A.C. Buchanan's Blog, page 8

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Review: Pride

When I was born, Yorkshire, the beginning of 1985, the strike was almost over. My mum remembers watching it on the news just hours after my birth. So I have no memory of world events before the Berlin wall came down, and no-one in my family was a miner, unless you count the great-uncle who was forced down the pits during World War II when he tried to sign up, because apparently being a miner was less funthan being sent to France to be shot at, or at least less heroic.

And yet, in another sense...

Bree’s Dinosaur

Very excited to announce thatBree’s Dinosaur won second place in the SpecFicNZ SHORTCUTS contest, and will also be published by Paper Road Press next year.

It’s a story about expectations, trauma, friendship, adjusting to a new environment… and a dinosaur, of course. It was one of those stories where you think you’re writing one thing, and half way through you realise that it’s really about something else. (And have to go back to the beginning. And make the final edits an hour before the deadl...

Accessing the Future

High on my list of upcoming-things-I’m-excited-about is a new anthology from The Future Firecalled “Accessing the Future”– a collection of stories that “interrogate issues of disability—along with the intersecting nodes of race, nationality, gender, sexuality, and class—in both the imagined physical and virtual spaces of the future”. My short story “Millie“, which explores issues around disability and impairment, choice and bodies, was published in a previous TFF anthology (Outlaw Bodies), so...

E is for Extracts

I know some people don’t like posting extracts of works in progress, and I understand that; my first drafts are often rough, clumsy, and sometimes a little emotionally close to home. On the other hand, though, a long project can stretch out for months or years without seeing the light of day, which is kind of a shame. So for day five – or letter E – here are a few extracts from what I’m working on at the moment.

FromBree’s Dinosaur:

My host sister takes a break from building her dinosaur to wat...

B is for Berlin

Most of these posts won’t be cities, but this one falls into place unavoidably. Random memories stretching back over a decade, one of only three cities I can claim to have loved. Traces of teenage freedom. Summer storms, sitting on a balcony as the heat builds up and shatters into rain.

When I was first there, there were still forests of cranes and segments of the wall amongst the streets. Each year, there were less. I walked for miles in sandals, fuelling myself with pastries from little shop...

A is for April

I’m joining a few friends and writerly people in blogging through the alphabet this month. I’m lining up posts – they’re meant to be short but I’m sure there’ll be a fewessays in there – on things which are important in my life, places, books, music, and a few random things besides.

I’m aware this is a slightly uninspired post (and one that definitely meets the “short” aspect), but it’s serving as my introduction. A is for April and everything else will follow.

But to stop this being too devoid...

What now?

Yesterday I handed in my MA thesis. I’ve been working on it for two years, but over the past couple of months it’s been particularly intense, to the exclusion of essentially everything but the day job. I began the acknowledgements page (which, ridiculously, was probably the hardest page to write) with this:

This journey has marked by discussions and words of encouragement too numerous to detail. My thanks go to all those who, in various ways, supported my exploration of the wider topic of disa...

Growth.

‘Growth’ was a challenging story for me to write. Oddly, in some ways, because it’s one of the more straightforward pieces I’ve written in recent years. Though some parts are emotionally close to home , it was not in the dark, and often pretty twisted, way I sometimes explore my psyche.

The call for submissions requested positive portrayals of QUILTBAG (that is, gender and sexually diverse) families. It turned out there was a lot to the opening line to Anna Karenina – functional families can b...

SJV Award nominations

It’s that time again. The Sir Julius Vogel Awards are open for nominations until 15th February. Anyone can nominate – it’s a simple matter of sending an email tosjv_awards@sffanz.org.nz. I’d be particularly happy with nominations for my novella, ‘This Other World’, which I think was my best published work this year, but here’s a full list should you feel inclined to read, and perhaps nominate. All these were written under the name Anna Caro – which I suggest you use for clarity’s sake.

I have...