I started work on New Year’s Day, though, and have managed 2/5ths of the proofs of Power and Majesty. Tomorrow has to be a very productive day! A very very productive day. Sigh…

Back to reality. On the bright side, I am loving my book right now. I’ve been living with P&M for so long now that I could be forgiven for being in a major hate phase but no, not right now. Which is good, because I need to boost to lay hard and fast into the final rewrite of CoM. And then, you know, I have a third book to write this year.

And then another after that… something NEW before the end of the year, lalala. But it is not the end of the year yet, one thing at a time.

Today, we capped off the main part of  girliejones‘s visit with a trip to the Mt Nelson signal station, in order to watch the boats come up the river for the Sydney-Hobart and share some more lovely Tasmanian scenery with GJ.

Then we put her on the bus and sent her off to the land of dodgy internet (aka Flinthartsville) for the second half of her holiday. It’s sad to see her go (“I miss Alisa,” Raeli said sadly, two minutes after we had left her at the bus station) but we are looking forward to the weekend at which apparently  flinthart will be bringing her back early and setting up an overnight camp in our garden with his kids. House party!

It’s hot and the house feels empty without Alisa, so we are zoning out in the living room, inhaling a Christmas DVD of Justice League Unlimited. The belated turkey is cooking in the oven (we got distracted!) and there’s still plenty of chocolate in the house. Life is really not that hard.

Back in the world of the living (which is to say, the internet), Justine Larbalestier wrote a blog post post in response to my review of Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld, confirming my theory on the book appealing to a different (though overlapping) audience to Scott’s other YA books. Definitely worth a read!

Not that we actually went and picked berries or anything, but we could have done if we’d wanted to! Instead, we reclined in a lovely garden, eating amazing food and chatting nineteen to the dozen. (yes, we could have talked at home, but it was PRETTY and there were WAFFLES)

For the record, strawberry, cucumber, mint & pepper salsa on a crepe stuffed with brie and smoked salmon is a very good thing indeed.

We have also managed to take our guest to many literary high points, notably several locations for Siren Beat. This afternoon, while I stayed in the car with the baby,  aifin took GJ for a walk around the docks and showed her the boats, and a particular set of Antarctic statues. “You mean where the bodies were found?” I said when they returned.

The visit so far has been lovely, but  flinthart is stealing GJ from me for five whole days which seems completely unreasonable since he apparently wishes to spend most of that time teaching her to hunt and fish, which doesn’t seem like a productive use of anyone’s time. Having mostly provided her with coffee, desserts and gluten-free dinners, I feel I have already won this particular contest.

Tomorrow there will be fabric shops. Because I play dirty.

Meanwhile GJ has had a remarkably good influence on Raeli, who listened seriously to descriptions of what an engineer was, and how important they are to building things, and reported gravely that she thought she was going to be a builder when she grew up. Score!