Angela Slatter's Blog, page 89

Graced: Amanda Pillar

One of my favourite peeps, writer and editor (as well as archaeologist, coz over-achiever) Amanda Pillar has her debut novel out this week from Momentum. Graced can be purchased here. Amanda kindly took the time to answers a few questions.

So, what do new readers need to know about Amanda Pillar?

I’m an editor and author, I have two cats, I’m Australian and I’m an archaeologist. I would have more cats, but my husband won’t let me. He says he has this thing called ‘allergies’. I accept my crazy-cat lady status with pride. Oh, and while I specialised in archaeoastronomy, I work in Australian cultural heritage management. And did I mention I like to write and edit?

What was the inspiration behind Graced?

Graced took a long while to mature into a real story in my mind. Looking back, I can see its development in a few of my earlier – abandoned – short stories. But the most basic inspiration? The phrase ‘eyes are the windows into the soul’. What happens if they really do give away something essential about your nature?

What attracts you to the speculative fiction genre?

The wonder of it. Whenever I pick up a new work, whether it’s from an author I haven’t read before, or writers I am familiar with – I never know what exact journey I will be taken on, the shape of the world, the madness of the universe it is set in…and of course, there are times when I sit there in utter envy wishing I had thought of the idea myself (The February Dragon is an example of that!).

How did you connect with Momentum?

Through my agent, Jenny Darling. She was amazing.

What are the challenges of being an editor who writes fiction … or a  fiction writer who edits?

Ohh, I guess the easy answer, but also the most truthful one: making sure I am wearing the right cap at the right time. I have to remind myself that when I’m writing, it doesn’t have to be perfect straight off, it just has to be there. The fine-tuning can come later. I guess it’s about not getting too frustrated with myself.

When I’m editing, I have to remember that this is not my story, but someone else’s, and that my job is to just help the author make the story the best it can be. I do get emotionally invested in both the stories I write and those I edit.

In general, who and/or what are your writing influences?

Argh, this is a tough one. Can I say everything?

Much like any writer, it’s all about what we see, hear, smell, feel…other authors are certainly a huge inspiration, but sometimes it’s a certain image, hearing a song, watching a show…all these little things accumulate in your brain. I even found Lady Gaga’sBad Romance inspirational – after all, what happens if you want a bad romance, rather than the HEA?

When did you first decide you wanted to be a writer?

This one is easy. And odd. I tended to get stuck on things as a youngster, when I think about it. (Age four, decision: I want to be an archaeologist. Current age: archaeologist, check).

Anyway…it was when I was 13. I went home from school one day, and began typing out my first novel. It was utter rubbish – and very derivative – but I haven’t stopped writing since.

Who is your favourite villain in fiction?

Nooo. You didn’t ask this. (I rather like a good villain and I’m fickle). I’m going to be cheeky and pick an anti-hero instead: Dirk from the Second Sons trilogy by Jennifer Fallon.

However, because I ducked out on it – I’ll admit to my current favourite TV villain: Reddington on The Blacklist…(hey, I’m only one season in!).

Who is your favourite heroine/hero in fiction?

This is tougher. I have high expectations of my heroines and heroes. However, I’m going to go back to some of my first favourites: Alanna the Lioness, Daine the Wildmage, and Aly, all from Tamora Pierce’s Tortall universe.

Alanna took on a male-dominated society to prove her worth as a knight, Daine was a poor girl from an impoverished background who proved that she could – literally – be anyone she wanted. And then there is Aly, born into wealth and privilege, but with a mind as cunning and sharp as a thief’s…wonderfully diverse female characters with great personalities and foibles.

What is next for Amanda Pillar and the Graced cast?

Next on the list after Graced will be Bloodlines (the sequel to Bloodstones) a horror anthology all about blood magic and blood-ties that will be published by Ticonderoga Publications in June/August 2015. I also have hopes there will be another book set in the Graced universe, so you’ll get to see the characters again, but no publishing plans as yet.

 

The Best Horror of the Year Volume 7

The delightful Ellen Datlow has released the ToC for The Best Horror of the Year Volume 7, and I’m stoked to have a story in it. In fact, it’s a record year for new faces: Rio Youers, Keris McDonald, Rhoads Brazos, Kurt Dinan, Garth Nix, Brian Evenson, Genevieve Valentine, and Orrin Grey.

Table of Contents

The Atlas of Hell by Nathan Ballingrud

Winter Children by Angela Slatter

A Dweller in Amenty by Genevieve Valentine

Outside Heavenly by Rio Youers

Shay Corsham Worsted by Garth Nix

Allocthon by Livia Llewellyn

Chapter Six by Stephen Graham Jones

This is Not for You by Gemma Files

Interstate Love Song (Murder Ballad No. 8) by Caitlín R. Kiernan

The Culvert by Dale Bailey

Past Reno by Brian Evenson

The Coat Off His Back by Keris McDonald

the worms crawl in by Laird Barron

The Dog’s Home by Alison Littlewood

Tread Upon the Brittle Shell by Rhoads Brazos

Persistence of Vision by Orrin Grey

It Flows From the Mouth by Robert Shearman

Wingless Beasts by Lucy Taylor

Departures by Carole Johnstone

Ymir by John Langan

Plink by Kurt Dinan

Nigredo by Cody Goodfellow

Mermaids and Other Mysteries of the Deep

The lovely Paula Guran has another fantastic reprint anthology coming out in May, Mermaids and Other Mysteries of the Deep (published by Prime Books) and available for pre-order here.

The ToC is great, including Margo Lanagan, Elizabeth Bear, Catherynne M. Valente, Genevieve Valentine, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Lisa L. Hannett … and some bloke called Neil Gaiman. 

I consider myself very fortunate to have “A Good Husband” on it (from Sourdough and Other Stories). It’s got a mari-morgan, a seamstress, frocks, bad men, and some delightful revenge.

 

The Bitterwood Posts: The Burnt Moon

In “The Burnt Moon” I wanted show a bit of the history of the ex-Abbot Adelbert (when he was still Abbot of St-Simeon-in-the-Grove) and of Larcwide the Librarian. I wanted to give readers more information about Gytha and her mother than Gytha ever got. In so many books all the mysteries are solved – but real life isn’t like that. Much of the time, secrets are held close and taken to graves. If you’re lucky, a trace has been left behind; if you’re lucky and clever then you might be able to track down the puzzle pieces and put them together. Maybe they’ll form a full picture, or maybe it’ll be a mosaic, with fragments and shards, and voids where things are missing.

I liked the idea of having a plague of rats to continue the Pied Piper echoes started in “The Maiden in the Ice”, and I especially liked the idea of a character telling lies that later turned out to be true, even though he didn’t know it.

The Burnt Moon

Three days after Hafwen was turned to ash, the rats invaded Southarp.

They started at the Burnt Moon Mill, spilling up and out from a hole in the cellar floor, climbing walls and clinging to the ceiling. They quickly spread through the town until the streets seemed an undulating carpet of dark fur. The good citizens could not move but that they put a foot down upon a squeaking, protesting rodent.

But that was three days after, three days after the fagots and sticks were lit beneath the  giddy-headed girl, then fanned until the larger branches and logs caught. Until the flames flicked and licked at her toes, the soles of her feet; until they engulfed the ankles, calves, knees, thighs, the belly so recently flattened, up, up, the stomach, the breasts, the shoulders, neck and finally the head with all its lovely golden hair. And Hafwen, fair summer, was gone, cindered and sundered.

But that’s by the by. The story doesn’t start there, not with the rats, nor even with poor Hafwen’s incineration. The story begins a whole week before the funeral pyre was sparked.

The story begins, as all good tales do, in a tavern with a kilderkin of mead, two monks speaking of foxes, and a wager.

***

Reminder the Second: QWC Short Story Clinic

April is creeping towards us, so this is just a reminder that I’m running a Short Story Clinic for Queensland Writers Centre this year. Got a friend or family member with writing dreams and a birthday coming up? Or just writing dreams? Or you just want them to stop dreaming and start doing?

Everyone participates by writing and submitting, reading and critiquing everyone else’s stories. So, you’ll learn more about writing craft and how to read your own and others’ work critically. And how to be constructive! If you’ve been writing for a while and want to kick your skills up to the next level, then please come along. Registration and cost details are here.

It’s an evening course, from 6pm – 8pm on the following dates:

Tuesday April 7
Tuesday May 5
Tuesday July 7
Tuesday August 4
Tuesday September 8
Tuesday October 6

She Walks in Shadows, full ToC

Amazing cover art by Sara Diesel

And the full ToC for She Walks in Shadows is below – excellent company I am in, yes.

“Bitter Perfume” Laura Blackwell

“Violet is the Color of Your Energy” Nadia Bulkin

“Body to Body to Body” S. J. Chambers

“De Deabus Minoribus Exterioris Theomagicae” Jilly Dreadful

“Hairwork” Gemma Files

“The Head of T’la-yub” Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas (translated by Silvia Moreno-Garcia)

“Bring the Moon to Me” Amelia Gorman

“Chosen” Lyndsey Holder

“Eight Seconds” Pandora Hope

“Cthulhu of the Dead Sea” Inkeri Kontro

“Turn out the Lights” Penelope Love

“The Adventurer’s Wife” Premee Mohamed

“Notes Found in a Decommissioned Asylum, December 1961?” Sharon Mock

“The Eye of Jupiter” Eugenie Mora

“Ammutseba Rising” Ann K. Schwader

“Cypress God” Rodopi Sisamis

“Lavinia’s Wood” Angela Slatter

“The Opera Singer” Priya Sridhar

“Provenance” Benjanun Sriduangkaew

“The Thing in The Cheerleading Squad” Molly Tanzer

“Lockbox” Elise Tobler

“When She Quickens” Mary Turzillo

“Shub-Niggurath’s Witnesses” Valerie Valdes

“Queen of a New America” Wendy Wagne

In the mail: Far Voyager

Huzzah! In the mail at last, three years after I originally  sold the story! Behold: PS Publishing’s latest Postscripts Anthology, Far Voyager.

An excellent ToC, too.

The Bitterwood Posts: The Badger Bride

Kathleen’s Badgers

I love badgers – yes, I know all the arguments against them, the great list of their sins – but I love them all the same. I’ve also always loved transformation stories, but they’re generally run along the same lines: one character must be transformed from animal to human in order for there to be a happily-ever-after. That ending assumes that whatever was threatening the star-crossed lovers has been defeated; but, I wondered, what if it’s not? What if the threat remains, blundering about, looking for its dearest, darkest desire? What might our heroes do in order to escape?

I love Gytha, the feisty copyist/forger of the tale. I love that she seeks answers no matter what the cost; there’s something rather Gothic about her determination, but she’s in no way a fainting, fairly stupid Gothic heroine. I love Adelbert the ex-Abbot and Larcwide the Bibliognost, and I have always, always loved the ideas of monastic libraries and the preservation of knowledge – due in no small part to Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, and my Uncle Rod, who’s also a collector of books and no mean bibliognost himself.

And I love the idea that sometimes, just sometimes, though you don’t get what you think you want, you get what you actually want.

 

The Badger Bride

by Angela Slatter

The tip of the quill scratches its way across the parchment, a sound that sets my teeth on edge.

One might think I’d be used to it by now. The black marks it leaves in its wake make no sense to me – indeed the entire book makes no sense – then again, I am a mere copyist and mine’s not to question why. Although I do.

Frequently.

Much to my father’s despair.

When he brought me this commission, I turned the tome over and over – a difficult enough task, for the thing is heavy, aged and fragile, the ebon cover tacky to the touch, the pages brittle – and a smell rose from the skin of the thing that was quite unpleasant. The name of the author and the title of the book were utterly obscured, a thick stygian gum had been smeared across them and it was hard to perceive whether this application was intentional or the result of mere carelessness. The inner leaves confirmed intent – no extant title page waited within, merely the remnants of a folio torn from the binding, tiny sad folds of paper with ragged edges.

So, an anonymous book.

‘Who is the client?’ I asked my father, Adelbert, once Abbot of the monastery of St-Simeon-in-the-Grove, who rolled his eyes and bid me Just do the job.

‘But, Father, it is very old, very frail, and the ink is faded ? fading as I watch if my eyes don’t deceive me.’ I manoeuvred the article in question so he could better see. ‘Is it the last of its kind? Who is the owner? What does he expect?’

‘He expects, like your father, that you do not ask questions, little prying thing. That you take this volume and copy it as quickly as you might!’ He took a deep breath and roared, ‘Else I’ll put you out in the cold, Gytha!’

I harrumphed, and left his study. He will not put me out; he will do no such thing. I am the  only child in Fox Hollow House who earns her keep, after all. Aelfrith spends her days draped across the couch, sighing for a husband, and Edda devotes her time to exercising and grooming the six horses in the stables. I alone understood and adopted the scholarly arts Father had tried to teach us; and I alone adopted the trade he learned at the monastery ? and at which, he freely admits, was terrible. People come from all around, from as far away as Lodellan, to have me copy their books, their precious, unique, failing books; to have me adorn and enhance them, to add vines and flowers and strange animals in the margins; to change the existing illustrations they cannot bear (modestly clothe a naked Eve, paint out grandmother’s warts on her nose, give uncle a chin that does not slope so straight from lower lip to clavicle). Copy, edit, amend, ameliorate, augment and occasionally, if the pay is right, forge.

I will make a book what they want it to be, either more or less itself.

***

 

Today: Corpselight

Sparrowhawk – by Kathleen Jenning, just coz.

Today, I’m back on Corpselight, the second book in the Verity Fassbinder series. It’s good to be getting into this again!

Corpselight

by Angela Slatter

She took a longish time getting out of her car, smoothing the workday creases from her Donna Karan suit, collecting her handbag and the briefcase. She jingled the keys in the front door of the house, as if the noise might ward off evil spirits. As if it might let them know she was home and they should disappear. The hallway looked fine, but the smell hit her before she got even two steps inside. Steeling herself, she followed the stench.

Mud.

Again.

On the expensive silk at the base of the rocker-recliner that had replaced the last one; oblongs of insufficiently jellified gunk, almost like footprints but lacking definition. Up close, the odour got worse, and she noticed the whole chair wore a thick coat of the same crap. And it wasn’t just mud. It was filth. Ooze. Fetid, decayed, contaminated, liquefied death.

She was, perhaps, less surprised than she should have been.

It was the third such occurrence in as many months. Always on the fifth. Always when she returned from work, as if they’d waited until she was gone in the morning. Always in the same spot. None of last night’s precautions had done a damned thing; she’d be having words with the bloody hippy chick at the West End spook shop.

She couldn’t imagine the insurance company would pay out. Not again. Not even under the Unnatural Happenstance provisions.

The first time this had happened she’d been unnerved; yes, even afraid.

The second time, she’d been annoyed and thought, Tricks. Shitty little tricks. Shitty ghosty little tricks.

This time, she thought, Fuck ‘em.

‘It’ll take a damned sight more than this,’ she told the empty room. Shouted, actually, made sure her anger carried the words all through the house.

She moved on by way of the dining room to find an answer of a sort; or simply a variation on a theme.

The kitchen was awash with brown.

Slither marks patterned the linoleum as if a school of middling-sized snakes had run amok. The biggest puddle was in front of the fridge. She picked her way across, stepping on the cleanish patches, careful not to slip, careful not to get crap on her expensive new shoes.

The handle of the fridge door was pristine and she grasped the coldly sweating metal with her own heated palm. She pulled.

There was a moment, one of those frozen seconds when things stand still. In theory, in that moment, there was time to step away, to jump to safety. In reality, the chocolately rectangle filling the matt silver Fisher & Paykel quivered and slid out onto her feet with an obscene sucking sound, leaving her shin-deep in muck.

Then the doorbell rang.

 ***

 

In the Mail: Letters to Lovecraft

My shiny new contributor’s copies of Letters to Lovecraft have arrived! Thanks, Jesse Bullington and Stone Skin Press.

I get to share space with luminaries such as Gemma Files, Jeffrey Ford, Tim Lebbon, Molly Tanzer, Livia Llewellyn, Nick Mamatas, et al.

More more info, go here.