Fi Michell's Blog, page 6

A Quick Bite of Flesh Released

Hazardous Press has just released A Quick Bite of Flesh, edited by Robert Helmbrecht.

A Quick Bite of Flesh is an outstanding collection of 55 bite-sized tales of zombie goodness. Stories of terror, sadness, adventure, revenge and betrayal. Whether you like your zombie stories terrifying, humorous, or bizarre, you will find plenty to love in this collection.

Get the collection for Kindle here.  A print-on-demand paperback will be released on October 1.

Exciting for me, not only for its zombie goodness, but because this collection includes my first publication, a science fiction romance zombie short (lots of genre mixing), Amidst the Poison Scrub We Hunt.  

This story was born from a writing prompt: ‘Welcome to my nightmare’. Alice Cooper’s 1975 song, which I got to know some years later in high school, played non-stop in my head as I wrote the first draft.

An old video – times have changed.  But it looks like Cooper enjoyed hamming it up!

Monsieur Lazhar …and an absent name

Although I enjoy a steady diet of speculative fiction and movies, I also enjoy mainstream cinema. Yesterday I watched Monsieur Lazhar with friends from my writing group. It is a Canadian film, French language with English subtitles. A beautiful movie which gently explores its contemporary themes.

When a year six class loses their teacher, Martine, to suicide, Monsieur Lazhar, an Algerian refugee in Quebec, is hired as a substitute teacher. He helps the students come to terms with Martine’s death. This subtle and compassionate film won several audience awards around the world for Best Movie, including from the 2012 Sydney Film Festival.

One of the recurring themes concerned the way schools deal with violence and death, and the potential problems for teachers if they touch children when intending to assist or comfort them. This movie does not preach, but presents a complex world that I can relate to.

One day, when my daughter first started Kindergarten, she gave her new teacher a hug goodbye. Her teacher explained that she couldn’t hug her back, as we don’t hug the students at school. This was completely appropriate and understandable, but it made my little girl sad.

Monsieur Lazhar explores the complexities of this issue, amongst others, from the perspective of both the children and the teachers. It also explores how a reticence to talk about death can make death hard to accept, and questions what we define as violence. Yet it is uplifting movie rather than dark, with superb acting from both the adults and the children, always understated. Mohamed Fellag brings dignity and sensitivity to the role of Bachir Lazhar.  Moments of humour keep the touch light. Definitely worth seeing, especially for anyone with school-aged children in their lives.

Flyers missing the lead actor’s name

I’ve just looked through the promotional materials that my local cinema made available for Monsieur Lazhar.  One flyer lists four actors and the director, by first and second name, but not Mohamed Fellag, who plays the lead.  The second flyer mentions Fellag, but only by his last name.  All the other actors mentioned, and even movie reviewers quoted, have both their first and second names cited. I can only guess the cinema (or the independent chain it belongs to) thinks people may not want to see this movie if they know the lead actor’s first name is Mohamed. Even after all those awards. How sad.

I’d like to see his name included.

Irony and Humour

Irony in the real world: My wonderful husband, taking a tropical holiday.

A while back, my writing teacher observed that I often use ironic distance in my stories. Since then, I’ve been paying more attention to my use of irony. It’s common to many of my stories which use contemporary settings. It’s instinctive, and springs from my outlook on the world. But it can both enhance or detract from a story, and I’d like to choose when I write this way or not.

Irony can sometimes undermine a story that needs to be taken seriously. I think it can distance the reader when empathy for the characters might be better achieved by a closer point-of-view, with no reminder of an outside perspective.

Irony can add a humorous vein to a story. In my stories, the humour isn’t overt – they’re not written as comedies. But I’m becoming curious to see whether I could lift a story that’s ironic into actual humour. A Google search on humour within the fantasy and science fiction genres resulted in this excellent article from 2006.

It discusses why humorous speculative fiction can be a hard sell, with the exception of successes like Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams. The public love humour done well, but publishers are often wary. There are also some worthwhile comments in there about how real humour derives from the characters in a story, rather than just a series of jokes or prat-falls.

In Australia, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine publishes light-hearted speculative fiction. In the US, Alex Schvartsman is launching UFO – Unidentified Funny Objects, an anthology of humorous science fiction. I’m looking forward to reading it.

Do you like humorous science fiction and fantasy? If you write it, how receptive have you found the various markets? And do you enjoy irony in a story?

News: One of my stories has made the final round at Andromeda Spaceways Magazine. I’m very pleased, even if it goes no further. I’ve made good progress revising scenes in my alien science fiction story, and have received plenty of very useful critiques from Critters for my demon paperwork story. And I am now half-way through Midnight’s Children, by Salman Rushdie (assigned for my writing class).

Tucker and Dave vs Evil, and thoughts on Twittering.

Tucker & Dave Vs Evil

Last night, my sister and her boyfriend came over. We watched Tucker and Dale vs Evil, a comedy-horror movie. Have to say, I loved it. It played with many familiar horror tropes, twisting them in a very entertaining fashion – for our audience last night, at least. I’m not sure how it would play out for someone unfamiliar with horror, but it was heaps of fun for us. Tyler Labine was wonderful and so sweet, as Dale. And, it starred Alan Tudyk as Tucker. I’m a fan of his from his role as Wash, in Joss Whedan’s movie Serenity and TV show Firefly. (Sob! how could they have canned that wonderful series?)

The Twitter-verse

Soon I may venture into the Twitter-verse, since my sister, who knows what she is doing, has kindly offered to show me the ropes. I’ve been wary of Twitter, since I don’t much like Facebook – too much spam and marketing material for my taste. Plus, I worry that it will distract me from my writing time. But she assures me that Twitter is different from Facebook, and doesn’t have to take much time at all. I should use it. Even my kids’ school is using Twitter now, to update parents.

Do you enjoy using Twitter?

[Edit: And now I've opened my Twitter account. It's like an entire world appearing...]

News: Several stories still in stages of rewriting. One is up for review on Critters this week. So far, the feedback has ranged from loving the premise and absolutely ‘getting it’, to regarding it as a pointless waste of time. Possibly I labelled it as the wrong genre – fantasy instead of horror. Sometimes, I find the divisions between genres hard to define. While that is going on, I am attempting an exercise on plot for my weekly writing class.

Feathers

I’m delighted to hear that Metro Fiction, the fiction section of Metro Moms Network, will publish my light contemporary fantasy, Feathers, in October. Metro Moms Network offers a consulting network, biannual expos, and an online and print magazine focussing on urban and family life. Each Sunday fortnight, they feature a new short story online, to encourage a busy working parent to grab a cup of tea and relax for five minutes. Stories aren’t necessarily anything to do with parenting.

I’m especially pleased since I am an urban mother of young children, like many members of their audience. I hope Feathers provides a fun escape.