Angela Slatter's Blog, page 32

The Starlit Wood: Aliette de Bodard

In this week’s Starlit Wood blog post, the wonderful Aliette de Bodard talks about “Pearl”.

1. What was the inspiration for your story in The Starlit Wood?

The story of Dã Tràng and the pearl has always stuck with me: it’s a classic Vietnamese tale of how helpfulness turns to hubris and addiction—I remember being horrified by the idea of crabs endlessly trying to bring sand into the sea. I wanted to tell it as a space opera, because to me space opera has a lot of the same mythical, larger-than-life components than fairytales (something which I’ve amply used in my own work!)

2. What appealed to you about a fairy tale anthology?

I love fairytales, and the way that their motifs echo down time for us—but I’ve started reading them to my son, and have been struck anew by how many assumptions they make about daily life and characters: in many ways they are very much of their time (the idea of the prince, for example, though it has staying power, doesn’t make sense to people living in a democracy, or certainly not the same kind of sense it would have made back them). For me the main attraction of this anthology was being able to look at those motifs through a more contemporary or at any rate a different lens: to retell and to transform and give new meanings to old images.

3. Can you recall the first fairy tale you ever read or that was read to you?

I don’t! Both my mother and my maternal grandmother read a lot of them to me when I was a child, and it would be hard for me to remember the first one. The one I remember being struck by is Truong Chi và Mi Nuong, which is a tragic love story between a fisherman and the daughter of a high-rank official: she spurns him, and the fisherman wastes away. He leaves behind a wooden block (or in some variants, jade), which is carved into a bowl and brought to the daughter. When she uses the bowl, the fisherman’s voice rises from its depths, and this song moves her so much that she cries. Her tears break the bowl, allowing the fisherman’s soul to depart.

4. What’s your favourite folk/fairy tale and why?

Ha, that’s a little like picking favourite children, isn’t it? My current favourite is Tam Cám, one of the most famous ones from Vietnam, which is about the rivalry between two sisters and how this impacts the marriage of one of them to the king. There’s a magical fish, a loom that speaks with the voice of a carved raven, a golden fruit, and pâté made from the flesh of the dead, because what’s a good fairytale without some major creepiness?

5. What’s next for you?

I’m working on book 3 of Dominion of the Fallen, my Gothic noir fantasy set in an alternate Paris which includes Fallen angels, Vietnamese dragons in human form, magicians and alchemists (I recently published a novelette set in this universe, “Children of Thorns, Children of Water”, here at Uncanny). And I have a couple stories in upcoming anthologies, notably Alma Alexander’s Children of a Different Sky.

 

Aliette de Bodard writes speculative fiction: her short stories have garnered her two Nebula Awards, a Locus Award and two British Science Fiction Association Awards. She is the author of the Dominion of the Fallen series, set in a turn-of-the-century Paris devastated by a magical war, which comprises The House of Shattered Wings (2015 British Science Fiction Association Award, Locus Award finalist), and its standalone sequel The House of Binding Thorns (Ace, Gollancz). She lives in Paris. Visit http://www.aliettedebodard.com for more information.

 

The Starlit Wood: Jeffrey Ford

Today in The Starlit Wood blog series one of my favourite writers, the amazing Jeffrey Ford, talks about his tale “The Thousand Eyes”.

1. What was the inspiration for your story in The Starlit Wood?

We were asked by the editors to pick an old fairy tale and to write a modern variation on it. When I got their email, I stood up from my desk, walked over to the book shelf in my office that held the fairy tale books, pulled out one of the Andrew Lang editions, opened it and landed on “The Voice of Death,” an old Romanian tale. I read the tale and then set it aside until the day I was ready to begin writing. On the day I was to start writing my version, just before waking, I had a dream about my mother’s funeral. We were driving out on Long Island, somewhere near Yaphank, and the limo we were in passed a burned-out night club with a big sign out front that announced – The Thousand Eyes. I took that as the title of my riff on “The Voice of Death” and went with it.

2. What appealed to you about a fairy tale anthology?

Fairy Tales are always fun, always weird and harrowing, and often have a resonance with the present-day world and its trials, tribulations and joys. The real thing that interested me in the project, though, was an opportunity to work with two relatively new, young, anthology editors that seemed to have it together. My intuition was borne out in that The Starlit Wood was considered one of the best anthologies of the year it came out. It won the Shirley Jackson Award for best anthology and has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award in the same category.

3. Can you recall the first fairy tale you ever read or that was read to you?

That’s going back quite a way now and so my memory of these things grows murky, but I do recall Little Red Riding Hood, The Three Little Pigs, The Billy Goats Gruff (never knew what the hell a “gruff” was) and some horrible story where a woman ends up vomiting frogs and snakes.

4. What’s your favorite folk/fairy tale and why?

My favorite stories along these lines are the voyages of Sinbad the Sailor which appear in the Thousand and One Nights. Granted, they aren’t of European origin, but they have all the imaginative power of the Grimm Brothers’ best and are also cultural touchstones. Sinbad’s thirst for adventure, his errant wandering on the open seas, the monsters he battles, all delighted me when I first read them. The thrill they provided, I found again, later in life, in the stories of Maqroll, the gaviero, written by Alvaro Mutis.

5. What’s next for you?

For the next few months, I’ll be working on a novella and editing a novel that will be coming out from Morrow/Harper Collins next May – Ahab’s Return, or The Last Voyage.

 

Jeffrey Ford is the author of the novels, Vanitas, The Physiognomy, Memoranda, The Beyond, The Portrait of Mrs Charbuque, The Girl in the Glass, The Cosmology of the Wider World, and The Shadow Year. His story collections are The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant, The  Empire of Ice Cream, The Drowned Life, and Crackpot Palace. His latest collection, The Natural History of Hell, won the 2016 World Fantasy Award for Best Collection. He lives in Ohio and currently teaches part-time at Ohio Wesleyan University.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How exciting!

The lovely Dr Anita Harris is presenting a paper next week, and Vigil is one of the subjects! Always thought I’d be dead and dusty before something like this happened – if at all!

The 17th Biennial Symposium on Literature and Culture in the Asia-Pacific Region

“Seas, Rivers, Cities: Fantastic Psychogeographies of Malacca and Brisbane in the novels of Yangsze Choo and Angela Slatter.”

Abstract:

“This paper proposes to examine the ways in which Gothic fantasy and Urban fantasy novels repurpose and reconfigure the architecture and geographies of cities through a psychogeographical perspective. Two cities in the Asia Pacific Region will be explored in this comparative analysis: Malacca and Brisbane through the works of Yangsze Choo (The Ghost Bride) and Angela Slatter (Vigil, Corpselight). In the work of both authors, the familiar is made strange and uncanny through alternate fantastic versions of both cities. Both Malacca and Brisbane are near-coastal cities, albeit inland enough that their identities are defined by rivers rather that the sea. However, both cities are steeped with hybrid cultures from different countries that overlap and inform each other. In Yangsze Choo’s Mythopoeic Award-nominated novel The Ghost Bride, the streets of Malacca have an analogue in the underworld, and the protagonist’s odyssey through it brings her through landmarks such as the Stadhuys. Similarly, in Slatter’s Vigil, the narrative roots through familiar Brisvegas landmarks and streets such as West End and Boundary Street, revealing a hidden supernatural hierarchy interspersing the day-to-day and the mundane. Rated as urban fantasy, Slatter’s Vigil has a supernatural protagonist embroiled in a war on the streets of Brisbane. In both Choo’s and Slatter’s novels hidden hierarchies and geographies are superimposed upon the day-to-day and the mundane. Through a Gothic and psychogeographical theoretical framework, this paper will unearth the ways in which the geography of both cities leave an impact upon the surreal and speculative visions of both authors, and what these visions reveal about human hopes, wants and desires as framed by buildings, streets, and the less tangible liminal structures between life and death.”

When you get two PhDs …

… the degree of goofiness just increases exponentially. Best Brains, ready for the Mods and Monsters Banquet. Lisa with her nod to the Mods, me telling people the worst monsters are on the inside (don’t be fooled by the pretty dress).

GenreCon 2017 Plenary Address

That title is a fancy way of saying I ranted at a bunch of nice people at 9.20am this morning. It was fun!

Here’s the transcript of my rant.

Awards Don’t Matter

Good morning to you all, hungover or otherwise.

My name is, as you might have already heard, Angela Slatter.

I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of this land on which we stand, for they were this country’s first storytellers and we always walk in their footsteps, if not their shadows.

So, I’m here today to address an apparently controversial topic, which causes a great wailing and gnashing of teeth, the occasional beating of breasts, and the rubbing of ashes in the hair.

That topic is awards don’t matter.

So, who the hell am I to be telling you this horrible thing?

I thought I’d tell you about the milestones in my career as relate to awards so you can see my trajectory, not because I’m a narcissist, and I don’t believe in comparing yourself to anyone, but I also believe that in watching the steps others have taken – be they successful or otherwise – you can always learn something. Also, I believe that my purpose in life is to always be a warning to others.

My caveat: you can’t recreate someone else’s career. You can try but it won’t work because the planets will be in a different alignment to what it was ten, twenty, thirty years ago. But you can learn strategies that can be applied to other situations.

I’ve scribbled all my life, but 13 years ago I made the decision to embrace poverty, self-doubt and a diet of 2 minute noodles and become a writer. I knew I needed training, particularly in matters of structure and building convincing characters, so I did a Grad Dip in Creative Writing … then to improve my work yet again I did a Masters (Research) in Creative Writing … then because I apparently am a glutton for punishment I did a PhD in, you guessed it, Creative Writing.

In those thirteen years since I’ve written and published eight short story collections (two co-written with Lisa L. Hannett), three novels (the third one is out next year), two novellas, over one and fifty short stories and articles about writing. I’ve was one of the inaugural Queensland Writer Fellows and the Established Writer in Residence at the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers Centre in Perth. I have been awarded four Arts Queensland career development grants, one Copyright Council career development grant, one Copyright Council CREATE grant, and this year I got an Australia Council New Work grant. So please if you want to ask me about applying for grants over the weekend, please do so.

I have also won some awards.

So, what Happens When You Win an Award? 

Firstly, Kelly Link, writer extraordinaire and international treasure, tries to kill you.*

Helen Marshall, another extraordinary writer, joins in – which is especially awful because she’s Canadian. I think she had her citizenship revoked for that one.**

So, for me, the awardening began with the shortlistening. The first story I had shortlisted for an Aurealis Award was “The Angel Wood” and that was in 2007, three years after I’d started writing for realsies.

I was shortlisted again in 2008 and 2009.

In 2010 I published my first two short story collections, The Girl with No Hands and Other Tales, and Sourdough and Other Stories. Both were shortlisted for the Aurealis Award, TGWNH won. Sourdough was a finalist for the World Fantasy Awards. That year I also won Best Fantasy Short Story with Lisa Hannett at the Aurealis Awards for “The February Dragon”.

In the time since I’ve had something shortlisted for the Aurealis Awards every year.  I’ve also won four more Aurealis Awards.

In 2012 I won a British Fantasy Award for Best Short Story for “The Coffin-Maker’s Daughter”. I was the first Australian to win this award; and that’s when the award-effect kicked in. There was a lot of print media coverage, the news made it to the radio and even the television. That’s when overseas publishers started looking for my name in earnest. That’s when I started getting emails about my novel – surely I was writing a novel? Wasn’t I? We’d love to see it when it’s done.

The BFA got me new readers both at home and overseas. I began to get requests for reprints from places like Russia and Bulgaria and Japan. So you can see that there was some effect.

It also brought me to the attention of Jo Fletcher of Jo Fletcher Books, part of Hachette International. She was one of those publishers asking where my novel was … ultimately she did end up as my publisher, and will hopefully remain so for some time!

In 2014, I won a World Fantasy Award for The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings, which is the prequel to the Sourdough collection, even though I wrote it afterwards … so perhaps Sourdough had prepared the way. I certainly knew I had readers out there who wanted more of that world. And this award also made me, at the time, one of only eight Australians to have won in a forty-three year history.

In 2015 I won a Ditmar for Of Sorrow and Such.

In 2016, my debut novel Vigil was shortlisted for the Aurealis Awards, and also for the Locus Awards in the US – despite not having been released there – for best debut. This week, Vigil was longlisted for the Dublin Literary Prize.

It all seems so easy, doesn’t it?

None of this tells you how many words under the bridge, how many tears, how many times I’ve thrown myself on the eighteenth-century fainting couch and howled that I simply cannot go on any longer. It doesn’t reveal the financial distress, the broken relationship, the number of times I’ve neglected my family and friends because I was on deadlines. Because I was caught up in a story that bodily took me away from the living, breathing fleshy folk around me.

The groaning awards shelf

or: the shelf of groaning awards

The lovely Dr Kim Wilkins launched my second novel in July this year and made a joke about my groaning awards shelf. She asked if I woke up in the morning, looked at it, and thought “Fuck, I’m awesome!”

The answer is no. The answer is that I have to dust the damned things.

But! Awards can do things for your career.

If there’s prize money attached – and we always live in hope – then there’s a chance that we can pay the rent for a while longer, buy a better bottle of whiskey, stock the pantry with more two minute noodles against the lean times, and just maybe buy a new pair of shoes or underpants before our old ones disintegrate.

There’s marketing value. It doesn’t hurt your bio to have the words ‘award-winning author’ in there, but please make sure you *are* actually an award-winner before you put that in your bio. Please remember that everything is googleable nowadays.

It can get you the attention of an agent or a publisher: at conventions or conferences where there are award ceremonies, these folk will appear in the bar with a bottle of Veuve Cliquot in hand if you’ve just won an award.

Maybe a boost in sales – awards garner media attention, especially if it’s a slow news day.

A word of warning: don’t tell a writer who’s won an award that they’re lucky.

There is a point to all of this!  There are three things I want you to take away from today.

Winning awards never makes you a better writer.

In fact, it can give you a complex. It can make you fearful that you will never write anything so good again.

Losing awards does not make you a worse writer.

I have lost awards and it’s never affected how or why I write.

Conversely, it may well drive you on to greater heights … but you should be striving to write better purely for the challenge of being a better writer – not because you’re craving external validation.

Awards can be useful marketing tools but your career will not die without them.

They are not and should not be your end game.

I said before don’t compare yourself to others. You are a different writer. You can’t be Neil Gaiman, because we’ve already got one and he’s rather good at being Neil Gaiman. Don’t be the next Neil Gaiman – be the first YOU.

Write the best thing you can. Write the words that make your heart sing – maybe someone else will like the tune. Maybe not. You are not owed an audience. You’re not owed awards.

You can’t influence the judging panels of awards; you don’t know what the competition is like. Sure you wrote the best book you could, but you know what? So did someone else.

At the end of the day, awards are basically Russian Roulette for the Soul. If you write in expectation of them you are setting yourself up for disappointment. Personally I think writing is such a hard endeavour anyway, why put a new obstacle in your path. The fact is that you might never be published let alone win an award.

So when I say awards don’t matter, what I’m trying to give you is perspective.

If you are writing to win awards, then you need to readjust your ideas or settle in for a lifetime of heartache over something you cannot control. Some of you are simply going to be folk who have that tendency anyway in all aspects of your life – good luck to you, I can offer nothing except the name of a couple of good therapists.

Concentrate on the important thing, the one true thing we have: our words. Write your stories. Write your books. If others want to come along for the ride, then that is wonderful – love that, enjoy that.

When you’re dead and dust, you won’t leave behind awards – because they’ll be buried in the mausoleum with you – and they can’t be studied or interpreted or enjoyed. They me

But Kathleen Jennings will Art for you if you win awards

ant nothing to anyone but you for the brief span you were on the planet.

You’ll leave behind your books and that’s your legacy.

* Please note that Kelly Link did not *really* try to kill me.

** Please note that Helen Marshall is still a Canadian citizen ever though she *did* try to kill me.

GenreCon 2017

Woohoo! So this is my weekend. Last night I did a reading from Vigil at the literary salon, along with the other guests. Big fun!

This morning was the first plenary session, with myself, Nalini Singh, Claire Coleman and Garth Nix doing our best to impart some wisdom.

The Starlit Wood: Kat Howard

Today’s visitor to The Starlit Wood is the delightful Kat Howard, talking about her tale “Reflected”.

1. What was the inspiration for your story in The Starlit Wood?

My story, “Reflected,” is a retelling of “The Snow Queen.” My favorite part of that story has always been the enchanted mirror, and so I wanted my version to focus on that.

2. What appealed to you about a fairy tale anthology?

I’ve always loved fairy tales and their retellings. The Datlow/ Windling anthologies were some of my favorite books when I really got into reading fantasy, and so the opportunity to be part of something like that was a thrill.

3. Can you recall the first fairy tale you ever read or that was read to you?

I can’t recall the first one I read, but the one that left the earliest impression was the Disney Sleeping Beauty movie. Maleficent was legitimately powerful and terrifying and I loved that even as she scared me.

4. What’s your favourite folk/fairy tale and why?

I’ve always loved Beauty and the Beast. My earliest impression of it was a story that showed that someone who truly loved you would see you as you truly are, and that has always felt like magic to me.

5. What’s next for you?

My most recent novel, An Unkindness of Magicians, just came out. Next up is a short fiction collection, A Cathedral of Myth and Bone, which will be out next fall.

Photo by Shane Leonard

Kat Howard is a writer of fantasy, science fiction, and horror who lives and writes in New Hampshire. Her short fiction has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, performed on NPR, and anthologized in year’s best and best of volumes. In the past, she’s been a competitive fencer and a college professor. An Unkindness of Magicians is her second novel. Her debut, Roses and Rot, was released from Saga Press in May of 2016, and was a Locus Award finalist for Best First Novel. Her short fiction collection, A Cathedral of Myth and Bone, will be out in 2018, also from Saga. You can find her on twitter, where she is probably posting about her cat

The Dublin Lit Award

I’m delighted to see that Vigil is on the long list for the Dublin Literary Award!

In excellent company with 12 other novels from Oz and NZ.

Good to see the flags being flown in international competitions!

Details are here.

The Tallow-Wife

Random Alex says lovely things about The Tallow-Wife over here …

“I can always rely on Angela Slatter to shatter my heart.”

My work here is done. *swirls cape*

 

The Starlit Wood: Max Gladstone

In today’s Starlit Wood post, Max Gladstone discusses “Giants in the Sky”.

1. What was the inspiration for your story in The Starlit Wood?

The term “beanstalk” has a second life outside of fairy tales, in fiction about space elevators. I wanted to play on this connection, and tell a posthuman sort of fairy tale, from the perspective of the fairies.

2. What appealed to you about a fairy tale anthology?

Fairy tales are myths that people without power tell: they’re folk stories about life in a world beyond your control, about encounters with beings beyond your ken, tales of normal people trying to survive. They’re the stories for our moment.

They’re stories with roots, too. They’ve been polished and shaped by generations of hands: vicious little memetic predators, sleek and evolved. It’s as dangerous to deal with fairy tales as it is to deal with fairies. They’ve been around longer than you, with their sharp and hidden edges. But sometimes we love challenges.

3. Can you recall the first fairy tale you ever read or that was read to you?

The first fairy tale I can remember was some version of the Billy Goats Gruff.

4. What’s your favourite folk/fairy tale and why?

Jack and the Beanstalk has a soft place in my heart, but mostly because of “Giants in the Sky” from Into the Woods.

5. What’s next for you?

Too many things! My most recent novel, RUIN OF ANGELS, just came out last month, and right now I’m driving on a number of projects I can’t wait to announce.

 

Max Gladstone is a two-time finalist for the John W Campbell Best New Writer Award,  and a one-time finalist for the XYZZY and Lambda Awards. In July 2016 Tor Books published his most recent novel, FOUR ROADS CROSS, a tale of sovereign debt and dead gods.  FOUR ROADS CROSS is the fifth Craft Sequence novel, preceded by THREE PARTS DEAD, TWO SERPENTS RISE, FULL FATHOM FIVE, and LAST FIRST SNOW. His most recent project is the globetrotting urban fantasy serial BOOKBURNERS, available in ebook and audio from Serial Box, and in print from Saga Press.

Max studied Chan poetry and late Ming dynasty fiction at Yale; he lived and taught for two years in rural Anhui province, and has traveled throughout Asia and Europe. He speaks Chinese, can embarrass himself reading Latin, and is a martial artist, fencer, and fiddler. He’s also worked as a researcher for the Berkman Center for Internet and Policy Law, a tour guide for the Swiss Embassy, a go-between for a suspicious Chinese auto magazine, a translator for visiting Chinese schoolteachers, a Chinese philosophy TA, a tech industry analyst, and an editor. He has wrecked a bicycle in Angkor Wat, sung at Carnegie Hall, and been thrown from a horse in Mongolia