Angela Slatter's Blog, page 40

Avid Reader: Science Fiction & Fantasy Bookclub – Angela Slatter

So, I’ll be at the Avid Reader Science Fiction & Fantasy Bookclub chatting with Trent Jamieson on 31 July at 6.30pm! We’ll be talking about writing and Brisneyland, and Vigil and Corpselight, and maybe even a bit about the final Verity Fassbinder books Restoration.

Tickets can be booked here.

Birthday Cake of Dooooooooom

So, I finally got to have a family celebration (eleven days late) last Saturday for my 50th, and it coincided with my sister’s 48th.

Foolishly, my lovely sis had asked me twelve months ago “What kind of cake do you want for your Significant Birthday?”

Perhaps facetiously, perhaps not, I said “The Eye of Sauron.”

And I got it. Yes. Best sister in the world. Possibly that also makes me the worst. At any rate, all I can say is that there was cake, a buttload of royal icing, edible stars, a reforged blade, and I am still eating cake and there’s more in the freezer.

For the purposes of comparison: my cake and my sister’s.

Ararat: Christopher Golden

CHRISTOPHER GOLDEN is the award-winning, bestselling author of such novels as The Myth Hunters, Wildwood Road, The Boys Are Back in Town, The Ferryman, Strangewood, Of Saints and Shadows, and (with Tim Lebbon) The Map of Moments. He has also written books for teens and young adults, including Poison Ink, Soulless, and the thriller series Body of Evidence, honored by the New York Public Library and chosen as one of YALSA’s Best Books for Young Readers. Upcoming teen novels include a new series of hardcover YA fantasy novels co-authored with Tim Lebbon and entitled The Secret Journeys of Jack London.

A lifelong fan of the “team-up,” Golden frequently collaborates with other writers on books, comics, and scripts. In addition to his recent work with Tim Lebbon, he co-wrote the lavishly illustrated novel Baltimore, or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire with Mike Mignola. With Thomas E. Sniegoski, he is the co-author of multiple novels, as well as comic book miniseries such as Talent and The Sisterhood, both currently in development as feature films. With Amber Benson, Golden co-created the online animated series Ghosts of Albion and co-wrote the book series of the same name.

As an editor, he has worked on the short story anthologies The New Dead and British Invasion, among others, and has also written and co-written comic books, video games, screenplays, the online animated series Ghosts of Albion (with Amber Benson) and a network television pilot.

The author is also known for his many media tie-in works, including novels, comics, and video games, in the worlds of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Hellboy, Angel, and X-Men, among others.

Golden was born and raised in Massachusetts, where he still lives with his family. His original novels have been published in fourteen languages in countries around the world.

 1. First of all, what do new readers need to know about Christopher Golden?

I’m not sure where to start. I’m an American novelist, comic book writer, and screenwriter. I’ve also written short stories, a radio play, an animated web series, and loads of other things. I’ve edited numerous anthologies, most recently DARK CITIES. I co-host the pop culture podcast Three Guys with Beards. it’s weird to talk about awards and bestseller achievements, so I’ll leave that to Google. I’ve been published in languages and countries around the world going back to my first novel in 1994. Though I may be best known as a horror writer, I’ve also written fantasy, SF, thrillers, and mystery, for both adults and teens.

2. Your latest novel is Ararat – what was the inspiration for that book?

Like most writers, I accumulate ideas and articles and other inspirations.  I’d had an article about Noah’s Ark on my desk for years and I was thinking about what to do next. I glanced at the article and thought about Arkologists who spend their lives searching for the ark on Mt. Ararat in Turkey…even though it’s been picked over for ages and there’s no way the ark could be there. It occurred to me that the area has a history of earthquake activity, and that led me down a rabbit hole of research into both the history and the biblical and other ancient stories connected to the ark, Ararat, and Noah. I thought, “what if the ark was there, but it was covered by an earthquake…and what if there was a new earthquake that revealed it again?” I don’t believe the ark is there, by the way. But I loved the idea of what would happen if you had a group of archaeologists and government representatives who come from different faiths and backgrounds, and the tensions that would arise in the presence of the ark…and the demonic-looking thing they find inside it. There are some specific influences in the mix as well, including THE EIGER SANCTION, among others.

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

I don’t recall one moment of epiphany that made me want to write. There are specific comics, specific TV shows, specific novels that were inspirations, for sure. I started writing short stories in high school. Stephen King and THE TWILIGHT ZONE were probably my biggest influences then. But I do remember the moment I thought “i could write a novel.”  I was reading John Skipp & Craig Spector’s THE LIGHT AT THE END. Something about the irreverent tone of that book gave me the push I needed to believe I could do this thin. I never looked back.

4. When you’re in the mood to read, who do you choose?

Something from my To Be Read shelf, of course. But a list of SOME of my favorite authors would include Stephen King, Shirley Jackson, Jack London, Joe Lansdale, James Lee Burke, Walter Mosley, Dennis Lehane, Larry McMurtry, Charlaine Harris, John Irving, and Don Winslow.. Just to scratch the surface.

5. What attracts you to writing horror?

My mother’s been wondering that my whole life. There are so many reasons I love it. Horror has the capacity to carry any sort of story within it: romance, western, SF, thriller, historical, fantasy…virtually any story can be a horror story.  I’ve always loved a story that would give me a chill or make me hold my breath, and if I can do that for someone else, that’s a wonderful thing. Horror—fear—is cathartic and exhilarating and life-affirming.

6. What was the inspiration behind the new Hellboy prose anthology, An Assortment of Horrors?

I wanted to edit an anthology that would have an Angela Slatter story in it.  But aside from that, I’d done a sort-of trilogy of Hellboy anthologies years ago and it had been a long time since we’d done one.  It’s such a wonderful and well-loved character and I’d been wanting to do a new one for years. Mike and I agreed early on that the one rule would be that we wouldn’t approach anyone to contribute who’d written Hellboy prose in the past. It forced us to not rely on the familiar. I’m thrilled with the results. I can’t wait till Hellboy fans get their hands on the book.

7. What was the inspiration behind your Baltimore character?

As much as I feel like I’ve made Baltimore as much mine as it is Mike’s, the original idea (and much of the plot of the novel) came from him. He’d been brewing the character and the story for years, planning it as a graphic novel, until one day he called and told me he’d realized he would never do the graphic novel. He had about 85% of the plot and he wanted to know if I’d like to turn it into a novel. Obviously I did. I loved everything about his original ideas. We share so many of the same interests in folklore and legend. As the comic book series has gone on, I’ve been guiding more and more of the story, but it all balances out. I’ve been saying for years that I know BALTIMORE is the best thing I’ll ever do in comics, but I’m doing JOE GOLEM: OCCULT DETECTIVE now, and that’s building into something really cool as well, so who knows?

8. Which five writers have been your biggest influences?

King. Clive Barker. Rod Serling. Marv Wolfman. Charles de Lint.

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

A Prayer for Owen Meaney by John Irving. The Stand by Stephen King. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. The Sea Wolf by Jack London.  Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.

10. What’s next for Christopher Golden?

I’ve just finished an epic fantasy novel with the great Tim Lebbon. BLOOD OF THE FOUR will be out in February from Harper. Tim and I had a blast creating this world and we hope readers will enjoy exploring it with us.  I hope folks will follow me on Twitter @ChristophGolden or visit my site at www.christophergolden.com

Of Sorrow and Such artwork

You can now buy an art print of the cover for Of Sorrow and Such!

The wonderful Anna and Elena Balbusso Twins have it for sale here.

Plus (and I did not realise this), the illustration, “The Witch”, won two awards!

2017 SILVER AWARD 55th Annual Illustration Competition Society of Illustrators Los Angeles

2016 SPECTRUM 23 WINNER The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art

Australian Writers’ Centre

Art by Kathleen Jennings

I’ll be appearing at the AWC in Sydney on Friday 21 July 2017, 6-8pm, for a Masterclass on Fantasy writing.

It’ll be an in conversation event with the delightful and erudite Pamela Freeman.

For bookings, go here.

New Fears

Delighted to see the cover for the new anthology from Mark Morris and Titan Books!

New Fears has stories from Alison Littlewood, Stephen Gallagher, Brady Golden, Nina Allan, Brian Keene, Chaz Brenchley, AK Benedict, Brian Lillie, Ramsey Campbell, Carole Johnstone, Sarah Lotz, Adam Nevill, Muriel Gray, Josh Malerman, Conrad Williams, Kathryn Ptacek, Christopher Golden, Stephen Laws and little old me.

The book will be out on September 19, and there will be a signing at the British Fantasy Convention over the weekend beginning September 29.

Domnall and the Borrowed Child: Sylvia Spruck Wrigley

1. What do new readers need to know about Sylvia Spruck Wrigley?



They should know that the sense of time and place in my stories is very variable. I’m German-American and I’ve spent more time living in Spain and the UK than I have in either of the countries that I come from. I am currently living in Tallinn, Estonia. I love to explore the nature of places (and culture and questions and homelessness) but sometimes people come to my stories with expectations based on the first thing they’ve read that I’ve written. So there’s this shared understanding, which is great, but then things don’t quite fit and I guess it can be confusing.

So sometimes I get confused email insisting on knowing where I’m from. And the answer to where I’m from is not an easy question to answer (and harder still for my son, who has never lived in any of the countries that he holds citizenship for, but has spent his lift split between two countries who don’t consider him a citizen).

I guess they should also know that Spruck is a middle name (although it is my mother’s maiden name and the name I commonly go by in Germany), so in order to find my work, they should be looking under W not under S.

2. When did you first decide you wanted to be a writer and can you recall the story that made you feel that way?

That’s so hard to answer! I remember Peter Beagle’s The Last Unicorn and Mary Stewart’s Crystal Cave series as being the books where I became aware that there was more to a story than just the story-shaped thing. I became aware of good writing and that the way of telling a story could be as important as the story itself.

I know I wanted to be a writer at a fairly young age. The first thing I wanted to be was the first woman on the moon but after that, I talked about being a writer. I don’t really know how that happened or where it came from, so I asked my mother:

What stuck with me is the middle school paper you wrote on free speech and you mentioned “pornography” and the free speech movement (Bob Brophy) and your teacher never responded to content (it was brilliant) but took off major points for surface level mistakes I think it’s good to say that there was not one epiphany (there seldom is) it a mounting trail of evidence that you could do better. And I don’t remember you ever not have a journal from age 7 on – and a need to capture ideas and put your thought on paper. And there was Reginald Clark before then and the power of words.

3. What was the inspiration for Domnall and the Borrowed Child?

I always wanted to go to Ireland, it seemed such a beautiful and magical place. And one night, I dreamt I had gone and the next morning, walking to work, I saw a big poster with green hills and stunning scenery in the window of the travel agents. I walked in on the spot. It was a coach tour to Scotland. I decided that was close enough (Hah) and walked in and booked a ticket. Turned out, I was the only bilingual person on the tour, so I got railroaded on the spot to translate, taking the German tourists around the Scottish highlands. I loved everything about it and ended up taking a job there for the season. I wrote a lot while I was there, mainly bad poetry. But the big thing was that I immersed myself in the myths and legends. We often drove for hours and I wanted to be able to tell the tourists about the countryside and keep them interested — although really, all that was expected of me was “And we will meet back on the bus in one hour”. There was no world-wide web at the time, of course, but people found ways of sharing stories anyway. In every village, there would be a small shop (at least one!) selling shortbread and cheap jewelry and cassette tapes of mediocre bagpipe playing. And in most of these shops, there were small pamphlets, just paper stapled together, of a local story written by someone in the village. Sometimes they were historical or to do with a specific building in the village or a battle that happened. I read those too. But the ones I loved were fantasy stories about the wailing woman of the ford and the sea-horse-monsters and the witch that lived on the hill. I bought every one that I could find and read them all. I wonder if you can still get these.

Later, I noticed that most Celtic mythology seems to be focused on the Irish myths, the banshee rather than the bean nighe, especially when it came to fairy lore. And it seemed like some of the old Scottish versions were getting confused and overwritten by these Irish stories.

Domnall and the Borrowed Child came as a part of those pamphlets I read back then and trying to make sense, in my own head, how the world would work from their point of view. That’s why, I think, there’s a sense of Domanll in a greater world, that this is just one piece of it. Because it was very deliberately part of something bigger.

4. Can you remember what the first fairy or folk tale was to make an impact on you? 

Cover art by Kathleen Jennings (of course!)

My first fairy tales were German. Max und Moritz, Struwwelpeter, die Heinzelmännchen.  My mother got some flak for reading me the original Grimms Märchen when we moved to the US, because of the Evil Stepmother Queen dancing on hot coals until her feet fell off sort of endings. She says that the only time I got upset, though, was when she took me to watch the Disney version of Snow White. Apparently, I started sobbing when she was lost in the forest and just never stopped. My mother had to take me out and she never took me to see another Disney movie. Luckily, my dad did (don’t tell her).

I couldn’t tell you which had the most influence because fairy tales were such a pervasive part of my childhood.

5. How do you schedule your work day?

I’m not very good at waking up and doing things but over time it’s become clear that I do my best writing in the mornings, much to my disgust. So I try to plan things so that I can write in the morning before the rest of the world takes over my brain.

If I have a deadline, I’ll set the alarm an hour earlier to get extra writing time in but I’m not crazy about stealing sleep in order to get my writing done; eventually I turn into a witless zombie and fall over.

If I have the full day free to write, then I spend most of it browsing the web, so I try to make sure not to have the whole day free unless I have someone waiting for me: I react very well to deadlines and pressure.

I tend to work on a single project at a time; I’m not good at changing gears. So for example, I’ll work on an aviation book for a month straight and then put it aside and work on fiction, a short story or maybe a novel (I’m not good at novels but I’m working on it). I’m not one of those people with a dozen projects on the go. Or rather, I am, because I’m terribly addicted to shiny new ideas, but I work on them completely sequentially.

So the perfect work day, from a writing point of view, is two hours in the morning, followed by Everything Else That Needs Doing. I have the occasional binge days and when getting close to finished, I’ll spend more time. But for the bulk of the work, it’s done in that slot.

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

BIG THICK ONES. I’d be tempted to choose my old favourites, sagas that span decades, like Lord of the Rings and Thorn Birds and Pillars of the Earth. And as a kid, I devoured Roots and Gone with the Wind over and over and over. So I could see killing some time on the island with those although now I’m much more aware of the problematic perspectives so a lot of that time would just be ranting. If I could choose Song of Ice and Fire as a single book, I would take it, as I can imagine reading that repeatedly and finding new things every time. But I wouldn’t want the first five books as my entire reading material, that would be terrible.

The thing is, whatever books I took would get ruined in the sun and wind and wet really quickly. People talk about how much they love real books but what I love MOST about e-books is that I don’t have to decide what book to take with m e on holiday. I love the fact that I can keep them *all* in my bag and pick on the spur of the moment. So I’m going to cheat and say that I would take five Kindles.

7. Do you think fairy and folk tales will always have something to say to readers and writers?



Absolutely.

8. You’re an aviator – what attracted you to flying?



Help! I’ve written novellas on this subject, I’m not sure I can cover it in a paragraph or two.

Books + Publishing

It’s nice when the industry mags notice! And you’re in excellent company! Thanks, Books + Publishing.

Australian authors shortlisted for Locus Awards

15 May 2017

Several Australian authors and illustrators have been named as finalists for the Locus Awards for science-fiction and fantasy writing.

Garth Nix is a finalist in the young adult category for his novel Goldenhand (A&U). Nix was previously a finalist in the same category in 2015 for Clariel (A&U).

Angela Slatter is nominated in the best first novel category for her debut novel Vigil (Jo Fletcher).

Author and illustrator Shaun Tan is nominated in the best artist category and the best art book category for The Singing Bones (A&U). Tan has previously won the Locus Award for best artist in 2011 and 2012.

The winners will be announced during the Locus Awards Weekend in Seattle from 23-25 June. To see the full shortlists, click here.

 

Shadows & Tall Trees #7: Rebecca Kuder

Rebecca Kuder’s story, “Rabbit, Cat, Girl,” appeared in Year’s Best Weird Fiction, vol. 3. Her essays have appeared in The Manifest Station, Jaded Ibis Press, Lunch Ticket, and The Rumpus. She lives in Yellow Springs, Ohio, with her husband, the writer Robert Freeman Wexler, and their daughter. Rebecca blogs at www.rebeccakuder.com.

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

It was born from an embryonic essay I wrote last spring speculating about what I would take to the curb for junk week. (We have an event in our town every year: you can drag just about anything to the curb and either another resident will harvest it or the garbage service will take it to the dump.) From the typed printout of the essay draft, I copied the words onto paper, writing longhand, using a kick-ass magical process inspired by the incomparable Lynda Barry (which I blogged about here). I allowed myself to veer from the original essay, transforming it into fiction. I do come from a lineage of packrats, though, which made writing this piece both creative and cathartic. (p.s. There truly was a dead canary in a family member’s freezer.)

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

I’ve wanted to be a writer since before I could read. Maybe Dr. Seuss was where it started. Horton Hears a Who. When I was seven, I wrote a story called The Hole in the Shirt. I dictated it to my father, and illustrated it. We mimeographed copies and sold them at the local sidewalk sale for .35 cents each. This was in 1974.

3. What scares you?

Our addiction to devices and social media. We are losing important chunks of our humanity. For instance, there is a bunch of research on the brain and how and why handwriting is important. I don’t want to lose handwriting. If we practice, maybe we won’t.

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

May that never happen, because I’m always discovering new books I can’t live without. But for now: Peter and Wendy by J.M. Barrie; In The Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje; Down and Out In Paris and London by George Orwell; The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion; and Syllabus by Lynda Barry.

5. What’s next for you?

I’m polishing a novel full of wonder and invention, where the machines that make our dreams are assembled from meat and stardust. Everyone’s an orphan at The Eight Mile Suspended Carnival—by choice or circumstances. Everyone needs a home. The novel will trot out to seek publication shortly. I’m always working on some short essay or other, but the next big project will be another novel, which might or might not be loosely inspired by Stella Gibbons’ Cold Comfort Farm.

 

 

 

Dark Satanic Mills

I’ve got a story in the latest anthology from Black Shuck Books, Great British Horror 2: Dark Satanic Mills. You can pre-order it now.

Thanks to Steve Shaw for inviting me and letting me be part of such excellent company.

Here’s the opening of my tale, “Our Lady of Wicker Bridge”:

There were stories about Wicker Bridge Estate, always had been even before there was an estate. So many stories and for so long that it was hard to tell if what you were being told was new or old. Something that smacked of urban legend might well have its roots in ancient tales of demons and spectres. Sometimes the true tales were worse: folk dying alone, left undiscovered for years, or eaten by beloved pets, only found when some number cruncher realised a gas bill hadn’t been paid for far too long.

            Tricia had heard them all, retold a few in her time, but the one that occurred most often amongst the children she dealt with was this: if you were suffering, if you were alone and friendless, if you were desperate, a pale lady would appear and offer you a deal.