Tansy Rayner Roberts's Blog, page 193

Lying to Children

This post from Penni Russon about her eldest child figuring out the Santa thing made my heart hurt a little bit.

Ah, the Santa quandary. To lie, or not to lie?

Our only defence is that we never told Raeli that Santa is a real person who flies around giving out Christmas presents. But when she came home from daycare and informed us about that fact – we copped out and smiled and didn't deny it. It was easy to let other people spread the story, and to let her believe it. (cough, likewise I...

Fiction by the Pound (Quality vs. Quantity)

I've really been enjoying Rachel Swirsky's guest posts over at Ecstatic Days, Jeff VanderMeer's blog. Her latest piece is a review of Cat Rambo's collection Eyes Like Sky and Coal and Midnight (Paper Golem Press, 2009) which engages directly with another review of the collection from Publisher's Weekly. Swirsky moves fluidly between defending Rambo from the scathing remarks of the Publisher's Weekly reviewer to agreeing with aspects of what they say, and it makes for a very dynamic review.

O...

Darning Fairies

In my other life, when not hurtling through novel manuscripts or chasing around after babies, I sell dolls. The Deepings Dolls, in their hundreds of variations of time period, character and costume detail, have been part of my life for more than two decades. My mother Jilli started painting for them when I was little, and she was putting herself through Art School. She continued to paint in the evenings even once I was a teenager and she was back working full time.

When Raeli was a...

The Silly Season Begins

Last night we gathered for a celebratory dinner with the Nano-chums, including partners and children and ended up being a 20+ group! Arranging the tables took some serious thought, and we ended up in three distinct sections: kids, parents, grown ups.

It was lovely to mark out our success (seriously only 19% of Nanoers completed, and we had something like a 60% success rate, how awesome is that?) and to include our long-suffering families (it being Hobart, most of the hubbies knew each other a...

Films Romana: The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964)

Starring:

Sophia Loren – Lucilla

Alec Guinness – Marcus Aurelius

Stephen Boyd – Livius

Christopher Plummer – Commodus

James Mason – Timonides

Omar Sharif – King of Armenia

"I loved you, Livius, but now you have to die – that's the kind of joke the gods love best."

Summary:
In his dying days, Emperor Marcus Aurelius (Guinness) chooses Gaius Metellus Livius (Boyd) as his successor, as he has no faith in his flighty, gladiator-loving son, Commodus. Livius wants to marry Lucilla, the daughter of...

It's Behind You!

Just another lazy Sunday.

We were out to the pantomime this afternoon, our family and  godiyeva's, collectively known as "the Horde". As the eldest rampagers had already been to the panto in town with their school, we decided to try a more local, amateur production.

And boy. Yes. Amateur. The costumes were awesome, the set and production values great, and the adult half of the cast were mostly pretty good. The younger half ranged from "quite good when they finally relax enough to enjoy...

Men of Yore

This article about a decade of shitty films based on classical legends (ie failing to capitalise on the awesomeness that was Gladiator) entertained me greatly, and got me thinking. I was still a Classics postgrad when the first wave of post-Gladiator films (Troy! Alexander!) were due out, and I remember the excitement and the buzz we felt about them, looking up pre-publicity (ooh Brad Pitt, okay that's weird, Sean Bean as Odysseus, that's awesome, Orlando Bloom as Paris, PERFECT, omg what...

Aurealis Awards

The Aurealis Awards shortlists are out today (the site hasn't been updated yet but I expect it will soon) and I am delighted to announce that I was shortlisted twice this year – for "Siren Beat" in the fantasy short story category, and for "Like Us" (Shiny #5) in the YA category.

Both stories, of course, were published by Twelfth Planet Press, which also scored a shortlisting spot (I want to say nomination, damn it, but the AA language has changed so that every eligible piece is 'nominated'...

Front and Center, by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

The best thing about (finally) reading the third book of a trilogy, especially the kind of trilogy that is actually three books and not just three volumes of the same book, is that it finally gives you a chance to sit back and figure out what the trilogy was about, and what it achieved.

Some spoilers for the first two books follow!

The series by Catherine Gilbert Murdock (which I am assuming stops at 3, wahh, though a quick Google search has left me none the wiser on this score) is about...