Tsana's Reads and Reviews: 2014snapshot

Showing posts with label 2014snapshot. Show all posts

Friday 8 August 2014

Snapshot 2014: KA Bedford

K.A. Bedford lives with his wife Michelle somewhere in the radiation-blasted wastelands north of Perth, Western Australia. He has twice won the Aurealis Award for Best Australian Science Fiction Novel, and his novel TIME MACHINES REPAIRED WHILE-U-WAIT was shortlisted for the Philip K. Dick Award in 2009.

I gather you have a new novel, Black Light, approaching publication. Can you tell us a bit about that?

BLACK LIGHT will be my sixth published novel, and unusual in a number of ways, including my first foray into writing fantasy. I think the publisher, Fremantle Press, is planning to lean more on the "supernatural crime thriller" aspect, but to me it's always been a fantasy novel that just happens to be set here in Western Australia, in the 1920s.

The story concerns a woman, Mrs Ruth Black, a Great War widow who lost her husband in the Battle of the Somme. She's English, from an aristocratic family, but after the death of her husband she moves to Australia, and takes up a career as a writer of scientific romances, which do moderately well, inspired by the great revolution in physics underway in Europe at the time (the advent of quantum mechanics, in particular, and its challenge to Newtonian physics). She's independently wealthy, and lives in a home in the WA seaside fishing town of Pelican River (a town which is fictitious, but inspired by the real-world town of Mandurah, 72km south of Perth). One thing that drives her is that she's never been completely convinced about the death of her husband, Antony, and in this book she begins, whether she's ready or not, to unravel the truth about him.

In structure and form the book presents as a crime novel with supernatural aspects, in that someone in Pelican River begins tormenting her with mysterious notes hinting at mysterious aspects regarding the death of her husband, and these rapidly lead to blatant extortion, which leads indirectly to murder, and things going very badly indeed.

Your two most recent books, Time Machines Repaired While-U-Wait and Paradox Resolution follow the same character, a time machine repairman. What inspired you to combine a murder mystery with time machine repairs?

I just like crime novels, and I like sf novels, and I know there's a great tradition in sf of writers mixing crime with sf, so it seemed like it might be fun. Also, two of my three earlier novels were also sf/crime hybrids (ORBITAL BURN, and HYDROGEN STEEL). I have sometimes tried to write straight crime fiction, but somehow it always ends up with spaceships and aliens and weird stuff. I'm like the guy who always has to have tomato sauce with everything he eats.

As for the issue of combining murder-mystery and time-travel: that just seemed like a neat challenge. Because if you're the homicide squad, and you've got access to time-travel, it would be easy to see what happened when someone got murdered (or you could prevent the murder). And I had a world where everybody has time machines the way today everybody has phones and tablets. So I needed a way to make life hard for the coppers, so that I would have something for my protagonist to do.

What can we expect to see from you next? Will there be sequels to books you’ve already written, or something completely different?

Next? I'm thinking about a third Spider Webb book, but I'm also thinking about a murder/ghost story book about a new character, taking place in present-day (or very near-future) Perth. So, to answer your question: a bit of both!

What Australian works have you loved recently?

The Australian book that has knocked me sideways just lately is Andrew Macrae's TRUCKSONG, which was tremendous! A coming-of-age story in post-apocalyptic Australia, with sentient cyborg trucks, mysterious signs and portents from the heavens, and lost people roaming about, trying to figure out a way to get back to when everything worked and the world was whole. Whole thing gave me a feeling of THE ROAD and MAD MAX, as well as its own wild, diesel-powered, red-dust-stinking, self, where you absolutely fear the Brumby King and its mob of murderous trucks. When I first heard about the book, I remember the phrase, "trucks having sex and reproducing", and right there I knew I had to get this book. Not because, you know, truck-related porn, but because someone had dreamed up what seemed like an actual, shiny, fresh idea: living, intelligent trucks, not just motorised AIs, but they're alive, and have interests and intentions and passions and schemes. And there's a kid caught up in the middle of the whole thing, searching for his truck-kidnapped lover. It's a powerful, often poetic, cracker of a book!

Have recent changes in the publishing industry influenced the way you work? What do you think you will be publishing/writing/reading in five years from now?

So far I still work the way I've always worked, with traditional publishers, and everything that goes with that. I work with the Canadian firm, EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing, based in Calgary, Alberta; and with local publisher Fremantle Press. I first worked with Fremantle on the Australian edition of TIME MACHINES REPAIRED WHILE-U-WAIT, and I wanted to go to them again when I was preparing BLACK LIGHT.

As for five years from now: I have no idea. For instance in five years I don't know if I'll even still be writing, let alone deciding how I want to be published. I'm not sure. I'm fairly sure I don't want to take on all the huge responsibility that goes with self-publishing. I've come to see how critically important editing is, and the powerful effect a really great external editor can have on a manuscript. I could hire one for a self-published book, but the expense is way out of what I could afford. Likewise, the cost of promotion, publicity, marketing is also out of my reach. So I really don't know what the future will bring. It would be nice to still be involved in the scribble caper in some way. I've made some tremendous friendships through writing and publishing, both here in Oz, and in the US and Canada (especially Canada), and that's been the most rewarding aspect of the whole process.

As for what I'll be reading in five years? Probably very much the same sorts of things I read now, which is to say, lots of crime fiction, lots of classics, and some sf. As I get older (I'm 51 now) I find that really high-end hard science fiction seems to require so much knowledge and understanding on the part of the reader that it often seems as if you need a degree in science, and preferably physics, simply to get what a writer is trying to convey. Then there are the writers who fill their books with neato in-jokes that I, at least, often don't get. Whole chunks of these books often feel as if they're being aimed not at the general, interested sf reader, but at specific groups of readers who get the joke. I don't like books that make me feel stupid in either of these respects, so I find crime fiction and classics much more rewarding.

This interview was conducted as part of the 2014 Snapshot of Australian Speculative Fiction. We’ll be blogging interviews from 28 July to 10 August and archiving them at SF Signal. You can read interviews at:

http://tsanasreads.blogspot.se/search/label/2014snapshot (here)
http://fablecroft.com.au/tag/2014snapshot
http://kathrynlinge.livejournal.com/tag/2014snapshot
http://bookonaut.blogspot.com.au/search/label/2014snapshot
http://www.davidmcdonaldspage.com/tag/2014snapshot/
http://tansyrr.com/tansywp/tag/2014snapshot/
http://randomalex.net/tag/2014snapshot/
http://jasonnahrung.com/tag/2014snapshot/
http://stephaniegunn.com/tag/2014snapshot/
http://helenstubbs.wordpress.com/tag/2014snapshot/
http://ventureadlaxre.wordpress.com/tag/2014snapshot/
http://mayakitten.livejournal.com/tag/2014snapshot/
http://benpayne.wordpress.com/tag/2014snapshot/
http://www.merwood.com.au/worldsend/tag/2014snapshot
http://crankynick.livejournal.com/tag/2014snapshot

Thursday 7 August 2014

Snapshot 2014: Edwina Harvey

Edwina Harvey has over 30 years experience as a writer, specialising in speculative fiction though also writing children’s stories, articles, and interviews. Her work has been published in a wide range of publications.

Edwina also has 10 years experience as an editor, editing several issues of Andromeda Spaceways Inflight magazine, the Australian SF Bullsheet (2002-2010), Rare Unsigned Copy by Simon Petrie (published by Peggy Bright Books, 2010), Light Touch Paper, Stand Clear (co-edited with Simon Petrie, published by Peggy Bright Books, 2012) as well as editing the double novella, Flight 404/The Hunt for red Leicester for Peggy Bright Books, 2012.

Her website is edwinaharvey.wordpress.com.

Your collection The Back of the Back of Beyond was shortlisted for a Ditmar Award this year. Do you think you’ll be writing more stories set in the same world, or have you said everything you wanted to say with it?

I've had some great reader feedback about The Back of the Back of Beyond, and it's encouraged me to write more in the universe the collection is set in.

You’ve been on both sides of the editing process, having written many stories and edited anthologies and magazines (as well as manuscript editing). What are some of your favourite aspects of each side of fiction production?

I like the "escaping to different worlds" that writing offers me, and I like sharing those worlds with people that having my fiction published offers me.

As an editor, I get a lot of satisfaction from helping authors tell their stories more succinctly so their readers can better understand and appreciate what they have to say.

What can you tell us about your current or future projects?

In the past few months, Simon Petrie and I have seen our second collaborative effort, the anthology, Use Only As Directed, published by Peggy Bright Books. We're both pleased that it's been selling well and receiving such good reviews.

I've just finished editing a very good fantasy novel by British author, Terry Jackman for American publisher, Dragonwell Publishing.

I'm looking forward to editing Simon Petrie's forthcoming fiction collection, Difficult Second Album, later this year and I'm also currently on the lookout for publishing projects for Peggy Bright Books.

I'm about half way through writing a children's novel, and wish I could find more time to devote to my writing.

What Australian works have you loved recently?

I've only just started reading LynC's first novel, Nil by Mouth, and it looks like it's going to be good.

I'm really looking forward to reading Guardian, the third instalment of Jo Anderton's Veiled Worlds series. I'm so glad it's been published because it's a great series, and so pleased it's been picked up by an Australian publisher.

Have recent changes in the publishing industry influenced the way you work? What do you think you will be publishing/writing/reading in five years from now?
The emergence of small presses like Peggy Bright Books and Dragonwell Publishing have provided me with the opportunity to work in the publishing industry that I mightn't have otherwise had.

I'm really looking forward to going to Book Expo Australia at Olympic Park, Homebush at the end of August to promote myself as an author and editor as well as sell titles for Peggy Bright Books and Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine.

I hope to have a few more of my own books published in the next five years.

I love editing, specially encouraging emerging writers to find their writing feet, so I hope I'll be more involved in that, and I'm sure I'll still be reading five years from now. But it's interesting — I was given an e-reader for Christmas this year, and think it's great for reading review books, or having a number of titles with me, or for being able to access references on the internet when reading non-fiction books, but I still want to buy paper versions of the books I really want. I think reading e-copies will continue to grow in popularity, and in many ways that's a good thing, particularly from a publisher's point of view, but I secretly hope there's still a place for words on paper. I guess I'm just old-fashioned that way.

Wednesday 6 August 2014

Snapshot 2014: KJ Taylor

K.J.Taylor was born in Australia in 1986 and plans to stay alive for as long as possible. She went to Radford College and achieved a Bachelor’s Degree in Communications at the University of Canberra, where she returned to obtain a Master of Information Studies in 2012. She now holds down a “real” job as an archivist.

She published her first work, The Land of Bad Fantasy, through Scholastic when she was just 18, and went on to publish The Dark Griffin in Australia and New Zealand five years later. The Griffin’s Flight and The Griffin’s War followed in the same year, and were released in America and Canada in 2011. The Shadow’s Heir, The Shadowed Throne and The Shadow’s Heart have now joined them in both Australia and the US.

K.J.Taylor’s real first name is Katie, but not many people know what the J stands for. She collects movie soundtracks and keeps pet rats, and isn’t quite as angst-ridden as her books might suggest.

You have serialised your new novel, Wind, posting weekly instalments on Wattpad. Can you tell us about the story and why you chose the path of serialisation?

I’ve always been interested by the different character “types” who tend to show up in stories, and one of those types is the character I call “the Messenger”. They’re not the protagonist or the villain – instead their role is to be a catalyst. They might be a mentor figure, or the protagonist’s friend, but they do things like provide valuable information, or give the hero that little extra push they need to save the day. For example, Rafiki from The Lion King is a Messenger. As a teenager, just starting out, I wrote an entire series of books about that kind of character. More recently I decided to revisit the idea, and that’s what got this new project started. The character who binds each installment together is a mystery figure who has seen the future and knows who she must find and what they have to do. I made the setting Germanic since I’ve been studying German – which I love.

When I wrote the first part, Wind, it turned out to be quite short (publishers prefer fantasy novels for adults to be about 200+ typed pages) and I was feeling pessemistic about the fantasy publishing environment generally – right now it’s very hard to sell anything new in that genre, because its rise in popularity has made it much more competitive. So I decided to go ahead and put the book out myself, with a plan to charge money for the sequels. That said, my agent has now looked at it and is about to send it off to publishers, so that plan isn’t set in stone yet. If it sells I’ll be taking it down – but for now you can read it for free!

In the Fallen Moon trilogy the main character is an anti-hero. What inspired that choice?

Actually, he was meant to be the villain. I had grown disenchanted with heroic characters, and had noticed that the villain is often more interesting. So I decided to write about one, and deliberately gave him all the traditional hallmarks – I made him pale, thin and not very masculine, gave him a tragic backstory and, in a final very unsubtle touch, I gave him the title of “Dark Lord”! It was all deliberate, and meanwhile his nemesis is a blond square-jawed orphan with the sadly all-too-common “heroic” trait of being a racist moron.

Of course, later on I found out that I’d wound up with an anti-hero, which isn’t so surprising since I couldn’t make him out-and-out evil – that would have made him too unsympathetic, and unrealistic as well. In any case, darker characters are popular at the moment – I think society has become pretty cynical as a whole, which would explain the prevalence of dark, gritty stories in both book and film. I think I came along at just the right time.

Since Fallen Moon, which I wrote in about 2006 when I was barely out of highschool, I’ve discovered that heroic characters can be just as interesting and fun to write about, so I’ve moved away from the whole anti-hero thing – while still keeping my trademark dark, cynical tone.

What’s next for you? Will you be writing sequels to Wind, more griffin books or something completely different?

Wind has three sequels, one and a half of which have been written. The griffin series is fifteen books long, and I hope to publish the remaining nine volumes eventually – I’ve promised fans that if I can’t sell them I’ll just put them out myself. Either way they’ll get to find out how it all ends. In the meantime I have a few other things out there with my agents, and am currently writing the first of an entirely new series. Obviously, I’m not one to hang about. Readers of the griffin series (which really needs an overall title – I’m considering “Chronicles of Cymria”) may be interested to know that I’m also working on a spinoff project; an urban fantasy series set in the same universe, hundreds of years after the ending of the original series. So now the originally medieval world, which has reached its equivalent of the Renaissance by the end of the series, has progressed to having cars, phones, the Internet, big cities, and so on. But the griffins and magic are still around. I’ve written several instalments in that series, and it’s looking great.

What Australian works have you loved recently?

That’s a tricky question, since I don’t generally take note of where a book came from. Plus I have a tendency to read the same books over and over again, and don’t necessarily read “new” books as they come out. However, one recent Australian book I enjoyed was Ink, inc., written by my friend Jack Heath, who asked me to launch it for him. But I’m not just saying that to shill for a friend – I genuinely enjoyed it, which is saying something since it’s science fiction, and I don’t read a lot in that genre. Some of my other favourite Australian authors are Jackie French, Robin Klein and Gillian Rubenstein – all of whom I grew up reading.

Have recent changes in the publishing industry influenced the way you work? What do you think you will be publishing/writing/reading in five years from now?

The world of publishing is in flux right now, thanks to the increasing popularity of e-books. According to my Australian agent, book sales are down by 30% across the board, pretty much as a direct result. It’s also become a lot harder to sell a new book to the publishers, and as I’m sure you’ve noticed bookshops are shutting down all over the place. Personally, I believe this is a transitional phase. The former head of Voyager told me she believes that one day the majority of books will be electronic only, and that printed books will become a luxury item, with only bestsellers and classics being produced in that format. In other words, the cheap paperback will become a thing of the past. Since my day job is in archiving that does trouble me a little bit – I know all too well how fragile digital data is, and a lot of books could be lost in consequence. Nevertheless, I think that’s where the future lies. I explained all that to my grandmother when she grumbled to me about the state of books – but of course she didn’t want to hear it!

In all seriousness – people will always tell stories. We’ve been doing it since we evolved language. Stories aren’t just entertainment; they’re the way we pass on the things we have learned in our lives. The fastest way to teach anyone anything is to put it in the form of a story, and it’s been proven that we learn things much more quickly that way. The way in which a story is communicated really doesn’t matter. Once we passed them along orally, then we started using pictures, then we invented the written word, and after that we had movies and TV, and more recently video games. All forms of storytelling are valid – I don’t care what Luddites like Alan Moore say. Whether a story is given to you as a book, a film, or an anecdote on the bus – it’s still a story, and that’s what counts. Even if the printed novel eventually dies out, which I doubt it will during my lifetime, I won’t mind. In any case, I’ve been trying my hand at screenwriting; as a film fanatic, suceeding at that would make me very happy indeed!

Tuesday 5 August 2014

Snapshot 2014: Nina D'Aleo

Nina D’Aleo, who wrote her first book at age seven (a fantasy adventure about a girl named Tina and her flying horse). Due to most of the book being written with a feather dipped in water, no one else has ever read ‘Tina and White Beauty’. Many more dream worlds and illegible books followed. Nina blames early exposure to Middle-earth and Narnia for her general inability to stick to reality. She also blames her parents. And her brother.

The Last City, Nina’s debut novel, was nominated for an Aurealis Award for best science fiction novel. Nina is the author of three novels including The Last City, its sequel The Forgotten City, and The White List, available now from Momentum Books.

You’ve just had a new novel come out, The White List. Can you tell us a bit about it and what some of the inspirations behind it were?

The White List is a story about secret agencies, supernatural powers, plots to take over the world and love – all the big stuff :) Inspiration sparked from a lot of different books, movies and artworks that I love such as X-men, Heroes, James Bond, all the superhero comics/movies/stories in all their variations, as well as a whole lot of urban fantasy books, where strange things happen under the surface of our normal world.

Your first two published books, The Last City and The Forgotten City, are set in the same genre-blended world. Was it the setting or the characters which came to you first for these books?

Good question. I think I’d have to say the characters and then the setting, as some of the characters grew from early drafts of other books that I was writing at the time (which was over ten years now).

What’s next on the cards for you? What can readers expect to see next?

Next, I’m hoping, will be book 3 of the Demon War series and hopefully a few other separate stories as well :)

What Australian works have you loved recently?

The most recent Australian work that I’ve read and loved was Amanda Bridgeman’s Aurora Pegasus (book 2 in the Aurora series) – very cool sci-fi!

Have recent changes in the publishing industry influenced the way you work? What do you think you will be publishing/writing/reading in five years from now?

Another great question. I don’t think the changes have really influenced me, I’m writing the same way and the same type of story as I always have, but I do have an amazing agent who handles all the business side of everything. The biggest change I’ve made is swapping the majority of my reading to ebook. I resisted for a long time because I thought it would be like reading on a computer screen but discovered it really wasn’t, and now I’m addicted. In five years time, I’ll still be searching out and reading fantastic stories in whatever form they come and hopefully I’ll still be writing the kind of fantasy/sci-fi that I love as well.

Monday 4 August 2014

Snapshot 2014: Simon Petrie

Born and raised in New Zealand but now, like Phar Lap, claimed by Australia, Simon Petrie has had numerous stories published, in venues such as Redstone SF, Murky Depths, Sybil's Garage, and elsewhere. Many of his stories are collected in Rare Unsigned Copy: tales of Rocketry, Ineptitude, and Giant Mutant Vegetables (Peggy Bright Books, 2010). He is a member of the Andromeda Spaceways publishing collective and the Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild, and has twice won NZ's Sir Julius Vogel Award: in 2010 for Best New Talent, and in 2013 for Best Novella / Novelette (Flight 404, Peggy Bright Books, 2012).

You’ve recently had an anthology you edited with Edwina Harvey come out. The title and theme are Use Only As Directed. Is there a story behind the inspiration for the theme?

Insofar as there’s a story, it starts back in the closing months of 2006, when I’d just rekindled my interest in writing fiction after a quarter-century hiatus and had, in the process, discovered the burgeoning local publishing scene. Keen to be a part of this, I wrote not one but two stories specifically crafted for the particular 17th-century spacefaring worldbuilding of the new New Ceres webzine and submitted them in eager anticipation, to have them summarily rejected in due course. They weren’t very good stories—but their signal failing was that they weren’t stories that I could send anywhere else, either. It was a formative experience for me: tight themes can be a real straitjacket.

Slushreading for ASIM reinforced this message, too. I don’t think anyone who slushreads can long remain ignorant of trends in anthology themes. After you’re read three Machine Of Death 2 rejects in a row, you start to spot a pattern ...

The above considerations have naturally coloured my experiences as an editor of anthologies. And it’s worth mentioning that Use Only As Directed is the third such, and follows the precedent set by the other two. My first anthology, also co-edited with Edwina Harvey, was Light Touch Paper, Stand Clear (Peggy Bright Books, 2012), and we pretty much agreed we didn’t want to place too many obstacles in the way of the authors’ imaginations. Last year, with Robert Porteous, I co-edited Next (Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild)—again, it was a case of trying to leave the theme sufficiently broad to permit as many interpretations of genre as possible. So this time around, because this was the second anthology Edwina and I had done together, we felt a clear necessity to keep faith with Light Touch Paper by adopting a similarly loose theme for Use Only As Directed, and I’m really pleased with the variety of stories that our wonderful authors have given us as a result.

You’ve written a lot of short stories over the years and many of them were collected in Rare Unsigned Copy. Are there any stories that stick out to you as having been particularly memorable to write?

Often, the ones which are most memorable are those which have a difficult birth.

The standout of these is possibly ‘Running Lizard’, my were-raptor story from Rare Unsigned Copy, for which I wrote the initial grisly murder-investigation scene across a couple of lunch hours at work sometime in 2008. I then did nothing with it for over a year—I’d just been word-doodling at the time, sketching out a scene for which I had no further plans—until one evening I was trawling through my fiction folder, saw a filename I didn’t immediately recognise, and started reading. I couldn’t even remember having written it at first, but got caught up in wanting to tell the rest of the story ... which meant, of course, that I needed to work out what was the rest of the story. There’s a moment in it—I’ve always been sceptical of those authors who say that their characters sometimes surprise them, because obviously that’s just bullshit, I mean the author’s the one sitting at the keyboard dictating the characters’ actions ... but I swear, that scene where Charlotte goes back to her car ‘to get some rope’, I didn’t know what was going to happen next, but she did ...

The other story that I particularly despaired of ever getting finished was ‘Flight 404’, which again came about in a somewhat unorthodox way. I was in the living-room with my daughter one day when she suddenly announced, without preamble, “They’re dead. They’re all dead.” I hadn’t been paying attention, but, as I think you’ll admit, it didn’t sound good ... so I looked up, to see that she was indicating the vase of flowers on top of the TV cabinet. But the apocalyptic nature of her statement niggled at me, I had the germ of a story idea; and ultimately, after a lot of blind alleys, a terrific amount of self-doubt, and more rewriting than I care to remember, it was done.

I’ll mention a third memorable story, which stands out for a different reason. Writing’s usually a solitary game, but sometimes we can let others play in our sandpits. Within the past year, I’ve co-written a story (which I can’t name, because it’s currently under blind review) with Edwina, and I’m sufficiently pleased with the process and the result that I’m hoping we can repeat it when the opportunity presents itself. There’s still lots to learn about the collaborative process, but the great thing about trying your hand as a writer is that there are always new directions to explore if you know where to look for them.

What are your future writing plans? Do you intend to keep writing mainly short fiction, or do you think you might try your hand at some longer works, like another novella or maybe even a novel?

It’s still common advice, I think, for would-be writers to start out with short fiction and progress to longer material as they get their eye in. It works very well for some people, whose bent is towards the short form, but others are natural-born novelists and really struggle until they’re let loose on something with a bit of room to sprawl.

I’ll definitely continue with short fiction, because (a) I like the scope it gives for the exploration of a wide variety of SF ideas and settings and (b) I honestly don’t yet seem to be ready to ‘graduate’ to novel-length material—which is not to say that I haven’t made attempts at the latter. But I think the tendency for me is still to gravitate towards a reasonably compact frame for my stories, even though it is stretching out gradually over time. It’s no longer quite the exception for me to write something of novelette length, or longer—I’ve written three of those in the past nine months or so, and as I say the will is there to write novels. Just to get the ambition off my chest, as it were, I want to finish a novel that completes the story of Charmain Mertz’s homecoming after Flight 404—there are some really crunchy ideas I want to throw into that, about sexuality and religion and tolerance and family and belonging and interstellar politics, all wrapped up in a ten-generation-old mystery and a murder rampage; I also want to complete a humorous first-contact novel in which a ship crammed with gifted specialists travels via FTL to the Galactic core to intercept the source of a SETI signal that, as yet, no-one has satisfactorily been able to decipher; and, in what I think of as ‘novel writing by stealth’, I’ve been writing a sequence of short stories set on Saturn’s smog moon, Titan, which introduce the characters who will feature in my Titan novel Wide Brown Land, when I get around to writing more than the first three proper chapters of it. And there’s a novella, Panumbra, that I must get around to finishing sooner or later–it’s set in the dense-interstellar-cloud milieu of a couple of my earlier stories, but hopefully avoids ending up being quite as bleak as they were.

Having said all that ... the next thing I have coming out is the follow-up, as it were, to Rare Unsigned Copy. My second short-fiction collection is to be called Difficult Second Album, it’s once again edited by Edwina Harvey and published by Peggy Bright Books, and assuming all goes to plan, it’ll be out at the start of October. It’s subtitled more stories about Xenobiology, Space Elevators, and Zombies in Love, and if that doesn’t tell you more than you wanted to know about it, it has a new Gordon Mamon murder mystery novella, a new and very nasty Titan story, as well as stories about comet mining, fridge whispering, interplanetary freight delivery, choosing the raygun that’s right for you, and the mating habits of spacefaring squid. There’s plenty of hard science fiction in there, some whimsy, some action, and a couple of puns. Three, tops. Honest. (Carefully uncrosses fingers behind back.)

What Australian works have you loved recently?

I’m going to be shamelessly partisan, and say at the outset that the list has to include those stories I edited or co-edited myself, for Next, The Back Of The Back Of Beyond, and Use Only As Directed. Outside of those volumes, much of my reading time over the past year or so seems to have been swallowed up by the 2013 Fantasy Short Story reading for the Aurealis Awards, and so that’s very much coloured what has stuck in my mind. I read a lot of good, and often very good, stories for the AAs. I suppose some that particularly stood out for me were Jay Kristoff’s ‘The Last Stormdancer’, Kim Wilkins’ ‘The Year of Ancient Ghosts’, and Thoraiya Dyer’s ‘After Hours’. I also very much enjoyed Claire Corbett’s When We Have Wings ... and I’m sure I’ve forgotten other books or stories I should have mentioned at this point, but the nature of these questions is that I never seem to function well in attempting to answer them.

Have recent changes in the publishing industry influenced the way you work? What do you think you will be publishing/writing/reading in five years from now?

It’s perhaps not exactly what you had in mind ... but the shift towards e-books has meant that, as someone who dabbles in layout and typesetting, I’ve had to learn how to format e-books as well as books for print.

I think e-publishing, and self-publishing, have changed things quite dramatically over the past five years, and I would imagine that change will continue, though I’ve no idea exactly how it will proceed. I do definitely like the idea that there seems to be more of a niche for novellas (novellae?), in this new read-it-onscreen world, because I think that can be liberating both for writers and for readers—the more scope there is for variety, the better. Bring it on!

I don’t know that any of this has much affected the way I work as a writer, though—I don’t think I’m the sort to follow trends in fiction, which probably reflects itself in my (lack of) sales ... I write the stories it occurs to me to write, in the way it seems to make the most sense at the time, and if people enjoy reading them, that’s great.

What will I be writing five years from now? Hopefully, the final chapter of my third novel ... or the start of a new short story. Who can tell?

Now, where did I leave the keys to that time machine?

Snapshot 2014: MC Planck

After a nearly-transient childhood, he hitchhiked across the US and ran out of money in Arizona. So he stayed there for thirty years, raising dogs, getting a degree in philosophy, and founding a scientific instrument company. Having read virtually everything by the old masters of SF&F, he decided he was ready to write. A decade later, with a little help from the Critters online critique group, he was actually ready. He was relieved to find that writing novels is easier than writing software, as a single punctuation error won't cause your audience to explode and die. When he ran out of dogs, he moved to Australia to raise his daughter with kangaroos.

You have a new novel coming out very soon, Sword of the Bright Lady, the first in a series and due out in September. What can you tell us about this new fantasy series?

Publishers' Weekly described Sword of the Bright Lady as a tale of modern idealism in a gritty medieval world, which is quite perceptive. I didn't set out to do that - I just wanted to write an adventure story - but by putting a modern person into a classic fantasy world, it was necessarily unavoidable. At least for me.

When I started playing Dungeons and Dragons, I was outraged to discover that unleveled people - that is, ordinary mortals - were effectively scenery. They existed to be eaten by monsters and rescued by heroes. I spent a lot of games trying to change that political equation, much to the consternation of the other people at the gaming table. The protagonist of my book, being a modern educated person, has the same reaction I imagine all of us would have to realities of medieval fantasy life: shock and a good dollop of horror, along with a powerful desire to change things. In addition he has to survive nefarious plots and hideous monsters, of course.

Your previous novel, The Kassa Gambit, was more science fiction rather than fantasy. What did you find were some of the differences in writing across the different genres? What were some of the similarities?

My definition of SF is "real people in an unreal world," meaning you change the laws of physics and see how people would adapt; and F is "unreal people in a real world," meaning the story is about archetypes rather than individuals. By that standard, Sword of the Bright Lady is actually an SF book despite the presence of swords, magic, and (eventually) dragons. It's not so much a story about the Hero's Journey as it is a story about WTF what if magic was real?

Presumably, your next few books will be sequels to Sword of the Bright Lady. Do you have any other writing plans after that?

I am working on an SF about a super-intelligent dog. It's also kind of a Greek tragedy. Eventually I would like to write a sequel to The Kassa Gambit, because there are some threads in that book that lead to interesting places.

What Australian works have you loved recently?

I am going to take a huge cheat here and admit that the last Australian books I was really over the moon about are Song of Scarabaeus and Children of Scarabaeus. In fact, I liked the first draft of Song so much I married the author.

Have recent changes in the publishing industry influenced the way you work? What do you think you will be publishing/writing/reading in five years from now?

The publishing world is changing a lot, but people still want to read stories, and for the most part they're still willing to pay for them, so I am pretty sure I will still be writing in any conceivable future. The biggest effect of the new marketplace is that none of my books will ever come out as mass market paperbacks. That space has been taken over by ebooks. I grew up reading paperbacks I could put in my back pocket, and I am a little disappointed that I'll never write one.

As for 5 years for now, I hope to still be writing various stories in the world of Sword; that entire book is from a single person's perspective, and yet there are so many other interesting viewpoints and adventures. I also want to write an Elizabethean romance about giant ants, but my agent gives me funny looks when I bring that one up.

Sunday 3 August 2014

Snapshot 2014: Trudi Canavan

Trudi Canavan lives in Melbourne, Australia. She has been making up stories about people and places that don’t exist for as long as she can remember. While working as a freelance illustrator and designer she wrote the bestselling Black Magician Trilogy, which was published in 2001-3 and was named an ‘Evergreen’ by The Bookseller in 2010. The Magician’s Apprentice, a prequel to the trilogy, won the Aurealis Award for Best Fantasy Novel in 2009 and the final of the sequel trilogy, The Traitor Queen, reached #1 on the UK Times Hardback bestseller list in 2011. For more info, visit www.trudicanavan.com.

The first book of your new series, Thief's Magic, came out not too long ago. It's about an industrial revolution powered by magic, which is a bit of a departure from the settings of your other books. What made you want to explore that particular setting?

At Aussicon 4 I saw a panel on exploring other potential something-punks than Steampunk and Cyberpunk. I got to thinking about what magic-punk might look like. What if magic was used instead of coal? What if it had a grimy residue like coal? Tyen's came together as a separate story, at first - a 'one day I'll write this' novel. But while hashing out the synopsis for my next series I realised it needed a second story thread, and since that was set in a multiple-world scenario I could easily add Tyen's story to it. As it turned out, the magic systems blended very well, and the two very different worlds give the setting contrast and texture.

Last year you had a Doctor Who novella come out in conjunction with the 50th anniversary celebrations, Salt of the Earth. Can you tell us how that came about? Also, did you get to choose which Doctor to write about?

When the email first turned up, on a Friday, my first reaction was doubt, because I've not written tie-in fiction and time travel and science fiction aren't what I usually write. I decided to think about it, and by the end of the weekend I had a rough plot idea and setting. The process was very different to what I'm used to, with approval processes for each stage of story development. I wound up writing a story that could use almost any doctor and companion and left it to them to decide. I was happy when they chose Jon Pertwee, though not too sure about Jo Grant as I couldn't remember much about her. So I borrowed as many dvds as I could of the third doctor's series featuring Jo, listing 'Third Doctorisms' and facts about Jo in order to get their 'voices' right.

I assume your current plans are to finish up the Millenium's Rule Trilogy, but do you have any plans beyond that? Can you tell us something about future books?

Bookwise, I'm planning to write another trilogy in the Black Magician Trilogy world. I'd also like to do a short story collection in future. And in my 'one day I'll write this' list there's a young adult horror novel that's been patiently waiting for me to find the time to write, as well.

What Australian works have you loved recently?

I gave Jane Routley some feedback on a small novel recently that was a lot of fun, and I enjoyed Alan Baxter's dark fantasy, Realmshift. I'm lucky to find the time to read 15 or so books a year, and a few of those are manuscripts, yet I keep buying books as if I read three times as fast so my to-read pile is enormous.

Have recent changes in the publishing industry influenced the way you work? What do you think you will be publishing/writing/reading in five years from now?

Actually, not much has changed in the way I work, but some things have changed in the way I interact with fans and other writers. I get my own swag printed and arrange some publicity events. I'm not going to as many conventions now, but I aim to get to a pair of Supanovas a year. Social media has taken over from blogging and forums - and I like it much better! The only way any of this has affected how I write is to make sure the first chapter of a book is a good length for a reading, and I keep an eye out for good quotes to put on bookmarks.

Saturday 2 August 2014

Snapshot 2014: Jo Spurrier

Jo Spurrier was born in 1980 and has a Bachelor of Science, but turned to writing because people tend to get upset when scientists make things up. Her interests include knitting, spinning, cooking and research. She lives in Adelaide and spends a lot of time daydreaming about snow.

The final book in your Children of the Black Sun trilogy came out a few months ago. How does it feel to finally have the full trilogy out in the world?

It was very emotional to get to the end of this story. I listen to music when writing and as I was finishing the manuscript for North Star I found myself playing a lot of break-up songs. That’s really how it felt to me, not an acrimonious split, but an inevitable parting of ways. I sometimes call my characters my imaginary friends (albeit ones that I torture relentlessly), and it feels like I’ve had to say goodbye to them in order to move on to other things. I do miss them, and catch myself wondering how they’re doing, but then I remember they’re probably fine now that I’ve stopped doing horrible things to them.

The whole Children of the Black Sun trilogy deals with, among other things, the thoughtful story arc of Isidro loosing the use of his arm. Unlike a lot of stories, the warrior is not sidelined out of the story nor magically healed. Can you share your thoughts about this sort of representation?

As a disabled person, it always bothered me when characters would suffer life-altering illness or injury only to have it magically healed, or to have them shuffled out of the story — to me it seemed to invalidate those characters’ sacrifices and cheat them of the consequences of their actions, whether those consequences were deserved or not; as well as brushing off the repercussions of suffering a severe injury, what it means to the sufferer as well as those around them. With Children of the Black Sun I deliberately set out to find out what would happen when Isidro and those close to him were forced to live with the consequences of his sacrifice to protect Cam. He remains at the centre of his own story, he doesn’t get to retire gracefully from the action because of his injury and no-one’s going to go easy on him because he can’t fight the way he used to. He still has the same challenges and dangers to face as everyone else, he just has to find another way to deal with them.

Now that the whole Children of the Black Sun trilogy is finished and out in the world, what have you been working on? What can readers expect to see next from you?

And now for something completely different! I wanted to work on something with a completely different set of world rules and character constraints. My next story is set in a world that combines elements of India and ancient Greece, in the post-cataclysmic aftermath of a failed industrial revolution. I’m interested in what happens when a fantasy world reaches the technological age, and I suppose what I have in mind could be considered steampunk, though I’m consciously trying to avoid a lot of the steampunk tropes. In any case, I have been reliably informed that it can’t be steampunk unless it has some link to Victorian Britain, which this story definitely does not have. It’s about refugees and displaced people, about what happens when the fabric of society unravels, and what people are capable of when they have nothing left to lose.

What Australian works have you loved recently?

I’ve been re-reading The Eternal Frontier by Tim Flannery, which follows the natural history of North America over the last 65 million years. If it seems an odd choice, it’s because I’ve found it hard to focus on a novel while looking after my baby, and it’s a book I can open to any page and start reading when I have a few minutes to spare.

Have recent changes in the publishing industry influenced the way you work? What do you think you will be publishing/writing/reading in five years from now?

To be honest it hasn’t changed my methods — I’m not especially flexible or fast in the way I write, and I seem to be incapable of telling a story in less than about 540K words, so the ability to instantly publish online hasn’t had much effect on me. The biggest change has come from having my son near the start of this year! In five years I’ll probably (hopefully!) be finishing off the series I’ve talked about above, and with regards to reading I expect will have mostly made the switch to e-books. What I’d love to see is a method of buying e-books that also supports local and independent booksellers. Publishers and booksellers, please find a way to make this happen!

Snapshot 2014: Justine Larbalestier

Justine Larbalestier is an Australian-American novelist. Her forthcoming novel is Razorhurst which will be out in Australia in July and in the USA in March 2015. Her previous solo novel was the award-winning Liar. She also edited the collection Zombies Versus Unicorns with Holly Black. Justine lives in Sydney, Australia where she gardens, boxes, and watches far too much cricket.

Your latest novel, Razorhurst, has just been released. It’s set in 1930s Sydney with a supernatural element. What was the most interesting and/or unexpected thing you learnt while researching this book?

That a common slang term for a prostitute during the 1930s was "chromo." No one knows why. I used it because how could I not?

You’ve previously published two academic books and many essays on the history of science fiction, among other things. Do you have any plans to write more academic work, or are you focussing primarily on fiction?

My scholarly career ended in 2003. I do not miss it. My heart has always been with fiction.

Your website explains that you usually work on several novels at once. Which one do you currently think is most likely to be finished first and can you tell us a bit about it?

I can tell you about it very vaguely. I've learned that if I talk about a novel in any detail before there's a first draft it does not go well. I also can't outline a book until I've finished writing it.
That said, my next novel will be out late 2015. It's a contemporary about an Australian boy who moves to New York City with his family, falls in love, and, um, has to figure out how to deal with evil.

What Australian works have you loved recently?

A: Larry Writer's Razor: Tilly Devine, Kate Leigh and the razor gangs which was the spark that led me to writing Razorhurst. Without it my book wouldn't exist. I've also been re-reading all of Ruth Park and Kylie Tennant's books and they're even more wonderful than I remembered. Too many of Tennant's books are out of print. That needs to be remedied.

Have recent changes in the publishing industry influenced the way you work? What do you think you will be publishing/writing/reading in five years from now?

You'd go mad if you let the paroxysms and dramas of the publishing industry affect your work. I've done a great deal of research on the 1930s in Australia and the USA and publishing was in crisis back then too. I sometimes think publishing has always been in crisis.

When I write I don't think about any of that stuff; I just write. Five years from now I'll be doing the same thing. Writing, reading, talking about writing and reading with my friends. I have had many different publishers in my career. I imagine I'll have many more. But whatever happens I will continue to write. I have been writing fiction since I was able to write and before that I told stories. Nothing that happens in the publishing industry will change that.

Friday 1 August 2014

Snapshot 2014: Simon Haynes

Simon Haynes was born in England and grew up in Spain, where he enjoyed an amazing childhood of camping, motorbikes, air rifles and paper planes. His family moved to Australia when he was 16.

Simon divides his time between writing fiction and computer software, with frequent bike rides to blow away the cobwebs. His goal is to write fifteen Hal books (Spacejock OR Junior!) before someone takes his keyboard away.

Simon's website is www.spacejock.com.au.

You’ve just released the seventh Hal Spacejock book, Big Bang. With this latest novel, you initially released it in serialised form. How did this different release method work out for you and do you think you will be doing it again?

Hal 7 was my 12th novel, and I desperately needed a new challenge. I've always been a chronic rewriter, fiddling with scenes, changing the plot, messing about with characters and so on. But at the end of the day, who cares if a fruit salad has a dollop of vanilla or chocolate ice-cream on top? I found myself dithering over irrelevant details, when I could have been writing more novels.

So, the serial. I planned 10 parts of approximately 7500 words each. I promised I would have the next part ready before I published the previous one, which meant people knew it wasn't just going to fizzle out. This also gave me the opportunity to revise the previous part if changes arose during the writing of the current one.

And it worked. I found myself looking forward instead of back. I wrote quickly, I had no trouble with subplots or fiddly details, and the reviews for book seven have been great.

The only problem was when I reached part ten. Everything had gone so well for parts 1-9 that I decided to publish part nine before I finished the novel. Then I discovered I needed to write about 15,000 words for part ten, to do the rest of the book justice. That took far longer than expected, which meant everyone had to wait for the final part. I've had fans writing to me, politely asking whether the next Hal book will also be a serial. When I reply that it won't be, they seem very happy.

Now, the thing with the serial was that I found it easy to motivate myself to write and publish 7500 word parts. Since I finished Hal 7, I've hardly written a word (again). So, perhaps I need to write in serial form, but just not publish any of the parts until they're ALL done.

As well as the original English, Hal Spacejock is available in French. How did that come about and did you have much contact with the translator?

The translator, Albert Aribaud, instigated the whole thing. He contacted me several years ago, and I referred him to the publisher. Cut a long story short, Albert and I collaborated on the translation between us, and I released the resulting novel as an ebook. Riviere Blanche will be releasing the paperback later this year.

Apart from Hal Spacejock in French, Bastei Lubbe recently released the first two novels in German as 'Ein Roboter namens Klunk' (Hal 1) and 'Helden Heulen Nicht' (Hal 2). This is a traditional publishing contract, organised by the original Hal Spacejock publisher, Fremantle Press. The interesting thing is that the German publisher picked up on a little in-joke of mine. That is, they released the first Hal Spacejock book with the title 'A robot named Clunk', recognising that the entire series is actually about Clunk the robot, not Hal Spacejock.

Over the years people have occasionally posted reviews saying that Hal is a jerk and a little shallow, while Clunk is far more interesting. No kidding. Anyway, it's good to see that ten years after Hal Spacejock was published, someone saw through that little ruse.

Then there's Hal Junior … the first novel has been translated into Italian by Lia Desotgiu, and was recently published as an ebook. I have the layout for the paperback edition on my screen right now, and will be publishing that later today after I finish this interview.

Lia contacted me a year or so back after I blogged about translations, and I was highly impressed with her lengthy resume. She's translated a huge number of famous AAA computer game titles, including one of my all-time faves, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Lia is also keen to translate Hal Junior 2 and 3.

A french translation of Hal Junior: The Secret Signal, also by Albert Aribaud, is nearing completion and should be published soon.

What I'd really like is a native Spanish speaker for a Spanish translation of my works. I'm fluent in Spanish but not to the degree needed, and I'd love to read my work in that language. So … if anyone's interested, contact me and we can discuss details.

As well more Hal Spacejock (and Hal Junior?) books, it looks like you’re planning another spin off series about Harriet Walsh. Can you tell us a bit about that?

The Peace Force was mentioned in the first Hal Spacejock novel, and the idea was that they're the police of the future Galaxy, although with a more military approach to crime fighting. They have a reputation for ruthlessness and brutality, hence 'Peace' Force.

Anyway, Harriet Walsh is a Peace Force officer, and she's a tough, independent character. She seemed to hit a nerve with readers, and I remember one Hal fan emailing me to ask for a short story or novella featuring Harriet. I toyed with the idea, then decided to write a novel instead.

The problem is, writing a futuristic police procedural is hard. Imagine a future where you point a gadget at a bloodstain or a fingerprint, and the suspect is immediately identified and located. E.g. their car stops mid-traffic, the doors lock, and a large transport drone flies out to scoop the car up and deliver the suspect to the nearest station. All while the detective is still sipping coffee at the crime scene.

I don't quite have the same problem in the Hal novels, because he's broke and can't buy any cool gadgets. He can barely afford fuel, and when he finally buys a mobile phone he discovers Galactic Roaming charges would cripple him for about 40 years.

I found a solution for this problem in Harriet Walsh, but I've not yet got my teeth into writing the thing. And, in the meantime, the siren call of Hal Spacejock 8: Shaken and Stirred, has pulled me in.
By the way, the Hal Junior series is set 10-12 years after Hal Spacejock, and features Harriet Walsh as the mother. (A lot of people got the idea Hal Junior is just Hal Spacejock as a kid. Including me, when I first started writing The Secret Signal. However, Hal Jnr worked much better as a new character.)

What Australian works have you loved recently?

I confess I haven't read anything at all for the past two years. About a year ago I got into board gaming by accident, and it's become a major passion. Like many, I suffered through Cluedo and Monopoly as a kid, but I put all that behind me when home computers burst onto the scene in the (very) early 80's.

Looking around now, the variety of complex, interesting, challenging board games is breathtaking. Puerto Rico, Game of Thrones, Pillars of the Earth, Caverna/Agricola, Village, Shadows over Camelot, Descent, Neuroshima Hex, 7 Wonders, Battle Line, Lords of Waterdeep, Jaipur, Lost Cities, Eldritch Horror … who has time for reading? (Or writing!)

Have recent changes in the publishing industry influenced the way you work? What do you think you will be publishing/writing/reading in five years from now?

I transferred to self-published ebooks (with POD paperbacks) about 3 years ago now. The speed with which I can reach fans influenced my decision to publish Hal 7 as a serial. It also triggered the wave of translations, and I'm keen to continue with those.

I have plans for a present-day thriller, and a friend and I are planning a collaborative novel which is just a bare-bones idea at the moment. To that end I've been modifying yWriter (my free novel writing software) to add collaborative features so that two authors can work together on the same novel, in realtime. Right now it's using Google Drive to store data temporarily, which is just a stop-gap until I work out something better.

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