Cate Gardner's Blog, page 19

HO HO OH - THE FOURTH

HER MAJESTY'S monstrous, stinking foot crushed Reject's video camera that he'd made out of sticky-back plastic, cardboard, hair rollers and recycled ink cartridges.
Reject will have to tape together another camera so that we can share the hideousness that is her RENDITION of DING DONG MERRILY or rather SCREECH SCREECH TERRIBLY. 
Once we've uploaded it to YOU TUBE, it will BREAK the world.

HO HO OH - THE THIRD

Wheeze is wheezing. He was trying to fix (as in 'so it would collapse') HER MAJESTY'S exercise bike when she bounced into the room and DECLARED she was going to do twenty-five minutes on the bike. More like a gasping three minutes that left her WHEEZING more than poor Wheeze does on a FARTYLICIOUS day.
Wheeze had no time to escape and, having stooped to close to the pedal, her pukesome bunny slippers grabbed hold of Wheeze's left ear and sent him spinning alongside her ladyship's left foot. 
Her highness' feet STINK. We didn't need Wheeze to tell us this. 
We don't think he'll ever breathe again. He probably doesn't want to breathe again.

HO HO OH - THE 2ND

It's too dangerous even for a Gremlin to approach HER MAJESTY today as she's wearing THE MOST UNCOMFORTABLE KNICKERS IN THE WORLD. She's even threatening to write a story about an INVASION of UNCOMFORTABLE KNICKERS. We plan to encourage her.

HO HO OH! - THE FIRST

As Gremlins consigned to HER HIDEOUS HIGHNESS, THE UNSPEAKABLY UGLY CATE GARDNER, we have stolen her password, taken over her blog and won't let her back in until CHRISTMAS is done. 
Behold our first post...
#
NO ONE believes Her Majesty is EVIL.
We wish NO ONE were a GREMLIN and not a collective description for all HUMANS. The humans are wrong. SHE is a MASTER GENIOUS OF EVILNESS and some. Treacle wants to make HER LADYSHIP an honorary GREMLIN. She certainly has the credentials:
Breaking things  ✓Smashing things ✓Accidentally spilling things ✓Frightful hair ✓
I'm of the opinion we will win this battle and make her sing to OUR TUNE, which will be silence, silence and more silence. It can't be too hard to GAG someone who spends most of their time staring into space. Its just she has this knack of moving just when we're about to lean in and ends up knocking us off the desk. CROOK thinks she's a NINJA in disguise. 
I don't think Ninjas are supposed to have so many wobbly bits. 

Happy Black Thursday (or something like that)

HADLEY RILLE BOOKS Birthday Sale is on with all Kindle and Nook books at $0.99 or £0.77.

There is my little book, Theatre of Curious Acts, available at Amazon UK and Amazon US plus other neat little Amazon sites across the globe. Damien Walter of The Guardian had fabulous things to say about Theatre here.

You can find a comprehensive list of Hadley Rille Books at Amazon and at Barnes & Noble. My book is only available on Kindle.

World Fantasy Convention 2013

Last weekend was the long-awaited World Fantasy Convention. Today, I shall play bullet point girl (no super powers required) to give you an overview of my convention.It'll be different to your convention. Also, if you've wandered here from the Hilton Metropole in Brighton, I apologise for leaving my ghost behind. I'm still attempting to adjust to normal life and a part of me is still wandering the hotel corridors. By the way, your hotel is gorgeous and huge and elegant and there are soooo many stairs. My thighs both hate and love you.

So my con...

The girl to the left looks happy and she is. Very, very happy that her Bestwick held her hand throughout the con and helped her with a raging case of social anxiety. He blew my tiredness and insecurities away (or at least hid them in his pocket).

I only attended two panels. I say only but it's two up on last year when I didn't attend any. I can do maths (yay!). First up, I attended the comics panel even though I have no intention of writing comics (although I do love reading them). I may have attended because Joe Hill and Neil Gaiman were on the panel. I'm fickle like that. The second panel was an Arthur Machen panel about the weird tale. The panellists included some bloke called Simon Bestwick, alongside ST Josh, Nina Allan and John Llewellyn Probert. Next year, I may attend four panels.

The Joe Hill interview was superb. Gillian Redfern did a fantastic job interviewing Joe with humour high on the menu. LUNCH MEAT. You'll understand that last statement if you were there. Really excited to hear that Joe is planning on turning his novella Gunpowder into a novel. Loved Gunpowder.

Simon Kurt Unsworth (who had just announced an awesome book deal) and the gorgeous Rosie Seymour, gave us a lift to the convention. We talked about underpants and agents. The equally lovely Paul and Cath Finch gave us a lift home from the convention. We didn't talk about underpants. At least, not that I recall. I hope I didn't doze off and yell 'underpants'.

Lovely to see old friends and make new friends including (apologies if I forget to mention folk but the weekend is a blur and I'm still trying to find some of you in the corridors) Alison Littlewood and Fergus (I always seem to bounce about when I see them), Mark West (and the delightful Sue Moorcroft), Simon and Lizzie Marshall Jones, Ray Cluley and Victoria Leslie, Gardner Goldsmith, Ren Warom, Angela Slatter, Stuart Young, Rio Youers, John Llewellyn Probert and Thana Niveau, Nina Allan, Lynda Rucker, Rob Shearman, Graeme Reynolds (who gave me two books - thanks, dude), Neil Buchanan, Damien Walter, Stephen Bacon, Mihai Adascalitei (so, so lovely), Helen Marshall, the delightful Pete Atkins, Ramsey & Jenny Campbell, Jon Oliver, Allen Ashley, Tej Turner, Dean Drinkel, Adam Nevill, Conrad Williams, Charles Rudkin, David Price, the beautiful Pixie Puddin, Ruth Booth, Ben Baldwin, Vincent Chong, Christopher Teague (who had the unfortunate experience of seeing me at breakfast pre-make-up), Martin Roberts and Helen Hopley, oh and Jenny Barber (although I did a brief nervous hello to both her, Pete Coleborn and Jan Edwards), Roy Gray, Anna Taborska, Paul Kane and Marie and Jen O'Regan, James Bennett, and of course, Simon Kurt Unsworth, Rosie Seymour, and Paul and Cath Finch.

I know I've forgotten people!!!! Delves fingers into brain and finds only empty space.

Thanks to the awesomeness of this convention, I got to sit in a room with William F Nolan and talk about Logan's Run. I got to see Joe Hill and Neil Gaiman (but didn't speak a word to them or get them to sign anything as I was way, way, way too shy and awkward and stupid. Mostly stupid). I briefly met Ellen Datlow with a squeak of 'can you sign this' and then ran away. Oh wait, I did speak to Neil Gaiman. How could I forget that? But it was in the pretence that I was Rosie Seymour as I went down the Best New Horror line to get her book signed. Shakes head.

Deserving of a paragraph of its own. I got to meet Jonathan Aycliffe whose stories I love, love, love. I was all fan girl and blushing.

I went to one reading (Rio Youers - extraordinary story) and the Proberts' late night reading starring Alison Littlewood, Thana Niveau (what a show woman) and Ramsey Campbell. Most meals were romantic affairs for me and the Bestwick apart from one lunchtime meal with Dean Drinkel and Tej Turner, and a Chinese meal with the adorable Lizzie and Simon Marshall Jones. I ate too many noodles. If it's possible to eat too many noodles.

Most important of all, on the drive home I became the official awards announcer (via Twitter) and we were all excited to hear that Joel Lane, Rob Shearman, John Llewellyn Probert, Ray Cluley, Jon Oliver, Adam Nevill and Graham Joyce had won awards. Joel's win got a particularly rapturous 'hell yes' from the Bestwick and I may have uttered something similar for Ray's win.

No candy floss was harmed in the making of this convention.

We shall end with my favourite photo of the convention... (Lizzie and Simon Marshall Jones; Ray Cluley and Victoria Leslie)...

Creepy Freebies - It's all about me (and that Bestwick bloke)

I'm a day early. Forgive me. But I'll be at work, then on a train, then busy with my Bestwick tomorrow night and may not have time for the internet so I figured I should post my freebies now.

As per last week's post, Milo Fowler has gathered a bunch of writers together to do giveaways on Fridays during October. This is my week and I'm joined by Simon Kewin, Roland Yeomans and Christine Rains.  Check their blogs tomorrow for awesome freebies and giveaways. Or maybe their posts will be up today like mine because they are also cheating.

If everyone cheats is it really cheating?

Too deep for me. So what about my prizes...?

I am giving away a paperback of my novella, Theatre of Curious Acts and a paperback of Simon Bestwick's The Condemned. Simon's book contains six novellas so I guess I'm doing you with mine.

I am evil. This pleases me.

Still not giving away The Wolf Dude. (See previous blog post. The Wolf Dude in question is not the Bestwick although he likes to think he's a Wolf Dude of sorts).

So what do you have to do to enter? Just leave a comment on this blog and I'll draw the winner after the World Fantasy Convention 2013 - on November 5th. And if you're going to be at WFC, see you there... I'll be the one nervously grinning and hiding behind things.

Almost anyone can enter - no restrictions on country, but you should probably be over sixteen, oh and you can't be Simon Bestwick or anyone related to me, especially as many of them are under sixteen. That is all. Until I find something else to blather on about like...

What's with all the cobwebs this year?
Cheap Halloween Toys make awesome office decorations.
I think the Gremlins are planning to eat me.

Creepy Freebies - Muahaha

You may have noticed that I've been remiss in appearing here of late. Then again, you may not. I used to be an obsessive blogger. Obsessive (with a capital O and not just because it's starting the sentence). When Milo Fowler contacted me about joining his Creepy Freebies for October, I figured why not. May as well wake the blog up for a month. Who knows, I may even find I have some news to report like...

Aliens have abducted me because they loved the short story full of loony people that I set on the moon.

or... I've finally won the battle with the gremlins and now I am their queen rather than their Cinderella. Not that I have a fairy godmother and if I did, said fairy godmother would probably look like The Wolf Dude. I hope my fairy godmother would look like the wolf dude.

or...Oscar Wilde rose from the dead to stop my attempts at wit because he feared I might break the world. Then we sat in the gutter for a while and contemplated the stars.

Who knows?

Anyway, what is Creepy Freebies all about? Well it's probably obvious. Freebies that are creepy. Or creepyish (and no I'm not giving away The Wolf Dude - although he's not creepy at all; more cute in a terrifying, blood-dripping from his teeth way). Every Friday a bunch of bloggers will be listing links to free stories or giving things away for free that are creepy (I suppose). Still not giving away The Wolf Dude.

Today's players are... (drumroll please) Erin Cole (win an ebook of her latest story collection - yay!), Rhonda Parrish (freebie story and a million and one AWESOME freebies in a competition), Milo James Fowler (the king of Creepy Freebies will be raffling off some of his titles) and Stoney Setzer (awesome freebies still to be revealed - stay tuned).

Next week there will be another bunch of freebie-giving writers, some of them creepy (that's because it's my turn next week). Oh wait, I'm not really creepy. I hope.

This Foolish & Harmful Delight

Available for pre-order from Egaeus Press, The Transfiguration of Mr Punch, featuring work by me, Charles Schneider, and D.P. Watt.

Here be the contents of this marvellous book:

The Show That Must Never Die by Charles Schneider - A curious and rambling essay with certain grand, glorious and once-secret revelations.

Memorabilia by D.P. Watt - An evening’s entertainment for two players, incorporating a number of singular tales.

This Foolish & Harmful Delight by Cate Gardner – A grotesque novella set in hell and theatreland, concerning love, death, dismemberment and a mechanical heart.

The book is lithographically printed, 256 page sewn hardback with colour endpapers. It is priced £30 incl p&p and is limited to 300 copies. The first 150 copies include an exclusive postcard of Charles Schneider's deranged Punch oil painting "How do, Mr Toby". You can pre-order the book here.

Lakeside Circus - A New Speculative Fiction Magazine

The wonderful Dagan Books, publishers of anthologies such as 'Fish', 'Bibliotheca Fantastica', and 'In Situ', are starting a speculative fiction magazine for short fiction. 
Lakeside Fiction is open for submissions from today and they are accepting stories up to 2500 words. They are looking for Science Fiction (hard, soft, near-future etc), magic realism, urban fantasy, and apocalypse fiction. Payment is 1 cent per word with a minimum of $10. 
Give them a go.*
*This is an instruction to both me and to you.