Blatant Acts of Self-Promotion

Year’s Best Australian SF & Fantasy

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Years Best Australian SF and Fantasy 4 CoverMy internet access is  wonky at the moment, so I’ll be making this brief and hoping it goes through before the modem crashes again. The page for Mirrordanse Book’s Year’s Best Australian SF and Fantasy 4 has gone up along with a copy of the recommended reading 2007 list from the very back of the back. 2007 wasn’t really a big year for me, publications wise – I was still finding my feet post-Clarion and the stuff I did get published was mostly flash – so I was kinda surprised to spot my little SF Flash “Avenue D: The Tankboy’s Ride” among the list.

Admittedly it wasn’t a surprise I got today – I picked up a copy of the book while I was down at Conflux – but one calls attention to good stuff when the opportunity presents itself. It’s a damn good read by any stretch of the imagination, and it’s one of the three Year’s Best collections I now pick up regularly (alongside the Datlow/Link/Grant Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror and the Dozois Year’s Best Science Fiction). I’m not entirely sure why the table of contents isn’t up when the recommendations are, but trust me when I say you won’t regret picking up a copy (assuming you are, of course, a fan of spec fic and the short story, but I can’t imagine why you’d be reading this if you weren’t).

More Last Short Story

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Another mention from Last Short Story today, this time from GirlieJones: “The strongest story for me in Fantasy this year was Peter M Ball’s “On the Finding of Photographs of My Former Loves”, which was also when I perked up my ears and hopped on the Peter M Ball train. It’s tender and odd and sad and bittersweet. And beautifully beautifully written. I’m looking forward to reading what Ball does next. “

Last Short Story

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If you’re a fan of the speculative fiction short story, you really do owe it to yourself to be following the Last Short Story blog. It’s maintained by a small group of dedicated readers committed to reading every short story published in the field over the course of a year and making note of their favourites. I was a big fan during the blogs first year, 2007, when it directed me towards some outstanding anthologies I would have otherwise missed – New Space Opera & Interfictions – and directed me towards what would become one of my favourite stories of the year, Garth Nix’s Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz Go To War Again.

Being such a fan of the blog, it’s been kind of neat to watch some of the nice things they’ve said about two pieces of my fiction over the last couple of months.

About The Last Great House of Isla Tortuga in Dreaming Again
  – BenPayne: “… tells of a young cabin-boy on a pirate ship, taken on his first visit to a whorehouse. Nothing is as it first seems; either boy or whorehouse. But more powerful than the surprises are the deft writing and the fragility and compassion that imbue this story. Not at all what I expected; it’s another deftly written character story, and another writer worth keeping an eye on.”
– Cassiphone: “I thought I was over pirate stories after the glut of them in recent times, but Ball has provided a sexy, charming and utterly sinister pageturner, about a crew of pirates who come ashore at an infamous brothel staffed by zombies.”

About On the Finding of Photographs of My Former Loves in Fantasy Magazine
– Cassiophone: “… a sinister story about love ending. More magical realism than fantasy, it left me with my stomach all twisty and unhappy.”
– BenPayne: :… is a nicely evocative little relationship story, emotionally jagged and well-crafted.”

The Last Short Story crew are at a point where they’re finalizing their recommendations for 2008 and preparing for the onslaught of the new year, so it’s the perfect time to start reading. They’re folks that work hard, they recommend good work, and they attempt the impossible (think about it for a second – *all the spec fic stories published in a year; every magazine and anthology and website* – you’ve got to give them props for that). Setting aside the obvious bias generated by the kind words on display above, I recommend checking them out.