Angela Slatter's Blog, page 21

Australian Writers’ Centre Courses

So, Brisneylanders, I’m teaching Creative Writing Stage 1 on Saturday 20-21 July 2019 10am–4pm for the Australian Writers’ Centre.


 


Then, Sydneysiders, I’m teaching it for you on


Saturday 10-11 August 2019 10am-4pm AND then I’m teaching Short Story in One Day on Sunday 8 September 2019 10am-4pm (as the title suggests, it’s a one-dayer). That also means I’m in Sydney for 5 weeks, which is irrelevant to most folk except friends who want to have coffee and cake.






Aaaaaaand I’ve also started teaching the online version of Creative Writing Stage 1 should you find that an easier way to “attend”.




More details are here.

Christopher Golden: The Pandora Room

One of my favourite humans/writers/editors is the delightful Christopher Golden. Today he’s chatting about his new novel The Pandora Room.

What do new readers need to know about Christopher Golden?

Hmm. I’ve been writing full time since 1992. Horror, fantasy, mystery … but I’m most at home with the supernatural thriller. It just fits my story sense perfectly. I also write comics and screenplays, and I’ve edited a bunch of fiction anthologies. What else should I say? I like ice cream a bit too much and got my first tattoo this year, at the age of 51.

What was the inspiration behind The Pandora Room?

I often get sparks of inspiration while doing research. I’ll be working on a project and come across something that inspires something completely different. A few years ago, I was reading about the Pandora myth and the variations on it, some of which say the box contained all the world’s blessings and some all its curses, and there’s a version in which Pandora is called by the name Anesidora. It just hit me -what if Pandora and Anesidora were sisters? What if there were two boxes, one with all the blessings and one with all the curses? One for each sister. And what if now, in the present day, an archaeologist found ONE of them…but didn’t  know which one it was. Everyone would want to lay claim to this thing…and though nobody in their right mind would open it, many would want to do exactly that, no matter the consequences.

How do you choose the anthology projects you do? What inspires them?

Most of the time it’s just something that hits me, some inkling or inclination. With THE NEW DEAD, I was actually approached by my editor at St. Martin’s. With SEIZE THE NIGHT, it was a frustration with people saying vampires weren’t scary anymore. With DARK CITIES, it was a panel at DragonCon about where the authors felt comfortable and where we felt anxious, in a dark alley or a dark country road. With HARK! THE HERALD ANGELS SCREAM, it was actually a title I’d come up with years before. I so wanted to use it for something, and then I came up with the idea for a short story I called “It’s a Wonderful Knife,” but I didn’t have a Christmas anthology to sell it to. My friend Tom Sniegoski suggested I do a Christmas horror anthology and finally use that title, and I knew it was perfect. I made him promise to do a story for it. With the upcoming HEX LIFE, my co-editor Rachel Autumn Deering approached me to team up. Normally I would pass on something like that, but Rachel is incredibly talented and a real pro, and I liked the idea of that team up. My one caveat was that I wanted to do an all female anthology, just to say to the editors who have hardly any women in their anthologies that it’s not difficult to find fantastic horror and dark fiction by women, you just have to want to.

In general, who and/or what are your writing influences, classic and modern?

Such a huge question. Stephen King is and always will be number one for me. His narrative voice is the narrative voice of my youth. Other huge influences people may or may not see in my work include Jack London, Shirley Jackson, Charles de Lint, Carol O’Connell, James Lee Burke, John Irving, Mo Hayder, Dennis Lehane, Mike Mignola, Carlos Ruiz Zafon, John Wyndham, and comics writers like Marv Wolfman and J.M. DeMatteis. Right now I’m reading THE NIGHT SISTER by Jennifer McMahon and I’m taking a lot of wiring inspiration from that. Jennifer has a gift for timing and delivery, the way she metes out plot to create fantastic tension.

Can you remember the first story you read that made you think “I want to be a writer”?

I really can’t. I could lie to you, but I won’t.  What I do remember is the first time I thought, “hey, I could write a novel.” I was reading THE LIGHT AT THE END by John Skipp and Craig Spector and there was something about the tone of that novel, their storytelling voice, the fun they were having and the colloquial way they presented their characters that made me think I could actually do that. I started my first novel, OF SAINTS AND SHADOWS, shortly thereafter.

What scares you?

Are you kidding? I live in the United States of America in 2019. Everything is terrifying. We live in fear every single day that the ignorant piece of shit in the White House will destroy us all. Beyond that, we need immediate and radical action to ameliorate the climate disaster that is already underway. But, y’know, let’s talk about ghosts and demons instead. I’d much rather focus on the supernatural than on the children in cages and filth in concentration camps in my own country. (That’s sarcasm. I’m very vocal about all of this and I know it costs me readers but I couldn’t care less. Children are dying. People are suffering. I only pray we can get enough people out to vote in 2020 that we can overcome the election tampering that is absolutely, 100% going to happen.)

Your Baltimore series is quite amazing – how did you come to work with Mike Mignola on that?

Mike and I have been friends since I interviewed him for Flux Magazine way back when HELLBOY first hit comics shops. We’d worked on a number of projects already and we talked on a regular basis. Over the course of a few  years he kept telling me about this vampire graphic novel he planned to do, and one day he just said he’d realized he was never going to have the time to do it, and would I like to write it as a novel. That turned into the novel BALTIMORE, OR, THE STEADFAST TIN SOLDIER AND THE VAMPIRE, which led to us doing two other books together, and then to the comic book series BALTIMORE and JOE GOLEM: OCCULT DETECTIVE, and some other things I can’t talk about just yet.

You can take five books to a desert island with you: which ones make the cut?

THE STAND by Stephen King. A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY by John Irving. LONESOME DOVE by Larry McMurtry. THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE by Shirley Jackson.  THE SEA WOLF by Jack London.

What attracts you to the darker side of fiction?

I’ve always loved the dark stuff. As a kid, I gravitated toward monster movies and comics, and when I started reading, to horror and dark fantasy. When I started writing, my mother asked “why can’t you write something good?” What she meant was something NICE. I explained that I’d written love stories, western stories, science-fiction stories, but that somebody always died. My work nearly always has romance in it, too, but I think the darkness is there to emphasize the light. It’s about having something to fight for. Heroes are only as interesting as their villains, protagonists only as courageous as the terrors they face are terrifying.

What is next for Christopher Golden?

I’m currently working on way too many projects at once. My next novel, RED HANDS, should be out next year. I’m writing the TV pilot for BEN WALKER, a series based on the main character from ARARAT and THE PANDORA ROOM.  I’m writing several comics I can’t announce yet.  October sees the release of two new anthologies, HEX LIFE and THE TWISTED BOOK OF SHADOWS.  My anthology with Tim Lebbon, TEN-WORD TRAGEDIES, inspired by the music of Frank Turner, comes out in two weeks! Thanks so much for asking, Angela, and for writing me some wonderful stories, including for HEX LIFE. I can’t wait for people to read it!

New Novel

So, I’ve started writing a new novel, Morwood.

Like Blackwater it’s a gothic fantasy set in the Sourdough/Bitterwood world, and I’m at the stage where I love it. It’s new and pretty and we’re in our honeymoon period.

Here’s a first draft sample (no comments required).

Just before I entered beneath the archway, I glanced over my shoulder, at the lawn and gardens across which I had come. Lightning flashed yet again and lit up the grounds, silvering a strange hunched silhouette back up on the curve of the drive, and I thought of … something. Something large but of indeterminate shape, something I could not quite place, nor did its colour even remain in my memory; there was only the recollection of red eyes. Resolute, though shivering with more than cold, I crossed the threshold.

‘Miss Todd,’ said the man with certainty; no surprise, really, unless the Hall was frequented by random young women on a daily basis. He waved his hands as if doing so might squeeze the moisture from my thin jacket and thick skirt. I caught sight of my reflection in the enormous mirror that was the centrepiece of a rosewood hall stand. My tiny green silk hat appeared to have melted, and I could feel the extra weight of the rain in the thick braided bun of my mousy hair. It would take hours to dry. My face was pale and I appeared, ghostly, although I’d never felt so triumphant in my life. I glanced away before I could examine too closely the look in my own eyes, and blinked, held the closure for a few moments to compose myself so the man could not see it either.

‘Yes,’ I say and it feels not enough. ‘I’m Asher Todd.’

Restoration in paperback form!

Well, guess what’s coming out in paperback!! Hello, Restoration, my last child.

So, if you’ve been waiting, arms crossed, grumping “I won’t buy it until all the trilogy is out, even though that might affect the chances of getting the last book published!” (yeah, I see you) then now’s your chance!

#restoration

#verityfassbinder

#lastveritybookever

#wholeseriesisout

#paperback

#supernaturalcrime

#urbanfantasy

Ten Things You Need to Know about Grants*:

Art by Kathleen Jennings

I’ve been fortunate enough to be awarded some grants during my career (by Arts Queensland, the Copyright Agency and the Australia Council for the Arts). To balance things out, I have also not received many of the grants for which I’ve applied. As I am a writer, I’ll be specifically directing this towards getting grants for literature, but there’s enough general advice in here for anyone in the Arts to walk away with some useful information. I’m also Australian, so this applies specifically to the Australian system of public Arts funding (d’uh). As with anything, be a responsible self-directed author, and do your own research to fill in the blanks ? that’s the whole point of Google.

So, here are ten things you need to know about grants (*not an exhaustive list):

Many Hear the Call but Few Are Chosen

Grants.

Everyone wants one.

Everyone thinks they deserve one.

Everyone’s chances of getting one are very low indeed.

The sad fact is that there’s a limited pool of Arts funding to go around. Artists don’t tend to attract sponsorships the way sportsfolk do … and I think that’s a shame, because honestly, who’d be better adverts than writers for coffee, booze and yoga pants? Well, maybe not the yoga pants so much, lycra is very unforgiving and we’re not always given to activities involving movement or sweat.

My point? Have realistic expectations. What stage are you at in your career? What will you get out of this project/what will you produce? Is your project going to look like a good investment of public funds? I know that doesn’t sound very artistic or creative, but government funding bodies need to justify their expenditure. They need to be able to see some sort of return on investment, whether that be a new work written (although preferably written and published) or a skills development course undertaken to get you to the next level of your creative career.

Your Application Will Take a Few Weeks

That’s not the decision-making process (that will take months) – that’s the time it will take you to prepare and pull your application together. You’re going to need to discuss in a considered and articulate fashion the scope and aims of your project, how you’re going to do The Thing, and what you’ll get out of it (production  of a new work, career development, skills acquisition/development, market/audience development, etc).

You might need to ask for support letters from people with standing in the writing/publishing industry/community who know your work. These people need to be prepared to commit to paper that they believe you will (a) benefit from the grant, (b) will make the most of the opportunity, and (c) will move forward in your career as a result. Hint: do not ask them the night before, it’s the equivalent of telling your mum you need an asparagus costume for school the very next day.

If you’re applying for a grant to produce a new novel, you will also need to provide writing samples to show the grant body the standard of your work – so, not the micro-fiction you threw down one Saturday night after not much thought but rather a lot of cheap wine. An already published piece is generally better than an unpublished piece (shows a publication track record), and a piece that has won an award or had multiple reprintings is better again (again, showing some kind of achievement in your field helps). You might be required to submit a sample of the new work you’re hoping to get a grant to create, so make sure you polish it until it shines. A well-crafted short example is better than a weak overly-long extract.

The upshot of all this is: be prepared. It will take time to write and edit and proof your application (because a document filled with grammatical infelicities and spelling eccentricities is not going to help your cause). And again (I cannot emphasise this enough), it will take anyone who agrees to provide a support letter time to phrase that correctly, so don’t ask for these things at the last minute. They don’t get written quickly or easily: a good letter of support will not only mention your writing ability but also help to demonstrate how your proposed project will move you forward. Respect everyone’s time.

Don’t Put All Your Eggs in One Basket

There are several organisation to which you can apply for grants, but you cannot rely on getting one from any of them.

If you’re applying for a big grant to buy yourself time away from other forms of paid employment to write a novel/cycle of poems/short story collection, then do not plan on getting that grant. Don’t plan on that being your only source of income, with no safety net. If you do assume you’ll get it, trust me when I tell you that you are going to be devastated if/when it doesn’t come to fruition. I learned that the hard way so you don’t have to: never have only one plan. Nowadays, my back-up plans have back-up plans.

So: what is your Plan B if you don’t get your grant? It needs to be more detailed than just throwing yourself on the fainting couch and howling for a couple of days whilst living on nothing but whiskey and Pringles.

How are you going to keep writing? How are you going to complete this project whether you get a grant or not? Because that’s another thing a funding body will want to see: that you are going to do this project come hell or high water, grant or no. That you’re committed to your artistic career.

That you will commit art no matter what.

You will need to make sure that you prepare a realistic budget for your project. Check with the organisation to see what level of detail they will require for the grant budget (and also for the acquittal process at the end, if you need to keep receipts, etc). If you’re applying for a travel grant to go and do a course somewhere, make sure your budget takes in all the costs, then show what proportion you’re paying and what proportion you’re proposing a grant will cover.

A travel grant will mean airfares, course registration, ground transfers, accommodation, travel insurance, incidentals (like phone costs, printing costs), a per diem rate for meals (you can use the government travel rate charts for public servants as a guide – once again, Google is your friend), etc. A grant to take a significant period off other paid employment to produce a significant piece of literature will need to budget for your expenses during that time: rent/mortgage payments, health insurance, food and utilities bills, associated travel costs for research trips, etc. Again: you will need to figure out what portion is going to be met by you, and what portion by one or more grants.

Grant bodies are also going to want to know that you’re (a) not expecting them to fund 100% of your project, (b) that you’ve applied to other grant bodies to help bear the cost, and (c) that you’ve got other forms of income to put towards the project yourself.

Keep in mind that there are also fully funded fellowships and residencies out there that you can apply for. They should pay you a living stipend for the period of the fellowship/residency, and if they’re located overseas you’ll often get your airfare paid for as well by the administering body. The Aerogramme Writers’ Studio maintains a very useful list of such opportunities (again: not exhaustive, so do your own further research).

It Takes Persistence

You might not get the first grant you apply for. You might not get the second, or third, or tenth. But: keep doing what you’re doing. A grant body will note if you keep applying, they will note if you’ve kept doing your art in spite of everything, kept achieving. But there is no point in throwing a hissy fit because you didn’t get the grant you applied for, no point in flouncing off declaring you’re never applying again – who is that supposed to teach a lesson to?

It’s also particularly unwise to throw public hissy fits at or in the direction of the funding body. Or even private hissy fits directed at the employees of that body. Why? If only because you might one day decide to apply for another grant – do you really want someone to remember you and say “Oh, hells no.”

Persist in polite but bloody-minded fashion. Show a pattern of persistence, show a pattern of determination and application. Who knows? Maybe one day you’ll get a grant coz someone ends up feeling sorry for you. Pity is also a tool.

It’s Not All about You

The point of this is: what are you going to put back into your community?

If you do get this grant to help you advance your career, what are you going to do to put something back or pay something forward? If you teach writing or mentor newer writers then that’s your first means of transmitting useful info. Tell your classes about what you learned. If you made connections and new networks as part of your project, then share that information with your students who are likely to be newbies with not a lot of clues: help them learn how the systems work (because grants for newbies are very rare indeed). You can’t make someone into a decent kind generous human being, but you can at least be an example of how one functions. Being a good example of a generous networker is the least you can do. Like, literally.

Similarly, if you’ve got an online presence, then write an article about your experience and what you learned (hey, just like this article on my website distilling and sharing what I’ve learnt! Will you look at that?). Document the advantages and pitfalls. It’s not all about the successes either, so if you encountered problems that others might also find, then talk about them – I’m not saying have a whinge-fest, but just let folk know there were stumbling blocks.

And if you get a publication outcome of out this project, then make sure you acknowledge the help of the funding organisation on your website and in the front matter of your book. Achievements like that are important outcomes for the grant bodies and help keep them getting funded so we keep getting funded.

 

You Need to Acquit

If you do get a grant, then at the end of your project you will need to acquit it to the satisfaction of the funding body. This means you need to show that you spent the public funds you were given in the manner you promised – i.e. did not spend it in dive bars or on online shoe shopping binges.

That might take the form of keeping receipts, letters or certificates of completion, or simply writing a report that shows you achieved the goals set out in your original application. If there were things you were unable to do then document that as well and give reasons as to why not. If you did something over-and-above the stated goals then document that as well (international publication, optioning of film rights to the book, etc), and reiterate the places where you will acknowledge the assistance of the grant organisation.

 

Be Realistic about What You’re Going to Do

There’s no point in applying for funding for a project that’s so jam-packed that you’ve actually got no realistic hope of achieving everything. The people assessing grant applications will have a good idea of what is and is not achievable in a particular period amount of time. You need to find that fine balance between doing too much and too little, between a realistic workload (because a project is work) and throwing everything into the soup.

If You Change It, You Need Approval

If you do get a grant but the parameters of your project change before you start it (e.g. part of your professional development or one of your appearances falls through), then you need to alert the granting body as soon as possible. It might change the amount you get, but if you can undertake replacement activities, you should be fine. Just make sure you supply confirmation of the new activities, like enrolment or invitation to participate details. It’s better to catch this at the start rather than having to justify it after you return.

Remember That You Might Never Get One

I hate to be a Debbie Downer on this and remind you of Points 1 and 3, but it is a sad fact for which you need to be prepared. Don’t rely on getting a grant. Ever. Like awards, this is a crap shoot, a gamble, buying a lottery ticket. However, the advantage is that if you keep applying you show persistence, and you will (hopefully) get better at writing grant applications. Plus you will build up a suite of grant applications that you can adapt from one round to the next so you’re not always reinventing the wheel.

Don’t Be an Asshole

If someone else got a grant and you didn’t? That’s life. Not everything comes with fries. Don’t whine or bitch, don’t complain, don’t tell others that your project was better. Don’t be an asshole.

Your project might simply not have held up against a range of others: perhaps you didn’t adequately demonstrate how it would help your career, or there wasn’t enough clear benefit to the Arts community, or it simply wasn’t an appropriate fit (hint: if you’re at uni and you applied for an Arts grant in order to complete part of your post-graduate degree, then that won’t fly because there’s post-grad funding for that with your uni). Just be gracious; congratulate those folk who get a grant this round. Maybe even ask them about their application – maybe they’ll be good eggs and let you see it so you can take notes for your next attempt. They might even end up being people who’ll be willing to write you a support letter later on.

So, no matter what happens, just try to be a decent human being.

In conclusion: this isn’t everything you need to know. These are just the highlights that have occurred to my tired brain. Do your own research, and remember that your local writers’ centre should also maintain a list of funding bodies; some of them might even list upcoming opportunities in a weekly or monthly bulletin. Remember that there are websites to visit, but that you should also make a point to chat (yes, on the phone) with the lovely folk at the funding body just to get a better feel for what they’re looking for, if there are specifically things they won’t fund, etc.

Essentially, if you only take away two things from this article, let them be (a) persist and (b) don’t be an asshole.

Some Funding Bodies of Interest:

Arts Queensland (each state in Australia has some similar body, so do the Google).

The Australia Council for the Arts

The Copyright Council’s Cultural Fund

The Neilma Sidney Literary Travel Fund

On Writing and Finishing a Trilogy

Over at Always Trust in Books I talk about the agony and the ecstasy of finishing off my Verity Fassbinder supernatural crime/urban fantasy trilogy.

Write a trilogy, they said. It’ll be fun, they said.

*sigh*

I should start by saying that the Verity Fassbinder series began as a standalone short story. ‘Brisneyland by Night’ was written at Clarion South in 2009 and caught the eye of someone who helpfully suggested it would make an excellent series if I could manage it.

Ignorance is not only bliss but also a kind of protective Teflon coating that blinds you to any real clue as to what you’re about to attempt. I had no idea what structure was, so turning ‘Brisneyland’ into Vigil took me roughly five years. Luckily for me, Jo Fletcher is patient.

Go here for the rest.

The Flensing Factory …

The Flensing Factory is open once again, operating at full capacity.

All the flensing, all the time.

Bring me your novels, your short stories, and pay me because I offer a very valuable service!

Contact me at me@angelaslatter.com

The Lovecraft Squad: Rising

Absolutely delighted to have another installment in Stephen Jones’ third and final Lovecraft Squad mosaic novel! The artwork for The Lovecraft Squad: Rising is by Douglas Klauba and the book will be published by Pegasus Books in 2020.

Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2019

Delighted to say that I’ve got a story in this one! Especially delighted as this story was difficult to write and edit, so I’m Most Pleased.

Even more delighted to see fellow Aussies Kaaron Warren and JS Breukelaar also in the ToC with a bunch of other wonderful writers. Thanks, Paula Guran!

Over at PseudoPod

My story “Home and Hearth” (which originally appeared as part of the Spectral Press chapbook series) has been transmuted into a podcast by the lovely folk at PseudoPod! Thanks, peeps, and special thanks to narrator Robin McLeavy.

Go here to listen.

Warning: horror.