Tansy Rayner Roberts's Blog, page 117

Friday Links Can't Do It Alone

I empathised deeply with this post about the solitary existence of writers and the way we need our people around us to keep us sane, and professional.

As part of the ongoing excellent advocacy work coming out of the #AWW challenge, here's a list of Australian women writers of Asian heritage to help you include some diversity in your choices.

The Australian government is running an online survey about our opinions on gay marriage. So far the interim response is pretty depressing (running at only a bit over 30% saying YES GAY MARRIAGE) but it's not based on very many people's opinions. So if you're Australian, go, take five minutes and register your own thoughts on the issue.

Alisa Krasnostein, Cheryl Morgan, Lynne M Thomas and many other smart people share their opinions on awards in the latest SF Mind Meld.

One of my favourite Tor.com posts this week – Redskirts looks at some of the portrayals of women among the traditional 'redshirt' junior-Starfleet-person-of-the-week tradition in the original Star Trek.

The new Doctor Who companion has been announced and we still know very little about her – Ritch Ludlow asks some questions about fan response to Amy Pond and considers what kind of standards might be applied to this new character.

Oooh, another great one from Tor.com! Comic artist Faith Erin Hicks whose work I really enjoyed on 'Friends With Boys' has drawn a personal response to The Hunger Games as a popular story, drawing upon her family experience (as the daughter of a Vietnam veteran). I love to see the comics form used to tell powerful memoir and this brief piece is very compelling.

Peter Ball flagged this interesting article about how Iceland as a country has been using social media to aid in economic recovery. I particularly love their Tumblr "Iceland wants to be your friend."

Another brilliant & funny parody-read-along post by Sarah Rees Brennan on gothic novels, this time Greygallows by Barbara Michaels.

One that got accidentally left off last week's link post: Seanan McGuire on Fanfic

Ben Peek muses on worldbuilding, and a critical approach to fantasy traditions, especially when it comes to race.

Also on my iPod I have really enjoyed a couple of great podcasts lately: Shaun Tan guests on (the horribly named) Shooting the Poo, and is fascinating to listen to, especially talking frankly about the experience of being an animator at the Oscars last year. The latest Writer and the Critic also has a guest, and if you've never had the opportunity to see Mondy and Rob Shearman giving each other hell as the mates they are then this is the podcast for you.

I've been meaning to write a post about the importance of women's history and why history is actually supremely important and relevant to people's lives, inspired by this kickass women's suffrage vid first brought to my attention by Sean the Blogonaut, but I'm obviously not going to get it done, so have the vid. It is most excellent.

Elsewhere on the Internet: Writing Advice & Companion Speculation.

Over at Lisa Hannett's blog, I have joined in with her Tuesday Therapy series of advice for writers.

And I was so excited to find out that the BBC will be shortly announcing the new companion that I asked readers of the Doctor Her blog to speculate (or wish) about what kind of companion we're going to get.

Aurealis Award Goodness

I am delighted to see that The Shattered City has been shortlisted for Best Fantasy Novel in the Aurealis Awards – and that Love and Romanpunk and "The Patrician" have also been shortlisted for Best Collection & Best YA Short Story, respectively.

Congratulations to all the nominees! I am honoured to be in the company of so many excellent friends & colleagues. I'm planning to be at the ceremony – had so much fun last time. Hope to see many of you there for our night of nights! (ooh, clothes shopping!)

Winners of the 2011 Aurealis Awards and the Peter McNamara Convenors' Award for Excellence will be announced at the Aurealis Awards ceremony, on the evening of Saturday 12 May at the Independent Theatre, North Sydney. Details of the evening and a link to the online booking website are available at www.aurealisawards.org

An after party will be held at Rydges, North Sydney, following the awards presentations. Accommodation is available at Rydges for $149 (room only) or $174 (including full buffet breakfast). To take advantage of these rates please use the code 'Aurealis' when making your booking.

For further information about the awards please contact the convenors at convenors@aurealisawards.com

The 2011 Aurealis Awards are sponsored by HarperVoyager and Cosmos Magazine and proudly supported by Galaxy Bookshop.

If You Like It Then You Shoulda Put a Pin On It

So, Pinterest.

I have been, like many people, looking at this latest social media phenomenon from the outside in, and as I learned with Twitter and Tumblr, these things don't always make a lot of sense until you jump in to see what the water feels like.

In fact, along with the media flurries about how Pinterest SHOCK has lots of women and SHOCK is the new big internet traffic light system, one of the most common comments I've seen about it has been "OMG I so don't want to know what Pinterest is, one more social media is going to break me."

Which, fair enough.

So I didn't know much, going in, about it apart from, well, it's about arranging pictures. And there's a remarkably fan-lite community (cos, as Kaia remarked to me, they're all still on Tumblr). I asked the universe to put the Galactic Suburbia books on a pinboard last week, and our listener Celia leaped into action, showing if nothing else that if the book selling industry really is going down the tubes, it's not Galactic Suburbia's fault.

After that, I had the taste for it! So I signed up myself.

My initial interest, as with most social media, was how I could use it to promote my projects (though actually Twitter only wormed its way into my heart because of live-tweeted Arsenal games, and I went to Tumblr mostly because my friends Kaia & Millie did and it was the only way to maintain communications with them but let's pretend it's all about business stuff!).

I did experiment with a bit of that – putting together a Creature Court board, for instance, as promoting those books is kind of a big focus for me right now, and a board linking to all the Doctor Who posts I have written across various blogs. And I couldn't resist putting together all the Twelve Planets book covers so far, and an assortment of my own quilting projects. But then I got a bit creatively distracted…

Because, as it turns out, Pinterest has a fabulous use for authors which has nothing to do with social media or promotion. Design scrapbooks! Or creative collages. Or whatever. I have always yearned a bit for the Jenny Crusie process of creating a formal design scrapbook of a novel before you write it – casting your characters, putting key visuals together, and so on. It always sounded so fascinating when she did it, and yet I never quite found the time (or, you know, put the time aside) to do such a thing. There was an indulgence about it, I think, that part of me felt I couldn't justify. Don't ask me how my mind works!

So yes, from The Creature Court I went on to a bunch of other projects in various stages of being written – such as my Verona book, Nancy Napoleon, and this other thing I'm not quite supposed to talk about yet.

And I am COMPLETELY in love with this process. I'm gonna be pinning every story or novel I write to the wall for the forseeable future. There's something so charming about being able to assemble a bunch of pictures to sum up a mode or a setting or a character. And sure, I could do it in Scrivener or a folder on my desktop, but this is the 21st century, where we show our workings (and knickers) in public, and these are mine!

Another big difference between this and other social media is that there's less of a focus on real time participation – unlike a dead blog or a Tumblr/Twitter account that hasn't been used for ages, Pinterest feels very much like something you can pick up and put down at your leisure, without being locked into a daily or weekly commitment.

There's some problematic stuff about Pinterest, I'll admit, as has been pointed out to me – and I thought was particularly well articulated here. As with all social media, there are issues to do with copyright and the ownership of images, and indeed whether Pinterest itself holds too much ownership over your ideas. It's something I'm wary of and will be thinking about when I post – but on the other hand, this is the internet, and the sharing of pictures back and forth is hardly any more problematic with Pinterest than it is on Tumblr, Twitter or WordPress.

What I do like is how easy it is (indeed, it's the default) to credit back to the source of the image – and I think the user-friendliness of the design of Pinterest is part of why it feels so fun to use. I have my little 'pin this' gizmo on my Firefox toolbar, and if I hit it to repin a pic from somewhere on the internet, it does link directly back. I've also enjoyed having conversations with crafters etc. on the site about the pic – it feels more personal than just grabbing things off Google Image Search and I like that personal touch, where you can compliment the person who made the awesome handbag, even as you put it on your board of 'things I want to make some day'.

So, not unproblematic, but there are so many lovely things about it as a space (so far, knock wood, honeymoon period n' all) and as a tool for my writing that I suspect, like Twitter and Tumblr and all those other things ending in r, Pinterest is going to be folded in to my online profile and lifestyle.

Because, PRETTIES!

Super Best Friends Forever!

Friday Links Prefers To Be Called 'Sir'

I loved this article at the Mary Sue about women in history who have held the titles traditionally belonging to men. So many interesting women – some of whom I'd never heard of before! The uses of 'king' by women particularly interested me because that was something I was trying to do with Velody in the Creature Court books – when there has no one but men holding the title of 'king' for as long as people can remember, you keep using the damn word even if there's a woman doing it now.

Also at the Mary Sue, I loved this depiction of women's work in World War II, one of my favourite eras/topics of social history.

Amanda linked me to this great post about 20′s and 30′s fashion and how they actually worked (and why they so often don't look right when worn by modern women) – including some gorgeous images of classic dresses as they might be worn.

Bookseller+Publisher have released the statistics of books reviewed in Australian publications, with gender breakdowns. Eye-opening, occasionally pleasing, and mostly depressing.

I also really appreciated receiving this link, about the choice of teaching texts in high schools, and how books by and about women are being left out. Remember this one when the "oh noes all these books for girls are excluding boy readers" discussion gets rolled out again.

Cat Sparks posted her tribute to Paul Haines, from his memorial service. It's rather wonderful, and conveys his personality as well as that of his writing very well, I think.

Elizabeth L Huede, the tireless campaigner of the Australian Women Writers' Reading Challenge has written an extraordinary post about the way romance is devalued in our society, and the importance of respecting books by women. She addresses a regular derailment technique, that we should be dealing with 'important' women's issues instead, by looking at domestic abuse, and how the men in our society are still taught to disregard women's feelings and not look at the world from their point of view. The prioritising of the male gaze in literature is part of this – seriously, just go read it! Stirring stuff.

Slightly adjacent to this topic is Jo Walton talking about learning to love romance fiction, after a childhood of rejecting it because of the way it was gender coded – ie boy stuff is more cool than all that silly pink. It's a mindset that I think a lot of geek girls/women will find familiar, and Jo's discussion of becoming more open-minded as she gets older is also very compelling.

Jane Espenson talks about the importance of having female TV writers, not because they bring an especially non-male writing style or talent to the table, but because WHY NOT?

Sean the Blogonaut, fan writer, blogger, podcaster and general book enthusiast, is running for NAFF to get to Continuum this year. Let's make it happen!

I hadn't really thought of it before, but this article about the Hunger Games made me think about what a positive thing for young women the current YA dystopia craze could be – apart from the fact that they're all secretly/accidentally reading science fiction, of course!

Elsewhere on the Internet: Ace and Domesticity at Doctor Her

I don't want to keep putting my own stuff in my Friday Links posts because, you know, it's all about linking to other people! So I'll be making occasional 'elsewhere on the internet' posts to point towards me doing the blog post thing in places other than here, for those who aren't on Twitter or missed the tweets/facebook announcements.

This week it's all about Doctor Her, my new shiny thing, though you can also expect a post all about my Pinterest experience Quite Soon I think.

My Doctor Who watching has been all about Ace and the Seventh Doctor recently because Raeli has fallen in love with that era (but mostly with Ace) and actually asks to watch classic Who with me. Shock!

So I wrote a review about the interesting depiction of Female Power in the Curse of Fenric, then followed it up with a coda about The Many Futures of Ace McShane. I also wrote a sequel to my Classic Who Domesticating the Doctor post from the other week: Domesticating the Doctor II: The Missus, The Ex and the Mothers-in-Law. I'm not sure why it is that reading so much about feminism & Doctor Who is making me think so much about the companions' Mums, maybe it's that I am actually realising how much closer I am to Jackie Tyler's age than Rose's?

Mostly I've been loving the vibe over on the Doctor Her blog – we don't always agree, especially when it comes to controversies like 'is River Song a feminist character' but we have some amazing conversations in the comments, and it's feeling like a really nice community.

Do the Ditmar Dance

Ditmar nominations are open! These are fan awards for the best Australian spec fic awesomeness of the year. I won some of them last year and cherish them dearly – even more so when I went back through the history and discovered that only six women had won Best Novel in the whole history of the award, going back to the 1970′s.

You can run over there right now and nominate as many things as you want – you don't have to be a member or supporting member of a recent convention, though that's a helpful thing to cite if you think the committee might not know you. (the whole 'known to committee' thing isn't about elitism, it's about checking you're a real person) Otherwise you may need a reference, someone who has attended a recent con who has interacted with you in real life or online and is prepared to say 'yep, this is a real person.'

If you can't remember all the stuff you read and liked this year, then there's a Wiki trying to keep track of Australian spec fic that eligible – it's not all-encompassing so if you see a gap there, please add the book/person etc. that you know is missing.

If you are keen to nominate any of my work, here for reference is what I published last year:

Novel:

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

Short Stories

"The Patrician", Tansy Rayner Roberts, in Love and Romanpunk, Twelfth Planet Press

"Julia Agrippina's Secret Family Bestiary", Tansy Rayner Roberts, in Love and Romanpunk, Twelfth Planet Press.

"Lamia Victoriana", Tansy Rayner Roberts, in Love and Romanpunk, Twelfth Planet Press.

"Last of the Romanpunks", Tansy Rayner Roberts, in Love and Romanpunk, Twelfth Planet Press.

"Taking Leaves," Tansy Rayner Roberts, Love2Read website

Collected Work:

Love and Romanpunk by Tansy Rayner Roberts, edited by Alisa Krasnostein, Twelfth Planet Press.

Fan Publication

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

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

If anyone is keen to nominate me again for the William Atheling for Criticism & Review, I'm probably proudest of my ongoing "Pratchett's Women" series of posts, all but the most recent having appeared last year, but I am more than happy to sit this one out.

Hmm, on the other hand, the blog series "Watching New Who – in conversation with David McDonald, Tansy Rayner Roberts and Tehani Wessely" probably fits better there than under 'fan writer' if people like that series and would like to nominate us.

And here are some things I especially liked, or people whose work I heartily recommend, from last year!

Novels:

Burn Bright, Marianne de Pierres, Random House Australia.

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

Stormlord's Exile, Glenda Larke, HarperCollins.

The Courier's New Bicycle, Kim Westwood, HarperCollins.

The Shattering, Karen Healey, Little, Brown.

Short Stories:

"Alchemy", Lucy Sussex, in Thief of Lives, Twelfth Planet Press.

"Breaking the Ice", Thoraiya Dyer, in Cosmos 37.

"Catastrophic Disruption of the Head", Margo Lanagan, in The Wilful Eye, Allen & Unwin.

"Cross that Bridge", Deborah Biancotti, in Bad Power, Twelfth Planet Press.

"Dying Young", Peter M. Ball, Eclipse 4.

"Head Case", Kate Orman, in Cosmos 41.

"Nation of the Night", Sue Isle, in Nightsiders, Twelfth Planet Press.

"Palming the Lady", Deborah Biancotti, in Bad Power, Twelfth Planet Press.

"Thief of Lives", Lucy Sussex, in Thief of Lives, Twelfth Planet Press.

Collected Works: [omg this one is going to be pretty damn competitive this year]

Bad Power by Deborah Biancotti, edited by Alisa Krasnostein, Twelfth Planet Press.

Eclipse 4, Jonathan Strahan, Night Shade Books.

Nightsiders by Sue Isle, edited by Alisa Krasnostein, Twelfth Planet Press.

Thief of Lives by Lucy Sussex, edited by Alisa Krasnostein, Twelfth Planet Press.

The Wilful Eye (Tales from the Tower 1), Isobelle Carmody and Nan McNab, Allen & Unwin.

Yellowcake by Margo Lanagan, Allen & Unwin.

Artwork:

"Finishing School", Kathleen Jennings, for Steampunk!: An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories, Candlewick Press.

"The Freedom Maze," Kathleen Jennings, cover, Small Beer Press [this one's not on the wiki. Does that mean *I* have to figure out how to do it? This could go badly for everyone]

Fan Writers:

Alexandra Pierce

Ian Mond

Sean the Blogonaut

Jason Nahrung

Fan Artist:

Kathleen Jennings for her tanaudel website but especially The Dalek Game

Fan Publications: (ie mostly where we put podcasts)

Bad Film Diaries podcast, Grant Watson. (Bad Film Diaries)

Boxcutters podcast, episode 269, "Making SciFi TV for Adults" by Josh Kinal, John Richards, et. al.

Dark Matter, Nalini Haynes. (not a podcast! See, I have breadth!)

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

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

Best New Talent

Jo Anderton

William Atheling for Criticism and Review

I don't know about the rest of you, but I am overwhelmed by the sheer length of the list of reviews listed here in the wiki. Anyone wants to make more personal recommendations about a specific piece of work – something that stood out from the crowd, let me know! I might have to go reading some to find some recs I can stand behind.

There's still a bunch of stuff I haven't read yet, too, and would like to – especially the Ishtar collection of novellas and Lisa Hannett's collection Bluegrass Symphony. How exciting that we are so spoilt for choice. Is this the golden age of Australian speculative fiction or what?

Australians: Win a Copy of Reign of Beasts!

.goodreadsGiveawayWidget { color: #555; font-family: georgia, serif; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; font-size: 14px;
font-style: normal; background: white; }
.goodreadsGiveawayWidget img { padding: 0 !important; margin: 0 !important; }
.goodreadsGiveawayWidget a { padding: 0 !important; margin: 0; color: #660; text-decoration: none; }
.goodreadsGiveawayWidget a:visted { color: #660; text-decoration: none; }
.goodreadsGiveawayWidget a:hover { color: #660; text-decoration: underline !important; }
.goodreadsGiveawayWidget p { margin: 0 0 .5em !important; padding: 0; }
.goodreadsGiveawayWidgetEnterLink { display: block; width: 150px; margin: 10px auto 0 !important; padding: 0px 5px !important;
text-align: center; line-height: 1.8em; color: #222; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold;
border: 1px solid #6A6454; -moz-border-radius: 5px; -webkit-border-radius: 5px; font-family:arial,verdana,helvetica,sans-serif;
background-image:url(http://goodreads.com/images/layout/gr... background-repeat: repeat-x; background-color:#BBB596;
outline: 0; white-space: nowrap;
}
.goodreadsGiveawayWidgetEnterLink:hover { background-image:url(http://goodreads.com/images/layout/gr...
color: black; text-decoration: none; cursor: pointer;
}


Goodreads Book Giveaway

Reign of Beasts

by Tansy Rayner Roberts

Giveaway ends March 31, 2012.

See the giveaway details

at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Sorry overseas people, this one is specifically an Australian giveaway. Meanwhile, apparently Reign of Beasts is available on the Kindle stores in the US and UK, but I still haven't heard when the first two books will be likewise available. Hopefully I can make an announcement on that soon! I know not everyone has access to Kindle e-books but it's a start!

Galactic Suburbia 55

I didn't put this up before because Podbean has been down all weekend but now it's back! You can check out the new Galactic Suburbia episode on our website or at iTunes.

Episode 55

In which we honour the memory of Paul Haines by giving ourselves nightmares, and catch up (mostly) on several months of feedback about how Galactic Suburbia is singlehandedly keeping the bookselling business alive.

News

Paul Haines in memoriam.

Death notice and information about memorial service

We discuss posts by Dirk Flinthart and Ben Peek.

If anyone does a round up of memorial posts about Paul, please let us know & we'll add the link. In the mean time, check out this post about his complete bibliography and how to get hold of his work.

Ladybusiness on coverage of women on SF/F blogs

New Galactic Chat: Claire Corbett

What Culture Have we Consumed?

Alisa: Wives, Paul Haines; The Warrior's Apprentice, Lois Mcmaster Bujold; Power and Majesty, Tansy Rayner Roberts), Locus Round Table featuring Nalo Hopkinson and Karen Lord

Alex: Solaris Rising (ed Ian Whates); Reign of Beasts (Tansy Rayner Roberts); Pure (Julianna Bagott)

Tansy: Madigan Mine, Kirstyn McDermott, The Opposite of Life by Narrelle M Harris

Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs, check out Galactic Suburbia Podcast on Facebook and don't forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!