Narrelle M. Harris's Blog, page 13

Quintette of Questions: Red Cape Publishing

Today I’m asking  Red Cape Publishing 5 questions about their latest anthology!

1. What’s the name of the anthology– and how hard was it to pick a title?

The name of the anthology is A is for Aliens. We knew when we started the project (a series of 26 books) that the titles would be A is for…B is for… and so on. Some of the letters were more difficult to name than others, either because there were very few options (such as X) or because there were too many choices (Vampires, Viruses, Vendettas, for example). That said, Aliens was an easy choice.

2. How did you come up with the theme of the anthology?

We wanted to put together another series after the success of our four-part series in 2019 (The Elements of Horror) but were undecided which sub-genres of horror to focus on. The A-Z of Horror gives us the opportunity to cover a huge amount of categories.

3. What five words best describe the book?

Sci-fi, horror, invasions, experiments, and aliens (Obviously!)

4. What is your favourite kind of genre mashup?

Anything with horror as an overriding theme, but science fiction and horror blend very well together.

5. What song reflects a theme, thread or overall tone of the anthology?

I’d probably go with the theme tune to War of the Worlds.

(Narrelle’s note: I found the live version on YouTube)

About A is for Aliens

A is for Aliens, the first book in an epic series of twenty-six horror anthologies. Within these pages you will find a collection of thirteen stories from some of the finest independent writers on the scene today, blending science fiction with horror. From the humorous to the terrifying, A is for Aliens contains a diverse range of stories with each author taking a different approach to the theme.

Buy A is for Aliens

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About the authors

A is for Aliens is an anthology containing 13 short stories. It includes stories by Dona Fox, Daren Callow, P.J. Blakey-Novis, Nancy Kilpatrick, Tim Jeffreys, Mawr Gorshin, Theresa Jacobs, Jeremy Megargee, Monster Smith, Megan Neumann, Lesley Drane, Astrid Addams, and Mark Anthony Smith.

So many book launches and author talks have had to be cancelled, I’ve decided to run as many Quintettes as I can to share some great upcoming work – and let you stock up on things to read while we’re all self-isolating.

Quintette of Questions: Alison Booth

Today I’m asking Alison Booth 5 questions about her latest book!

1. What’s the name of your latest book – and how hard was it to pick a title?

My latest book is The
Philosopher’s Daughters. It was hard to pick the title but once we’d
settled on it, it seemed exactly right for the story.

The Philosopher’s Daughters begins in 1890s London. It is written from the
perspective of two sisters, strong young women who were brought up by their
widowed father, an eminent moral philosopher (the philosopher of the book’s
title). I imagined him as a younger version of John Stuart Mill, who was a
great advocate for the emancipation of women. The girls thus had a relatively
modern upbringing. Then I altered the sisters’ circumstances so that they
separately choose to journey into remote and wild Australia. What might happen
to them?  How would they view the world
and life at the frontier? And how would this affect their own personal
development and happiness once they moved away from their father’s influence?

The second half of the novel mostly
takes place in the Northern Territory of South Australia. Together with the top
of Western Australia, this was one of the last areas of the continent to be
appropriated by white colonisers.  At
that time and in that part of Australia, the ‘frontier wars’ were still being
fought, largely over the establishment of the cattle industry, although they
weren’t recognised as frontier wars back then. I wanted to see how The
Philosopher’s Daughters would cope with being thrust into this
challenging environment.

2. If you could choose anyone from any time period, who would you cast as the leads in your latest book?

I would like to play the part of Harriet. A natural for Harriet’s younger sister Sarah would be Mia Wasikowska and especially so if Mia can play the piano.

Henry Vincent, whom Sarah marries, could be played by someone like Simon Baker. Mick Spencer is an important character in the second half of the book. If Aaron Pederson’s years could be wound back a bit, I’d like him to play this role. If not, would be great in this part. So too would .

There are several malevolent figures who feature in the story and I would like David Wenhamarruthers or his friend Brady.

3. What five words best describe your story?

Evocative, insightful, thought-provoking, lyrical, delicately-handled. (Here I’m picking from words that others have used to describe the novel.)

4. Who is your favourite fictional team/couple ?

There are many. But at the moment I especially love the tenderness of the main and nameless female character in Milkman (the novel by Anna Burns that won the 2018 Booker Prize) towards her ‘wee sisters’ and her mother. I think they could be described as a team.

5. What song reflects a theme, character, relationship or scene in your book?

I particularly like Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu singing Wiyathul. That piece is so haunting, so beautiful, so expressive of what might have been. It reflects the relationship between Harriet and the Aboriginal stockman Mick, and would be especially right for one of their evening conversations at the boundary fence of the home paddock of Dimbulah Downs.

About The Philosopher’s Daughters

The Philosopher’s Daughters is a tale of two very different sisters whose 1890s voyage from London into remote outback Australia becomes a journey of self-discovery, set against a landscape of wild beauty and savage dispossession. 

Buy The Philosopher’s Daughters

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About Alison Booth

Novelist and academic Alison Booth was born in Melbourne, brought up in Sydney, lived for many years in the UK, and now calls Canberra home. Her new novel, The Philosopher’s Daughters, is set in the 1890s in London and Australia. Her previous books include A Perfect Marriage, a work of contemporary fiction, while her first three novels (Stillwater Creek, The Indigo Sky, and A Distant Land) are historical fiction spanning the decades 1950s through to the early 1970s.

Alison’s work has been translated into French and has also been published by Reader’s Digest Select Editions in both Asia and Europe. Stillwater Creek was Highly Commended in the ACT Book of the Year Award in 2011 and A Perfect Marriage was Highly Commended in the 2019 ACT Writing and Publishing Awards. 

Social MediaWebsite: https://www.alisonbooth.net/ Blog: https://www.alisonbooth.net/blogFacebookTwitter: @booth_alisonInstagram: @ alisonboothauthor9723

So many book launches and author talks have had to be cancelled, I’ve decided to run as many Quintettes as I can to share some great upcoming work – and let you stock up on things to read while we’re all self-isolating.

Quintette of Questions: Kirsten Krauth

Today I’m asking Kirsten Krauth 5 questions about her latest book!

1. What’s the name of your latest book – and how hard was it to pick a title?

The title is Almost A Mirror. The book had another title for a while but as I began to do more research into the Crystal Ballroom, the venue in St Kilda in the late 70s and early 80s, the wonderful song ‘Shivers’, written by Rowland S Howard and sung by Nick Cave in Boys Next Door, was clearly an anthem for the period and these words seemed to encapsulate characters moving between the early 80s and contemporary worlds.

2. If you could choose anyone from any time period, who would you cast as the leads in your latest book?

Well, in this book I was lucky enough to feature Nick Cave as a character, so I’d love Nick to go back in time to play himself as it would be hard to replace him.

As for Mona and Benny, the two main characters, I’d say Toni Colette and Heath Ledger (both as teenagers and in their 40s/50s) whose work I have always loved, Toni for her robustness and ability to take on any role, Heath for his sensitivity to the world.

3. What five words best describe your story?

Music. Memory. Motherhood. Mirrors. Masculinity.

4. Who is your favourite fictional team/couple?

Fleabag and the Priest. I have spent many hours, days, weeks, contemplating that relationship and even wrote about it for The Monthly because I had to get it out of my system. Like many others, I think Phoebe Waller Bridge wrote the perfect script for that series. I’ve studied her writing in great detail because she doesn’t have a single excess word. Not one. And the rhythm is stunning.

5. What song reflects a theme, character, relationship or scene in your book?

This is pretty hard for me to do because Almost a Mirror is structured as a mixtape where every chapter is an 80s song! I have over 40 songs to choose from but I’ll go with ‘Spring Rain’ by the Go-Betweens because it’s about melancholy and joy, looking to the future, hoping to reinvent yourself. My main characters Mona and Benny move through their grief and use creativity to find this place. “I want surprises just like spring rain.”

If you want to hear the mixtape playlist, you can search for Almost a Mirror on Apple Music, Spotify or YouTube.

About Almost a Mirror

What we make of memories and what they make of us. Like fireflies to the light, Mona, Benny and Jimmy are drawn into the elegantly wasted orbit of the Crystal Ballroom and the post-punk scene of 80s Melbourne, a world that includes Nick Cave and Dodge, a photographer pushing his art to the edge.

With precision and richness, Kirsten Krauth hauntingly evokes the power of music to infuse our lives, while diving deep into loss, beauty, innocence and agency. Filled with unforgettable characters, the novel is above all about the shapes that love can take and the many ways we express tenderness throughout a lifetime.

As it moves between the Blue Mountains and Melbourne, Sydney and Castlemaine, Almost a Mirror reflects on the healing power of creativity and the everyday sacredness of family and friendship in the face of unexpected tragedy.

Buy Almost a Mirror

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About Kirsten Krauth

Kirsten Krauth is an author and arts journalist who lives in Castlemaine. Her writing has been published in the Guardian, Saturday Paper, Monthly, Age/SMH and Overland. She’s inspired by photography, pop and punk, film and is an 80s tragic.  Her first novel is just_a_girl.

Almost a Mirror was shortlisted for the Penguin Literary Prize and won the Parker University Medal at the University of Canberra for Most Outstanding PhD thesis, the first ever for creative writing.

Social Media

Website: Kirsten KrauthFacebookTwitter: @kirstenkrauthInstagram: @kirstenkrauthInstagram: @almost.a.mirrorYouTube: Almost A Mirror playlist

So many book launches and author talks have had to be cancelled, I’ve decided to run as many Quintettes as I can to share some great upcoming work – and let you stock up on things to read while we’re all self-isolating.

Quintette of Questions: Caroline Angel

Today I’m asking Caroline Angel 5 questions about her latest book!

1. What’s the name of your latest book – and how hard was it to pick a title?

Madman Across the Water. Picking the title was easy, I’ve listened to the song of the same title since I was a child and always felt there could be a story hidden behind the haunting lyrics.

2. If you could choose anyone from any time period, who would you cast as the leads in your latest book?

I could only think of fictional characters – Sam and Dean from Supernatural!

3. What five words best describe your story?

Creepy. Suspenseful. Eerie. Scary. Nightmarish. 

4. Who is your favourite fictional team/couple?

As above, Sam and Dean from Supernatural.

5. What song reflects a theme, character, relationship or scene in your book?

That’s easy, the title, Madman across the Water! 

About Madman Across the Water

For generations one family has been haunted by something… something that stalks. It sees and listens, it watches and follows. In the shadows and mist it waits, to take you, to hurt you, perhaps to kill you. And if it doesn’t kill you, you’ll wish it did.

A creepy, suspenseful saga of family, horror, and mystery, this is one story sure to leave you frightened of the woods at night, fog, and all things tall and slender

Buy Madman Across the Water

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About Caroline Angel

I can’t remember exactly when I started writing stories, Various fantasy novels found their way into my library, and if a book combined science fiction, horror, and fantasy I was home.

I took a break from writing for many, many years, though occasionally I’d start a story I would only to put it aside without finishing.

I caught the writing bug again when I started reading fan fiction, writing a few of my own, and received great reviews. I then penned a few short stories and submitted them into competitions. I was fortunate enough to win or place highly, and took the leap to write a novel. The novel received several offers to publish it when it was only about a third of the way through, spurring me to finish and submit it. And the rest, as the saying goes, is history.

Social Media

Website: Caroline AngelTwitter: @ucat42FacebookInstagram: @ucat42Goodreads

So many book launches and author talks have had to be cancelled, I’ve decided to run as many Quintettes as I can to share some great upcoming work – and let you stock up on things to read while we’re all self-isolating.

Lockdown Fiction: Queen of Cats

This is a tiny something I wrote in response to the latest Improbable Press prompt word list: foolish human, pixelate, melting, on the carpet

If you want to read the other stores prompted by these words, or take part in the prompts yourself, visit Improbable Press’s blog.

Queen of Cats

This foolish human heart of mine has melted. Look at you, Miss Fuzzy Drawers, Kitty LaRue, the Feline Queen of All She Surveys, squirming on the carpet with your paws in the air and a coquettish tilt to your whiskers. What price dignity now, puss?

I’ll take a picture for posterity – My Cat Empress, in playful mood.

I know it’s a trap. You know that I know it’s a trap.

I’m going in anyway, to rub your white belly, hairs as soft as silk (claws like needles, teeth like pins). No blood is drawn – you’re a merciful tyrant.

And I’ll post that photo, the Monarch Reclining at Home, but I’ll pixelate your face to protect your identity and maintain your mystery.

Quintette of Questions: Stephen Dedman

Today I’m asking Stephen Dedman 5 questions about his latest book!

1. What’s the name of your latest book – and how hard was it to pick a title?

IMMUNITY, and for once, it was very easy. I knew I wanted a special bioweapon as the McGuffin, and once I’d decided that the main character would be backed up by an American who had diplomatic immunity…

2. If you could choose anyone from any time period, who would you cast as the leads in your latest book?

A 30ish Guy Pearce or Sam Neill for Nick Horne.  Tom Hardy would be interesting as Purdy, or maybe Chris Hayes.

3. What five words best describe your story?

Australian, noir, detective, bioterrorism technothriller.

4. Who is your favourite fictional team/couple?

Master Li Kao and Number Ten Ox, from Bridge of Birds.

5. What song reflects a theme, character, relationship or scene in your book?

Private Investigations, Dire Straits

About Immunity

When Nick Horne, police crime scene examiner turned science journalist, hears rumours of a leak at Helikal’s genetic engineering lab in Western Australia’s wheatbelt, he tries to contact geneticist David Mora for details. After learning that Mora has disappeared, Horne realises that someone is trying to stop him investigating Helikal.

He reluctantly teams up with Tom Purdy, a US defence attache with diplomatic immunity who is also looking for Mora and fears that he may have given a bioweapon to a terrorist group threatening to unleash it on America.

Soon, Horne is not only fighting for his life, but must make decisions that can affect the world – but first, he has to decide who he can trust.

Buy Immunity

Amazon AustraliaIMMUNITY Amazon US

About Stephen Dedman

Stephen Dedman is the author of The Art of Arrow Cutting, Shadows Bite and For a Fistful of Data, and more than 120 short stories published and reprinted in an eclectic variety of anthologies and magazines. He’s taught creative writing at UWA and the Forensic Science Centre, and worked as a bookseller, book reviewer, game designer, editor, actor, museum exhibit and experimental subject.

He’s won Aurealis and Ditmar awards, and been nominated for the Bram Stoker Award, the BSFA Award, the Sidewise Award, the Seiun Award, the Spectrum Award, and a sainthood. He lives in Western Australia and likes travel, theatre, movies, talking to cats, and startling people.

Social Media

Website: www.stephendedman.com

So many book launches and author talks have had to be cancelled, I’ve decided to run as many Quintettes as I can to share some great upcoming work – and let you stock up on things to read while we’re all self-isolating.

Quintette of Questions: Suzanne Moore

Today I’m asking Suzanne Moore 5 questions about her latest book!

1. What’s the name of your latest book – and how hard was it to pick a title?

The Place Between. The title evolved on its own over time. I can’t quite remember when I settled on the title. It was a working title and I played around with a couple of others but they didn’t feel right so this is the one that stuck. It felt like it captured the essence of what was going on in the story.

2. If you could choose anyone from any time period, who would you cast as the leads in your latest book?

I think Diana Rigg
would have made a great Sarah. For Beryl? Betty White, all the way.

Who wouldn’t want
Grace Kelly to play one of their characters? I think she would make a great
Lillian.

3. What five words best describe your story?

Mysterious. Unsettling. Loving. Emotive. Touching.

4. Who is your favourite fictional team/couple?

Max Smart and 99. They bring me straight back to my childhood and I still find the show funny. Just hearing the opening music to Get Smart makes me smile. I remember lying on my stomach in our lounge room when I was quite small, recording it for my Dad on Betamax tapes. I would have to pause recording during the ad breaks and then remember to start again as soon as they were finished.

5. What song reflects a theme, character, relationship or scene in your book?

It would have to be Gary Jules’s version of Mad World. The lyrics, “all around me are familiar faces…” makes me think of how, in the story, two people can see the same thing but they a completely different meaning, with completely different consequences.

About The Place Between

A lost mother, a forgotten past and three generations bound by hidden memories… History doesn’t always tell the truth.

Buy The Place Between

JTW Publishing Amazon AustraliaBook DepositoryThe Place Between[image error] (AmazonUS)

About Suzanne Moore

Suzanne Moore began her professional career as a small
animal veterinarian with a love of surgery. In 2004 she returned to university
to study creative writing as an aside to her veterinary career, and the balance
of power between hobby and career shifted in favour of her creative pursuit.

After many years cocooned in her study Suzanne emerged
rebranded as a writer, obtaining a PhD in creative writing from Murdoch
University. During this time, she developed an interest in women’s narratives
and time theory while juggling two small children and a household of geriatric
pets.

Suzanne’s novelette, ‘The Station’—an eerie tale of a young
girl’s journey through time and place—was published in Tincture in 2013.

Suzanne lives amongst the trees in the Perth hills. When she
isn’t writing and the snow is deep, you can find her snowboarding in Japan with
her family.

Social Media

Website: www.suzannemoorewriter.comInstagram: @suzannemoorecreativeFacebook: Suzanne Moore – Author. Twitter: @SuzanneLMoore

So many book launches and author talks have had to be cancelled, I’ve decided to run as many Quintettes as I can to share some great upcoming work – and let you stock up on things to read while we’re all self-isolating.

Lockdown Fiction: Ink Black

During this time of social isolation, I’m going to try writing a few extra stories to share. This one is actually a response to a writing prompt posted on Improbable Press using the words black water, buzz buzz, Martian and boardwalk, and it’s on that page with some other great responses.

Future lockdown stories will be posted first on my Patreon and then be made public a few days later – but I’m sharing this first one here too!

Ink Black

Sitting on the edge
of the boardwalk, my feet dangle over black water: ink and crow feather black;
shadow black; mourning black.

The surface of this
black lake, flat as a mirror, reflects no stars. When I peer hard I can discern
the distant line of the bio dome reflected in the mirror. Beyond the dome, the
Earth circles between me and the Sun. I am not certain, this Martian equinox,
where in its path it is, but knowing it waltzes out there, spinning and yet blue,
gives comfort to my homesick heart.

(One day, perhaps
soon, my Earth will be grey. She spins and dies so far away from me.)

At my back, on the
red soil shore, stands the Mars Terraform Project’s water extraction plant.
Squeezing the moisture from waste matter and the sweat from our clothes. The
precious fluids of the living things that died. The little white mice from the
lab. And not only mice. Channelling it into the lake. 

And from the ink
black, sorrow black lake, comes the soft whispering buzz buzz of all
those dehydrated souls. Not haunting; promising.

One day – not soon
but one day – you and we and all will quench the thirst of alien soil and make
it fertile. We will grow the new world and nourish our successors. 

My darling Li Xiu
Ling’s whisper buzzes to my ear, reminding me that, to her, black is the colour
of prosperity, of health.

One day (not soon
but one day) I will be not on but of the lake. I will give everything to
the prosperity and health of the future. One day, humankind will survive, because
of us. Because of me.

In our lake, black
as ink, as elegance, as infinity, Li Xiu Ling and I are the grandmothers, the
goddesses, of this brave new world.

Quintette of Questions: Michael Farrell

Cover art: artwork: ‘Apparent Acquittal’ by Melbourne artist Spiros Panigirakis

Today I’m asking Michael Farrell 5 questions about his latest book!

1. What’s the name of your latest book – and how hard was it to pick a title?

Family Trees.  I knew that was the right title once I hit on it. Like a number of my book titles, it comes from a poem title in the book, but the meaning can be read more generally. Also, I didn’t realise till afterwards how many trees recur in the poems.

2. If you could choose anyone from any time period, who would you cast as the leads in your latest book? (or What things inspired you in writing these poems? )

To answer this question, it seems too easy to suggest Jude Law would be a good Pope Pinocchio, but maybe LIzzo would be good also.

In terms of inspiration:

1: reading, especially history, for example Edward Browne’s A Literary History of Persia, also Hardt and Virno’s Radical Thought in Italy 2: spending time on the SE coast of NSW near Bega, and in my home town of Bombala; pop music: Laurie Anderson, Chrissie Amphlett, Radiohead, Frank Sinatra — and painting — and TV (Kimba, yet again). 

3. What five words best describe your story?

Love, the bush, pop, animals, trees

4. Who is your favourite fictional team/couple?

Jeeves and Wooster

5. What song reflects a theme, character, relationship or scene in your book?

There are many, but I will plump for Sharkey’s Day, by Laurie Anderson.

About  Family Trees

The poems in Michael Farrell’s Family Trees operate according to a queer and inclusive logic, which binds humans, animals, objects, plants and concepts in familial relationships.

The poems model contact through affection, sharing, and attention – sometimes violent attention. They tell strange stories – tall tales from the country, rambling reminiscences, shaggy-dog stories – of weird and wonderful things: the coffin with legs that walked, an infertile rabbit that fosters a lamb, robots hunting in Kenya for the little white lion of Tokyo, an argumentative sock-puppet, marsupial geese and singing worms, and Pope Pinocchio, who thinks his heartbeat powers Italy.

The characters in these scenarios think, gossip, sleep and work. A phrase, a detail, an object can send them in a hundred directions. Anything can be a twig (or bud or leaf or fruit) on Farrell’s family trees.

Buy  Family Trees

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About  Michael Farrell

Photo: Nicholas Walton-Healey

Michael Farrell grew up in Bombala, NSW and has lived in Melbourne since 1990. He has edited two anthologies: Out of the Box, Contemporary Australian Gay and Lesbian Poets (with Jill Jones) and Ashbery Mode. His book I Love Poetry won the Queensland Literary Award for Poetry in 2018, and was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Awards. Cocky’s Joy was shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Awards in 2016. He won the 2012 Peter Porter Poetry Prize for ‘Beautiful Mother’, a poem which includes Hebrew and merges the stories of Jesus and Kimba.

Michael has a PhD from the University of Melbourne: a revised version of his thesis was published as Writing Australian Unsettlement: Modes of Poetic Invention 1796-1945 (Palgrave Macmillan). He is currently a Juncture Fellow at Sydney Review of Books. He also edits a magazine Flash Cove with designer Wendy Cooper.

Social media links:

FacebookTwitter: @readingrevival

So many book launches and author talks have had to be cancelled, I’ve decided to run as many Quintettes as I can to share some great upcoming work – and let you stock up on things to read while we’re all self-isolating.

Quintette of Questions: Christine Bell

Today I’m asking Christine Bell 5 questions about her latest book!

1. What’s the name of your latest book – and how hard was it to pick a title?

No Small Shame isn’t the original title. My publisher ‘stole’ one of my chapter titles for the book, (their words