Angela Slatter's Blog, page 50

Re-opening of the Flensing Factory

So, I’m back in the flensing business.

My short story development service has re-opened. Details at the link above.

Winter Children – pre-order

And the pre-order page for Winter Children and Other Chilling Tales is up!

Go here for one of 200 limited edition signed copies.

Eleven reprints and one brand new story, “The Red Forest.”

Jodi Cleghorn: The Leaves No Longer Fall

Jodi Cleghorn (@jodicleghorn) is a Brisbane-based author, editor, poet and small press owner with a penchant for the dark vein of humanity.

 1. What inspired your At the Edge story?

The deciduous trees in my dad’s street in Ballarat had barely begun to drop their leaves when I was visiting in very late autumn 2013. Some were still laden with dark green leaves. It made me wonder, with global warming, would we reach a point where autumn no longer existed.  “Deciduous used to be a verb” was a line I carried for a while, waiting for the right story to speak to it.

I also wanted to write a story where the humanitarian crisis of refugees was an internal one. I wanted to create a setting where the ‘othering’ and ‘demonisation’ was of a country’s own citizens based on an unprecedented movement of the population south. The Australia of “The Leaves no Longer Fall” is an Australian were every mainland citizen is a ‘boatperson-in-waiting’—all trying to make it across Bass Strait to the cooler sanctuary of Tasmania.

The tech innovation of ‘living glass’, as an answer to the climate crisis, was almost an afterthought.

2. What appealed to you about this project?

I met Dan at Continuum in 2013 and it was a no brainer to want to be part of an anthology he was editing. His editing partnership with Lee reminded me of the one I’d had with Paul Anderson at the start of my editing career.

At the Edge offered an opportunity to spotlight the great dark SFF writing coming out of New Zealand and Australia. Who wouldn’t want to be part of that?

3. What do you love about short stories?

A short story is a literary TARDIS. I am both enamoured and fascinated with the way a simple idea can be captured, examined, perverted and reconstituted into something rich and complex, with the capacity to have lasting impact on the reader.

4. Can you remember the first thing you ever read that made you want to write?

Writing and the escape/transcendence it creates have always been my primary motivation since I was 10. For me, the feeling of ‘having written’ is a creative aphrodisiac. Questions like this used to perplex me.

Then a few years ago I was introduced to the work, first of Italo Calvino, and more recently, Jeanette Winterson. Reading their work made me want to write far outside my comfort zone. To want to play with the poetics and lyricisms of language, with the beauty inherent in style, in a way conceptual ideas and frameworks compelled me in the past.

5. What’s next for you?

In all honesty, most of my energy at the moment goes into supporting my son with reintegrate into mainstream schooling.

While that’s happening I have a collaborative novel with my writing partner Adam Byatt, and an old friend, Rus VanWestervelt slowly forming. The Heart is an Echo Chamber, a chapbook of flash fiction I edited, and a companion publication to No Need to Reply, is scheduled for release in August. When life opens again there are several novellas patiently waiting for attention: Twice Lost, a ghost story set on Moreton Bay and Encursion, the first in my birthpunk series.

 

Supanova in RAdelaide!!!

Woohoo! Supanova the Second – for me at least.

With my fellow authors (scribblers!) Maria Lewis, Jane Abbott, Alison Goodman and Alan Baxter, I’ll be at the SupaAuthors’ table, signing stuff, tallying redheads (Jane has a theory, we’re testing it), and squeeeeeing over amazing cosplay. Also, talking on panels, including the Book Club on Friday night right after the Opening Ceremony,

Dymocks are the bookseller there, they’ll have copies of Vigil – and I will have a very small supply of Black-Winged Angels, The Girl with No Hands and Other Tales, and Midnight and Moonshine for the hardcore amongst ye.

So, please come along and say ‘hi’, and do introduce yourself coz no one looks the same IRL as they do on the Internet and I might not recognise you – nor you me, for that matter.

We stay, we stand, we witness.

We stay, we stand, we witness.

We remain alert for more of this bullshit washing onto our shores. We combat the rot that is already here. We make sure to help those less fortunate, those whose rights might soon be eroded due to race, sexuality, religion, whatever – they will be our family, friends, strangers. We offer a hand and a meal and safety whenever we can.

We stay, we stand, we witness.

Dreaming in the Dark

While I’m bombarding you, I may as well mention the new Dreaming in the Dark anthology, edited by the delightful Jack Dann.

This is the first cab off the rank for PS Australia (PS Publishing’s arm here in Oz), and features myself, Garth Nix, Lisa L. Hannett, Kim Wilkins, Sean Williams, Rjurik Davidson, Alan Baxter, Jason Nahrung, Kirstyn McDermott, and a bunch of other Australian writers.

It can be pre-ordered here OR you can wait for the Brisbane and Melbourne launches in December (more details as they come to hand).

New Reprint Collection: Winter Children and Other Chilling Tales

And so here is the cover for my newest collection – my first “proper” horror collection, Winter Children and Other Chilling Tales. Eleven reprints together for the first time AND a brand new story, “The Red Forest”.

The lovely PS Publishing have done a great job of pulling together this limited edition with an amazing cover by Pedro Marques. Thanks to Conrad Williams for the Introduction.

Pre-order pages will be up at the PS website on Friday.

More details here.

‘Angela Slatter’s stories are enviably original, and told in prose as stylish as it’s precise. Not just disturbing but often touching, her work enriches and revives the tale of terror.’ ~ Ramsey Campbell, author of The Doll Who Ate His Mother, The Hungry Moon, and Told by the Dead

Summer Wigmore: Back When the River Had No Name

Summer Wigmore has written many books and published one, so far: The Wind City, published by Steam Press. This is their first foray into sending out short stories, and shows the excellent rewards of foraying. Lately Summer has also taken up a bewildering variety of crafts, from candle-making to drying their own ingredients for tea. A living experiment in gentle pretension.

 1. What inspired your story/novelette?

What made me choose it for this was all the brilliant post-apocalyptic media going around at the moment, so, thank you Mad Max. I’ve had the idea for a long time, though. As a teenager I was biking along the riverpaths by my house, and wondered what it would be like if they were completely deserted, the tarmac cracked. I stood by the busy bridge very early in the morning one day and got a hint of that desolation. From that I played around with the idea of a post-apocalyptic version of the city I grew up in, and here we are.

Initially I never managed to write it because I thought it was a novel! I’m glad I’ve come far enough to delight in other forms, and that I finished it eventually.

2. What appealed to you about this project?

Literally eveeeeerything.

Liminality and well-liked peers. The edges of things. Most of all, being able to contribute or participate in a project that sounded so exciting! I love everything done by the creative team involved, Dan and Lee, Marie. I wanted to appear beside our best and brightest and I’m so grateful and delighted that I got to!

3. What do you love about short stories?

Every word needs to be there. You don’t get the chance to waste anything.

Also, they can hit like a hammer to the chest, or sneak up on you ages later and linger around. A powerful effect for a small thing.

4. Can you remember the first thing you ever read that made you want to write?

Yes, but as it was a picture book about ants where I was mostly just enamoured with knowing what punctuation marks were, I might answer this with what made me take my lifelong idle wish to be a writer and actually work to make it a reality, which is Pat Rothfuss’s book The Name of the Wind. Reading it I was struck immensely by its beauty. It was the first book I stayed up after one for. (Back BEFORE that was my routine.) I vowed to one day make something even a quarter as beautiful. I can recognise it as being a work made by a human and possessing flaws, these days, but I’m still deeply grateful for the fire it lit in me.

5. What’s next for you?

I’m still tinkering away at a novel that seems to have taken me a long time, and have high hopes for this one, cautiously. And will always be writing books! I will dive more often into short stories as a form, now, though. It’s exciting to see what can be done with them.

 

Supanova in Brisneyland!!!

Well, you might not be three exclamation marks’ worth of excited but I am!!!

It’s my first Supanova and it’s in my hometown. Pretty happy about that. Also pretty darned excited that I’ll be there with mates such as Alan Baxter, Kim Wilkins and Maria Lewis.

I’ll be doing panels and signing books in Authors Alley, and I’ll have a few Corpselight  chapbooks for the first twenty-five folks who bring a copy of Vigil for me to sign.

I’ll also have a buttload of Vigil badges for anyone who asks nicely right up until I run out of them.

Details are here.

Alan Baxter’s Crow Shine

Alan Baxter is an award-winning author of dark fantasy, horror and sci-fi and an international master of kung fu. He runs the Illawarra Kung Fu Academy and writes novels, novellas and short stories full of magic, monsters and, quite often, martial arts. He rides a motorcycle and loves his dog. You can find him on Twitter @AlanBaxter, Facebook and Instagram: @warrior_scribe.

His debut short story collection is Crow Shine (links for pre-order can be found here), and he is the author of the kick-ass (or kick-arse for those of you in The Commonwealth) Alex Caine trilogy, Bound, Obsidian, and Abduction.

1. How did the Crow Shine collection come about?

After 70-something short story publications my agent and I started nosing around publishers for interest. I’ve always wanted a collection and Ticonderoga were pretty much my first pick as they always make such fantastic books. Thankfully they liked my work and jumped on board. They’ve published a number of my stories before in various anthologies, so we had a working relationship already.

2. What sorts of tales will readers encounter?

While I write across horror, fantasy and sci-fi, this is a collection of the cream of my dark fantasy and horror stories. Stuff I usually refer to as the dark weird fantastic. There’s magic and monsters, there’s revenge and consequences, there’s wonder and darkness. And hopefully a few thrills along the way.

3. Which is your absolute favourite story in the whole collection?

What!? I can’t pick a favourite child! Honestly, I love different stories for different reasons and genuinely couldn’t pick a favourite. I’m immensely proud of every single story in this book.

4. Who are your favourite short story writers?

So many people! Clive Barker, Thomas Ligotti, Edgar Allan Poe, Shirley Jackson, Roald Dahl… You know what? I recently wrote a blog post that was exactly this – a long list of short story writers I love. So maybe just check that out here: http://www.alanbaxteronline.com/short-story-writers-recommend/ All the people included there are absolute masters of the craft.

5. What’s next for Team Alan Baxter?

I’m in open water productively at the moment. I’m about to start work on a couple of new big projects, but in the meantime I’m waiting for the release of Bound: Alex Caine Book 1 in the US in December and then Primordial, a monster novel I co-wrote with David Wood, is coming out from Cohesion Press in February. Sometime next year a mystery/cosmic horror/modern noir novella called The Book Club is coming out from PS Publishing. Exciting times!