Tansy Rayner Roberts's Blog, page 182

Galactic Suburbia

Yes, it's true, we have a podcast. Alisa (aka  girliejones) ,  random_alex and myself have been talking for quite a while about doing this. Our ears pricked up when the Sofanauts (BRILLIANT podcast) died. We considered volunteering to take over that particular podcast, but then figured that something we did would end up so different, it might be better to be our own thing from the start.

It's basically the three of us chatting, about what's going on in the spec fic world, what we've been...

The Wrong Kind of Green

Deborah Biancotti has written a gorgeous essay about how creepy, horrific, threatening and generally unfriendly she finds the Australian landscape. It's a brilliant piece of writing, undercutting and at the same time contributing to a couple of centuries of problematic attempts by writers and artists to describe, capture and define something that is pretty damn alien.

I remember hearing a story of a "genius" English painter who came out to Australia to capture the landscape, only to discover ...

The Price of Freedom

I'm having trouble thinking of anything to write that isn't about Doctor Who and Arsenal. Bear with me!

My first week of writing-free March has been relaxing enough. I'm getting used to the new routine of Raeli being at school, and Jem having 2 afternoons a week in daycare. I've been socialising perhaps more than I usually would on weekdays – and managing to get some housework done, too. Today I cracked (well technically my HIMYM season 3 disk 3 cracked, hence the sudden burst of needing t...

Ruining Young Men's Lives

On 27 February 2010, 19 year old footballer Aaron Ramsey had his leg broken in two places.

Over the last couple of years, Ramsey has worked his way up from being a Welsh youth player with great potential to signing for Arsenal, one of the top four teams of the Premier League, to playing with the first team. He's very young still, but he was building momentum and there was much talk about the career ahead of him. On the day in question, he was tackled by the Ryan Shawcross, the 22 year old ...

Siren Beat/Roadkill giveaway

If any of you are GoodReads members, I'm giving away a copy of Siren Beat/Roadkill over there. All you have to do is click a button! It's eligible to anyone worldwide.

Along For The Ride by Sarah Dessen

Do we all remember how I vowed to buy no books in Feb-March and instead have been compiling a list of all the books I have wanted to buy during this time period? Well, the other day I had to write ALL THE SARAH DESSEN BOOKS on my list. The list is now quite dreadfully long.

Along for the Ride is about Auden, the daughter of two professorial parents, who has spent her whole life being the good child. While her elder brother Hollis screwed up, ran riot and as she puts it "got the only...

Yes, I do wake up at 6 in the morning thinking of ways to fix year-old Doctor Who stories

I suppose it was bound to happen eventually. Thank you, Doctor Who podcasts and RTD writing book, my obsession has now reached epic proportions. My brain is officially full of Doctor Who.

I woke up this morning, early, with a burning revelation about how Planet of the Dead could have been fixed, and redeemed beyond all measure.

(SPOILER CUT for those who haven't seen it, or who don't want to kick themselves for not also seeing this easy scripting fix which would make the story ten times...

Lost in Berriedale

Jem and I had quite an adventure today! I've been licensed to drive for nearly a whole calendar, and this is the first time that me and my little car have gotten well and truly lost.

Visiting a sick friend, I set off for Glenorchy. Easy! I could go via the highways, I've driven that way before, all good. Also I used to live up the complicated hilly back end of Glenorchy, and I was pretty sure I could find the place.

Could I, ha! I missed the turn off to Glenorchy, kept on down the highway ...

(Invisible) Women in Horror

I had heard vaguely of the SFX horror screw-up, but only today (via this great summary post from  nwhyte) found my way to the blog of Maura McHugh, aka Splinister to read about her correspondence with the editor of that magazine, about the lack of representation of female authors in the SFX Horror special. Maura objected to a general lack of women in the entire issue, but was particularly upset by a special feature in which 34 horror "experts" were invited to recommend "hidden treasures of...

Other People's Sons and the Gendered Shopping Experience

I discovered (via bluemilk) this new feminist-academic-mommy blog that is full of all kind of smart thinking. I was particularly moved by this post which discussed how the writer became confronted with the societal attitudes towards gender during her pregnancy and early years of parenthood. There's lots of great stuff to unpack in the post, here's a sample:

Then there's the experience of watching gendered expectations and values applied to our child, who is largely approached more as "a...