News & Upcoming Events

Yep, the internets are full of stuff I’ve been involved with this week…

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…so I may as well go with the hat-trick when it comes to blatant acts of self-promotion this week and mention the following:

1) The Coming Dark at the Internet Review of Science Fiction

A long-ish article about the apocalypse in its varied form, put together by my write-club peep Angela Slatter and featuring a bunch of talented Aussie writers (plus me, who is pretty lucky to be sounding coherent given that I was drafting responses to these questions during Gen Con Oz a few weeks back. Not to self – don’t agree to deadlines that coincide with conventions you’re working at).

Spec-fic writers tend towards the strange, the weird, the unpleasant—that’s their writing, not their personalities. We’ve had the apocalypse penciled in for a while now, so how are some of us going about documenting the coming dark? How is our changing, frayed environment affecting the writing of authors on our side of the literary divide?

A small chunk (really a thin, dietary slice) of these folk grudgingly agreed to answer some questions whilst waiting for the sun to burn and the moon to crash. So I locked them in a small room, put the kettle on and gave them some homemade biscuits to distract them. The subjects ranged across scary strangling vines, whether the environment really is out to get us, and the Age of the Puffin. The writers gromphing down the custard kisses and jam drops (and muttering about mandatory detention) are Deborah Biancotti, Kaaron Warren, Peter Ball and Jason Fischer. Mad Max

And for the record, I’d totally support Jason’s theory about the ascent of the puffin.

2) Interfictions Two Available for Pre-order (Due for November Release)

If you’re left wondering exactly what an interfiction is, you can probably get a good taste of the style by looking over the anthology’s online annex, featuring a bunch of free stories that supplement the anthology. Or you can go check out the Interstitial Arts Foundation  which tends to be full of interesting people talking about the ways genres intersect and mutate (check out the essays, but be prepared to lose to day of your life as you move from one to the next).

Or you can just take the my word, biased as it is, and pre-order based on the fact that the first anthology kicked nine kids of butt. I mean, even if you aren’t a particular fan of the story I’ve got in there, the book contains new work by folks like Jeffery Ford and Brian Francis Slattery, and I’d happily shell out the cash for a copy based on those two facts alone 🙂

Some quick pre-order info as I head out the door…

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I’m currently preparing to head off to the Gold Coast, primarily to spend a few days catching up with my parents who I haven’t seen for longer than a dinner since they came back from their trip OS a month ago (and, it must be said, to languish in the peaceful surrounds of their home and get some writing done while I’m away from the internets). With that in mind I’m going to forgo today’s entry and make mention of an anthology due to hit shelves in December. Of course, you don’t want to wait for December to organise your copy, because *all the really cool kids are preordering now*. You want to be one of the cool kids, don’t you?*

Descended from Darkness: Apex Magazine Volume 1
Scheduled Released December 1st, 20009

Man, I’m excited about this one. Descended from Darkness collects a lot of the work that appeared on the Apex Magazinewebsite during the first half of 2009 (and maybe a little 2008) into an attractive anthology that has the dual benefit of letting you read these great stories offline *and* contributing a few dollars to keeping a pretty damn awesome online magazine running (with the added benefit that if you order using that link on the top, you may also be contributing beer money to your not so humble author).

So why get Descended from Darkness? Well, for starters, it’s one of those ultra-rare anthologies that’s going to feature me and my most excellent peep Jason Fischer(recent Writers of the Future Winner, Clarion Mate, and all-around dude) on the same table of contents. Plus the genre that Apex promotes (Horror-SF) is one of my favourites and I suspect it doesn’t get enough love. Plus there’s a bunch of other writers on the TOC that make for an assemblage of awesomeness – Mary Robinette Kowall, Lavie Tidhar, Ruth Nestvold, Ekaterina Sedia, and Theodora Goss among them. And the best thing is that it’s a total try-before-you-buy thing if you want it to be – just go check out the magazine archives to see what Apex has been doing.

*All suggestions of peer pressure should be attributed to my own tendency towards awkward cheesyness  when engaging in self promotion, not a reflection of said anthology. Which will be very cool. And has an awesome cover, which I haven’t been able to convince my website to upload and display. And this makes me sad.

Some Awesomeness, Some Writing Advice, Some Help Needed, and Some Horn Spotting

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1) Two Reasons Angela Slatter is awesome

The latest Clarkwesworld magazine has an interview with eight Emerging SF authors, including the insightful and rather startlingly talented Angela Slatter. She says some smart stuff, as do the rest of the interviewees, and it’s well worth a read. If, however, you like you’re writing advice in a more direct and focused form, I really suggest heading over to Angela’s website and read through her advice on editing. Actually, I’d advocate printing out the entire post and keeping it handy next time you’re proofing something. I’ve been lucky enough to have stuff edited/proofed by Angela before and I can say with certainty that she knows of what she speaks here.

2) Interesting Writing Advice from Across the Interwebs

Still on the writing front, I’d also recommend going and taking a listen to Mary Robinette Kowal’s guest-spot on the Writing Excuses podcast. It crams four really useful pieces of advice to fiction writers (based on puppetry, interestingly enough) into the space of fifteen minutes. I transcribed them and put them in the folder where my draft of Black Candy is waiting for me to start rewriting, just as a reminder that I need to think very clearly when I start replacing all my habitual non-verbal tags that get scattered through dialogue.

3) Help Needed/Gen Con Australia

Do you know someone who loves fantasy and SF authors and roleplaying games who doesn’t suffer from stage fright and will be in Brisbane between the 18th and the 20th of September? If so, get them to drop me an e-mail at peter.ball@genconoz.com because I’m in need of some volunteers who’d be willing to MC some panels at this year’s Gen Con Australia. This is your basic call for interested folks – e-mail me for more details.

Yes, I realise this is an odd way to go about it, but I’m short on time and the usual pool of folks I’d ask has gotten shallow in recent years, and I figure most of you who are reading this are SF and Fantasy fans who might know some folks. Given that we’ve had to do this fast and there were set-backs due to the computer-crash*, I’m going to go with odd-but-direct rather than time-consuming-but-standard. 🙂

*after all my gloating about my back-up plans, it was discovered that I’d failed to back-up the outlook files for the account used in this exercise.

4) Horn Spotting

Horn got a nice write-up from Narelle Harris on her blog. As always, there’s the excerpt:

Horn is a novella, a fast read at 80 pages – a short, sharp uppercut of a book. Parts of it are hard and ugly, as they need to be for this kind of story, but it’s also a ripping yarn. It may leave you desperate for whisky and a cigarette, but you’ll finish it knowing you’ve fought the good fight.

As usual, I’ll mention that copies of Horn are still available from Twelth Planet Press (Not *many* copies, sure, which still blows my mind, but there are still some there if you’re so inclined…)

And now I need to go figure out what’s happening with the sequel. And figure out something to cook for write-club tonight. And get some gen-connery organised. ‘Tis a busy day in the office for me, which is as it should be really.