Angela Slatter's Blog, page 39

Solace & Grief: Foz Meadows

Foz Meadows is an Australian fantasy author, reviewer, poet and blogger. She has most recently published An Accident of Stars, an epic portal fantasy from Angry Robot, and Coral Bones, a Shakespearean novella; she has also written two YA urban fantasy novels, Solace and Grief and The Key to Starveldt. A full list of her publications can be found here. Foz is a reviewer for Strange Horizons and a contributing writer for The Huffington Post and Black Gate; her essays have appeared in various venues online, including The Mary Sue, A Dribble Of Ink and The Book Smugglers. In 2014 she was nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer; she has also been nominated for the Ditmar for Best Fan Writer in 2014 and 2016. Foz likes cheese, geekery, writing, webcomics and general weirdness. Dislikes include Hollywood rom-coms, liquorice and waking up.

Foz currently lives in Brisbane with not enough books, her very own philosopher and a toddler. Surprisingly, this is a good thing.

1. So what should new readers know about Foz Meadows?

I’m a genderqueer dork who yells a lot online about fandom, feelings, feminism and politics, not necessarily in that order; I also write poetry, reviews, essays, short stories and fantasy novels. In any social gathering, you will find me lurking in close proximity to both food and alcohol, unless the venue in question has a resident cat (or cats), in which case I’ll be trying to befriend them. I think that characterisation and worldbuilding are the lynchpins of a good plot, that SFF is valuable precisely because it shows us how to create new worlds, and that tropes are both a feature and a bug. Also, I love karaoke.

2. Name five people you’d like to invite to dinner. 

See, that’s a tricky question to answer, because while I’m probably meant to choose an ideal guest-list from the untouchable famous – or maybe from all of history – that’s honestly too much pressure. I’m much more fond of informal hangouts than actual sit-down dinners, and I’d feel too self-conscious to try and have Important People sitting on my toddler-stained Ikea couch eating Bolognese out of my favourite white bowls with the fish painted on, you know? Plus, I mean, if you start picking people from different historical periods, it sounds all fun on paper, but in reality, there’d be so many cultural and language barriers that even at a fancy catered venue, it would end up super awkward. So honestly, if I had the ability to magic five people of my choosing over to my place for dinner, it’d just be a bunch of my real-world friends who live so far away that I don’t get to see them often, let alone all at once. That’d be amazing.

3. When you’re in the mood to read, who is your first choice?

Again, a difficult question! At this point, my TBR pile stretches into infinity, and if I’ve got the brainpower to start a new book, I usually go for whatever recent release or as-yet unread purchase is closest to the top of the stack. If I want a comfort read, though, my current go-to is The Goblin Emperor, by Katherine Addison, though Tamora Pierce’s Protector of the Small quartet is also high up the list.

4. What was the story/book that made you think “I want to write!”?

For me, it was less a single book or author that made me want to write, and more the love I felt for stories generally. I grew up in a house full of books, and as a kid, it never really occurred to me not to try my hand at it. We had to do plenty of creative writing assignments in primary school, which led in pretty naturally to me writing my own stories at home, for fun. The first time I ever sat down with the express intention of producing a novel, I was eleven or so, and my direct inspiration was Elyne Mitchell’s Silver Brumby series – I tried to write my own story about the lives of wild horses, and while I didn’t get very far with it, that’s when I realised that writing was something I wanted to do, not just for my own pleasure, but as a career.

5. What was the inspiration for Solace and Grief? 

Way back in 2006-2007, I’d started sending out the Great Unpublished Epic (GUE) that I worked on all through high school and university. By that point, I’d been editing it for so long that my brain just wanted a break, and as it happened, I found myself re-bingeing Buffy the Vampire Slayer while working a job as a legal PA. Like many administrative positions, the job was either full-on busy or dead quiet, and during one of the quiet periods, I started mulling over the (largely inconsistent) mythology in Buffy and thought, why not write my own take on magic and vampires and urban fantasy? I honestly didn’t expect it to go anywhere, which is perhaps why it did: free of any personal pressure or expectations, the first draft of the novel only took a few months to finish, and when I started submitting it alongside the GUE, it was Solace & Grief that people were interested in.

6. Do you prefer writing short or long form?

I wouldn’t call it a preference, per se, but most of what I end up producing – or finishing, rather – tends towards novel-length. My drafts folder is full of unfinished short stories: I get plenty of ideas that work as shorts, but for some reason, I find it really difficult to go back and complete them once the initial surge of enthusiasm has passed. With novels, it’s easier to take my time, to write in bouts interspersed with breaks as I work out the kinks and characterisation, but short stories are different. Unless I finish them all in one sitting – or, rarely, two – the likelihood is that I won’t finish them at all. Or at least, that’s been my habit so far: I’ve recently started trying to write the initial idea down as notes, so that I can mull the execution and come back to it later, but whether or not that’ll work long-term is yet to be established.

7. Who’s your favourite heroine? Your favourite villain?

I’m terrible at picking overall favourites of any kind, because it always feels like comparing apples to oranges. I love Nausicaa from Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, but measuring her against Dutch from Killjoys or Keladry of Mindelan is kind of impossible, not only because they all come from different SFFnal subgenres, but because they exist in different types of narrative. The same applies to villains, with the added complication that there’s a difference between enjoying an evil but well-written villain and actually liking the character despite their wicked ways. Mads Mikklesen as Hannibal in the recent TV series has a fascinating tendency to blur the lines between the two; it’s just such an amazing performance that, even when you’re horrified, he’s still compelling. But trying to compare him to Cersei Lannister or No-Face from Spirited Away is… not really possible.

8. What is the book that taught you the most about writing?

In absolute honesty, and as much as I’ve learned something from every book I’ve written, the thing that’s taught me the most about writing is fanfiction. In traditional publishing, there’s such a long stretch of time between creation, submission, editing and publication that it’s easy to get lost in the process. I’ve said before that the paradoxical thing about writing a book is that the act of completing it turns you into someone who couldn’t have written it, because who you are at the end is, in some fundamental way, different to who you were at the outset. So when the editing process stretches out over months or years – when you go so long without external feedback, caught up in second-guessing yourself because the person you are now, doing final copyedits, isn’t who you were when you wrote the first draft, and how do you reconcile the two? – it’s easy to feel like you’re somehow a step removed from your own creation. But fanfiction has this glorious, raw immediacy to it, not just in terms of stylistic conventions, but the rate of production and the speed of feedback. You write a chapter, you post a chapter, and ten minutes later you’ve got commenters telling you what they thought and asking for the next one. Fanfiction taught me how to get out of my own damn head and just write the thing; how to break conventions and fix issues on the fly and just generally produce stuff that was better, faster and less self-conscious. I’m an infinitely better writer for having become involved with fanfiction than I was before, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. Plus and also: queer everything.

9. Who were/are your literary influences? 

In approximate order of appearance, my most influential authors growing up were Rudyard Kipling, Geoffrey McSkimming, Brian Jacques, Tamora Pierce, Douglass Adams, Sara Douglass, Anne McCaffrey, Terry Pratchett, Robin Hobb, Katharine Kerr, Kate Elliott and Neil Gaiman. There are other authors I’ve discovered since then who’ve had a huge impact on how I view SFF as an adult – notably N.K. Jemisin, Catherynne M. Valente, Lois McMaster Bujold, Aliette de Bodard and Nick Harkaway – but those first twelve are my core genealogy. Their works are the line of direct descent I trace whenever I’m asked how I discovered this part of genre or that, like a sort of developmental zodiac. I’m more critical of all their works now than I was growing up, but I wouldn’t be here without them, and for that, I’m grateful.

10. What’s next for Foz Meadows?

Right now, I’m working on a couple of queer epic fantasy romances that I’m really excited about, but I’d also like to do some more with the Manifold Worlds series – perhaps not another novel right off, but maybe a novella or two. I’ll have to play with it all and find out!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mad Hatters and March Hares

And this new anthology from Ellen Datlow is up for pre-order, Mad Hatters and March Hares: All-New Stories from the World of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.

Gentle Alice – Kris Dikeman  (poem)

My Own Invention – Delia Sherman

Lily-White & The Thief of Lesser Night – C.S.E. Cooney

Conjoined – Jane Yolen

Mercury – Priya Sharma

Some Kind of Wonderland – Richard Bowes

Alis – Stephen Graham Jones

All the King’s Men – Jeffrey Ford

Run, Rabbit – Angela Slatter

In Memory of a Summer’s Day – Matthew Kressel

Sentence Like a Saturday – Seanan McGuire

Worrity, Worrity – Andy Duncan

Eating the Alice Cake – Kaaron Warren

The Queen of Hats – Ysabeau Wilce

A Comfort, One Way – Genevieve Valentine

The Flame After the Candle – Catherynne M. Valente

Moon, Memory, Muchness – Katherine Vaz

Run, Rabbit, Run – Jane Yolen (poem)

 

Shadows & Tall Trees #7: Christopher Slatsky

Christopher Slatsky’s stories have appeared in The Year’s Best Weird Fiction vol. 3, the Lovecraft eZine, Nightscript vol. 2, and elsewhere. His debut collection Alectryomancer and Other Weird Tales (Dunhams Manor Press) was released summer of 2015. He currently resides in Southern California.

1. What inspired your story in Shadows & Tall Trees 7?

As clichéd as it may be, my story was based on a dream about my (long deceased) grandparent’s home. That and the anxiety parents and children all too often have over failing to adequately communicate their goodbyes was the impetus.

2. Can you recall the first story you ever read that made you think “I want to be a writer!”?

The earliest story that sparked the writing bug would have to be Poe’s “The Black Cat”. There was something more to it than the gruesome crime as depicted, something profoundly uncanny in the dread-soaked atmosphere.

3. What scares you?

Not much. The universe will inevitably collapse and decay, the metabolic tantrum that makes me an organic automaton will continue for a few more decades hopefully. No phobias, no ghosts, no gods, no supernatural antagonists to afflict me. I do have tremendous anxiety over the well being of my wife and children. That fear is omnipresent.

4. You can take five books to a desert island: which ones do you choose?

Of course I’ll change my mind once I set foot on the island, but here goes: You Will Never See Any God (Krause), Giovanni’s Room (Baldwin), The Invisible Man (Ellison), Blood Meridian (McCarthy), and City of Woman (Landes).

5. What’s next for you?

Besides my story in Shadows and Tall Trees v. 7, I have others awaiting publication in Darker Companions, Would But Time Await: An Anthology of New England Folk Horror, and Looming Low.

 

 

Corpselight Launch Details

This is not a drill!

Corpselight will be launching on Friday 14 July at 6pm. There will be cupcakes and Kim Wilkins will be doing launching duties and we’ll do a retrospective on “From Vigil to Corpselight” (or something).

But most importantly: there will be cupcakes.

Venue: Brisbane Square Library

Bookings: The event is free but you absolutely must book! Phone  07 3403 4166 to reserve your place.

Pulp Fiction are doing the book sales, and they’re also taking pre-orders so if you wanted to pre-order then collect at the launch for signing purposes, that is all good.

 

Corpselight ARC in the Wild!

Or rather, in my hot little grabby hands.

Much excitement.

Thanks to Jess  at Hachette for sending it to me.

Many thanks to Alison Goodman, Margo Lanagan and Christopher Golden for the lovely cover quotes.

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Interview over at A. C. Wise’s Place …

… with me (quelle surprise).

We talk about Corpselight, short stories, collaborations and awards. Plus other stuff.

The interview, she is here.

Cover Reveal for The Lovecraft Squad: Waiting

I’m delighted to be part of this mosaic!

The Lovecraft Squad: Waiting will be out this Halloween with stories by myself, Brian Hodge, Reginald Oliver, Michael Marshall Smith, Steve Rasnic Tem, Peter Atkins, Richard Gavin, Jay Russell, Thana Niveau, Stephen Baxter and Kim Newman. Cover art by Douglas Klauba.

Gorgeous review of Dreaming in the Dark

Over at SF Book Reviews Mario Guslandi has very kindly reviewed Dreaming in the Dark, the Jack Dann edited anthology from PS Australia.

Readers and reviewers of dark fiction have certainly noticed, during the last years, that the number of Australian authors appearing in books published in the UK and in USA is constantly on the rise, and that the quality of their contributions is usually top notch. This Australian renaissance, reaching out from the secluded world of their national market, is a reason for rejoyce. Many Aussie writers are by now renowned authors perfectly at home in genre anthologies and collections from both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

Thus, it’s not surprising that British imprint PS Publishing has decided to launch an Australian branch of their company, under the editorship of Jack Dann.

The rest is here.

Ripper on Amazon

My novella, Ripper, is now available on Amazon!

This story first appeared in Stephen Jones’ Horrorology: The Lexicon of Fear.

 

 

The Horror Story We All Know: Stephen Graham Jones on Little Red, Paths, and American Backpackers

This is a fantastic essay by the amazing Stephen Graham Jones on age-old horror.

So two guys are walking across the moors.

Yeah, you’ve heard this one.

Couple of young Americans are backpacking through Europe, and they duck in out of the cold, find themselves in the newly made quiet of a very local bar, where they get what turns out to be some pretty sage advice: beware the moon, keep clear of the moors, and, most important, stay on the road.

This is a story older than either them, the locals, or what we call Europe.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when and where we started telling ourselves the Little Red Riding Hood story, but the why is pretty easy: it espouses the safety of the village, the urban, over the known dangers of the unknown forest—the rural, where the hills always have eyes. It’s an admonition we know well, and we don’t even need stories or parents or scary wolves to feel its truth. We just have to listen to our inner ear, each time we’re walking across a bridge, a plank, a log: the middle is where safety is. The only thing to either side is a fall. The only thing off-path, it’s some version of death. It’s a balancing act we’ve even encoded into our religions. Buddhism’s Middle Path between austerity and hedonism, say, or Christianity’s Jesus, who’s neither man nor god, but right in that beatific middle.

Little Red Riding Hood feels true to us in a way we don’t even think to question. Because of that, it’s circled the globe time and again. Any meme should hope to go so viral. It’s the cautionary tale we hold the most dear, it’s the one that’s had the longest legs, it’s the one that doesn’t lose anything when it’s adapted into culture after culture, era after era, and you keep on finding versions of it the deeper you dig into history, into folktales—into us.

The rest is here over at Tor.com. Highly, highly recommended.