Angela Slatter's Blog, page 26

Sydney: Restoration Event

Hey, Sydney!

I’ll be at the wonderful Galaxy Books on 20 September at 6pm to do a Q&A about Restoration, Verity and the writing life, so come along and ask me stuff. I’ll sign books, too – mine, other people’s – sure, I have boundary issues!

You can click here and book in.

 

Aaaaand launched!

Pre-launch panic

And Restoration has been launched! Thanks to everyone who came along and listened to Dr Kim and I banter, and my parents heckling from the audience. Thanks to the wonderful staff at Brisbane Square Library who always look after us so well, and to Cupcakes by K who provided many of us with a delicious dinner/dessert! And thanks to Jo Fletcher Books and Hachette Australia for bringing the book baby to life!

Still panicking but held in place by Dr Kim and our bangs

Y’all know what these are

Restoration: launch reminder and interviews

So, this is your last reminder to RSVP for the Restoration launch, which is happening tomorrow night at Brisbane Square Library. Me, Kim Wilkins, cupcakes, amusing profanities, books! So, 6pm arrival for a 6.30 start, details are here.

Over at Lael Braday’s blog I talk about writing process and stuff.

Over at Carleton Chinner’s blog I talk about more stuff.

And as part of the blog tour:

Lisa Reads Books reviews Restoration, as does Thoughts by Tash, and Lou at her blog.

And Theresa Smith reviews Vigil, just for a blast from the past!

And! Corpselight gets a great review over at Sisters in Crime by Isobel Blackthorn.

Plus! Jeann at Happy Indulgence is giving away a copy of Restoration.

 

Book Birthday!

Hello, Restoration!

My baby is out in the world.

‘Slatter’s dark imaginings, spritzed w/ humour, pack age-old magic into a contemporary setting with a sure hand. This woman knows her stuff.’ MARGO LANAGAN, bestselling author of Tender Morsels

And lest we forget, the launch is Friday 17th August at Brisbane Square Library – pls RSVP and come along for cupcakes!

Suspended in Dusk II: Sarah Read

Today’s blog guest is the lovely Sarah Read, talking about “Still Life with Natalie”, from the the new Suspended in Dusk II anthology.

1. What was the inspiration for your SiD2 story?

A friend of mine (hi Torii!) told me about a dream she had where a man was growing human heads in flower pots. It sounded like a good time, so I ran away with it a bit. I love it when my friends tell me their nightmares. People don’t usually like to listen to mine. Except you lovely people.

2. Who are your top five horror-writing inspirations?

This changes so often. My heart is a revolving door of affection for horror stories. But the folks who keep to the middle of the door and just keep going round past dizziness are Caitlin Kiernan, Shirley Jackson, Stephen Graham Jones, Jeff Vandermeer, and Paul Tremblay. What a dreadfully painful question. My spinning door heart is already at war with my answer. And have you ever tried to slam a revolving door? I’ll be up all night changing my answer.

3. You get to choose one book for a desert island exile (yes, you did something terrible): what is it?

The Neverending Story by Michael Ende.

4. What’s your favourite trope in horror?

I’m a sucker for haunted old houses. I NEVER get tired of ghosts and creaky stairs and hidden passages.

5. What’s next for you?

My first novel will be released from Journalstone/Trepidatio in early 2019. It’s a YA/adult crossover horror story set in an English boarding school in 1926. The title is currently in flux, or I’d tell you what it’s called. So for now, just keep your eyes peeled for Sarah’s Book of Unpleasant Happenings. An anthology I’m editing for Pantheon Magazine, called Gorgon: Tales of Emergence, will be released this fall. We have an incredible lineup of authors and I’m so excited to share their stories of transformations with the world. I’m currently tidying up my second novel manuscript and writing my third. I’m having WAY too much fun.

 

Bio:

Sarah Read’s work can be read in The Best Horror of the Year vol 10, Black Static, Gamut, Lamplight, and Behold!: Oddities, Curiosities, and Undefinable Wonders, among other places. Her debut novel will be released in early 2019 from Trepidatio, an imprint of Journalstone. She is the editor of Pantheon Magazine and its affiliated anthologies. You can follow her at her website www.inkwellmonster.wordpress.com, or on Twitter or Instagram at @inkwellmonster.

 

Restoration reviews

Grabs from the first couple of Goodreads reviews of Restoration – thanks to Paromjit and Imogene respectively.

1. Angela Slatter writes a bewitchingly compelling addition to this series. Her greatest strengths are her witty and humorous writing style and the fabulous and charismatic central character of Verity, with her inordinate ability to upset those around her, but blessed with a close coterie of friends and allies she can rely on, particularly the gifted Norn sisters running their Little Venice cafe. Slatter has created a world and characters that I have become fond of, and which has me looking forward with marked anticipation to the next in the series. Highly recommended! Many thanks to Quercus for an ARC.

2. Disclosure disclosed, OH EM GEE!

I loved Vigil and Corpselight, and I unashamedly recommend them to all urban fantasy/ kick ass protagonist readers in my book store.

However….have you ever had that moment with an author where you realise that they have been laying the seeds, the throwaway lines, the unimportant mentions, the minor characters just so that they could make them all an integral part of a gigantic, amazing, mind-blowing stupendous storyline that will culminate in ways you never dreamed of? No?

Well, you’re about to.

Kaaron Warren: Tide of Stone

Today, the deceptively adorable Kaaron Warren talks specifically about her new novel, Tide of Stone, and about writing in general.

1. So, what do new readers need to know about Kaaron Warren?

I’ve been publishing fiction since 1993. Took me about five years to sell my first story, once I decided I really wanted to, but I’ve had stories in print every year since, which is something, I think. I’ve lived in Melbourne, Sydney, Fiji and Canberra, finding inspiration in every place. Even a simple walk to the shops can give me ideas for story or character. Tide of Stone is my fifth novel in print, although I have another one almost finished, plus one at first draft and a novel I wrote as a teenager.

2. What was the inspiration behind your new novel, Tide of Stone?

Like anything I write, it came from a number of places. Often a single image sends my imagination racing and in this case it was a picture of the Maunsell Sea Forts. Huge and abandoned, I imagined their insides echoing, and wondered what it would be like to spend a night inside one of them.

Apart from the isolation and the emptiness, there is a sense of permanence about them, regardless of the rust. They look like they’ve been there forever.

As I started writing the novel, about criminals who are given eternal life and imprisoned, I realised that the Forts wouldn’t work for what I was doing with the story, so reluctantly I had to let them go.

The Time Ball tower captures a similar mood, but gives me the added symbolism of the ball dropping every day, keeping time.

3. How did you connect with Ominium Gatherum?

I knew of the publisher through some of the great writers they have published, such as SP Miskowski,John Claude Smith, Lucy Taylor,and Simon Bestwick. So they were on my radar as a place to consider them for Tide of Stone, which is a novel that takes some chances with content, style and layout.

When Lee Murray was hired as a commissioning editor they jumped further up my list. I’m a great admirer of Lee as a writer and as a writing professional. I’d seen her at work at the NZ Natcon, and I knew she knew her stuff. So I approached her to see if she would be interested in reading Tide of Stone.

Luckily for me, she loved it and Kate Jonez did, too. Lee edited the book and Kate has been incredibly supportive and professional throughout.

4. What attracts you to the darker side of fiction?

Like that with dark fiction, all the endings aren’t tied up happily. I don’t mind a happy ending but quite often those endings don’t ring true for me.

I like that I can let a story travel where it needs to, and that anything is possible. I’m fascinated by ghosts and I like being able to write stories where the existence of ghosts is a given.

5. In general, who and/or what are your writing influences?

I’m a very broad reader and always have been. I’m a scavenger for information, always looking for that ring of authenticity I can bring to a story. For example, I recently rescued a pile of old magazines and pamphlets from recycling, and I’ll use these to inspire a story or two. They might give me ideas, or they might give me a specific detail that will help a character ring true. They might help me decide on a plot development. You never know!

VW Service Book

The British Stake in South Africa

An Ordinance Relating to Motor Traffic 1936-1972

Tourist Park Guide 1965

Cumberland Recipe Calendar 1950. This is all cocktails! Including the Angel’s Dream, which is Apricot Brandy with ice cream on top.

Geelong Street Directory 1950s

And the fabulous Symbols for Welding. If this doesn’t end up in a story I’ll eat the booklet with tomato sauce.

So I’m influenced by all I read, including fiction, good and bad.

6. Who is your favourite villain in fiction?

Very hard to choose just one. It’d come down to Randall Flagg in Stephen King’s The Stand, Nurse Ratched in Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and the vampire in Nathan Ballingrud’s Sunbleached.

But the award goes to the first real villain I came across in fiction: Rooky in Enid Blyton’s “Five Get Into Trouble”. I was terrified of him! The Famous Five are kidnapped by Rooky after a case of mistaken identity, and he makes the most awful threats. He has a terrible temper, and this idea that someone couldn’t control themselves, would literally blank out and commit acts of violence, gave me nightmares. Then of course there is the escaped convict the children discover. He terrified me too, because we knew so little about him, but Rooky was protecting him so he must be bad. And then there’s Mr Perton, who owns the isolated house…

7. When did you first decide you wanted to be a writer

I started writing stories from the moment I learnt how to form words on the page. Even in the early years of primary school I took every opportunity to write a story. I still have some scraps of paper with early first lines on them, and one or two of my very early stories.

At 14 a family friend gave me a list of possible venues for stories, including writing groups running competitions and more. This gave them the idea that I could in fact become a published writer, but I didn’t really start sending stories out properly till I was about 23 or 24. I was 28 when I sold my first short story, so it really did take a while.

8. What scares you?

Loss.

9. Name five people, living or dead, you’d like to invite to dinner?

Five people who still think about me even though I have forgotten they exist.

10. What is next for Kaaron Warren?

I have a short story collection from Dark Moon Books called A Primer to Kaaron Warren.

I have a novella coming out from Cemetery Dance.

I’m Guest of Honour at World Fantasy in Baltimore this year, and at Stokercon and NZ’s Geysercon next year.

I’m working on a new novel (one is done and ready to go) and a number of short stories. I always have a few things on the go at once.

 

 

 

Cover reveal: Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2018

Happy to see the cover for the latest Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror from Paula Guran and Prime Books!

“Sunflower Junction,” Simon Avery (Black Static #57)

“Swift to Chase,” Laird Barron (Adam’s Ladder: An Anthology of Dark Science Fiction)

“Fallow,” Ashley Blooms (Shimmer #37)

“Children of Thorns, Children of Water,” Aliette de Bodard (Exclusive for The House of Binding Thorns preorders/Uncanny #17)

“On Highway 18,” Rebecca Campbell (F&SF 9-10/17)

“Witch Hazel,” Jeffrey Ford (Haunted Nights, eds. Ellen Datlow & Lisa Morton)

“The Bride in Sea-Green Velvet,” Robin Furth (F&SF 7-8/17)

“Little Digs,” Lisa L. Hannett (The Dark #20)

“The Thule Stowaway,” Maria Dahvana Headley (Uncanny #14)

“The Eyes Are White and Quiet,” Carole Johnstone (New Fears, ed. Mark Morris)

Mapping the Interior, Stephen Graham Jones (Tor.com)

“Don’t Turn on the Lights,” Cassandra Khaw (Nightmare #61)

“The Dinosaur Tourist,” Caitlín R. Kiernan (Sirenia Digest #139)

“Survival Strategies,” Helen Marshall (Black Static #60)

“Red Bark and Ambergris,” Kate Marshall (Beneath Ceaseless Skies #232)

“Skins Smooth as Plantain, Hearts Soft as Mango,” Ian Muneshwar (The Dark #27)

“Everything Beautiful Is Terrifying,” M. Rickert (Shadows & Tall Trees, ed. Michael Kelly)

“Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience,” Rebecca Roanhorse (Apex #99)

“Graverobbing Negress Seeks Employment,” Eden Royce (Fiyah #2)

“Moon Blood-Red, Tide Turning,” Mark Samuels (Terror Tales of Cornwall, ed. Paul Finch)

“The Crow Palace,” Priya Sharma (Black Feathers, ed. Ellen Datlow)

“The Swimming Pool Party,” Robert Shearman (Shadows & Tall Trees 7, ed. Michael Kelly)

“The Little Mermaid, in Passing,” Angela Slatter (Review of Australian Fiction, Vol.22, #1)

“Secret Keeper,” Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam (Nightmare #61)

“The Long Fade into Evening Steve,” Steve Rasnic Tem (Darker Companions, eds. Scott David Aniolowski & Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.)

“Moon and Memory and Muchness,” Katherine Vaz (Mad Hatters and March Hares, ed. Ellen Datlow)

“Exceeding Bitter,” Kaaron Warren (Evil Is a Matter of Perspective, eds Adrian Collins & Mike Myers)

“Succulents,” Conrad Williams (New Fears, ed. Mark Morris)

“The Lamentation of Their Women,” Kai Ashante Wilson (Tor.com 8.24.17)

The Flensing Factory

Just a heads-up, folks, that the Flensing Factory fees are going to go up at the end of August.

I haven’t done this for several years, so it’s well and truly time to give myself a pay rise!

Any work booked in now will be at the current rates (or if I’ve recently given you a quote, said quote will be honoured), but after 1 September there will be a new pricing structure.

Restoration …

OMG looks like the rumours are true and it’s a real book! Reviewers like Liz Barnsley have got copies of my baby!