Tansy Rayner Roberts's Blog, page 161

Because Small (cough, Indie) Press is Awesome

Thanks to Jonathan Strahan for pointing me towards this shortlist on the Capclave blog. Being nominated for an award like this, outside my own country, is super exciting. I really do love Siren Beat, and Alisa, Dion and Amanda did such a fantastic job of producing a beautiful book for it to live in.

Also, how fantastic is it to have an award especially for stories published by small presses?

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The Washington Science Fiction Association is pleased to announce the finalists for the 2010...

The Definition of Annoying

Day 23 – Most annoying character ever

Lydia Bennet.

Bar none.

In any medium.

Other Days of the Book Meme:

Day 01 – A book series you wish had gone on longer OR a book series you wish would just freaking end already (or both!)
Day 02 – A book or series you wish more people were reading and talking about
Day 03 – The best book you've read in the last 12 months
Day 04 – Your favorite book or series ever
Day 05 – A book or series you hate
Day 06 – Favorite book of your favorite series OR your favorite...

Motherhood: a Metaphor

My baby likes to cuddle. She will crawl up to me, pull herself up to my knees, and when I scoop her up into one arm she will snuggle in beautifully against my side. It feels good. She is warm and clingy and she smells nice.

Oh, and she likes to stay there for really long periods of time.

If I have a computer or a book handy, I can read or even peck out brief responses to people – occasional emails or blog comments. But sometimes she demands more – she wriggles, or is distracted, and the...

Amazon, Wanna Take a Ride? [Xena Rewatch 1.9-1.12]

1.9 Death in Chains.

Oddly this is almost exactly the same story as the previous episode, except that it's the goddess of Death in chains instead of Prometheus, and instead of healing being offline it's the opposite – thanks to greedy King Sisyphus, no one is dying, even the old and mortally injured. As with other fairly average episodes of this season, this one is mitigated by Xena showing off her heroic chops. Also there is a gang of bikie undead warlords led by the amusingly named...

Best Friends FOREVER

Day 22 – Favorite non-sexual relationship (including asexual romantic relationships)

Oh, I do love me some platonics!

There are three kinds of relationship that really draw me into a story.

1) Siblings. I am just crazy about awesome sibling relationships in fiction – possibly because I never had a sibling myself, growing up. I never especially wanted one, but I loved reading about them in books. The Melendys from The Saturdays and other books are probably my favourites from childhood, a...

The Lovers

Day 21 – Favorite romantic/sexual relationship (including asexual romantic relationships)

Oh I have lots of these! Let me think.

There's Jessica Darling and Marcus Flutie from the books by Megan McCafferty – you saw them snogging yesterday, I think. I really enjoyed the fact that McCafferty followed their relationship over five books and I think about ten years in all, taking them through the stages of awkward, weird but intense friendship, awkward teen romance, long distance sweethearts...

Suburban Sprawl

In far more cheerful news, Alisa at Twelfth Planet Press has opened for pre-order sales of SPRAWL, a unique anthology of Australian suburban fantasy which will be released next month (aaargh so soon!) at Aussiecon.

It's one hell of a line up of awesome local writers, and will be the perfect souvenir of the convention for those attending, and those who will be waving folornly to us from afar. I've read almost all of the stories and it's full of weird and wonderful interpretations of that most ...

State of the Writer

I became snappish and strange this weekend, every time someone asked me how the writing was going. It's not their fault that the question makes me want to scream and jump out the nearest window. I can't even roll my eyes and complain that they didn't just check my blog, because I have been quite happily using the books meme to completely avoid blogging about what I have been doing lately.

There's a simple reason for that. I'm being hammered. It has been deadline after deadline, many of...

Messy, Screwed-up, So-wrong Kisses

Day 20 – Favorite kiss

When it comes to fictional kissing – or sex scenes, or romance in general – what I love most of all is when they get it wrong. When the timing is off, or the situation is completely wrong, or it's inadvertently funny. Part of the reason that I love romance in fiction but tend not to enjoy fiction that's too close to the romance genre is that I can't stand any implication of perfection. It's BORING. I don't want to know how beautiful she is or how strong his chest...

Jemcakes Day, Yes It's Jemcakes Day

My baby is one year old today. It's been a mad, jam-packed year of broken nights and novel deadlines, of manuscript papers and dirty nappies and really, really hard work squeezed into impossibly tiny spaces.

It's also been a year of great joy, of watching this new child grow into herself, of watching Raeli grow into being a big sister.

Jem, otherwise known as Jemimacakes, Babycakes, Jem-Jem, Mima, My Mima, Jemmels, La La and Bunny Girl, is one hell of a person. She is full of energy, a...