No one has been waiting for these books as long as I have! Well, except maybe Rowena herself… I can’t wait to see what she’s done with them.

There’s a trick, well-honed over the last eleven years, to finding a good ROR retreat. Ideally, we need some kind of shared accommodation to fit 5-8 writers, a working kitchen so Mr Flinthart can do his thing, a decent-sized space to all sit in for critiquing sessions, some inspiring scenery and some nice walking areas nearby.

Steeles Island, a mostly-private peninsula out near Carlton Beach (on the eastern shore of the Derwent River), turned out to have all these things in spades. It was a lucky find, as it turned out to have so many benefits we hadn’t even hoped for.

This particular ROR (wRiters on the Road/Rise/Riesling) had a family theme to it. We’d only included family members once before, when little Raeli was too young for me to bear leaving her behind for a whole four days, and so she and my honey came along to a North West Coast Tasmanian ROR, staying nights with us at the Hawley Beach house we rented, and disappearing during the days to visit relatives. This time around, we planned to do something similar only with Jem along – and then Margo and Rowena decided to bring family members too!

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Thanks to Tehani, I have some more pics from the Reign of Beasts/Sea Hearts launch! She has made them available through Creative Commons, so feel free to grab them, but do credit the photographer!

Reign of Beasts and Sea Hearts look so pretty together!

Richard Harland, Rowena Cory Daniells, Tansy Rayner Roberts and Margo Lanagan

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Any chance of catching up with all my blog reading this week was heartily delayed by my discovery of awesome Doctor Who rewatch blog The Wife in Space in which a diehard Doctor Who fan talks his wife into experiencing his favourite show in chronological order. Their conversations are funny and incisive, and I adore Sue’s take-no-prisoners attitude. She is tough but fair (scoring stories across the full range of 1-10), and watching her get sucked into a world of Billyfluffs, Base Under Siege and of course the dread reconstructions of lost episodes is horribly fascinating.

Sue (explaining the experiment to her flabbergasted brother-in-law): That was a walk in the park compared to something like The Toymaker or The Zarbi Planet. Some of the episodes don’t even exist and we still watch them!

I do especially like the fresh perspective of someone who doesn’t care about conventional fan wisdom, and takes every episode as they find it.

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Thrown into a tizzy at the lack of new Downton Abbey in my life, I fell back on one of my favourite costume drama stories of all time, by listening to the audio dramatisation of The Forsyte Saga. The down side of Audible is that there is often little/misleading information on the as to the source of the material – I guessed this was a radio production, and also that it wasn’t produced at ALL in 2010 as the copyright info suggested, thanks to the presence of Sir Michael Hordern (died fifteen years ago), Dirk Bogarde (died ten years ago) and an unrecognisably young Amanda Redman as Fleur. I eventually pinned it down as this 1990 production, which at the time was the most expensive radio series ever made. My favourite bit of the article is where Dirk Bogarde came in thinking his role as Galsworthy (the author and narrator) would just involve a bit of “topping and tailing” but it turned out to be a major performance. He is lovely in it. I adore Galsworthy’s prose, which I think is third only to Austen’s and Pratchett’s for sophisticated, dry observational humour, and it was nice that despite it being a dramatisation, an awful lot of the original text appeared.

As a side note, why is it with so many major radio dramatisations of big classic books and serials such as this, there are so few of fantasy novels? I know there’s a well-regarded audio dramatisation of Lord of the Rings, but surely the serial and substantial nature of epic fantasy, as well as the incredible popularity of some series and authors, PLUS the crazy expense of adapting them to visual media like film or TV, would make them ideal for audio? I find it interesting that there’s such a strong history of science fiction in radio/audio plays, from Hitchhiker’s Guide and Earthsearch all the way through to today’s Big Finish. I first encountered Asimov’s Foundation through a radio play… so where are the radio dramatisations of Pratchett and Gaiman and David Eddings and Mercedes Lackey and… okay, let’s scrub the Americans as they don’t have the cultural history of modern radio drama like the Brits, but where is the 24 part radio serial of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, or Lord Dunsany or HARRY POTTER?

Ahem, anyway.

I love the Forsyte Saga. Like, crazy, adoring love. I first discovered it through the 2002 TV adaptation with Damien Lewis and Rupert Graves, then read the books at least twice through, then got hold of the epic black and white “TV event” version from the 60′s, thanks to my university library. Finding another fully dramatised version was a delight, especially as it turned out to be a very good one. Old Jolyon was played by Sir Michael Hordern, an actor I came to through many classic British movies, notably A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum. Young Jolyon, who is my favourite and my best, was played by Anton Lesser, who also won my heart as Falco in the audio dramatisations of Lindsey Davis’ novels. Diana Quick is a gentle and affecting Irene, Alan Howard is a suitably creepy and horrifically compelling Soames, and when she finally turns up, Amanda Redman captures the caprice of Fleur with that perfect balance of adorable and oh-I-want-to-slap-her.

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Way behind on linking to the cool stuff that has come my way over the last week or two.

For a start, we have a new podcast! The Galactic Suburbia crew have launched a sister podcast, Galactic Chat, which will feature author interviews. You can head over there straight away to hear me interviewing powerhouse Australian SF writer Marianne de Pierres about her new gothy YA novel Burn Bright (as advertised on the Dolly Magazine website! Yes really!). I’ve known Marianne a long time now, and she was a great first interview subject.

A future episode we’ve already recorded has Alisa interviewing me (it’s not ego, honestly, she just wanted to practice on someone who wouldn’t be mean to her!) and we’re planning to get lots recorded at Swancon.

Speaking of interviewing me, Rowena Cory Daniells did so as part of her ‘yes, women in fantasy, we have them, they are right here, THEY OUTNUMBER YOU, DUDES’ series of blog posts. It’s a great, in depth interview and as good a way as any for me to launch my ‘ooh it’s time to start promoting my work again what with those books about to hit the shops’ season.

In reading the internet news, I recently enjoyed reading John Richards’ account of how he quite legitimately visited the now former Channel Nine centre in order to unscrew video machines and take stuff away, it being the end of an era.

Kelley Eskridge is interviewed about her recently rereleased classic SF novel Solitaire, putting that book straight to the top of my To Buy list. What a fascinating writer! I have been reading her partner Nicola Griffith’s blog for a while, but knew little about Kelley. Apparently, she’s awesome.

I also found this post on the changing face of the publishing industry by Kristine Kathryn Rusch really interesting. Not sure I agree with all of it, but it’s certainly worth the time to read it through as you drink your morning cup of coffee. I do think she has a very good point in her description of how powerless writers have been in the old publishing-distribution model. And I say this as someone waiting with bated breath for the royalty statement due this month which should give me a vague idea how my book sold between July and December last year…

My reading habits have drastically changed over the last few years. If I look at myself based only on my reading (and who doesn’t do that?), then I can barely recognise myself compared to the reader I was five years ago. If this reading meme has made me think about anything, it’s about my history with books and reading and styles, and how many different readers I have been in my life.

This is me now: I read YA books by the bucketload, mostly those that have come out this year. The same goes for SF and fantasy, mostly books by women, mostly standalones or urban fantasy in which every volume is short and sharp and self-contained. When it comes to the genre known as BFF (Big Fat Fantasy, referred to as such lovingly by fans and unlovingly by non-readers) I will defend it to the utmost and refer nostalgically to the books I consumed as a Reader Past, but in fact I don’t read much of it.

Or indeed, any. I don’t think I’ve cracked the spine of a BFF volume since the last time I judged the fantasy section for the AAs. I will wax enthusastic about current female fantasy writers such as Karen Miller, Jennifer Fallon and Glenda Larke, but the truth is that all of these writers have produced at least one if not several new series since I last read them. (I think Karen has put out about ten) I started keeping up with other aspects of the genre, and let this one slide. When I was remembering how much I love court fantasy with its intrigue and politics, I realised that I read all the books I love most from that genre some time ago. Because, you know, the books are long and they travel in packs.

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You can get a double dose of Tansyfic on the internet airwaves right now. Tehani Wessely reads my story “Relentless Adaptations” from the upcoming TPP anthology Sprawl on the Twelfth Planet Cast, and you can hear ME ME ME reading “Fleshy” at Terra Incognita SF.

Both are available on iTunes, too.

I would blog further, but we just got a freaking iPad and the household is in a total tizzy about it. Also I’m three quarters of the way through the latest Stephanie Plum and I won’t make any sense to anyone until I’m done with it – I’ve basically spent the day forgetting shit & bumping into things. Damned books. Some authors should be locked up.

I did get an exciting stack of mail today, though, including a certain book I’ve been hanging out for:

And of course, Trent couldn’t help it, he had to jump on the book trailer bandwagon too, though I think he may have missed the point just a tad.

I love my friends.

What is the one thing that would make the recent release of Power and Majesty: Book One of the Creature Court even more awesome? A BOOK TRAILER, YOU SAY?

My good friends Rowena & Daryl at R&D Studios have made this beautiful thing for me. I would be absolutely delighted if some of you reposted it on your blogs or linked to it. No point in a gorgeous book trailer if no one sees it, right?

I went by my post box today to pick up the June issue of Locus and to hope vainly that maybe my just-shipped copy of The Demon’s Covenant by Sarah Rees Brennan might have miraculously arrived already (it hadn’t).

What I found instead was even more exciting – a box full of my very own bookplates!

These were designed for me by the marvellous and multi-talented Rowena Cory Daniells (whose own trilogy King Rolen’s Kin is due out from Solaris in a month or so) – I like particularly that it reflects the colours and style of my Creature Court website, but of course also the black cat who represents Ashiol, one of Power and Majesty’s many anti-heroes.

If anyone would like a signed book plate to personalise their copy of Power and Majesty, and/or for a friend, or if they have a use for a larger number of bookplates – like if you work for a bookshop – please send me an email at creaturecourt@gmail.com, or DM/tweet me on Twitter at @tansyrr to let me know how many you need/what names to sign them to if any, and also a postal address (apparently you can’t DM me unless I follow you, so email may be best option for most).

I’m happy to post bookplates anywhere in the world, though I’m not sure if any actual copies of the book have made it outside Australasia yet – let me know if you’re a non Aussie/New Zealander who has managed to secure a copy and let me know how you did it! I haven’t heard of any successful purchases from online booksellers yet and would love to be able to recommend some that can provide actual copies to o/s readers.