Angela Slatter's Blog, page 42

Lotus Blue: Cat Sparks

Cat Sparks is a multi-award-winning Australian author, editor and artist whose former employment has included: media monitor, political and archaeological photographer, graphic designer, Fiction Editor of Cosmos Magazine and Manager of Agog! Press. She’s currently finishing a PhD in sci fi and cli fi. Her short story collection The Bride Price was published in 2013. Her debut novel, Lotus Blue, will be published by Skyhorse in March, 2017.

1. What do readers need to know about Cat Sparks?

That I am an enormous Sci fi nerd, always was and probably always will be. Which isn’t to say that I don’t dig other genres and non-fiction, only that for me, inevitably, all roads lead back to the future.

2. Which story of yours would you recommend to a new reader?

‘Hot Rods’, published in John Joseph Adams’s anthology Loosed Upon the World and free to read up at Lightspeed Magazine: www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/hot-rods/

I consider this my most skillful and accomplished piece of fiction to date. It’s a cli fi story set about 20 years from now which features one of my favourite concepts: weaponized weather, and is positioned very early on in the timeline and backstory to Lotus Blue.

 3. Who are your literary heroes/influences?

I so admire the brute, alchemical power of accomplished writing. The kind of skill it takes most practitioners years to develop and hone. Writers such as David Mitchell and Margaret Atwood manage to blend the gosh wow engagement of storytelling with the cadence and fluidity of poetry. Pretty damned impressive stuff.

4. You get to take five books and five movies when you are exiled to a desert island. Which ones do you choose?

Books: David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks, The Complete Adventures of Tintin (shut up, a boxed set totally counts as one title…), What Snake is That and Can I Eat It – a comprehensive idiot’s guide to desert island survival, Pride and Prejudice and Connie Willis’s Blackout and All Clear, which also totally counts as one title.

Movies: North by Northwest, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Wars (the original), Five Million Years to Earth & Team America.

5. What was the inspiration for Lotus Blue?

I’ve been attracted to post-apocalypse narratives since I was a kid so it was probably inevitable that I’d eventually try my hand at writing one.

In the 90s I volunteered as a photographer on a series of archaeological digs in Jordan. The villages near the dig house where we lived hadn’t changed much in a thousand years. Dig work was hard and rough, the landscape primitive and surreal, especially to a city gal like me not accustomed to getting her hands dirty. The mix of the old and the new world caught my attention: Bedouin living in tents with colour televisions and other mod cons. Oftentimes the landscape had a post-apocalyptic feel to it. The team was excavating Bronze Age sites, but I wouldn’t have been surprised had something utterly alien and inexplicable been unearthed.

These experiences, coupled with the imagery of Frank Herbert’s Dune, a book I adored as a teenager, and half-remembered classroom tales of European explorers starving to death in the Australian outback surrounded by food sources they couldn’t recognise, led me to Lotus Blue and its dead red heart.

6. Can you pinpoint a place in your career timeline when you had a writing epiphany that helped you move forward?

There have been a few small, yet impactful moments. Here’s one: I recall a few years back walking into my study and noticing for the first time just how many entirely filled, hand scrawled legal pads were teetering in towers, how many dog-eared books, how many scribbled-on scraps of paper scattered across the floor like autumn leaves. Me standing in the doorway comprehending that this was the end point. I wasn’t working towards a goal, I was standing in it.

7. Can you remember what story/novel made you think “I want to be a writer”?

There was never a particular story, it was more a state of mind. Reaching the point of engagement with the spec fic genre where being a consumer was no longer enough. I felt the burning urge to be a maker, to become a part of the fabric of the conversation.

8. Short fiction or long fiction?

As a reader, long, on account of the immersion factor.

9. How does Lotus Blue differ from your previous work?

The novel took me somewhere around ten years to hammer into acceptable form, largely because I didn’t know what I was doing, having written short fiction for so long and not fully comprehending the vast technical differences between the two disparate forms.Lotus Blue started life as a secondary world fantasy under a different title. I binned at least 300,000 words across the decade. There is more of my own sweat, blood and gristle in Lotus Blue than in anything else I’ve ever written*.

* I reserve the right to amend this statement after I’ve handed in my PhD.

10. What’s next for Cat Sparks?

First up, I need to finish said PhD, which is running approximately a year and a half behind, unless I want to be a bit more honest with myself and admit that we’re probably talking two. Secondly, I need to learn to drive and get a freaking license. Last year my partner & I moved to a lovely wooden house on a hill in Canberra where public transport is as rare as rocking horse poop. Then finally, I would like to start work on a sci fi thriller set in the present day. I’ve got the idea sketched out already, just haven’t had the time to get stuck into it.

 

 

And for those of you playing at home …

Luke Spooner

Part Three of “The Night Stair” is up at Gamut!

Here’s a snippet from the opening of the tale:

The Steward is a tall man, entirely bald, gaunt in the face, yet rotund in the belly. His legs in their loose fawn linen trews, look like a scarecrow’s, sticking out under the awning of his gut – perpetually in shade perhaps they don’t get enough light to grow. His tunic of padded green silk, his sable wool coat with its thick fur collar, are too warm even for the end of summer, but as marks of his office, must be seen, just like the yellow crystal hanging about his neck. Called the “Steward’s Gaze”, it’s the size of the top joint of a man’s thumb, and has passed from incumbent to incumbent for as long as anyone has the will to recall. He puts it in his mouth and sucks hard when he thinks no one is watching. It’s worth a king’s ransom, and I’ll warrant the gold chatelaine belt around his waist could buy the city’s food for half a year.

His finery makes me aware of the state of my black dress – not that it’s poor or made shiny by age, but it belonged to others before me. Both my sisters – my only full-blood siblings – wore it to their own choosing. I am certain I can smell them, their scents imprinted into the warp and weft of the fabric despite washing. The colour makes my skin paler, my eyes bluer, provides the perfect background for the tresses, which pour down my back like gold fresh from the smelter. I was careful, so careful with my toilette: brushing my hair, one hundred strokes; rubbing the cream that was my mother’s (comfrey and rose to soften and plump, a little lemon balm for lightening) into my skin; drops of eyebright to ensure my gaze is clear. I refrained from pinching my cheeks – pale is best – but I did nip gently at my lips, to carmine them a little, so it seems as if all life is concentrated there. I will not be found wanting.

I stand in line with seven other girls who have been presented this day. We are of an age, none more than sixteen springs, and there is only one of them, perhaps two, who might outdo me. To my right is Essa, with her milky skin and eyes like the sky reflected in ice, hair bright platinum; even her nails seem to have a silvery sheen. She watches me from the corner of her eye, just as I watch her.

To my left is Dimity, whose eyes are bright green, her cheeks with the tiniest hint of pink. She keeps her regard firmly fixed upon her own feet. Our Lady best likes girls who resemble herself; that is not Dimity for all her snow-washed whiteness – the eyes are all wrong and the eyes count.

So, Essa. Essa is the one to beat – the Steward will surely select between the two of us.

Supersonic Magazine

The latest Supersonic Magazine has a lot of great fiction, reviews and articles – as do all of the issues! But this one is especially awesome for me as my version of Little Red Riding Hood, “Red Skein”, has been translated into Spanish!

Also, a most excellent cover, and look at those other contributors!

The Perfect Weapon: Delilah S. Dawson

Delilah S. Dawson is the author of Star Wars: The Perfect Weapon and Scorched, the Blud series, the Hit series, Servants of the Storm, the Ladycastle comic, and Wake of Vultures and the Shadow series, written as Lila Bowen.

1. What do readers need to know about Delilah S. Dawson?

Well, I write in a ton of genres– Fantasy, Science Fiction, YA, Horror, Romance, Star  Wars, Comics. I’m very active on Twitter, @DelilahSDawson. And I love gluten free cupcakes more than life.

2. Who were/are your literary heroes/influences?

The three books that had the biggest influence on me growing up were Watership Down, The Mists of Avalon, and The Valley of Horses, so that should basically tell you everything.

Mermaids and Fairy Midwives

Over at the Review of Australian Fiction, Angie Rega and I have stories in the latest issue!

Mine is “The Little Mermaid, in Passing” (which took some inspiration from Mike Mignola’s “The Third Wish” and Damien Angelica Walters’ “Sing Me Your Scars”).

Angie’s is the very dark “The Fairy Midwife”!

And the results of the Aurealis Awards are in!

Big congrats to all the winners and shortlistees, and a huge thanks to the judges, the organising committee, and the dear readers! And thank you so much for choosing A Feast of Sorrows: Stories as winner of the Best Collection. Jack Dann and Alan Baxter are worthy stablemates (check out Concentration and  Crowshine).

It’s fantastic to see so many friends on these lists and so much new talent coming up through the ranks.

Quite frankly everything on the shortlists should form the basis of your reading and gift-giving for the rest of the year. Go! Buy! Read!

The Night Stair – Part Two

… is now live at Gamut!

The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn: Usman Tanveer Malik

Today I’m very pleased to host at the blog the astonishingly talented Usman Tanveer Malik.

Usman T. Malik is a Pakistani vagrant camped in Florida. He reads Sufi poetry, likes long walks, and occasionally strums naats on the guitar.

His fiction has won the Bram Stoker Award and been nominated for the Nebula. His stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Usman T. Malik among other venues. He is a graduate of Clarion West.

In Dec 2014, Usman led Pakistan’s first speculative fiction workshop in Lahore in conjunction with Desi Writers Lounge and Liberty Books.

1. First of all, what do new readers need to know about Usman Tanveer Malik?

When I was ten I got lost in Paris. After several hours of futile wandering, a pretty young dress shop clerk helped me figure out where my hotel was and walked me over. It was a few blocks away. I kept hoping she’d kiss me goodbye, but she never did.

2. Which book, either fictional or otherwise, would you say taught you the most about writing?

“About Writing” by Samuel R Delany

“It” by Stephen King

3. What was the inspiration for your British Fantasy Award-winning novella “The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn”?

The true story of Mughal princess Sultana Begum who languishes in poverty these days.

http://razarumi.com/sultana-begum-the-great-grand-daughter-in-law-of-last-mughal-emperor/

4. What does a working day look like for you? Where do you fit your writing in?

I’m doing an academic fellowship these days,  not writing much at the moment. Usually, I write at night around 10 or so or on my off days.

5. Which writers are your biggest influences?

Naiyer Masud, Kelly Link, Philip Roth, Joyce Carol Oates, Flannery O’Connor, Ted Chiang, Stephen King, Rumi, the Urdu poets Iqbal, Faiz Ahmad Faiz, and Ghalib.

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

Naiyer Masud: The Collected Stories

It by Stephen King

Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link

Collected Stories by Flannery O’Connor

The Essential Rumi by Coleman Barks

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

“Where are you going, Where have you been” by Joyce Carol Oates.

8. What projects are you working on right now?

I’m not writing anything new but am working with friends on the final steps of setting up Pakistan’s first Science Fiction award called The Salam Award for Imaginative Fiction. The award is named after the great Pakistani scientist and Nobel Prize winner Dr. Abdus Salam who was vilified by his own people for belonging to a marginalized community. It will be officially launched at the end of January, 2017.

9. Do you prefer the writing part of the creative process or the editing part?

The writing part when I hit my stride and feel the words flow like musical notes.

10. What’s next for Usman Tanveer Malik?

Hopefully more writing once I’m done with the busy part of my academic fellowship.

 

Finnegan’s Field and Sweet Potato Films

Art by Greg Ruth

I’m so excited to announce this: I’ll be collaborating with the wonderful Vicki Madden of Sweet Potato Films (writer of the award-winning The Kettering Incident) on a project inspired by my novelette “Finnegan’s Field“, which was published by Tor.com last year (and for which the amazing Greg Ruth did this awesome cover).

I’m a huge fan of Vicki’s work, so this is a dream come true … if your dreams involve schlepping around Tasmania in winter looking for creepy locations and inventing dark tales – and mine do!

Ditmar Shortlists

White fox by Kathleen Jennings

The Ditmar shortlists are out and I’m happy to say that Vigil and Finnegan’s Field both scored a spot.

Vigil is listed for Best Novel and Finnegan’s Field for Best Novella/Novelette.

And in very good company as well – congrats to all the shortlistees!