Tansy Rayner Roberts's Blog, page 169
June 20, 2010
Zombie Contingency Plans and Other Coode Street Notes
Some thoughts raised by the recent episode of The Coode Street Podcast, featuring Locus editor/debut novelist Amelia Beamer:
Amelia's first zomromcom novel The Loving Dead sounds all kinds of awesome and if I hadn't already pre-ordered it, I would be doing so on the strength of this podcast! The discussion of Kelly Link's influence on how zombie stories can be told was also really interesting.
The gang discuss the growing divide in the scene between short and long fiction as one is...
June 19, 2010
Faking It
Being a football fan didn't come easily to me. It didn't even come naturally. I was raised with a pathological disinterest in sport and it took a lot of effort to overcome that social conditioning. I developed an interest thanks to the support and encouragement of my good friends Kaia and Millie.
Me being me, this quickly turned into an obsession. It's really not about the novel any more. I've seen Arsenal through two seasons, through joy and heartbreak, and I'm not going anywhere. One o...
Postcard from the Desktop
One birthday party down, one to go. I managed some work this afternoon, cranking up some Lucksmiths and eventually graduating to my actual edit playlist as I transitioned from footling with my first chapter to flat out writing an all new chapter 2.
I'm at that stage with the structural edit when the comments from the editor finally sink into the backbrain and instead of 'yeahhh spose she has a point' I'm completely at 'how could I have POSSIBLY thought this was good enough, yeeHAH let's do...
June 18, 2010
List of Awesome
Kelly Link has been blogging all around the internet, popping up in all kinds of places and discussing a variety of topics, ostensibly to promote the paperback release of Pretty Monsters (which has made it all the way to Kingston, Tasmania – I spotted it in a bookshop today!). Over at i09 she talks about using your obsessions as fuel for short story writing, a technique I used to be quite evangelical back in my years of teaching creative writing. I called it 'the list of awesome' and...
June 17, 2010
Dr Tansy meets Paige!
The other night I did a great interview with Paige Turner at local university-based community radio station Edge Radio. Paige has put up a podcast of the interview in which we discuss the appeal of fantasy in a tech-heavy world, how I come up with my character names, and the heavy classics/historical influences of my fantasy. As well as other fun things.
Check it out!
Bullets, Bracelets & Candy – More of 1940's Wonder Woman
The Wonder Woman Chronicles Vol. One contd.
Last time I pretty much just reviewed the first Wonder Woman comic, rather than the many stories that make up this collection and constitute most of the first year of Wonder Woman. In her second appearance in Sensation Comics, she successfully returns Steve Trevor to 'man's world' in her invisible plane (which is never explained, though a later reference implies that every freaking Amazon has her own invisible plane – what the hell kind of island...
You Should Read This! Right Now. I'll wait.
I'm getting a little tired of lists and books and blog posts and articles and even blog comments by people telling me what I should be reading. I'm even getting tired of all of the above telling other people what they should be reading. Worst of all, sometimes I catch myself doing it, and then I have to roll my eyes at myself, and that's just a waste of everyone's time.
This isn't, by the way, aimed at any one individual. I don't blame anyone who has done it, because quite frankly we've...
June 16, 2010
Life and Times of a Part-time Author
Lovely evening tonight, hosting for Donna and her work friend Alex, who were both a big hit with our girls. And not just because they got roped into reading bedtime stories…
My honey made his famous fish pie (local salmon and scallops in vintage cheese sauce) and I made salad and a lemon sour cream cake (great simple recipe, thank you internet! I left out the lemon rind though cos my honey has a thing about it) which we served with Valhalla vanilla icecream. Yummmm. The Tasmanian...
June 15, 2010
Context is Everything
A little while ago, Jeff VanderMeer asked the important question: what do you look for in an anthology?
I meant to answer at the time, but I had been mulling over a blog entry on a similar topic for some time, and it was all just too big in my head to condense down to a comment. And, you know, I didn't get around to it. I recommend checking out the comments on that post, though, there's a wealth of reader response there!
Part of the reason I've been thinking about this is a conversation I...
June 14, 2010
Back to Work
The school holidays are at an end, and that means I am officially back to work tomorrow. I've had two weeks of chasing my daughters around the house, reading library books and Wonder Woman comics with them, sewing, blogging and promoting my new release.
What I haven't been doing, apart from a couple of lapses, is writing Book 3. I have been reading parts of the manuscript, and nutting away at titles, but I just know that when I go back to write Book 3, I want to build up crazy momentum and j...
