Tansy Rayner Roberts's Blog, page 165

Galactic Suburbia Episode 12 Show Notes

Episode 12 is available for streaming here, downloading here, and can also be found on iTunes by searching for 'Galactic Suburbia'

In which we talk about publishers behaving badly, authors self-publishing, the future of reading and the price of a short story. Also we talk about books. Shocking, isn't it?

News

Night Shade apologises for any problems they've caused any of their authors

SFWA puts Night Shade Books on probation as a qualified SFWA market for a period of one year, effective...

How Stephanie Plum Lost Her Sizzle

Day 01 – A book series you wish had gone on longer OR a book series you wish would just freaking end already (or both!)

I love the Stephanie Plum books. I love everything about them – I love the flawed and (mostly) unapologetic heroine, I love the quirky and colourful supporting characters, I love the two tall, dark & sexy men in her life, and I love her deeply awesome Grandma Mazur with her funeral obsession and her sawn off shotgun. I love the fact that she can't keep a car for more than t...

How Stephanie Plum Lost Her Sizzle (30 Days of Books Day 01)

Day 01 – A book series you wish had gone on longer OR a book series you wish would just freaking end already (or both!)

I love the Stephanie Plum books. I love everything about them – I love the flawed and (mostly) unapologetic heroine, I love the quirky and colourful supporting characters, I love the two tall, dark & sexy men in her life, and I love her deeply awesome Grandma Mazur with her funeral obsession and her sawn off shotgun. I love the fact that she can't keep a car for more than t...

Flesh and Biscuits

Just a reminder that you can hear me reading my story Fleshy at Terra Incognita SF.

TISF is a great monthly podcast which asks writers in the Australian spec fic scene to read one of their own stories aloud. The really cute thing is that Keith Stevenson, the mind behind TISF, actually posts a microphone and recording gear to each month's author! Luckily I was able to assure him we have a microphone, which saved him the postage for one month…

Fleshy is a story I wrote for 2012, the first of...

Wonder Woman: finally not embarrassing to read

Wonder Woman: the Circle

Wonder Woman: Ends of the Earth

both written by Gail Simone

I had high expectations, I won't lie. It's Gail freaking Simone. The writer behind Birds of Prey. The writer who took my favourite comic characters of all time – Black Canary, Huntress, Barbara Gordon – and made them even more awesome than they already were.

But still. It's Wonder Woman. The possibilities for it going wrong were still pretty endless.

In the end, none of the four stories collected across...

On Court Fantasy

"Court Fantasy" (or as I sometimes like to call it, Fantasy With Frocks) isn't a term I hear discussed much these days – certainly not as much as "Epic" or "Heroic" let alone "Urban" fantasy. In my teens, it was my favourite kind of fantasy fiction: stories of kings and queens and life in and around palaces or stately homes. Stories of politics, espionage, romance and – most important to me – everyday life rather than once-in-a-lifetime quests.

There are many things I like about these...

Nostalgia & Artifice: a mixed review of Hornet's Nest #1

Hornet's Nest #1: The Stuff of Nightmares

an audio adventure written by Paul Magrs

featuring Tom Baker as the Doctor

and Richard Franklin as Mike Yates

The script of this audio adventure feels like it was written as prime bait with which to hook Tom Baker into reprising the role of Tom Baker. It was released by the BBC and not Big Finish, and it shows – it's a deeply nostalgic imagining of Tom Baker's Doctor, with more old-fashioned storytelling techniques than we are used to from the recent ...

Spaceships in Your Ears: The Best of Big Finish

I've loved the idea of science fiction on audio since the old Earthsearch and Hitchhiker's Guide plays (all of which we own on cassette tape) – there's something gorgeously perfect about huge, high-budget space opera played out on such an "old-fashioned" format – though audio has had a huge renaissance in recent years thanks to the iPod. Honestly how did we ever get housework and exercise done before this?

Big Finish are a company who have been tirelessly working away for the last eleven...

Happy Birthday Tim Brooke-Taylor!

Thanks to  jblum who pointed out that it is Tim Brooke-Taylor's 70th birthday today

On my iPod: the Ood Cast

Yeah, yeah. I needed a new Doctor Who podcast like I needed a family of squirrels in my laptop. But this one is really gooooood. I resisted many times, even when Nat from Nottingham (of Bridging the Rift) insisted how great it was, but finally I listened to the Ood Cast yesterday and fell in love.

It's a gang of four performers who write songs and perform comedy skits in response to each episode, as well as chatting more seriously about it in the middle. My heart was won when they did a...