Liz Williams's Blog, page 22

Coming up...

M and I start a creative writing summer school tomorrow at our local college - it runs for 2 weeks, and will see us sharing teaching sessions between us. I have another writing gig which came up at the end of last week, and which I'm excited about: this will be mentioned at greater length in the next couple of days. We're doing some social stuff over the next few weeks, which is also going to be good - looking forward to seeing some of the f-list!

I am also delighted with the new book - several of you have ordered copies in the spring sale, and I will be making sure that these go out to everyone soon. You should be able to order copies via Newcon's website:

http://newconpress.co.uk/

Newcon Press and Glass of Shadow launch

We came up to London on Friday - annafdd is very kindly putting us up. Headed out to Queen's Park and a rather good gastro pub called the Alice house, which serves cocktails in teapots (we stuck to the wheat beer). Yesterday, we caught the bus into town, heading past a lot of T's childhood haunts in Maida Vale and around Marble Arch, arriving early in Holborn. We wandered around for a bit, looked at some remarkably overpriced jewellery in Hatton Garden and stumbled over a magic shop - the other sort of magic - which has apparently been there for 54 years. I had a long conversation with them, mainly about my dad and their upcoming conjuring convention.

Then we headed to the Cittie of Yorke, encountering messrs Whates and Watson en route. What a spectacular pub it is, with a high beamed ceiling and vast barrels. The room where we held the launch is like a gentleman's club - panelled, with leather sofas. Later, the long main bar became filled with a collection of lawyers, Guardsmen (with spurs) and subsequently the Met, lots of them, and all rather grim, who hauled out a number of disreputable blokes who had been in a fight down the road, run into the pub and hidden in the toilets (when I mentioned this to a woman at the launch, she said "What are they - 6?")

Ian thinks that about 80 people came. It was great to catch up with everyone, and to see Tanith, John, Anne S and co, and to meet Storm Constantine, who did the layout on my short story collection. She was one of the first people to publish me, over a decade ago, in Visionary Tongue, which was in hard copy then. Also great to see Peter Lavery, my now-retired editor at Macmillan. Too many people to mention by name, but it was lovely to see you all.

We left the pub about 7 and headed into Bloomsbury, splitting up in order to eat. Trevor and I ended up in Kimchee, which is a big Korean place. I had bibimbap, which I like but which means that the word gets stuck in my head ("Bibimbap! Bibimbap"). I'm sure this is very childish but some words just do that. Then we headed back to Kilburn and are now winding gently into Sunday: I think a trip to the local Asian supermarkets is called for before we head out.

I'd like to thank Ian Whates for organising this. It wasn't just my launch, but the 5th anniversary of Newcon Press. In the current climate, this is one hell of an achievement and Ian deserves to be congratulated for it. I would also like to say a huge thank you to Anne Sudworth for the cover, Storm and Andy Bigwood for other formatting and of course, to Tanith for her introduction. I don't wish to gush, but her comments have made me very reflective: I have admired her work since I was a teenager, and like so many other people in the professional SF field, she has been unfailingly supportive of me since I started out (we did not know one another). At the events at which she appears, I watch Tanith giving her time and her support to newer writers, and she is exceptionally generous with both.

Heads-up for the new short story subs!

The first two short story subs went out this morning (the Chen instalment will be with you in August). I hope you enjoy the new fic, and please do let me know if you have signed up, but have NOT had your stories - I'm currently involved in a 'hunt the email' saga with a poor friend whose emails are not reaching me, and I want to double check that everyone has had the stories that they've paid for. So if you haven't, please drop me a line and I will re-send immediately.

Writing

Right, back to business! Many thanks to everyone who has signed up for the new short story sub and the prequel Chen novel. I've now written the first two short stories in the Mondhile series and the Isis Dane series, and these will be going out to you in the next day or so. Hope you enjoy them! Those of you who have signed up for Chen will have to wait a little bit longer, but the first month's instalment should be with you by August 1st.

It's been really good to get back to all of these worlds and I've been having fun writing them - so thank you for giving me the opportunity. There are still subs available but I have been very pleased by the take-up.

Someone has asked me if the previous sub of 12 stories is still available, and indeed, it is. Email me for details at: mevennen@hotmail.com

For those of you who ordered tarot readings in the spring sale, I'll be doing the next round of these next week, and I am also getting on with commission stories, too. Those take a little longer, but I hope the results will be worth it!

mevennen @ 2011-07-02T09:55:00

This was in response to Tricia Sullivan's cogent and thoughtful post this morning on the 'women in SF' issue, which comes around with monotonous regularity every year like some seasonal storm and which, this summer, has homed in on Ian Whates.

Who will be launching my new short story collection next weekend, by the way //end of commercial break.//

I have had my own say on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/notes/liz-williams/aaaand-shes-off/244033265623140). For FB statisticians, 32 people 'liked' this, of whom 20 were women, and of those, I estimate that slightly over half are professionally involved in the publishing industry and known to me as such. Tiny sample, but I've saved you from counting so there we go.

Anyway.

I don't support the rather ad hominem attacks that have been made against Ian, and I've long since grown tired of following any party line.

I don't know whether I should say this or not, but I have been somewhat dismayed by a couple of conversations in which people seem to think that because I was on the Clarke's jury (i.e. the sole woman among several men), this is somehow the reason why Tricia's own excellent novel and Lauren's book were on the shortlist, and why Lauren won. I don't think it is appropriate to say too much about the selection process, but I can say that it was remarkably amicable and united. The idea that I've spent the last year battling against the opinions of Teh Evil Wimmin-Denying Blokes just isn't on. It was the same when I was on the Interzone editorial board.

I don't know what the percentage of the Clarke's list was in terms of gender balance. I didn't count it up. I did, obviously, notice whether the author was female or male and of both genders, some of the subs were - IMO - dire, some were average, and some were outstanding. This is what you'd expect.

I don't know whether my experience has been atypical or what. I don't actually think that it has. Most of my commissioning editors for novels were female, with the exception of the delightful Peter Lavery and the Nightshade team. With the exception of the latter in the later stages, I had universally good experiences with my editors (and with Marty Halpern who edited the Chen novels and was also great to work with. NS, as we know, Bob, had problems which had nothing to do, IMO, with the gender issue).

A large percentage of the book editors in SF in this country are female. Their hands are tied by the accounts depts of publishers: I don't think that it's because they want to fail to commission other women - on the contrary. It's a numbers game, of which many male authors are also falling foul (in SF - not, e.g., in urban fantasy where women do seem to be on strong ground). I think it is an issue with SF selling at all, no matter who writes it.

At magazine level, I have had a lot of support from a whole range of people - particularly Gardner Dozois, Sheila Williams, David Pringle, Shawna McC (who is my agent but who does not always take what I write for RoF) and others. Anthology invites almost always come from men - I think I've had one invite from a female editor in recent years.

I'm not in favour of quotas. I think N K Jemisin has a very salient point with OMG! Evil women are oppressing me! - for reasons of which I hope, by now, we are all conscious (guys, you've only had the last 12,000 years to make your point). But in no way on God's Earth am I going to favour a book or a story that isn't, in my opinion, as good as another book or story just because a woman wrote it. Nor am I in favour of being told what to think by a handful of other feminists who have more or less sweetly and condescendingly told me that when I have had my consciousness raised, and belong to a more advanced cultural mindset (i.e. American) then I'll understand that I'm in denial/expressing an unconscious bias/whatever. They can fuck right off. I react badly to being patronised, no matter which gender it comes from, and I watch attempts to shut down debate with dismay.

In da house

We have moved a couple of thousand books in the last 2 days and now have something that resembles a functioning household (especially since P appeared yesterday with a mower and sorted out the orchard, which it is now possible to walk in without a pith helmet and a machete). Progress on some fronts is being made and now it is time to get back to the writing - many thanks to those of you who have signed up for the next short story sub (I will be emailing everyone personally as soon as things settle down). I'm making good progress on the first 2 shorts and it's good to get back into the world of Ghost Sister.

The Glastonbury Festival has been and gone - I say this with some relief. Generally, we like the festival although we don't attend it - it puts the place even more on the map, and it's fun to have musicians wandering around town (U2 and the Kaiser Chiefs this year). I like watching bits of it on the box. The downside is the disruption on the roads and the emptying effect that the festival has on the town itself - for those who are unfamiliar with our locality, the rock festival is actually 4 miles away (this is why all the locals call it Pilton, since that's the village it is in).

NEW SHORT STORY SUBSCRIPTION - REPOST!

Many thanks to those of you who have already signed up, and to those who have boosted the signal for me - this is always appreciated and it does make a difference. For those of you who haven't visited for a while, the short story sub is going to be repeated for this coming year but it is going to be a little different. Morrigan Books will be bringing out the final (for now) instalment in the Chen chronicles, MORNINGSTAR, in the next year or so, but for some time now I have been planning to do a prequel. This will be the story of how Chen and Inari met, and quite a bit about Zhu Irzh's time in the Hell Vice Squad which, as those of you who have just had the latest story will know, is somewhat different from its earthly counterpart...


So instead of a Chen short story, you'll be getting a section of a Chen novel, and instead of getting it every three months, you'll be getting it every month instead. Confused? You will be, because in addition to this, there are 2 more short story sets:

MONDHILE: I will be writing 4 short stories (every 3 months) set in the world of GHOST SISTER, DARKLAND and BLOODMIND.

What will I be getting?: feral people, dangerous landscapes, romance, a far-future post-tech society and possibly a couple of battles at sea.

ISIS DANE: (Also 4 stories, every quarter) I've done a couple of short stories in this series already - it's the same magical Albion as the Cygne novels, and set around the same time, so Cygne may well show up. Isis is a water magician, dealing with rivers and river spirits.

What will I be getting?: water magic, underground rivers, demented magicians, sinister faeries, dangerous royalty and a determined heroine.

If you have been enjoying the Garnet Park series, don't despair, because I'll be doing a Christmas special which ties in some of the story so far. I'll announce this a little later in the year, with the opportunity to sign up for it.

Worldsoul: I will also be writing a package of 3 short stories set in the Liminality - this is the world in which Worldsoul, my new trilogy with Prime takes place. These will be ready for Christmas as well.

It's exactly the same deal as before, with no rise in price. I'm doing a limited run of 100, for each story.

Cost: £5/$8 per story. If you sign up for 4 (one series) over the course of a year, I'll call it £18/$30.

The whole deal (12 short stories): £50/ - depending on the USD rate, this is from $78 to $90.

You can do it through Paypal, below.

Stories will be sent as a Word attachment or a PDF - let me know which is best for you.
Interested?: email me on: mevennen(at)hotmail.com.





Short Stories
A Thousand Li £18.00
Mondhile £18.00
Isis Dane £18.00
All 3 series £50.00
Worldsoul pack of 3 £12.00

Applause, NYC

I'm obviously not a US citizen, but congrats to NYC for the passing of the Marriage Equality act. I have never seen why adults should not be able to marry whom they choose, and I utterly fail to see why my own heterosexual relationship should somehow be undermined by the occult force of a complete stranger's wedding vows. Anyway, I've always regarded New York as a magnificently take-no-prisoners sort of place, and my visits there have confirmed my opinion that it's a very tolerant one, as well. I am optimistic enough to think that in a few hundred years time, people will be looking back on this sort of development with a bemused wonder that it wasn't always a human right.

Bloomsbury and AOS

Up to London on Monday for a meeting with the mentoring organisation whom I work for. We had lunch at The Booking Office at St Pancras which, somewhat confusingly, is a brasserie (and my God, central London restaurant prices...! - although you can obviously eat much more cheaply on the concourse). Once our meeting was finished, I nipped into the British Library to see the new SF exhibition, which is a lot of fun - they have some very good exhibitions in that downstairs section. I then walked down to Bloomsbury and visited Treadwells' new, larger shop - great to see everyone - and had an early dinner in Museum Street before catching the bus home.

Treadwells furnished me with Phil Baker's new bio of Austin Osman Spare, a fascinating character whom the Cuming Museum in Southwark ran a very good exhibition on last year. I gather there's a new documentary coming out soon, as the London literati cotton on to what ceremonial magicians have known for years - that someone of remarkable artistic calibre was living in obscurity for decades in Borough. Unlike his contemporary Augustus John, Spare could not bring himself to paint socialites and the wealthy - an early brush with his own celebrity in his teenage years seems to have put him off - and he painted people in pubs and the local market women instead, and lived with a horde of cats made homeless by the Blitz. Alan Moore, in his excellent introduction to Baker's equally excellent bio, compares him to that 'other south London angel-headed nut-job, William Blake,' and I would agree.

Beyond speech

People possibly think I make stuff up. I never do. If anything, I downplay it. La M and Jaine and other folk will testify to this. I am just saying.

That being out of the way, some explanation: things occasionally get broken in the shop, It happens. When it happens, we can either throw it out (a waste), or find something else to do with it, and the 'something else' usually involves giving it to the local animal sanctuary. They repair the broken stock, sell it in a jumble sale, and thus benefit animals.

Today, Sanctuary Woman comes to pick up some stuff.

Me: How are you guys getting on?

SW: OK! Except we had a baby pheasant at the weekend, who died. And a duck who is at the vet.

Me: Oh no - what's up with the duck?

SW: Its willy won't go back in.

Me: !!!

SW: [impervious to shock] no, his willy has got stuck and we can't get it back in.

Me: [finding power of speech] I had no idea that could happen to ducks. I didn't even know they had them. I thought they had a kind of slot.

SW: It happens a lot and the last time it happened, it dried up and fell off.

Me: [unable to stop myself] Good thing that doesn't happen to men, eh?

SW: [slightly startled] Um, I suppose so!

Trevor now tells me that his conversation with SW, who is elderly and very sincere, involved her attempts to replace the rogue avian dick - "we found some grease, but then suddenly there was stuff all over my hand." Nooooooooooooooooo!