I have a new podcast already – yes, I’m fickle! In this case it’s Will Write for Wine, a brilliantly funny, giggly chatcast starring romance/paranormal/women’s fiction writers Lucy March and CJ Barry. It’s the closest thing I’ve found to Galactic Suburbia – only about a completely different genre. And you know, they drink while podcasting. We so couldn’t do that – we’d end up with every episode FOUR hours long.

I started with Episode 62, in which Lucy & CJ relaunch the podcast after nearly a year away, having both changed the names they write (and podcast) under. Along with fun regular segments like ‘guess that word’ and ‘latest obsessions’ they have a fantastic crunchy discussion about the pitfalls, benefits and psychological confusions that come from reinventing yourself as a writer, and writing under more than one name. The other eps are good too, I am very addicted now. Mango mimosas for everyone!

Jeff VanderMeer blogs about the 50th bookiversary of the very awesome Aqueduct Press and asks that press’s supporters to reblog that link. I’ve been so impressed with the Aqueduct books I have ordered and read over the last year or two – The Wiscon Chronicles, Writing the Other and The Secret Feminist Cabal. (I just searched my whole blog to discover I haven’t actually reviewed this properly, how dreadful! Possibly I was too busy telling everyone how awesome it was on a one to one basis) So yes, Aqueduct Press is brilliant, I can’t go to their website without finding a huge list of books I NEEEEEED, and their shipping to Australia is swift and reliable. Go. Get books. Or at least read this great interview with L. Timmi Duchamp.

Elsewhere on the internet, Pub Rants talks about the problem of e-books and regions, particularly about how hard it is to access US-English editions outside that country.

Genevieve Valentine, meanwhile, documented the experience of seeing the Eclipse movie, so the rest of us don’t have to.

… is available for download. You can also subscribe through iTunes – just search for Galactic Suburbia!

Alisa, Alex and I gathered around our computers to chat again, this time covering awards shortlists (the Australian Shadows Awards and the Nebulas), Karen Miller’s new book deal, the approaching season of Doctor Who, Scary Kisses, Swancon, Jensen Ackles doing Eye of the Tiger, and whether Nicholas Sparks is really comparable to Euripides, Shakespeare and Hemingway.

We also discussed our latest reading – The Kosher Guide to Imaginary Animals, by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer; Neptune Noir, edited by Rob Thomas; Boneshaker by Cherie Priest; Mirrorshades, edited by Bruce Sterling; Women of Wonder (1940-1970), edited by Pamela Sargent.

We topped it off with a chat about what we felt about single author collections, which is a nice way of saying that Alisa totally used us as market research to figure out what kind of single author collections we would want to buy (SPOILER ALERT: awesome ones).

The other exciting bit of Galactic Suburbia news is that the simply marvellous Tony C Smith has included our promo in his latest episode of StarShip Sofa. How awesome is that?

I’m really enjoying this podcasting lark right now. It’s lovely to chat to Alisa & Alex more often. Skype is a wonderful, wonderful thing.

UPDATE: I just listened to it and Tony says such lovely things about us! I’m bouncing ridiculously. Hard to get a better recommendation than that! Also he hinted that maybe someday the Sofanauts might come back. I am willing to grasp at straws here!

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!

———————

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.

There are people who at times express surprise at how much I manage to do. Looking after a small baby, a school-age daughter, writing books, blogging, running a small business, etc. Sometimes they ask my secret, and I say ‘well, I’m a really bad housewife.’

Jeff VanderMeer has cued up a discussion on women, writing, guilt, and domestic responsibility, both at the Booklife blog and on his own (the really good comments so far are on his own blog). Rachel Swirsky also comments on the issue at her own blog.

I’ve commented over on Jeff’s blog about my experience as the stay-at-home-parent-who-writes, and I know how lucky I am to have a partner who sees my writing as an investment in our future rather than something which takes away from time I should be spending on, you know, vacuuming. I’m sure he would prefer I spent a touch more time vacuuming, since we bought the robot vacuum cleaner and all, but he has always been remarkably non-judgemental about the whole thing, and shared the chores.

There are so many potential issues/problems/complications tangled up in the concepts of Guilt and Motherhood, Guilt and Writing Time, Balancing Paid Work and Writing, Balancing Unpaid Work and Writing, that I think it’s impossible for any person to sum it up in an all-encompassing way. I always find it interesting to read other people’s stories about how they handle that difficult balance, though, and how they deal with their own expectations, and the expectations of others, which often have a lot to do with gender.

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It feels sooooo strange to be posting without a word count bar at the top. It’s going to be March now before I’m back to writing first draft stuff. Straaange. But like everything else, I’m sure it will be here pretty damned fast.

Despite NaNo commitments and all the Last Short Storying, I managed to read 8 books in the last month, which is only two short of my monthly target.

The three I loved best were Derby Girl by Shauna Cross, Booklife by Jeff VanderMeer and Rampant by Diana Peterfreund (I’ll link to my review of that one when ASif posts it).

I also very much enjoyed Luv Ya Bunches by Lauren Myracle and I’m afraid rather dragged myself through Vacations From Hell, a YA short story collection which was not nearly as diverting as Prom Nights From Hell.

I really liked The It Girl: Adored, one of the Gossip Girl spin off Jenny-Humphrey-goes-to-boarding-school books, though I’ll admit I don’t remember much about it. This is my favourite Gossip Girl series. I also went back to the classics by reading the second of the ‘real’ Gossip Girl books, You Know You Love Me, which is kind of… weird to be reading now, after seeing the series. Alternate history!

Yes, I’m hoping to get to more crunchy books in future months as my post-baby fatigue ebbs away but I do love my YA…

I read The New Space Opera II, edited by Jonathan Strahan and Gardner Dozois, as part of my final round up of stories for LSS (favourite stories recced here) and that totally counts toward my book total even though the 200,000 odd words of Shadow Unit doesn’t… sigh. I enjoyed TNSOII though overall the stories were less exciting/inventive/generally wondrous than in Eclipse 3, also edited by Jonathan, which I did not read this month, but which may well be my anthology of the year… I’ll let you know on Dec 31st!

TNSOII does have the distinction of being the first entire book I read on the iPod, via Stanza, which may well change the way I read in the future. Considering the wealth of e-material we receive for LSS can I just say… YAY! The iPod touch is remarkably easy to read even in a sunny playground, and I love the page turny facility of Stanza even if it does turn docs into random chapters. Also it makes reading while a) breastfeeding, b) babyjoggling, c) big girl cuddling, d) cooking, e) driving (KIDDING) awfully easy.

Finally I have a reason to develop a love affair with Project Gutenberg!

As a final note, Glenda Larke is guest blogging over at Ripping Ozzie Reads, about her experience as a pro writer tackling NaNoWriMo for the first time. Go check it out!

The subtitle for Booklife is “strategies and survival tips for the 21st-century writer,” and that’s basically what it is – and what makes it different to just about every other writing manual out there. Booklife is not about how to write, it is about how to Be A Writer, which actually should make it out-sell every other writing book and magazine out there if there is any justice in the world, since a large percentage of those are aimed at and sold to people who prefer the idea of Being A Writer to actually doing some writing.

The book is divided into two halves – public and private – and while the private section has some useful advice, mostly on how to try to protect your creative writing side from your ‘I want to stuff around on the Internet’ side, it’s the public half that was most interesting to me, and which I think is most worth the price of the text.

‘Your Public Booklife’ is about the time and attention you may wish to give to promotion of your newly published books, and also promotion of yourself as an author, with the tools currently at our disposal, from personal appearances to internet & social media platforms. I read the book in a couple of days, tearing myself away from other projects to do so, because it was just so engaging and interesting. In particular VanderMeer looks at the thin line between using social media or events to promote your work constructively, and how to avoid that promotion turning on you and becoming destructive to your reputation. (in short, how to be nice to people and not look like a dick while constructing and selling your brand)

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