Tansy Rayner Roberts's Blog, page 174
May 14, 2010
Australian Speculative Fiction Carnival – April/May
Happy May everyone! I've done my best to read across a range of blogs this month, but as always there are going to be omissions. If you read a post this month that's relevant to the Australian Spec Fic community that you thought was really awesome, please link to it in the comments.
BOOKS & PUBLISHING
Alisa Krasnostein on Building a Publishing House and on Ensuring Subsequent Story Sales.
Richard Harland on writing steampunk
Kate Forsyth & Belinda Murrell, fantasy writing sisters with books...
Sneak Peek into Power and Majesty!
Voyager have put up the first four chapters of P&M for download on their site. I was running around retweeting links and telling everyone it was just the first chapter, only to be surprised when Kaia started squeeing about Garnet's voice, a new part of the book she hasn't read (she had previously read several drafts, but not the last rewrite which included all sorts of new goodies).
So um yes, four chapters! So far people are responding positively, which is nice. No one has yet reported a t...
May 13, 2010
Launchable
It's all starting to happen.
I finalised the launch details today with the Hobart Bookshop, and came away with some pretty posters to stick up to advertise the event. The details of the event are here and I'm hoping those Hobart residents out there who read this blog will be coming along to say hi and join the party. Chris and Janet at the Hobart Bookshop always put on a good launch, and it should all be done just in time to go have dinner somewhere lovely in Salamanca, even if it is a...
May 12, 2010
Galactic Suburbia Episode 6
Yes, Episode 6 is up at Galactic Suburbia! Show notes are here for browsing. We didn't discuss feedback in this ep, as we already ran way long – might have to do an inbetweeny ep just for talking about feedback received.
News
China Mieville becomes first 3-time Arthur C Clarke winner
Hugo Voting pack now available for download by Aussiecon4 members
Matthew Cheney has an intriguing (no, not INTERESTING, shut up, we have other words in our vocabulary honestly) column, "Patriarchy Studies," up...
May 11, 2010
Comfort Fruit (Tuesday Night is Sewing Night)
I'm about to abandon my family for the evening to dodge off to sewing, which is as good a time as any to do some show and tell about the sewing projects I've been working on lately. All presents, actually, which is a good way to ensure that your house doesn't become entirely stuffed with quilts.
This is the lap quilt I sent to Kaia for her 30th birthday this month. It's made up of handsewn hexagons in fabrics ranging through blues, creams & pinks, and oranges & browns.
The theme was...
May 10, 2010
On Re-Reading
I'm struggling to read as many real books as I used to, before a) the blogverse sucked me into its delicious tempting web and b) I had children.
Seriously, it's hard to finish a novel when you have a 5 year old or a 9 month old physically lying/sitting on you, which pretty much describes my weekends. I used to be able to read while feeding Raeli when she was little, but Jem started looking around and trying to check out the book pretty early, so I usually plug in the iPod instead (though she ...
May 9, 2010
CreatureCourt.com is live!
We've been working away this week on CreatureCourt.com, a website for all things to do with my upcoming trilogy. There is a blog as part of it, but I'll be using that mostly for news items, and anything overly exciting will likely be discussed here at great length. It's more to have a googleable site for the books where the first thing people see isn't me ranting about Doctor Who or the latest Arsenal results.
There will be a variety of content going up over the next few weeks as we run...
Soulless, by Gail Carriger
As I mentioned in a previous post, this is a book that has been calling out to me for some time. It's Victorian urban fantasy! (or urbane fantasy, according to the author's website, which is all kinds of awesome) The main character wields a parasol against vampires and werewolves! Mannerpunk! Oh yes. Completely my cup of tea. (did I mention the near-constant tea drinking?)
After resisting the purchase of this tempting morsel for so long, I snatched it up pretty instantly upon finally...
May 7, 2010
Why Do You Read What You Read?
Jonathan Strahan and Gary K Wolfe chat about reading, reviewing and short fiction over at the Coode Street Review podcast.
So much interesting stuff to unpack in there! I really enjoyed their discussion about the best short story writers in the field who don't write novels, and how that affects their careers as well as readers. Also there's the big question of – why do you read the books you read, how do you choose what to read (and what not to read) and how can you tell whether a book is...
At the Mercy of Wordcount
So April went pretty well, with me getting back into the pace of regular writing. The first week of May… well, I wrote 6800 words or so, which is not shabby at all, and yet falls short of the 7500 I was aiming for. 700 words, that's not much, right? Except that these things are hard to catch up on and then you get left behind, and…
Looking back on the week I can see my errors. I did great for several days, not only knocking off the 1500 word target comfortably, but also ...
