Angela Slatter's Blog, page 94

Horizon by Keith Stevenson

Long-time leading light amongst Australian editors, Keith Stevenson, has recently released the science fiction novel Horizon through HarperCollins. Ze blurb:

Thirty-four light years from Earth, the explorer ship Magellan is nearing its objective – the Iota Persei system. But when ship commander Cait Dyson wakes from deepsleep, she finds her co-pilot dead and the ship’s AI unresponsive. Cait works with the rest of her multinational crew to regain control of the ship, until they learn that Earth is facing total environmental collapse and their mission must change if humanity is to survive. As tensions rise and personal and political agendas play out in the ship’s cramped confines, the crew finally reach the planet Horizon, where everything they know will be challenged.

Keith took some time out to answer a few questions about Horizon.

 

1. So, what do new readers need to know about Keith Stevenson?

Well, I’ve pretty much immersed myself in science fiction for the last forty odd years and I really love sci-fi that takes place off-planet, presents real people dealing with believable science and technology and also tackles socio-political issues that are relevant to our times. If that sounds like something you love too, I have a debut novel I can recommend…

2. What was the inspiration behind Horizon?

I tend to work off images and inspirations and Horizon came out of a strong image I had of an astronaut waking from some kind of hibernation and almost choking to death. It led me to ask a lot of questions about who she was, what was happening to her, what was her mission and where was she going. I’d wanted to write a ‘real’ sci-fi novel for a long time and I’m a great believer in the power of the subconscious to react to our desires and wishes and offer up prompts to help us along the way. That image was the start and set me on the track not only to find out more about my astronaut but, as the story developed, to do a lot of research to build in believable science to make my spaceship and the voyage it takes as realistic as possible.

3. Tell us about the cover art.

It’s a great cover! Actually it wasn’t the first option, but the folks at HarperCollins let me provide some suggestions. It’s a (sort of) scene from the book so it fits in quite well, but given one of the main themes of the book is about planetary ecosystem collapse, I think it expresses that very well too.

4. What made you choose HarperCollins as a vehicle for Horizon?

I’d been subbing Horizon around a few outlets over the years and come up dry, but when HarperVoyager announced their digital submission intake around October 2012, I sent the ms along and hoped for the best. If they hadn’t picked it up I had thought to self-publish, but I guess I was lucky and it’s a real privilege to be published by the Voyager imprint. They’ve supported so many Australian spec-fic authors over the years and published some great stories.

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

Ha! My partner often points out my poor spelling and grammar in my written work. As a writer I just get on and write, I’m not ‘being an editor’ in the background, and I don’t think I could write if I was. Of course I go back and edit my work as best I can but, like any other writer, I’m too close to what I’ve written to really step back and I know I need an editor to look over it before it’s finally ready. As an editor I can be much more objective about the pieces I receive, and I’m in a different mindset when it comes to grammar and punctuation!

6. How did your online magazine project Dimenson6 come about?

A few things came together to create D6. The last couple of books I published took me two years apiece and I just wanted something that would be a quicker turnaround project wise. I also wanted to tear down the paywall between readers and great Australian speculative fiction, not because I think all fiction should be free but D6 is about promoting great work and hopefully leading new readers to buy more of the same from other sources. The reaction has been great and we’ve had over 800 downloads of the first three issues.

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

I grew up reading Philip K Dick, Isaac Asimov, Larry Niven, Cordwainer Smith, James Blish, William Gibson, Robert Heinlein, Iain M Banks, Stephen King and so many others. They all create believable worlds with real characters facing fantastic events or adventures. Some are more political, some more cerebral or emotional, some are just batshit crazy but they all tell great stories. That’s why people read them.

8. Who is your favourite heroine/hero in fiction?

Hari Seldon from the Foundation Trilogy was pretty cool: an amazing intellect who put in train a sequence of events to save humanity, despite the political machinations of those who opposed him. That’s pretty heroic.

9. Who is your favourite villain in fiction?

Right now it’s a character called Troels Volmar in the Lenticular Series books I’m currently writing (see below). I like villains who aren’t evil, but who are prepared to do what is expedient for the ‘greater good’ as they see it. It helps if they’re incredibly clever, devious and calculating. Troels is a heavy hitter in all those areas. He does what needs to be done, because he believes it’s important to protect Earth at all costs. You may not agree with his methods, but you’d like him in your corner if push came to shove.

10. What is next for Keith Stevenson?

As soon as I finish the next lot of reading for Dimension6, I’m back into my space opera trilogy The Lenticular series which is about an invasion by Earth of an alien planet, torture, degradation, space battles, escapes, redemption and revenge. Hopefully reading it is going to be as much fun as writing it is.

Refreshingly plausible, politically savvy, and full of surprises, Horizon takes  you on a harrowing thrill-ride through the depths of space and the darkness of the human heart. Sean Williams, New York Times bestselling author of the Astropolis and Twinmaker series.

Crackling science fiction with gorgeous trans-human and cybernetic trimmings. Keith Stevenson’s debut novel soars. Marianne De Pierres, award-winning authors of the Parrish Plessis, Sentients of Orion and Peacemaker series.

Schlock talks to Kathleen Jennings

[image error]My favourite illustrator chats with Schlock Magazine about art, creating and agonising.

How do your creative processes differ when you’re working on art or writing, if there is any?

In writing, I write then agonise. In illustration, I agonise, then draw. The first half is where the discovery happens, the second is where it is refined.

I push ideas further in illustration – not that the viewer can tell! When writing, I’m conscious of being conservative and protective of my characters. The illustrations feel more representational to me.

But they are both forms of storytelling, and I keep finding out new ways in which the lessons and principles of one form can be applied to the other. Movement, detail, simplicity, contrast, focus…

The rest is here.

The Female Factory: Vox

When Alisa approached us about doing one of the Twelve Planets, we readily agreed. Then, having sprung her trap, she added “But make it more science fictiony.”

Cue Mo Szyslak from The Simpsons … “Whaaaaaa?”

Undeterred, and a little heavy of heart, we two dark fantasy and horror girls trundled away dragging our feet. We were in the middle of other projects and deadlines: both finishing novels and various commissioned short stories, Lisa also digging her way through her first year as a full-time academic and Angela also completing two short story collections and a novella, as well as teaching for the Queensland Writers Centre. We Skyped. We emailed. We kvetched about the collection in general. We talked space shuttles and other planets, what the value of an embryo might be in a distant future where procreation had become more and more difficult for the human race.

We nearly gave up and ran away the moment we wrote a scene that started with the words: ‘Robyn eased back; the shuttle was new. Very new, and its controls were touchy, responding almost to her every breath. She’d flown a much earlier model before, but never one so well-maintained, so responsive, so in touch with its own gravity-defying aerodynamics. So freaking expensive – her old apartment, the one she’d had to give up when she couldn’t make the payments, hadn’t cost as much as this vessel.’

This was not our writing.

But we are nothing if not professional ? not to mention astonishingly stubborn ? and we kept throwing ideas back and forth. We pulled away from stories of a far-flung future and brought things closer to home, a not too far distant Australia. Our initial notes read something like:

Badger birth woman

Baby-soul voices

Fish changing sex in different temperature waters

Orphans and body parts.

Those fragments were built into The Female Factory. The first story in the collection is ‘Vox’, in which “The souls of lost embryos are never quite gone, never wasted; captured in software, they give electronics their voice.” ‘Vox’ was Lisa’s baby; she had the first spark that began the tale, and it was the product of idea-hording.

Some of the best ideas are gleaned from overhearing banter on the bus, or from chatting with friends, or even half-listening to dull presentations at work: you mishear something and bam! it’s a story idea… Or, in this case, someone says something striking in conversation, not giving it a second thought (forgetting you’re a writer and will ruthlessly collect story-seeds), and you tuck that image away for months or years, waiting for the right circumstances in which to use it.

That sounds rather mercenary, doesn’t it? It wasn’t meant to be so; but when Lisa’s friend told her a sad tale about another friend (it’s always “a friend of a friend” in these situations, isn’t it…) who’d had trouble conceiving, who’d done IVF and the whole nine yards, and no doubt would have done some of the things Kate and Nick do in this piece – and when this friend finally fell pregnant, but not as she’d imagined, the outcome really stuck in Lisa’s memory.

(PSA: you’ll never know what writers will find striking, so there’s no use in censoring what you say to them. Whether it’s personal or totally silly, the things you reveal — knowingly or unknowingly — might spark something in their minds. Then again, they might not. One way or the other, writers are always listening.)

From that little seed of inspiration, a series of questions arose that set ‘Vox’ in motion.  What if, Lisa wondered (many weeks later) you finally found yourself pregnant after years of failure? And what if circumstances prevented you from being truly happy about this? How would you feel, desperate for children, having to let them go? But then what if technology could offer a substitute for the children you’d lost? Would this replacement mollify or outrage you? Would it be enough?

In ‘Vox’, we explored some possibilities, and the answers may not be for the faint of heart.

 

SF Signal reveiws The Bitterwood Bible

The wonderful Haralambi Markov has reviewed The Bitterwood Bible over at SF Signal.

MY REVIEW:

PROS: Exquisite prose; a shared world where the stories bleed into each other to establish a vibrant and sprawling mythology; complex portrayal of women as protagonists and antagonists; the breathtaking pen-and-ink illustrations by artist Kathleen Jennings.

CONS: The collection ended. Honestly, I could read at least three more volumes with tales in this world.

BOTTOM LINE: It’s among the strongest short story collections on the market and it will fill your heart with darkest wonders.

The rest is here.

In the mail: Zombie Apocalypse! Endgame

Can you hear the happy squeeeing? I love these projects because they are like proper artefacts.

Mr Jones blends all his authors’ voices into a coherent whole, while still maintaining their individuality. Reading these mosaics actually feels like you’re reading an proper account of an apocalyptic event written by the dead and the survivors.

A big thanks to Mr Robert Hood, who allowed me to namecheck his character, Lynda Russo, from one of the earlier ZA volumes.

And my cousins will note that Dr Maisie Perry is a nod to our beloved grandmother (I conferred on her an honourary medical degree).

Goodreads Giveaway: The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings

So, if I’ve done things correctly, there will be a giveaway thingy appearing on Goodreads any old day now.

The prize consists of a signed copy of The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings and one of the gorgeous totebags I had made with Kathleen Jennings’ cover art on the front.

Click here.

Love and Other Poisons by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Not content with being a most excellent editor and publisher, Silvia Moreno-Garcia insists upon being a kick-ass writer as well. Here she talks about her collection Love & Other Poisons. Check out the Innsmouth Free Press site.

1. So what should new readers know about Silvia Moreno-Garcia?

I’m a writer and editor. My debut novel Signal to Noise, about sorcery, music and Mexico City, is out in February. My first short story collection This Strange Way of Dying was a finalist for the Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic.My second collection is called Love and Other Poisons. The latest book I edited was Fractured: Tales of the Canadian Post-Apocalypse. I am also the publisher of Innsmouth Free Press.

2. What can readers expect of Love and Other Poisons?

For one reason or another I was not able to fit all the stories I wanted in This Strange Way of Dying. Which is fine. Thematically it forms a unified whole. So Love and Other Poisons is kind of a companion volume. Ideally I’d love it if people would read both collections because it would produce the effect I’m looking for.

Anyway, Love and Other Poisons works around the theme of, you guessed it, love and poison. Not just romantic love but friendship, family and even enemies (that love-hate thing). Relationships and their complexities. While my first collection was very grounded in Mexican folklore, this one wanders around a bit more. There’s a story inspired by Poe, one by Stoker, so it’s not just rooted in Latin America. But there are some very Latin American pieces.

Three of the stories are brand new, never published before and of those I’m most enamored with “Sublime Artifacts,” which is my anti-steampunk story.

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

I wrote since I was a child but I didn’t take it seriously until 2006. At that point I decided I was going to take an organized approach to “making.” I suppose it worked since I have a novel coming out.

4. How do you balance being an editor and a writer?

I’ve perfected the art of not sleeping. Joking. I bounce from one thing to another depending on how I feel. Sometimes I’ll be tired of writing so I switch do doing some of the editor stuff and then back. I am scaling back my editing and publishing stuff, and also scaling back my short story writing, to try and focus more on novels. But I don’t think it’s that inherently difficult to manage more than one thing at the same time. I would resent having to focus on a single activity, such as writing, without any other outlets. That’s also why I like my dayjob, which is a great job, and why I’m pursuing a Master’s degree part-time right now.

5. What scares you?

Lack of money. I have a very I’ll-never-be-hungry again Scarlett O’Hara mentality. Also, my own mortality, although I suppose that’s a universal thing.

6. What made you choose to publish The Nickronomicon?

I like Nick’s stories a lot. They’re ironic, witty, and he knows a lot about literature. And it just seemed natural to try and collect his output in a single volume since he’s been rather prolific in the Lovecraftian scene for the past few years. Also, the title. I just couldn’t resist that title. The project sells itself. At a practical level it happens to be the perfect project for a small press. It’s not the kind of thing a large imprint would be interested in, but Nick has enough of a reputation in Lovecraftian circles to ensure we sell enough copies of the book. Financially, artistically, it just fits well with us.

7. Name five people you’d like to have dinner with? Dead or alive (keeping in mind that the dead ones will be cheaper dates).

Lovecraft! That’s an obvious one. I’m not sure what he’d think of me, he might like me because I’m Canadian and therefore a citizen of the crown. Tanith Lee, because I love her books. I did interview her one time, by the way, but it was through mail. Ann Boleyn. I find her a fascinating historical figure at a pivotal moment in time. Charles Darwin, because I’ve been reading his papers and letters lately. Daphne du Maurier. Not only do I love her work but I think she was a fascinating person. And my great-grandmother. I miss her very much.

8. What interests you in Lovecraftian fiction?

Everything? Is that an answer? Right now I’m completing my Master’s degree in Science and Technology Studies. My thesis proposal is about Lovecraft and eugenics, specifically degeneration issues. So I’m very interested in looking at how he translates issues of reproduction and inheritance into horror fiction, and how society is absorbing those same issues at the time.

As a writer, I’ve often said “this is the last Lovecraftian story I’m writing” and then I surprise myself by finding something new to respond to.

9. Your favourite heroine? Your favourite villain?

Emma Bovary, although she’s an anti-heroine. I’m fond of that devious rascal Tom Ripley. But I change my mind about these things all the time.

10. What’s your next big project?

 

My debut novel is coming out in February so I expect and hope a lot of my time will be spent promoting that. My agent has my second novel, Young Blood, about vampires and drug dealers in Mexico City. I’m hoping that sells, too. And then it’s off to complete my third novel, which is set in the Jazz Age, in the north of Mexico.

Editing wise I’m reading submissions for She Walks in Shadows, the first all-woman Lovecraft anthology. So a lot of reading. Oh, and my thesis work. I have a prospectus due this month.

Letters to Lovecraft: a review

And here’s the first review of the Letters to Lovecraft anthology edited by Jesse Bullington and published by Stone Skin Press.

I have a story in it called “Only the Dead and the Moonstruck”, and there are also excellent tales by Jeffrey Ford, Gemma Files, Molly Tanzer, Paul Tremblay, Stephen Graham Jones, and other luminaries.

Only the Dead and the Moonstruck by Angela Slatter addresses the following quote:

Children will always be afraid of the dark, and men with minds sensitive to hereditary impulse will always tremble at the thought of the hidden and fathomless worlds of strange life which may pulsate in the gulfs beyond the stars, or press hideously upon our own globe in unholy dimensions which only the dead and the moonstruck can glimpse.



With inspiration from that quote she created a story with the idea that children are afraid of the dark and are more sensitive to those hidden and fathomless worlds, but that it is a good thing sometimes as they’re more perceptive to the danger that adults might try and explain away.

The rest of the review is here.

Publishers Weekly reviews Bitterwood

My third starred review from Publishers Weekly – a cause for dancing if ever there was one!

The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings

Although set in a fantasy world full of sorcery and enchantments, the 13 expertly wrought stories in this short-fiction collection feature characters driven by the all-too-human motives of revenge and frustration with the miserable circumstances of their lives. In “The Coffin-Maker’s Daughter,” a woman spurned by the daughter of the house whose dead patriarch she is burying stealthily sows the seeds of her next job. “By My Voice I Shall Be Known” concerns a wronged lover who saves the essence of her nightmares to force a hideous fate upon the woman who supplanted her. Perhaps the story that best conveys the sense of a weird world in thrall to the dark side of human nature is “St. Dymphna’s School for Poison Girls,” about an academy where young girls are trained as assassins to kill on their wedding nights grooms from families who wronged their own decades—and even centuries—before. Slatter (Sourdough and Other Stories) has written these stories like somber fairy tales, humanizing the traditional nobles, stepparents, witches, and common folk with vulnerabilities of the flesh and spirit, and she unites them through allusions to characters and events across the stories into a loosely woven tapestry that maps a world that exists both geographically and psychologically. Her complex characters, employing the deceptions and subterfuges that they must in order to survive, express how, bearing out the observation of one such character, “we make our tales as we must, constructing our stories to hold us together.” The text includes 86 illustrations by Kathleen Jennings. (Sept.)

The original appears here.

Spectral Book of Horror Stories: new review

A new review over at This is Horror by Ross Warren of The Spectral Book of Horror Stories (Mark Morris, ed.). In a fit of self-centredness, I shall tell you only what is said about my story, but all the other excellent tales are discussed here.

‘The October Widow’ by Angela Slatter maintains the high standard with a richly detailed tale in which the mysterious Mirabel Morgan, the October Widow of the title, moves in to town and begins to assert quite a pull on certain young men of the area. On her trail is a grieving father left with questions to be answered by the woman he holds responsible but also desires. A story all the better for not providing any conclusive answers.