[direct from the iPad: a drawing by Raeli of Alisa at the TPP dealer's table]

memorable moment: Mondy staring at Aifin after about 10 minutes intense conversation about iPad sleeves and suddenly announcing, “Hang on, are you THE PRODUCER?”

many other memorable moments: Alex, expecting to be completely anonymous at this con, being faced by various people saying “are you ALEX FROM MELBOURNE?”

drink of the convention: the purple daiquiris at the Voyager 15 party.

frocks of the convention: Alex, Alisa & Terri at the Hugos.

book of the convention: THE LITTLE PINK ONE.

You can find a video here of Tony C Smith’s live broadcast of his reaction to the Hugo awards. About 40 mins in, he finds out he won the Best Fanzine for Starship Sofa and explodes with joy. It’s also a nice little visual of what it’s like to be following award ceremonies (as I usually am) via the internet.

Blindmouse’s con report (including a well thought out response to my disastrous female superhero panel)
Random Tangent has some great, detailed reports about panels attended. My favourite of course is Day 3 which refers to my feminism in fantasy panel!
Megan with glorious enthusiasm about her first ever lit panel.
Catherynne Valente documents how it feels to lose a Hugo.
Gary Kemble has gathered some links.
Voyager on the inaugural winner of the Norma K Hemming Award (THE NORMA!!!), Maria Quinn.

Tehani’s con report.
Flinthart’s con report
Mondy on life after Worldcon.

Thanks to Jonathan Strahan for pointing me towards this shortlist on the Capclave blog. Being nominated for an award like this, outside my own country, is super exciting. I really do love Siren Beat, and Alisa, Dion and Amanda did such a fantastic job of producing a beautiful book for it to live in.

Also, how fantastic is it to have an award especially for stories published by small presses?

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The Washington Science Fiction Association is pleased to announce the finalists for the 2010 WSFA Small Press Award for Short Fiction (published in 2009):

“each thing i show you is a piece of my death” by Gemma Files and Stephen J. Barringer, published in Clockwork Phoenix 2, edited by Mike Allen, Norilana Books (July 2009).

“Images of Anna” by Nancy Kress, published in Fantasy Magazine, edited by Cat Rambo (September 2009).

“James and the Dark Grimoire” by Kevin Lauderdale, published in Cthulhu Unbound, edited by Thomas Brannan and John Sunseri, Permuted Press, (March 2009).

“Race to the Moon” by Kyell Gold, published in New Fables, Summer 2009, edited by Tim Susman, Sofawolf Press (July 2009).

“Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast” by Eugie Foster, published in Interzone (January 2009) / Apex Magazine (August 2009), edited by Andy Cox (Interzone)/ Catherynne M. Valente (Apex).

“Siren Beat” by Tansy Rayner Roberts, published in Twelfth Planet Press, edited by Alisa Krasnostein (October 2009).

“The Pirate Captain’s Daughter” by Yoon Ha Lee, published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue #27, 10/08/2009, edited Scott H. Andrews.

“The Very Difficult Diwali of Sub-Inspector Gurushankar Rajaram” by Jeff Soesbe, published in DayBreak Magazine, edited by Jetse de Vries (October 2009).

The award honors the efforts of small press publishers in providing a critical venue for short fiction in the area of speculative fiction. The award showcases the best original short fiction published by small presses in the previous year (2009). An unusual feature of the selection process is that all voting is done with the identity of the author (and publisher) hidden so that the final choice is based solely on the quality of the story.

The winner is chosen by the members of the Washington Science Fiction Association (www.wsfa.org) and will be presented at their annual convention, Capclave (www.capclave.org), held this year on October 22-24th in Rockville, Maryland.

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!

The latest ep of Galactic Suburbia is up now for streaming and direct download.
EDIT: Now available from iTunes too!

In which we discuss girl heroes, boy books, sexy zombies with whips, why proofing makes Alisa’s brain hurt, how many limbs get hacked off in David Eddings novels, and analyse what SF awards actually mean to us.

News
Ditmar nominations now up:
Author Hannah Moskowitz complains at the lack of and treatment of boy characters in YA
Tamora Pierce responds with a discussion of why she writes girl protagonists

What have we been reading/listening to?
Tansy: The King’s Bastard, Rowena Cory Daniells; The Loving Dead by Amelia Beamer.
Listening to: Starship Sofa 142 & 144, Notes from Coode St
Alisa: books she is publishing, including SPRAWL
Alex: the Belgariad, David Eddings. Worlds Next Door, edited by Tehani Wessely.

Pet Subject: SF Awards
The value in awards for writers/publishers/readers.
The value in awards when they become a long-running thing (ie does it mean more to get a Tiptree now that it’s been going for a long time?).
Difference between fan-voted, peer-voted, and judged awards.

Feedback, etc: galacticsuburbia@gmail.com

Just a reminder that you can hear me reading my story Fleshy at Terra Incognita SF.

TISF is a great monthly podcast which asks writers in the Australian spec fic scene to read one of their own stories aloud. The really cute thing is that Keith Stevenson, the mind behind TISF, actually posts a microphone and recording gear to each month’s author! Luckily I was able to assure him we have a microphone, which saved him the postage for one month…

Fleshy is a story I wrote for 2012, the first of the Twelfth Planet Press anthologies – a collection of near future stories. It’s one of the few stories I’ve ever written which I think of as “real” science fiction – it was even inspired by an issue of Cosmos magazine! I think it was two separate articles that sparked off the story – one about cloning technology and another about making art out of body organs. Possibly I am imagining that second article.

“Fleshy” is about a woman whose partner brings home an experiment in cloning technology – which she, living from home, has to live with. It’s a story about ethics in science and in relationships, with plenty of pop culture references in there cos I love them (plus, it being one of my story, tea and biscuits) and it’s kind of icky! It was also the first story I ever had shortlisted in the Aurealis Awards. I’m pretty proud of it, and it was fun to read aloud.

So go have a listen!

Gah, it’s been one of those days. The kind that makes you wish you had the kind of life where staying in bed all day was actually possible. Still, I have the recording of Galactic Suburbia tonight to cheer me up!

Over at the Voyager blog, I talk about my favourite fictional cities, and ask what your favourite SF/fantasy city is!

Someone on my LJ (hello anonymous person!) sent me an awesome link to this great “redesign Wonder Woman’s costume” art contest.

I also found (via @thirtysix on Twitter) a brilliant essay on the incidental misogyny in cyberspace, and the way that gaming businesses have failed their female customers. It’s an incredibly intelligent piece which includes a historical perspective on gaming & female characters in games, from the POV of a woman.

Over at Twelfth Planet Press, Alisa unveils two of the beautiful books she has coming out in time for Worldcon, with design by the ever talented Amanda Rainey: Bleed by Peter M. Ball (the sequel to the hugely successful fantasy noir Horn) and Glitter Rose, a boutique collection by Marianne de Pierres, the queen of Australian science fiction.

I’ve spent the day ripping central chapters out by their roots and replacing a whole bunch of madeyuppy rubbish with saner, cleaner, sexier narrative. It hurts, my brain, it hurts.

So all I can offer in the way of useful bloggage are some good things that other people have been writing:

Tehani interviews Malindo Lo (check out the Fablecroft blog for some other great interviews this week)

Kaaron Warren talks about getting ideas for endings, while Catherynne Valente talks about the importance of the opening paragraph

Why the Dove Movement is bad for your daughters (via Copperbadge/Sam Storyteller)

Stephanie Gunn responds to our latest (tenth!!!) Galactic Suburbia podcast, talking about her early experiences in reading genre.

A powerful post about what it can be like bringing a second baby into your family.

And Alisa has posted her list of Twelfth Planet Press eligible works and eligible artwork for the Ditmars that are currently open for nominations. This is convenient for me because all my eligible stories were published by Twelfth Planet Press!

That is:

“Like Us,” Shiny Issue 5 – short story
“Prosperine When It Sizzles,” New Ceres Nights – short story
Siren Beat – novelette

When my brain is together enough to sift through old recs posts I will put up a list of Australian stuff I liked in 2009! It seems so very long ago, doesn’t it?

In closing, Tehani pointed me at this announcement that 69 year old Wonder Woman has finally been allowed to swap the flag-bearing minidress/shorts for some sensible threads. I’m dubious about the Superman-style alternate version of her backstory, but I do like the mature, Black Canary style costume. And Issue 600 of her monthly comic (amazing what people will do to hang on to a franchise) is definitely something to be celebrated.

Over at the Twelfth Planet Cast you can hear me reading Thoraiya Dyer’s great story “Yowie” from the upcoming anthology sprawl. I read this one when GJ first accepted it, and was delighted to be asked to read it. It’s a beautiful piece that combines a very Australian mythology with the tough side of suburbia and motherhood, and other kinds of family love. One worth reading/listening to more than once!

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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Episode 5 of Galactic Suburbia is up!  You can download it directly from the site, or find us through iTunes.

In this episode, we discuss:

News
Shirley Jackson Award nominees
New Aqueduct Line to be released at Wiscon
Locus Award shortlist

A Decade of Jewish Science Fiction & Fantasy
Edited by Rachel Swirsky and Sean Wallace
Introduction by Ann VanderMeer

Twelfth Planet Press Mother’s Day Sale – and watch this space for the upcoming TPP fiction podcast, on alternating weeks to Galactic Suburbia

Feedback
Gene’s feedback on fanzines, e-readers, and Galactic Suburbia in general.

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