Tansy Rayner Roberts's Blog, page 114

Friday Links is the Queen of Llamias

Aliette DeBodard talks about female protagonists in historical fantasy, and Kate Elliott responds by talking about female protagonists in fantasy-inspired-by-history. Between the two of them and the comments section there is some great, crunchy discussion.

Kate also appears on the Fantasy Cafe as part of their Women in SFF Month with a marvellous essay about learning that you don’t have to despise being a girl in order to play with the cool toys.

Kirstyn McDermott provides a counterpoint to the ‘women on urban fantasy book covers’ discussion by pointing out an example of getting it right. She is also interviewed by Dr Lisa & Dr Angela with Oops Your Psychosis is Showing. Later (Kirstyn is on FIRE this week!) she blogs about the consequences of being a girl, and the way we are socialised to view the world.

A lovely essay on the Mary Sue talks about having a four year old daughter who loves superheroes. I think you all know how much this resonates with me!

Also on the Mary Sue I learned about the woman who was laughed out of rooms by potential investors who didn’t see that her idea about consolidating babysitting services was a worthwhile business venture. Surprise, she’s now mega successful!

Small Beer Press answer the question of why print on demand isn’t right for them and their publishing model.

Cheryl Morgan talks about Women in Comics (Japanese Edition) and how the gender issues we have with the comics industry in the western world are funnily enough not the same at ALL in Japan.

Jo Walton looks at the issue of book series and how hard it is to review or consider them individually, and indeed the different ways in which continuing series work for readers, with particular reference to CJ Cherryh.

And finally, because it’s not a Friday Links post without Sarah Rees Brennan, check out her Thursday Sleuth post about the awesome Robin Scherbatsky from How I Met Your Mother, who defies gender roles at every turn and is definitely NOT going to be the mother. Hooray!

Which is of course an excuse to rewatch Robin’s embarrassing past…

Epilogue Revealed

My first short story sold this year will be appearing in Epilogue, a new anthology edited by Tehani Wessely for FableCroft Publishing (now a TASMANIAN small press, people!). It will be released at Continuum, as if I needed another reason to attend the convention. The elegant cover is by Amanda Rainey, who continues to make us all look good!

You can pre-order it (at a super low price) here on the Fablecroft site.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

“A memory trapped in light” by Joanne Anderton

“Time and tide” by Lyn Battersby

“Fireflies” by Steve Cameron

“Sleeping Beauty” by Thoraiya Dyer

“The Fletcher Test” by Dirk Flinthart

“Ghosts” by Stephanie Gunn

“Sleepers” by Kaia Landelius

“Solitary” by Dave Luckett

“Cold comfort” by David McDonald

“The Mornington Ride” by Jason Nahrung

“What books survive” by Tansy Rayner Roberts

“The last good town” by Elizabeth Tan

Elsewhere on the Internet: Queer Themes and Crossovers

The internet is a wide and expansive jungle and I am once again popping up in unexpected places!



Julia Rios interviewed me for the Outer Alliance Podcast – it is a long, sprawling conversation taking in the secret history of Galactic Suburbia, Australian geography and how that relates to the spec fic scene here, and (eventually) the queer themes in my work, especially the Creature Court trilogy and the collection Love and Romanpunk. Talking to Julia was so much fun! I just want to reach into my laptop and bring her to Australia for a holiday with all her favourite podcasting peeps.

Julia tells it like it is. The geographic tragedy that is Galactic Suburbia.

Meanwhile, in another part of pixel-space, I get to appear on my first MindMeld! The theme for this one is what crossovers we would most like to see, and it’s full of fun & creative ideas. I get bonus points for not mentioning to them that my favourite ever wacky real life crossover was the fanfic I read about how Xander from Buffy hooks up with Batman and hijinks ensue, right? Right??

Norma Shortlist!

Very excited to announce that this year’s Norma K Hemming Award for race, gender, sexuality, class and disability in Australian speculative fiction (or as we refer to it on Galactic Suburbia, the NORMA) has released its shortlist, and I am on it along with some very distinguished company. Hooray! The winner will be announced at Continuum in June – luckily I’m already going.

The Shattered City, I have to say, has so far received such a surprising amount of attention considering the conventional wisdom (heh) about middle books of trilogies. *pats little book’s head* I am delighted.

Black Glass

novel by Meg Mundell

published by Scribe Publications (Brunswick VIC)

Bluegrass Symphony

collection by Lisa L Hannett

published by Ticonderoga Publications (Perth, WA)

The Devil’s Diadem

novel by Sara Douglass (1957 – 2011)

published by HarperCollins

Eona

novel by Alison Goodman

published by HarperCollins

Hindsight

novel by A A Bell

published by HarperCollins

Nightsiders

collection by Sue Isle

published by Twelfth Planet Press (Perth, WA)

Road To The Soul

novel by Kim Falconer

published by HarperCollins

The Shattered City

novel by Tansy Rayner Roberts

published by HarperCollins

Yellowcake Springs

novel by Guy Salvidge

published by Interactive Publications Treetop (Brisbane, QLD)

Super Best Friends Forever #3

Man, I love this show.

Friday Links has Great Role Models

Twelfth Planet Press is now 5 years old, and wow how far she’s come!

Alisa muses on the last five years here, and also talks about how she can find positive female role models in trashy reality TV shows.

Speaking of role models, I wrote a Friday Hoyden post for Hoyden About Town, about: who else? Joanna Russ!

Kirstyn McDermott talks about the false equivalence of male and female representation on book covers, as beautifully illustrated by Jim C Hines.

Ben Peek heralds the new Ditmar ballot as ammunition in his ongoing secret rivalry against Bill Wright. Best Ditmar response so far!

Thoraiya Dyer, who has been holding out against social media for a long time, has decided to run a blog calling attention to the women making fan art in the SF community, in the hopes of bringing some diversity to next year’s Hugo ballot. It’s a work in progress, but such an important idea, keep an eye on it!

Cheryl Morgan talks about Tor going DRM-free with its ebooks.



Lynne Murray on Body Impolitic talks about the power of words, and the idea that everyday magic, for good and ill, can be performed on people through insults, jokes and compliments. People are not friends if they are bringing you down with what they say to you!

Grant Watson wants you to write or make art for his fanzine!

M.K. Hobson talks about how to run a spiritually successful Kickstarter.

Next time you hear people talking about how boys don’t want to or aren’t capable of identifying with a female character in an action series, point them at this response to the Legend of Korra series. Turns out boys like female heroes just FINE.

Smart Bitches Trashy Books critiques the media portrayal of the Romantic Times conference and how news reports can be truthful without being accurate. Reminds me a lot of media portrayal of SF cons!

Ancient Rome theme park to be built near modern Rome. I WANT THIS THING TO EXIST!!!

I was delighted that so many people knew that this great Batwoman/Batgirl comic was something I desperately needed to read. Now you do too!

Domesticating the Doctor Video

Back in March, I started writing a series of essays for the Doctor Her blog on the topic of Domesticating the Doctor. Now my fellow Doctor Her blogger Ritch (of the RitchandSpace YouTube channel) is making video versions of my essays.

You can find the original text of “Domesticating the Doctor I: Cocoa, Test-tubes and the Classic Years” here at Doctor Her.

Ditmar Shortlist

I see that Sean the Blogonaut scooped me on this one by dint of being awake past midnight on a school night. That’s dedication for you! But now I’m up stupidly early (by accident) and most of the people I want to squee with are still asleep!

So here it is. Um. UM. Let’s just say I’m not sure I’m going to be able to discuss this one sensibly on Galactic Suburbia. (Which of course won’t actually stop me).

Congrats to everyone on the ballot, with some especial squeeage for Jo Anderton who is represented by her debut novel. Thank you everyone who nominated & all the people doing the work to produce this ballot. I am staring at it with giant anime eyes. Just so you know.

The Ditmar subcommittee are pleased to announce the ballot for the Australian SF (“Ditmar”) Award for 2012. Voting is now open, and will remain open for at least 30 days. [Follow the link for voting info]

The 2012 ballot is as follows:

Best Novel

* The Shattered City (Creature Court 2), Tansy Rayner Roberts (HarperCollins)

* Burn Bright, Marianne de Pierres (Random House Australia)

* Mistification, Kaaron Warren (Angry Robot Books)

* The Courier’s New Bicycle, Kim Westwood (HarperCollins)

* Debris (The Veiled Worlds 1), Jo Anderton (Angry Robot Books)

Best Novella or Novelette

* “The Sleeping and the Dead”, Cat Sparks, in Ishtar (Gilgamesh Press)

* “Above”, Stephanie Campisi, in Above/Below (Twelfth Planet Press)

* “The Past is a Bridge Best Left Burnt”, Paul Haines, in The Last Days of Kali Yuga (Brimstone Press)

* “And the Dead Shall Outnumber the Living”, Deborah Biancotti, in Ishtar (Gilgamesh Press)

* “Julia Agrippina’s Secret Family Bestiary”, Tansy Rayner Roberts, in Love and Romanpunk (Twelfth Planet Press)

* “Below”, Ben Peek, in Above/Below (Twelfth Planet Press)

Best Short Story

* “Breaking the Ice”, Thoraiya Dyer, in Cosmos 37

* “Alchemy”, Lucy Sussex, in Thief of Lives (Twelfth Planet Press)

* “The Last Gig of Jimmy Rucker”, Martin Livings and Talie Helene, in More Scary Kisses (Ticonderoga Publications)

* “All You Can Do Is Breathe”, Kaaron Warren, in Blood and Other Cravings (Tor)

* “Bad Power”, Deborah Biancotti, in Bad Power (Twelfth Planet Press)

* “The Patrician”, Tansy Rayner Roberts, in Love and Romanpunk (Twelfth Planet Press)

Best Collected Work

* The Last Days of Kali Yuga by Paul Haines, edited by Angela Challis (Brimstone Press)

* Nightsiders by Sue Isle, edited by Alisa Krasnostein (Twelfth Planet Press)

* Bad Power by Deborah Biancotti, edited by Alisa Krasnostein (Twelfth Planet Press)

* Love and Romanpunk by Tansy Rayner Roberts, edited by Alisa Krasnostein (Twelfth Planet Press)

* Ishtar, edited by Amanda Pillar and K. V. Taylor (Gilgamesh Press)

Best Artwork

* “Finishing School”, Kathleen Jennings, in Steampunk!: An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories (Candlewick Press)

* Cover art, Kathleen Jennings, for The Freedom Maze (Small Beer Press)

Best Fan Writer

* Tansy Rayner Roberts, for body of work including reviews in Australian Speculative Fiction in Focus! and Not If You Were The Last Short Story On Earth

* Alexandra Pierce, for body of work including reviews in Australian Speculative Fiction in Focus!, Not If You Were The Last Short Story On Earth, and Randomly Yours, Alex

* Robin Pen, for “The Ballad of the Unrequited Ditmar”

* Sean Wright, for body of work including “Authors and Social Media” series in Adventures of a Bookonaut

* Bruce Gillespie, for body of work including “The Golden Age of Fanzines is Now”, and SF Commentary 81 & 82

Best Fan Artist

* Rebecca Ing, for work in Scape

* Lisa Rye, for “Steampunk Portal” series

* Dick Jenssen, for body of work including work in IRS, Steam Engine Time, SF Commentary and Scratchpad

* Kathleen Jennings, for work in Errantry (tanaudel.wordpress.com) including “The Dalek Game”

* Rhianna Williams, for work in Nullas Anxietas Convention Programme Book

Best Fan Publication in Any Medium

* SF Commentary, edited by Bruce Gillespie

* The Writer and the Critic, Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond

* The Coode Street Podcast, Jonathan Strahan and Gary K. Wolfe

* Galactic Chat, Alisa Krasnostein, Tansy Rayner Roberts and Sean Wright

* Galactic Suburbia, Alisa Krasnostein, Tansy Rayner Roberts, and Alex Pierce

Best New Talent

* Steve Cameron

* Alan Baxter

* Joanne Anderton

William Atheling Jr Award for Criticism or Review

* Liz Grzyb and Talie Helene, for “2010: The Year in Review”, in The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2010 (Ticonderoga Publications)

* Damien Broderick and Van Ikin, for editing Warriors of the Tao: The Best of Science Fiction: A Review of Speculative Literature (Borgo Press)

* David McDonald, Tansy Rayner Roberts and Tehani Wessely for “Reviewing New Who” series, in A Conversational Life

* Alexandra Pierce and Tehani Wessely, for reviews of Vorkosigan Saga, in Randomly Yours, Alex

* Russell Blackford, for “Currently reading: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke”, in Metamagician and the Hellfire Club

How I Write (Right Now)

Nicole Murphy has a regular series up on her blog, interviewing writers about their habits and their processes. I am her star of the week, talking about my habits here, and my processes here.

It’s a while since I have checked in with myself about what I’m doing and how I do it, so it was kind of fascinating to me to roll out these answers.

“I usually have one primary and a couple of secondary projects. This is the first year in a very long time I have allowed myself to have multiple projects, none of which are headline acts. I can write half a chapter of a novel, or 200 words each across 5 short stories if I want. Later in the year, as my projects consolidate, I intend to be a bit firmer about prioritising certain novels, but right now I’m letting myself write quite freely which is – terrifying and enchanting at the same time.”

I knew I was doing something completely different this year, but it hadn’t sunk in quite how much I have changed the way I work for 2012. It could be scary, except that I’ve been doing this long enough to know that my methods are always fluid, always changing. What works for me now is not necessarily what will work even one book from now, let alone three.

The big thing looming in my life is that I have less than two years now before Jemima starts school, though her first year is likely to be more disruptive than constructive to my writing, as I’d be exchanging 2 daycare days of 8:30 am to 5:00 pm for 2 school days of 8:30 pm to 2:30 pm (the actual time available to me, not necessarily school hours) plus one extra of I think 8:30am to about 12-1pm, so I won’t be gaining net hours as such.

But the year after that… day after day of glorious empty house!

Not that I want to wish away her early childhood or anything, but it will definitely be the end of one era and the dawn of a greater productivity for me. That’s the point at which I will have to address things like ergonomics which I hand-wavy about now because I never get to spend more than an hour working on anything.

Yes, I should be writing. Instead, I am blogging. This is how I write.

The Getting of Wisdom

The Getting of Wisdom by Henry Handel Richardson (one of the pantheon of female authors who took a male name to publish during that period of literary enlightenment known as the olden days) is one of those novels that I have heard mentioned here and there, but given my general allergy to Australian classics, I have not pursued it before now. But more recently, as I’ve been looking with greater interest at the history of women writers (or as I say on Pinterest, Lady Novelists) I became intrigued by Richardson.

I then realised that the movie I thought I had watched as a kid based on this book was actually My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin. Whoops! I am WAY better on the history of feminist science fiction novelists, I promise.

Anyway, in my research I saw reference to the fact that The Getting of Wisdom, as well as having that dreadful Australian Classic label, was a boarding school story. And I LOVE boarding school stories with a fiery passion. Apparently there were queer themes too, and there I was, ordering the book from the library like a boss.

Possibly it’s time to start reassessing what the ‘Australian Classic’ title means to me, or maybe it’s the benefit of reading as an adult rather than a child, but where has this book been all my life? Why was it not given to me with a ‘you’ve read Anne of Green Gables, Little Women, What Katy Did and the Little House on the Prairie books, plus all the Enid Blyton boarding school stories, and this is basically a cranky bitch version of all those books, set in Melbourne.’

Why do people not point twelve year olds towards the cranky bitch at boarding school books?

Laura is a great character, largely because she is flawed and opinionated and struggling, but there isn’t especially a moral message in the story – the wisdom she gains is more about how to figure life out and not make an arse of yourself in public, rather than becoming humble and prudent and KatyDidlike after Learning a Great Lesson. More than anything it reminds me of Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love, certainly in the portrayal of Laura as a cross, unsettled young girl. I was also reminded of Colleen McCullough’s portrayal of the young Servilia – it’s so rare to find young female characters in fiction who are angry, and selfish, as still allowed to be the protagonist.

Laura’s trials and tribulations make an interesting counter-narrative to the jolly hockeysticks type of boarding school story I am more used to. It’s the social details that made the story so compelling to me, and the various lively characters, detailed with such humour and sharpness. For the most part, the story is full of women, such a wide variety of women and young girls, with only a few rather hapless males trailing in and out when necessary. I found Laura’s attempts at friendship, romance and academic success quite fascinating in that the raw awkwardness of simply not knowing how the world works is so familiar from when I was young – so many heroines of YA fiction these days are dazzlingly confident in themselves, which makes them cool role models and great fun to read, but The Getting of Wisdom does a great job of conveying the angst and terror of saying the wrong thing or looking stupid in public, which I think is something that has largely fallen out of fashion in contemporary teen fiction.

I will be interested to read more of Henry Handel Richardson’s work, as her humour and social detail makes even an uneventful dinner party race along entertainingly, and her tone reminds me a lot of John Galsworthy, one of my favourite writers of all time. Like Soames Forsyte, Laura is an unpleasant creature, but so wittily told that I can’t help but want things to turn out well for her.

Reviewed as part of the Australian Women Writers 2012 National Year of Reading Challenge

Tansy’s Australian Women Writer’s 2012 Reading Challenge.

1. Eona by Alison Goodman (fantasy)

2. Cooking the Books by Kerry Greenwood (contemporary crime)

3. Bad Power by Deborah Biancotti (spec fic, superhero, short story collection)

4. The Opposite of Life, by Narrelle Harris (horror, vampire, comedy)

5. Madigan Mine, by Kirstyn McDermott (horror, contemporary)

Opposite of Life & Madigan Mine reviewed at Galactic Suburbia podcast episode 55

6. Angel Arias, by Marianne De Pierres (YA fantasy, vampire, slightly science fictional)

7. The Getting of Wisdom, by Henry Handel Richardon (AUSTRALIAN CLASSIC, literature, boarding school story)