Angela Slatter's Blog, page 53
September 7, 2016
BWF Most Wanted
Tomorrow night (Friday 9 Sept) I’ll be doing a reading from Vigil (which I’ve never done before!) at the BWF Most Wanted session on Maiwar Green at 7.30pm.
I’m lucky because I get to perform with Caroline Overington, Justin Cronin and Gary Kemble!
It’s a free session, but it won’t hurt to book yourself a place. Go here.
September 6, 2016
Anniversary
Facebook has just reminded me that today’s the anniversary of The Girl Wi
th No Hands and Other Tales!
To the left is Russell B. Farr of Ticonderoga Publications in full flight, launching TGWNH and the phenomenal Kaaron Warren’s Dead Sea Fruit. We were at AussieCon4 in Melbourne, Australia’s last hosting of the clans for WorldCon.
TGWNH went on to win the Aurealis Award for Best Collection, which was nice! Cover by my gorgeous Brain, Lisa L. Hannett.
This means it’s also the anniversary of Sourdough and Other Stories, which came out from Tartarus Press a couple of weeks before TGWNH!
J.C. Hart: Hope Lies North
And we’re finally back with the At the Edge anthology interview series! Today, J.C. Hart talks about “Hope Lies North”.
J.C. Hart is a mother and writer who resides in Taranaki, NZ, cushioned between the mountain and the sea. She is the author of several works of both long and short fiction, which include several short stories in award winning anthologies, of which, The Dead Way, which was a finalist for the Australian Shadow Awards 2014. Alongside her writing J.C. is also a freelance editor, and the co-chair of LexiCon 2017 – the 38th NZ National Science Fiction and Fantasy Convention. You can find her on Twitter @JCHart.
1. What inspired your story?
My story, Hope Lies North, was inspired by the landscape along State Highway 3 in New Zealand, particularly Awakino gorge, Mount Messenger, and the surrounding areas. I’d been mulling over what to write for this anthology for a long time, the deadline was getting close, and all I had was a severed hand, a changing landscape, and perhaps a dead baby. We were travelling (north) to Auckland for a wedding and I let my husband drive so I could stare out the window and daydream. I made a lot of notes, took a few blurry photos, and the story snowballed from there.
2. What appealed to you about this project?
I’d worked with Dan and Lee before on the Baby Teeth anthology. I knew from that experience that they could knock together an awesome collection, the theme of this one really appealed, and so naturally I wanted to be a part of it. Also, there was the rather alluring draw of anonymous submissions. It’s always a nice buzz when you know that your story is selected on its merit alone, not on who you are or who you know. I was eager to put my story to the test, and thrilled when it passed muster.
3. What do you love about short stories? 
As a reader, I love that short stories throw you right into a world and don’t let go until the end. I love that I can get a slice of something amazing, and be drawn in and satisfied within a short period of time.
As a writer, I love the challenge they present. You only have a small number of words, and you have to make every one of them count. They are also enormous fun and provide so many opportunities to explore ideas, themes, and techniques.
4. Can you remember the first thing you ever read that made you want to write?
I can’t say that I do, actually. I feel like I’ve been reading forever, but writing for even longer. The earliest books I can remember were things like Where the Wild Things Are, the influence of which one might say can be seen in some of my work – fierce situations, fierce people, but where the act of loving someone, really truly, is apparent in actions more than words.
5. What’s next for you?
In the next month or so I’m hoping to release a short fantasy novel told in three parts called Serafina’s Flame. I released the first part last year (Burn), and am looking forward to getting the completed story out there in the world. I’ve also just started working on something a little darker than my current titles, and more in line with the kinds of short stories I like to tell – but in a longer format. It should be fun, and more importantly, creepy!
September 4, 2016
UK Book Tour – Part the First
At last I am catching up on things, which means I’m getting these retrospective blog posts done. I’ve spent the last week trying to get over jetlag (with varying degrees of success), trying to get organised for Brisbane Writers Festival (close!), trying to make sure I don’t miss any story deadlines (the jury is still out), and trying to get organised for moving out by the end of September and into new digs.
On 7 of August I got on a plane bound for the UK with the goal of promoting Vigil to the folk of that fair land. The trip’s always difficult when you live at the arse-end of the world and have to travel back in time to get to London without the aid of a TARDIS, but was made extra difficult due to (a) the fact I’d torn the meniscus in my right knee, and (b) the IT Badger and I broke up some weeks before. We’ve been juggling all that goes with pulling apart two lives we’ve spent almost eight years entwining. It was a mutual decision, it was amicable, but that makes it no less painful.
The tour had been planned for months, there was no way I could back out and hide under my doona weeping and mainlining TimTams. Thus, armed with my trusty walking stick and a daily dose of harden-the-fuck-up, I set off.
I was able to have a couple of days’ rest after I arrived (thanks, Amanda Foubister!) then I started the events cycle with Fantasy in the Court at the gorgeous Goldsboro Books. It was a lovely few hours, chatting, looking at books, and catching up with the likes of Lavie Tidhar and Simon Kurt Unsworth.
Next, Nine Worlds, which is basically a geek culture expo a bit like Oz’s Supanova. I did 
some great panels, met some lovely folk like Sebastian De Castell, Sue Tingey, Tom Fletcher, and Stephanie Saulter. Highlight: finally catching up with the amazing Maria Lewis, who empanelled and moderated like a champ. Especially delighted to meet the wonderful Mieneke, the Fantastical Librarian, as well as the lovely Elizabeth from Books and Pieces with whom I recorded a wee interview!
Then I got a couple more quite days before fronting up for the Unsung Stories gig at The Star of Kings. I was privileged to read with three excellent writers, Malcolm Devlin, Eli Lee, and Rob Boffard. I read a brand new, never-before-heard story “The Red Forest”, which will come out in my new collection with PS Publishing, Winter Children and Other Chilling Tales. Thanks for inviting me, Gary and George!
And I must give the Hugest of Huge Thanks to the superb Sam Bradbury (JFB editorial assistant) and the equally superb Olivia Mead (Quercus publicist) for everything they did to make me feel loved and welcome, from putting me in taxis so I didn’t have to hobble into tube stations late at night to bringing me gifts of donuts when I was feeling blue. You two rock beyond rocking. xxx
And that’s it for the moment … I’m off to have a jetlag nap.
Brisbane Festival Panel: SNOW WHITE & THE LITTLE MERMAID
So tomorrow I’ll be taking part in a Brisbane Festival panel about fairy tale heroines, specifically Snow White and the Little Mermaid.
Suzie Miller (Playwright), Amanda Slack-Smith (Associate Curator, QAGoMA) and I will be chatting with moderator Lindy Hume (OQ) about these old favourites and how they do or don’t fit into modern life.
We’ll be on at 12noon in Queen’s Park, Treasury Casino & Hotel, in Brisbane City and there’ll be a chance for questions at the end of the session!
August 30, 2016
Malka Older: Infomocracy
The formidable Malka Older took some time from her insanely busy schedule to chat with us about her amazing novel Infomocracy (among other things). Her bio is below – read it at your leisure and be in awe!
Malka Older is a writer, aid worker, and PhD candidate. Named Senior Fellow for Technology and Risk at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs for 2015, she has more a decade of experience in humanitarian aid and development, ranging from field level experience as a Head of Office in Darfur to supporting global programs and agency-wide strategy as a disaster risk reduction technical specialist. In between she has designed and implemented economic development initiatives in post-disaster context; supervised a large and diverse portfolio as Director of Programs in Indonesia, and responded to complex emergencies and natural disasters in Sri Lanka, Uganda, Darfur, Indonesia, Japan, and Mali, in the last three as Team Leader.
Her doctoral work on the sociology of organizations at the Institut d’Études Politques de Paris (Sciences Po) explores the dynamics of multi-level governance and disaster response using the cases of Hurricane Katrina and the Japan tsunami of 2011. As part of this work she has been selected as a visiting scholar at Columbia University, on an Alliance Grant, and at the Fletcher School of International Affairs at Tufts University. She has an undergraduate degree in literature from Harvard and a Masters in international relations and economics from the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) Johns Hopkins University.
Her research interests include intra-governmental relations in crises; the paradox of well-funded disaster responses; measurement and evaluation of disaster responses; and the effects of competition among actors in humanitarian aid (. She has also conducted research for the French Institut de Radioprotection et de Sûreté Nucléaire (IRSN) on the human and organizational factors involved in the Fukushima Dai-Ichi crisis.
Malka Older’s writing can be found at Leveler, Tor.com, Bengal Lights, Sundog Lit, Capricious, Reservoir, Inkscrawl, in the poetry anthology My Cruel Invention, and in Chasing Misery, an anthology of writing by female aid workers. Her science fiction political thriller Infomocracy is the first full-length novel from Tor.com, and the sequel Null States will be published in 2017.
1. First of all, what do new readers need to know about Malka Older?
I’ve always been a reader and a writer. I’ve also worked in humanitarian aid and international development, and I’m currently a PhD candidate studying the sociology of how governments respond to disasters.
2. What inspired your novel Infomocracy? 
The general concept was inspired by two strands of frustration that I’d been chewing on for a while. The first has to do with outdated concepts of sovereignty and territory. I had lived or worked in a lot of countries with active secession movements: Sri Lanka, Sudan, Indonesia, Spain, Italy, which often led to violence. (In fact, almost every country has a secession movement of one kind or another). The flip side, of course, is the problem of ensuring adequate representation for minority groups in democracies.
The other frustration was around how political debates are becoming increasingly uncoupled from facts. I’ve seen this happen in a lot of places, but for me it came to a head particularly during the 2012 US presidential elections. I like having discussions with people who disagree with me politically, but it was becoming harder and harder to do because we couldn’t agree on basic premises of fact: who did what and what it meant, things that should have been provable one way or the other.
So I had those two issues bubbling, with some thoughts about potential ways to address them in a hypothetical future. Then came the trigger that gave me a location and a mood. I was working in Japan after the 2011 tsunami, and we had to drive an hour or more every day from where we were staying to the coast and back. Along the way on one of our routes was a kind of run-down, remote pachinko parlor called “21st Century” (????). I was struck by the image of enthusiasm and futurism around the 21st century back when this place was founded and named, and how poorly that had fared with the inevitable passing of time. That image helped me push the story into the future, and also linked the very emotional atmosphere of that time into my writing.
3. How do you approach long-form works as opposed to short-form?
As both a writer and a reader I prefer longer works. I really like having the time to get into a novel, get to know the characters, have little quirks and subplots and misdirections. When I write a novel it tends to be very organic: to start I usually have one or two scenes or at least phrases and set ups that feel clear to me, as well as an idea or two that I want to explore, a what if, or an emotional charge that I want to reach. And then I get to know the characters and let them play it out in that direction. With short stories I have to have a very defined, discrete idea and story to get across almost from the beginning. It’s nice when it happens, but more often I like to explore.
4. Can you recall the first thing you ever read that made you want to write?
Not really, because as far as I can remember I always wanted to write. I mean, I can remember as a tiny child coming up with non-fiction book pitches about a how-to manual for baths! To me reading was and is a huge part of life, and so writing seemed (and seems) like an utterly natural way to respond and engage.
5. What was the spark behind your essay “Thirsty for New” in Lightspeed’s People of Colo(u)r Destroy Science Fiction?
Representation is incredibly important, but a lot has been written about that and I felt like other authors have it well covered. When I think about diversity in fiction, I don’t always think about wanting to see myself. I think about wanting to see others that I don’t know much about, and learn about their worlds (As I say in the essay, that’s driven a lot of my career choices as well.). The biggest turn-off for me in a book is knowing what happens ahead of time because I have read the story or the character a million times before. Obviously this is relative; I can enjoy some relatively formulaic stories as long as the characters or the writing or the setting give me something new to think about. Also, my saturation point for a certain kind of story may be different from yours. More variety – diversity of all kinds – gives us more to learn about and enjoy and stretch ourselves. (Tangentially related: this is actually the point of the commonly misunderstood Darwin doctrine of survival of the fittest. It’s not about being the strongest, it’s about finding a niche, thereby at the macro level diversifying). To get diverse stories, we need diverse people writing them.
6. Is there a follow-up to Infomocracy in the works?
Yes! Null States, the sequel, is in edits now and will be out in 2017. It’s exciting because it let me explore some other elements of the Infomocracy world, including some new locations. Thematically, it is something of a flip: while Infomocracy is about the way information determines our choices and becomes power, Null States is in many ways about the limits of information and the places where it fails.
7. Who were/are your literary heroes/influences?
It’s such a long list, I don’t know where to start. Tolkien, L.M.Montgomery, Borges, Charlotte Bronte, William Goldman, Dumas, Hugo, LeGuin, Stephenson, Verne, Austen, Nabokov, Ishiguro, Carmen Martín Gaite, Dinesen/Blixen/Andrézel, Eduardo Mendoza, Gibson, Alameddine García Marquez, Vargas Llosa, Gruber, Fred Vargas, Zoe Valdez, Cortazar, Octavia Butler, Arundhati Roy…I could keep going…
8. You get to invite five fictional characters to dinner: what’s your guest list look like?
Aaliya Saleh (An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine); Jimmy Paz (Tropic of Night etc by Michael Gruber); Keita Mori (The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, by Natasha Pulley); Agnes DeWitt (The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich); Lauren Olamina (Parable of the Sower, etc by Octavia Butler)
9. Which book, either fictional or otherwise, would you say taught you the most about writing?
I always struggle with this question, because I’ve had such a wide range of influences and I feel like that range in itself has been really important to me. I read a lot of different genres, styles, time periods, and I try to write widely as well. If I had to pick one book that influenced Infomocracy specifically though, it would have to be Snow Crash.
10. What’s next for Malka Older?
As noted above, Null States will be out next year, which is very exciting because it gives me a chance to explore this strange world order beyond the intensity of a global election. I also have a number of stories and poems out or forthcoming – in particular check out my poems in Sundog Lit, my short story “The Rupture” in the (free) archives of Capricious, the short story “The E-Mail Heiress” in Reservoir Lit, and a new poem out in Inkscrawl late summer/early fall.
My Brisbane Writers Festival Schedule for 2016
More!
Woohoo! It’s almost that time of the year again, time for the writers to take over the city!
I’ll be doing some great gigs with BWF this year:
Friday 9 Sept Brisbane’s Most Wanted is a reading session with Caroline Overington, Justin Cronin, Gary Kemble, and yours truly. 5.30pm on Maiwar Green.
Sat 10 Sept BWF in the ‘Burbs: Mitchelton Library I’ll be talking about my debut novel Vigil at 10am.
Sat 10 Sept Overlords and Underworlds Justin Cronin, Candice Fox and I will be talking stuff at 5.30pm.
Sunday 11 Sept I’ll be talking Vigil with the wonderful Gary Kemble at 2.30pm.
For more BWF/UpLit goodness, go here.
Workshop in Melbourne
Hello, Melbourne peeps.
Thanks to the organisational abilities of the wonderful Louise Angrilli I’ll be running a three-hour workshop in your fair city on Sunday 23 October. Ze Blurb is below. Basically you need to be prepared to hit the ground running, you need to have a story submitted to the group by the deadline, and you need to be prepared to work. It’s a “crit clinic” essentially and if you’ve got a story you’ve been trying to beat into submission then this is the gig for you!
Places are limited.
After the workshop, we’ll be retiring to a coffee shop/pub where I’ll answer any and all questions about markets, professional behaviour, networking, and the usual stuff about which I carry on.
Critique workshop with World Fantasy award winning author Angela Slatter. Up to nine places are available for this three-hour workshop. As a part of the workshop you will submit a short story of up to 5000 words for critique and discussion. Each participant will be expected to read and provide some feedback on the workshop pieces provided by other participants. The workshop will be better suited to writers who have at least one prior publication.
For booking and full details, go here.
Any queries, please contact Louise as she’s boss, not me, and any queries directed to me will be met with “Please contact Louise as she’s the boss, not me.” 
August 28, 2016
Not Dead, Just on the Last Leg of a UK Book Tour …
… and I’m very, very tired.
And my blog has been sadly neglected.
But I’m flying home tomorrow – or rather, starting the god-awful long trip that always makes me shout “Where’s my matter transporter!?”
When I get back and recover from jetlag, stop walking into walks, etc, then I shall do The Big Post.
But until then, here I am talking to Kate Evans on ABC Radio National about Vigil.
