Tansy Rayner Roberts's Blog, page 188

Robert B Parker (1932-2010)

My dad taught me to read books for men. From about the age of ten, he was introducing me to his favourite authors. Dick Francis, Walter Tevis… Robert B Parker. At that age, I was a reading machine, and inhaled all of them.

Over the years, it was Robert B Parker's Spenser who stuck with me. I went back to those books time and again – I still don't have a complete set, something that irks me whenever I reread them. I've read other Parker books, but there was something about Spenser – a...

Cover Matters

It's all kicking off again – many of you will remember the controversy over the cover of Justine Larbalestier's US (Bloomsbury) Liar cover some months back, where the image of a white girl was chosen as the cover image for a book about a black girl. Justine herself spoke up about it, and the internet & media response was so (rightfully) fierce that the offending cover was replaced.

This time the book is written by a newbie author without Justine's clout and support circle, and unlike...

Mush!

My second day of Proof Camp didn't go quite so well, as the lurking sore throat I'd had for days manifested as a raging virus of hoarseness, sleepiness and severe inner ear issues. I needed to use Jem's first big nap of the day to catch up on my own sleep, having been up at 3am claiming to have a burst eardrum. (as it turned out, not technically true. But it HURT, I reserve the right to over-dramatise) By the time I got up and was staggering around like the walking dead, my inner ear...

who needs love when there's law and order

I decided to spend this weekend laying into my proofs for Power and Majesty – yes, more proofs! I'd already done my own painstaking proofread of the book, but more recently I was sent the pages from the two proofreaders, plus notes from the editor who worked on the book a little while ago, commenting on my extra scenes.

My job then is to go through and okay (or stet!) every correction or suggestion. And there are a lot of them! Even in a book you've gone over many times. Often I have to stop ...

Alyx and the Doctor (Understanding Joanna Russ Part 2)

The Adventures of Alyx (1976)

On Joanna Russ (2009)

I'm certainly glad that I read the Gary K Wolfe article, "Alyx Among the Genres" in On Joanna Russ, because without it I would have been rather alarmed and confused by the oddities of the Alyx collection. The individual pieces (mostly short stories, plus one extraordinary short novel) are marvellous on their own, but trying to figure out how they fit together is something of a puzzle. Luckily, having read the article, I knew it was supposed ...

Mums and Girls

Today was a reasonable combination of domesticity, work and leisure – a balance I've been struggling with all month.

After Raeli and I dropped Jem off at daycare for the morning, I made a deal with her – I got to work for an hour uninterrupted, and then we could do the activity of her choice. I got most of an hour to work on editing and Pendlerook orders, and then paid off Raeli with several rounds of Snakes and Ladders.

We baked a cake, too, which made the morning the most productive...

See Tansy Read

For those of you who live in and around Hobart, Tasmania, I'm going to be doing a public reading from "Siren Beat" at the Republic Bar on Sunday 7th February 2010. Republic Readings go from about 3-5pm, with the featured readers on in the first half, and an open mike in the second half.

 girliejones also left me with a plentiful pile of copies of the book to sell, so if you haven't managed to get hold of a copy yet, this would be a good time to do so!

Presenting sirens and sea-ponies in front ...

A Good Looking Book

Charles Tan at Bibliophile Stalker has put up a list of his 'best ofs' for 2009, and as well as showing some very good taste in novels (Slights for the YAY) he has declared Siren Beat/Roadkill as having Best Book Design.

Amanda ( vodkandlime) did a marvellous job of combining the nostalgia-friendly Ace Doubles style of the book construction with a modern, fun look, and her design showed off the two pieces of art by Dion Hamill to great effect. I currently have a couple of big stacks of the...

Hugo Eligibility

 girliejones has posted about the Hugo eligibility of all the Twelfth Planet Press stories published in 2009. This includes my:

"Siren Beat" (novelette)

"Prosperine When it Sizzles," New Ceres Nights (short story)

"Like Us," Shiny (short story)

And that, because I've been a one-publisher woman for short fiction for the last couple of years (aka lazy) completely covers me as far as Hugo eligibility goes.

It would be awesome to see some Australian names on the Hugo ballot this year since there...

Quotas vs. Outreach

Sean Wallace of Fantasy Magazine puts the myth to bed that Fantasy uses a quota system to get a better balance of female authors.

I've been one of those who repeated the myth, usually in trying to show people why a quota system would not be such a bad thing, and I'd like to apologise for contributing to the misrepresentation of how that magazine chooses their stories. It was an honest misunderstanding!

Having said that, it's worth reading Sean's post and what he has to say about how Fantasy...