Kaaron Warren's Blog, page 10

Refreshing the Wells 21: Conflux

One of the most delightful ways for me to refresh the wells is to go to a convention. This weekend, Conflux was held in my hometown. As special guest, I stayed in the con hotel and therefore had the bizarre yet wonderful experience of being away from home while not really being away from home.

Thursday

The SteamPunk High Tea. The first costume event of the convention. Amazing stuff! I went for something metallic rather than the wonderful costumes the others came up with. We nibbled salmon sandwiches and ate scones, arguing about how to pronounce scones. Actually that most mostly Matthew Farrer, who says he waits to hear how the other person pronounces it, then corrects them with the other pronunciation, just to be annoying! The idea of Matthew Farrer being annoying is as funny as the joke itself.

Next came the launch of Cat Spark’s first short story collection, The Bride Price. These books were delivered to my house during the week, so I had a sneak peek at them. Cat has been a dear friend for a long time and I’m a huge fan of her work. I also adore Russell Far as a friend and as a publisher, so this event was one not to be missed. I politely waited till the end to buy a book (actually was chatting with so many people I got distracted) that by the time I got to the book table, they were sold out! How brilliant is that!

Opening ceremony next, run by Craig Cormack. I have never, ever been at a funnier opening ceremony. It was full of evil overloads, people with nasty-person face masks and all sorts of good stuff. I sat up the front with the other guests, and realised yet again how lucky I was to be on the bill with them. Nalo Hopkinson, Marc Gascoigne, Karen Miller and Rose Mitchell. Talented, delightful and funny, the lot of them!

Cocktail party; it was loud, but then I rather like loud. I caught up with Amanda Rainey (we coined a brilliant new phrase which I have since forgotten) before I had to sneak off to my panel on The Horror Spectrum with Kirstyn McDermott, Jason Nahrung, Terry Dowling and Alan Baxter. It became quite a philosophical panel, and it was great to hear Terry talk about some of his motivations and the things he considers important in his writing (basically don’t bullshit on the page!).

Then to the bar. The wonderful Devin Jayathurai brought me something very special from Singapore.

Chicken Floss.

It comes in a bag and I spent most of the night making people try it. I’m afraid I do have a list in my head now of those who said no (vegetarians get a free pass). It is not anywhere near as weird tasting as it sounds.

Friday

My official day started with the launch of three books. Joanne Anderton’s The Bone Chime Song, Thoraiya Dyer’s Assymetry, and One Small Step, edited by Tehani Wessely of Fablecroft Press. I was very proud to launch these books, but terrified I’d stuff it up. I was so nervous I had the wrong glasses on and couldn’t read a thing, so had to remember it all. Luckily all three books are brilliant, so I could talk very honestly about what I thought of them! I believe all those books sold out as well. Conflux is clearly the place for book launches!

Am I Not Human panel, which we all called Body Horror because that’s where it started about six months ago when a few of us gathered to discuss such things. I loved this panel, with Deb Biancotti as the chair, Martin Livings, Kirstyn McDermott and Angela Slatter. Good stuff from the audience, too. At all the audiences I sat looking out at or sat amongst, people were totally engaged and connected to what was being said. Loved this panel, and loved the directions we took it all in. We talked about the future of beauty, and the nature of attraction, and whether or not Frankenstein was sexy. All good!

Mass book signing where I signed four books, sitting next to Nalo Hopkinson. Best thing was that I facilitated a visit for her to an op shop. I couldn’t do it, so I co-opted Ian McHugh and Rik Lagarto into it. I believe they had fun!

The terrifying (and terrifyingly nice) Rob Hood launched his book Fragments of a Broken Land next. I haven’t read it, and can’t yet, because this one sold out, too! I couldn’t be at the launch because I had a reading for Nicole Murphy’s anthology In Fabula Divino. Nicole (who co-organised the convention with Donna Hanson, an amazing job!) mentored 8 new writers, taking their stories from first draft to a publishable condition. Wonderful achievement! She asked a few of us (Trudi Canavan, Angela Slatter and Kevin J Anderson and Rebecca Moesta) to donate a short story for it, and I thought my first short story, White Bed, was the appropriate choice.

Rick Keuning did a great job of reading his story “Crossroads”, then I read a small part of mine. It’s a tough, confronting story to read aloud but you have to stand behind your work.

Russ Farr organised a Ticonderoga Author spot. There were so many of us we decided to go to the bar instead, and that was fun! I was snuggled into my seat, talking to Terry Dowling and Grant Stone, when I was called to the CSFG Next Anthology launch. Lots of wonderful authors, many of them at the convention, quite a number of them publishing their first short story. Very proud CSFG Member! I had to leave the very, very gentlemanly Phill Berrie with my copy, because the Banquet was about to begin and I had to frock up.

I didn’t frock up like most people did! Wow wow wow. Look at these pics! There was dancing, there was fabulous food (so fabulous Donna brought the chef out so we could cheer him and his staff). I had the best table, I think, with Lily  Mulholland, Graham Storr, Abigail Nathan, Richard and Aileen Harland, Mark Timmony and Helen Stubbs. Helen had a body double who was dancing professionally for us, which was a bit of a spin out! We had lots of fun talking, laughing, joking and eating. My favourite dish I think was chicken forced with caper sauce.

Dare I say the bar was next? Well, it was.

Saturday

By this stage, Justin Acroyd, bookseller, coffee lover, food lover, jokester and all round good blokester and I had settled into our routine of breakfasting each morning of a Natcon, joined by all and sundry. It’s a lovely way to start the day, feeding your face with as much food as you can shove into it, and talking books, sport and whatever else comes up.

Then to my reading. I chose The Pickwick Syndrome, from Pandemonium, Stories of the Smoke, Pandemonium Press. It is the right length, and I do like to have a complete story at a reading if possible. It’s actually quite a nice story, which left the audience stunned, but I think they still enjoyed it!

I wanted to attend Sean Williams’ talk based on his Phd work, but the room was so full I couldn’t fit in. He did the talk again on Sunday, but sadly I couldn’t make that one. This meant, however, that I could take a horde of people off to one of my favourite restaurants, Kopi Tiam in Manuka. My first chance to hang with my dear friend Kimberley Gaal, who was my mentee last year but has shifted up a notch! In fact she is my mentor as far as computery stuff goes, and I co-opted her into helping me out with my Guest of Honour speech, more of which soon. Marc Gascoigne came with, as did Amanda Rainey, Nick Evans, Ben Payne and Jane Routely and we all fought each other bloody over the alcoholic ginger beer, which was fun. I won, of course, because I am ruthless in such things.

Kim and I raced back to sort out the equipment for my talk, because I was terrified of stuffing it up.First, the interview of Nalo Hopkinson by Justine Larbalestier. What a wonderful hour that was! If the whole audience wasn’t in love with Nalo at the end of it, I’ll be very surprised.

She talked about her childhood, and her motivations, and Clarion and was so funny and delightful and inspiring.

My talk next. I spoke about the Geography of my fiction; all the places I’ve lived, and how the landscape has affected my stories. I had lots of pics and told stories about them all. Here are a couple to whet your appetite. I’ll probably give the talk again at some stage because it was a lot of fun and people seemed to enjoy it.

I finished a few minutes early to give the Ditmar Committee time to set up. This involved a throne, and a box of lego I brought from home! Here is a Twitter summary of the whole thing from Sean the Blogonaut. 

It was a really fun ceremony. I’m proud of all the winners, and got to hand David McDonald his award for next new talent, which made me very happy indeed.

Then of course there were the two awards I won! Best Novella, for Sky, and Best Collected Work, for Through Splintered Walls! Seriously, I was so shocked and excited I could barely stand up straight on stage. Marc Gascoigned had teased me earlier, saying he’d call my name no matter what the note said, so I thought perhaps he was having a lend! The awards are absolutely beautiful, made by Lewis Morley. 

Such a brilliant artist.

Masquerade time next! Again, some gorgeous costumes. Emma Kate, the Fan guest brought up from Tasmania as part of a fan fund and I got to judges this one, and it was so tough. In the end, the damaged bride was the winner. Well done, Emma Wearmouth! I didn’t go out for dinner that night. I ate fried prawns and drank champagne and sent a message to Martin Livings at 3am inviting him to breakfast!

Editing to add: Disco! Was so much fun. Sean Williams the genius DJ as ever assisted by Marc Gascoigne and Dave Cake, all of us dancing our little geeky arses off!

Sunday started with breakfast with Martin and Justin. Very pleasant way to start the day, then onto the mentoring panel with Kimberley Gaal, Valerie Parv, Satima Flavell, Jodi Cleghorm and Joanne Anderton. It was feelgood panel, and also, I hope, informative. Kim did such a good job herding us all.

The launch of In Fabula Divino next, and I signed a couple of books, confusing one poor reader, who, when I said “This is my first published story” looked so stunned I realised she thought it was published for the first time that day, rather than 20 years ago.

I saw Karen Miller’s Guest of Honour speech and it was fantastic. She actually did a similar thing to me; showing pictures of things that inspired her. Hers was very deliberate, the result of a long and amazing European trip. So inspirational.

We had some crazy plans for Angry Robot Hour (including a Robot pinata) but in the end realised that really what people wanted was to find out about the company and figure out how they can get published. So Marc Gascoigne, Joanne Anderton, Ingrid Jonach and I chatted about processes and the pub and all that. Marc is so generous with his time and with his information, so warm and honest. He’s also a sharp businessman, with an uncanny ability to see the future.

People drifted and wandered and Kim and I sat down for a talk and ended up in a circle of 20 or more people. I love that about conventions; I love the way people join in and two become twenty within minutes. I also know that this is exactly what makes it hard for some con-goers. If you see someone you know standing alone, looking as if they’d quite like to join in but they don’t know anyone, I think you should wander over, say hello, and see if they’d like to join the vortex. They may not want to, but they will probably appreciate being asked.

Closing ceremony, where Craig Cormack created magic for all of us and Donna was presented with a birthday present, and we all cheered Donna and Nicole for a wonderful, wonderful convention.

I arrived home to a “Congratulations Mum” sign, a delicious home-cooked meal, some non-alcoholic sparkling grape juice and family and cats very happy to see me.

Heaven’s Gate

Matthew Farrer and Marc Gascoigne standing in front of the huge, decaying concrete and chicken wire sculpture in the tiny town of Collector.

News and Conflux

I won two Australian Shadows Awards! Soon they will be sitting at the front door to scare off unwelcome visitors and greet those who pass my rigourous tests of entry.

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Refreshing the Wells 20

Poetry today, from the insightful and very witty P.S. Cottier, in response to my discovery of shopping dockets in a second-hand book! (See Refreshing the Wells 19)

You’ll be able to hear P.S. Cottier read at Conflux; she’s wonderful in person, too, so worth finding on the program, which is here!

 

 

A Short Poem Inspired by Two Shopping Lists Found Hidden Inside a Cookbook Purchased at the Lifeline Bookfair by Kaaron Warren, Novelist, March 2013.

 

 

list (a)

Shape Active milk, Brocolli (sic?) and Sweet William Pears.

list (b)

full cream milk, butternut snaps and peanuts.

 

 

Sweet William Pears, a fairy tale fruit.

Broccoli blooming, a fan of green coral.

Milk so active it must sprint from the teat.

Just the items a health-freak might eat.

 

Auntie Flo likes milk full crammed with cream.

Brownies with peanuts that kiss her fat tongue.

A tea full of sugar and a Butternut Snap,

on a TV tray sloped on a mountain of lap.

 

The healthy one died, while out for a jog.

There’s a lot to be said for the life of a slob.

 

P.S. Cottier

News

For those of you in WA, I’ll be running a workshop in May. The info is below. Really looking forward to this trip. I can’t wait to see the artwork produced in the Paper Cut Workshop, and hope to see lots of people at the writing workshop.

The City of Rockingham is happy to announce that registrations are now open for the latest City of Rockingham writers workshop, with award-winning NSW author Kaaron Warren. Kaaron is the author of the collection ‘Through Splintered Walls’, which forms the basis of the ‘Through Splintered Walls’ paper art workshops and community art exhibition which many of you have attended and to which you are contributing. She is jetting in from NSW to attend the exhibition opening and has kindly agreed to conduct a three hour writing workshop at the Rockingham Art Centre, Kent Street, from 10am-1pm, Saturday 4 May, on the subject of ‘Writing Landscape’.

She says: “Setting, character and plot are the three vital elements to any story. This workshop will focus on the importance of the landscape in establishing your setting, and how to use where you live and what you see to build believable, layered worlds that will help inform both your character and your plot.”

To register, contact Lee Battersby, Coordinator Cultural Development & the Arts, on 9528 0386 or lee.battersby@rockingham.wa.gov.au

 

Paula Guran has released the TOC and cover of Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales. It looks amazing. My story “Born and Bread” will make you want to bake baguettes. Perhaps. With some of my stories I have a visceral response, in that the story gives me a physical response. This one makes me feel as if I’ve eaten bread before it cooled down enough.

 

Alan Baxter has just finished a blog series where he asked some writers how they dealt with success. My interview is here, and the others follow. Jo Anderton, Angela Slatter, Lisa Hannet, Trudi Canavan and Margo Lanagan.

Conflux, the Australian National Science Fiction Convention, is only a couple of weeks away now. I’ve got a lot of work to do for this convention! I’m launching some amazing books, giving a presentation, appearing on panels (including one on the theme of body horror, which I’ve been anticipating for about six months!), attending the Regency Banquet and the High Tea and, I imagine, propping up the bar (or being propped up by it, depending on the time of night.) The Ditmar Awards will be announced during the convention, with the voting closing just before.

 

Ditmar and Australian Shadows Awards

I’m extremely proud to say that with the Ditmar Awards and the Australian Shadows Awards announced, I have a personal record on ten nominations!

Very thrilled to be amongst such strong shortlists across the three awards.

Refreshing the Wells 19

Shopping Dockets found in a Cookbook bought from the LifeLine  Bookfair.

The book is “Shoots, Leaves and Eats”, by Fran Archway. I’m assuming Fran knows the joke!

Tucked inside the pages are two shopping dockets.

Two different supermarkets.

One lists Shape Active milk, Brocolli and Sweet William Pears.

The other lists full cream milk, butternut snaps and peanuts.

One healthy, one not so healthy. I wonder; do two people do the shopping? Or does one person do the shopping, with conflicting purchases? Do they buy the healthy food where people they know can see them, and the unhealthy stuff at a place where they know nobody?

If I use it in a story, I’ll make the contrast more extreme, but I love the little contradiction these two dockets provide.

 

 

I found lots of excellent books at the bookfair. More soon.

Awards, readings, stories

I’ll be reading an excerpt from “The Glass Woman” at the Village Festival in Canberra this weekend. This is definitely an adults only reading! This story first appeared in Aurealis Magazine, and can be found also in my first short story collection, The Grinding House, soon in electronic form.

The Aurealis Award shortlist has been announced and I’m happy to see that I appear three times.

“Sky”, from Through Splintered Walls,  is shortlisted for Best Horror Story.

“The Lighthouse Keepers’ Club”, from Exotic Gothic 4, is shortlisted for Best Science Fiction Story.

Through Splintered Walls is shortlisted for Best Collection.

I’ll be in Sydney for the award ceremony in May. I was on the jury for the Illustrated Works panel. Loved sitting on this one and we’re really happy with the shortlist. I’m chairing the jury panel for the Stoker Awards Graphic Novel this year, and I’m looking to forward to lots of Australian submissions this year.

In publishing, Pandemonium press announced the Table of Contents for The Lowest Heaven, an  anthology of stories written about the planets. I scored Saturn, the planet of lead and of melancholy. I loved writing my story “Air, Water and the Grove”. The launch will be at the Royal Observatory in June. I so wish I could be there.

“Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells” was released this week. Tor Books ran a chat on Twitter, which actually out-trended the Prime Minister for a while! It was a really interesting discussion, worth catching up on.

I will be travelling to Perth in May, for the opening of the exhibition of works created during the Through Splintered Walls paper cutting workshops. Cannot wait to see these artworks! I’ll be running a writing workshop while there, and visiting the State Archives under the guidance of the talented and very amusing Lee Battersby.

Writerly Update

Lots of news to catch up on.

Firstly, I’ll be in Melbourne this weekend for OzHorrorCon. You can find me at the AHWA table from around noon on the Saturday, and I’m on two panels on the Sunday. Lots of cool stuff happening there, and the venue looks very inspiring. I’m hoping to find a ghost or two there, as well as lots of humans.


John Joseph Adams bought my story “All You Can Do is Breathe” for his electronic Nightmares Magazine. Very thrilled to sell a story to John, and to see this one available online.

This story recently appeard in Polish in the book Najlepsze Horrory.

I’m interviewed by Mihai Adascalitei in the Romanian magazine Revista de Suspans


Here’s the poster for Zombies vs Robots Women on War. I love this book! It’s so varied in its themes and directions. The signing sheets travelled the world, so grabbing a signed copy would be pretty special.

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Author Nicole Murphy embarked on a project to encourage new writers to reach publication. She did an incredible job, and has now published an anthology. I supported this by offering my very first published short story, “White Bed”, for the book. I read part of this aloud at the Harold Park Hotel, my first public reading. With my parents in the audience I had to read the opening page, which is not something I’d want my parents to hear. But what do you do? You can’t censor yourself because of your parents. In Fabula-divino looks to be an excellent book.

My story “The Gaze Dogs of Nine Waterfall”, which first appeared in the stunning series Exotic Gothic, is appearing on Tales to Terrify, read by the very talented Kim Lakin-Smith. It’s amazing to hear your work read aloud. The pauses, the emphases, the voices used. Love it, and can’t wait to hear it! It will be up in a day or two. My last story there was “All You Can Do is Breathe.”


Fablecroft Press have announced that they will publish the first Joanne Anderton short story collection. Joanne is an amazingly talented, original writer, and this book is a ripper. I know, because I’m writing the introduction so I’ve read it.
The astonishing Joe Pulver has edited an anthology inspired by the writing of Thomas Ligotti. I’m thrilled to be included in this TOC, which is full of rule-breaking, genre-busting, crazy-arsed writers. My story, The Human Moth, was a joy to write. I felt a sense of freedom in writing it, knowing that it could be insane if I wanted it to be be. It starts like this:Behold the human moth. Drawn to the light, antennae out and ears alert, she can’t stay inside on a night like this.

Finally, Through Splintered Walls news. The City of Rockingham has organised a series of paper-cutting workshops, using the mis-printed copies of Through Splintered Walls! The first workshop is already booked out, but there will be others. I cannot wait to see the result of these. Many thanks to Lee Battersby, author of The Corpse-Rat King, and Alisa Krasnostein, publisher, who made all this happen.

Dave Versace and Tsana Dolichva have posted excellent reviews of the book itself.

That’s all for now! Amongst all this I’m completing a number of short stories, and am working away on the next novel. And the next. So many words!

Refreshing the Wells 18

Art. One of my favourite artists, Stephen Harrison, presented his graduation work at the ANU on the weekend. He does amazing work. I have a castle built from found objects, which inspired my story The Castle. The story was published online at Shadowed Realms, but it no longer up. I’ll send the story to interested parties, if requested.

His work last year revolved around lighthouses. This year, it’s inspired by war. His work inspires many story ideas. I’m hoping to see a piece at Sculpture on the Sea this year.

You can see his work here.

Meanwhile, here’s an excellent review of Through Splintered Walls, from .