Angela Slatter's Blog, page 61

KSP Mentoring

So I’ll be the established writer-in-residence at KSP in Perth from 25 June – 10 July this year, and all the w-i-r folk do mentorships during their term:

KSP’s highly talented and experienced Writers-in-Residence offer one-on-one mentorships to a KSP-member whilst they are staying at the Centre. The goal is to provide you with personalised feedback and advice on your writing.

If you write in the genre of the visiting Writer-in-Residence and are available to attend the Centre, consider applying today. It is free to apply and the Writer will select the person he/she thinks they could help the most. The mentorship fee for successful applicants is just $50.

Upcoming Writers-in-Residence

MAY Lorna Hendry: travel, memoir, children’s non-fiction (APPLICATIONS CLOSING SOON!!)

JULY Angela Slatter: science fiction, fantasy

OCTOBER Chloe Higgins: literary fiction, short fiction

Want more info?

 

Who’s Afraid?: Maria Lewis

Author, journalist, reviewer, pop culture maven, werewolf aficionado, all-round powerhouse, and Idris Elba’s future wife (not to mention OMG-level of impressively inked) Maria Lewis is multi-talented and extraordinarily busy. But she was kind enough to take some time out to talk about her debut novel Who’s Afraid?, writing influences, the superheroes you’d find at her dinner party, and the High Lord Tarantino. Read on …

1. What do new readers need to know about Maria Lewis?

I’ve been a journalist for over a decade, which is how I got my start in writing and my background as a reporter has greatly informed my work when it comes to style and research. Who’s Afraid? is my debut novel and the first in a five book supernatural series from Little Brown Books/Piatkus in London. I’m also probably most certainly Idris Elba’s future wife, but that’s neither here nor there.

2. What was the inspiration for your novel Who’s Afraid?

It was almost anti-inspiration, actually, as I love the supernatural genre and I love urban fantasy, horror and paranormal novels but at the time I was getting annoyed with the kind of fiction I was reading. It felt like collectively we were in this rut where every hero of the story was a white, 15-year-old girl who read William Blake poetry and was ‘really mature for her age’ – which drove me insane. I wrote Who’s Afraid? purely with the motivation to create the kind of book I didn’t think existed in the market at the time which was one with a biracial, complicated heroine who has her own flaws and agency as well as one that dealt with adult themes and challenging inter-personal issues.

3. Is there a special fascination for you with werewolves?

Everyone has that supernatural creature they’re obsessed with and for me, it has always been werewolves. Always – going back to when I was a young kid growing up in rural New Zealand and I would get told werewolf stories while being able to see snow-capped mountains out the window. It’s also that idea of duality Robert Louis Stevenson nailed so well: living with a monster inside of yourself and reconciling with your animalistic and savage instincts.

4. Where did Tommi Grayson come from? Is she your inner wolf?

Haha no, she’s not my inner-wolf at all: I feel like we’d maybe be in the same pack but our wolves would be quite different. Tommi Grayson came from a place of loving werewolves and loving werewolf pop culture – movies, books, TV shows – but getting annoyed at there never being female werewolves who led and controlled the story. There’s a handful of examples like Ginger Snaps and When Animals Dream, but for the most part women never got to inhabit that monstrous physicality in the same way men did. I wanted to embrace that idea of the feminine grotesque and give audiences a back-breaking, flesh-tearing, muscle-ripping she-wolf who was just as gnarly as the men but also completely her own thing with her own strengths and motivators like loyalty, compassion and love.

5. Did you always want to write and when did you first think you’d like to do this for real?

Writing was always something I did: it existed simultaneously with my own life experiences but it wasn’t necessarily something I thought I could do professionally as a job until I got a journalism cadetship/scholarship straight out of high school. It felt pretty bloody real then, as I was a teenager covering the police beat for three years and dealing with some graphic and high-pressure situations. A newsroom environment is also a sharp learning curve, with daily deadlines and being surrounding by a very experienced team of editors, subs and chief of staff who expect the most out of you and demand it.

6. Who’s Afraid make a most excellent splash ? how did it feel to draw the eye of the High Lord Tarantino?

Insane. Like, unfathomably insane. I’m deeply influenced by pop culture and other media that I’ve consumed and it ends up being woven into my work in a similar way Tarantino’s films sometimes feel like a great DJ remix of all the stuff you’ve loved before within that genre. So when he requested a signed copy while he was in Australia on The Hateful Eight tour I was blown away, to be honest, and very grateful for the power of Twitter as the whole reason he heard about the book was Who’s Afraid? was the top trending topic in Australia for three days – above the premieres of The Hateful Eight – and he asked his people ‘What the f*** is this Who’s Afraid? thing?’ The rest is very modern history.

7. How did you get your start as a journalist?

I knew uni was going to be a stretch financially so I applied for a bunch of different scholarships while I was in highschool. I got two, to two very different universities to study two very different things, and the one I went with was a journalism scholarship where I worked full time at a newspaper on the Gold Coast and did my degree alongside that.

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

Mary Shelley, first and foremost. You’ve got to love a young and hungry teenager who manages to take on the boys club with a masterwork of horror.

9. So you’re a pop culture maven: name five superheros you’d like to invite for drinks and general shenanigans?

Photo by Alex Adsett

Gambit – he’s my favourite comic book character and you just know he’d be loose at a party, Jubilee – she’d bring great energy and be awesome on the dance floor, Huntress – my favourite comic book heroine because she’d be no-bullshit fun, Lying Cat – just to keep everyone in line and Jessica Jones – girlfriend knows how to slam down a drink.

10. What’s next for Maria Lewis?

Sleep? Such sleep. Much wow. Ah no, I’m currently on tour with Supanova Pop Culture Expo at the moment so once that winds down I’m off to the UK for two months to launch Who’s Afraid? internationally in England, Ireland and Scotland. Who’s Afraid? sequel drops January 2017 then it’s a matter of gearing up and preparing to do it all again.

The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2016

Cover for the next The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2016 from Paula Guran and Prime!

My novella “Ripper” is getting another outing, so huzzah!

Look at that ToC and pre-order here.

Alphabetical by Author Last Name:

“The Door” by Kelley Armstrong (Led Astray: The Best of Kelley Armstrong, Tachyon)
“Snow” by Dale Bailey (Nightmare, June 2015)
“1Up” by Holly Black (Press Start to Play, ed. Adams, Vintage)
“Seven Minutes in Heaven” by Nadia Bulkin (Aickman’s Heirs, ed. Strantzas, Undertow)
“The Glad Hosts” by Rebecca Campbell (Lackington’s #7)
“Hairwork” by Gemma Files (She Walks in Shadows, eds. Moreno-Garcia & Stiles, Innsmouth Free Press)
“Black Dog” by Neil Gaiman (Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances, William Morrow)
“A Shot of Salt Water” by Lisa L. Hannett (The Dark #8)
“The Scavenger’s Nursery” by Maria Dahvana Headley (Shimmer #24)
“Daniel’s Theory About Dolls” by Stephen Graham Jones (The Doll Collection, ed. Datlow, Tor)
“The Cripple and Starfish” by Caítlin R. Kiernan (Sirenia Digest #108)
“The Absence of Words” by Swapna Kishore (Mythic Delirium #1.3)
“Corpsemouth” by John Langan (The Monstrous, ed. Datlow, Tachyon)
“Cassandra” by Ken Liu (Clarkesworld #102)
“Street of the Dead House” by Robert Lopresti (nEvermore, eds. Kilpatrick & Soles, EDGE)
“Mary, Mary” by Kirstyn McDermott (Cranky Ladies of History, eds. Roberts & Wessely, Fablecroft)
“There is No Place for Sorrow in the Kingdom of the Cold” by Seanan McGuire (The Doll Collection, ed. Datlow, Tor)
“Below the Falls” by Daniel Mills (Nightscript 1, ed. Muller, Chthonic Matter)
“The Deepwater Bride” by Tamsyn Muir (F&SF Jul-Aug)
The Greyness” by Kathryn Ptacek (Expiration Date, ed. Kilpatrick, EDGE)
“The Three Resurrections of Jessica Churchill” by Kelly Robson (Clarkesworld #101)
“Those” by Sofia Samatar (Uncanny #3)
“Fabulous Beasts” by Priya Sharma (Tor.com)
“Windows Underwater” by John Shirley (Innsmouth Nightmares, ed. Gresh, PS Publishing)
“Ripper” by Angela Slatter (Horrorology, ed. Jones, Quercus)
“The Lily and the Horn” by Catherynne M. Valente (Fantasy #59)
“Sing Me Your Scars” by Damien Angelica Walters (Sing Me Your Scars, Apex)
“The Body Finder” by Kaaron Warren (Blurring the Line, ed. Young, Cohesion)
“The Devil Under the Maison Blue” by Michael Wehunt (The Dark #10)
“Kaiju maximus®: “So various, So Beautiful, So New” by Kai Ashante Wilson (Fantasy #59)

Kind words …

… from the lovely Neil Snowdon are here. 

“Rich and heady as honey mead, potent and earthy as great Scotch, the sublimely dark tales of Angela Slatter are an addictive delight. Take a sip and let the pleasant buzz enhance your world, or guzzle the lot and get drunk. The only hangover you might feel will be the disappointment of returning to the real world… and the hankering for more.“

ARC! ARC in my hands …

… albeit briefly.

I met with the delightful Sean and Kathie from Hachette yesterday to talk about Vigil and bookstores and appearances and stuff.

Sean had an ARC with him and I got to pat it it and cuddle it before I had to hand it back so it could be used to seduce booksellers. It’s so damned purdy.

 

Let’s call this a cover reveal …

… so, Vigil is getting around, ARCs are appearing in people’s mailboxes, photos are appearing of these occurrences, and it’s officially made its way onto the Hachette UK website – voila!

This is my cover. I love, love, love it!

It’s available for pre-order around the traps as well. It will be in Australian bookstores on or around 12 July. We’ll be having a Brisneyland launch party, too, at a date and time to be disclosed (as soon as I get organised). There’ll be goodie bags for the first 50 folk at said launch to buy a copy of Vigil (she says, optimistically assuming we’ll have 50 people there!).

Then I’ll be in the UK for a large chunk of August – appearing at Nine Worlds in London (12-14 August), the inaugural Dublin Ghost Story Festival (19-21 August), and somewhere in there will be some other London appearances, and a thing in Newcastle for the Novocastria Macabre ‘brand’ of events. And wherever JFB/Hachette UK tell me to go, lo, I shall go.

Huzzah!

More details and dates as they come to hand.

Should you be a genuine reviewer of books, please contact the publicity departments of Jo Fletcher Books in the UK or Hachette in Australia and present your bona fides to the lovely peeps there (don’t ask me, I ain’t gots no ARCs).

Contact Made, stuff won

Lisa & I with our Ditmars, mine is backwards because: Angela

Over Easter weekend we attended Contact2016 in Brisneyland and it was one of the cons Ive enjoyed most in my life as a writer. It was great fun to catch up with old friends, and make new ones, opine on panels, find places that made good coffee rather than the sludge from Satan’s bladder served by the hotel, and eat the extraordinarily good food at the same hotel’s restaurant (I just don’t know why the coffee was so bad when the everything else was sooooo good!).

And Lisa and I won our very first Ditmars – hers for Best Novel (Lament for the Afterlife) and mine for Best Novella (Of Sorrow and Such – which get some love here). There were the Aurealis Awards, too, and big congrats to all the winners (of AAs and Ditmars), especially to Sean Williams and Garth Nix. And I got to interview Rivers of London author Ben Aaronovitch, which was fun and highly amusing.

And a huge thanks to the Contact2016 Team who worked so hard, solved so many problems, selected such great GoHs, and generally made the weekend so awesome for all.

In which there are things

Thing the first: tonight I am chatting to Ben Aaronovitch about The Rivers of London, Doctor Who, Blake’s 7, and writing stuff. Tickets are still available … but hurry!

Thing the second: the ARCs of Vigil have arrived in Australia. They are hanging out in Sydney at the Hachette offices, no doubt eating all the cake and drinking all the coffee, and proving a general embarrassment in the manner of tribbles.

Thing the third: Lisa is here! Huzzah – Brains reunion 2016! Shenanigans at the ready.

My Contact2016 Schedule

Well, the NatCon is just around the corner! It’s actually just waiting in the milkbar, filling up on thickshakes, until the curtains go up. I’ll be there and my schedule is below. Come up and say “hello”.

My Contact 2016 schedule:

Thursday 24 March

In Conversation with Ben Aaronovitch, He of Rivers of London Fame

6-8pm

State Library of Queensland – room to be advised

Friday 25 March

Free! Free! I’ll see you in the bar.

Saturday 26 March

2.30-3.30pm

Panel: Dead Ends and Red Herrings (M)

Ben Aaronovitch, Angela Slatter, Trent Jamieson (M), Marianne de Pierres

Sunday 27 March

2.30-3.30pm

Panel: The fall and rise of the short story. (M)

Angela Slatter, Tehani Wessely, (M), Simon Brown, Cat Sparks

Monday 28 March

9-10am

Panel: International markets – selling across the ditch (M)

Sean Williams, Keri Arthur, Kylie Chan (M), Angela Slatter

10-11am

Panel: Australian Gothic (M)

Liz McKewin (M), Robert Hood, Simon Brown, Angela Slatter

 

 

And over at Smash Dragons …

… the lovely Matthew Summers kindly asked me some excellent questions, which I have answered to the best of my limited and extremely flippant abilities! (Look at all these posts! Can you tell that (a) I finally finished Corpselight and (b) my website has been fixed?)

I talk about fairy tales, horror, managing (that’s a strong word) my writing day, my Tor.com novella Of Sorrow and Such, writing tips, building convincing characters, world peace in five words or fewer, 2016 appearances, and the favourite book in my library.

Hey Everyone! 
 
I’m delighted to bring you yet another instalment in our ongoing interview series here at Smash Dragons. This week I had the amazing opportunity to chat with award-winning author Angela Slatter. Angela kindly took time out of her very busy schedule to stop by, so for that we are incredibly grateful. I hope you all enjoy it! 
 
Be sure to check out all of her work as well… it’s amazing!
 
Angela Slatter, welcome to Smash Dragons!
 
First up, tell us a little bit about yourself.
I’m a Brisbane-based writer of dark fantasy and horror, most of my tales have their roots in fairy tales. I’ve been publishing since 2006. I’ve done a lot of jobs over the years in order to avoid being a writer ? university admin officer, articled clerk, check-out chick, research assistant, membership coordinator ? but ultimately I have failed to not be a writer. I have no cat.

The rest, she is here.