Narrelle M. Harris's Blog, page 17

The Neighbours of Night Terrace: Tansy Rayner Roberts

The Kickstarter for the third season of the brilliant radio SF comedy, Night Terrace, is entering its final third. In celebration, I’m interviewing a number of people involved with the previous two seasons and the current series!

Today it’s:

Tansy Rayner Roberts

who is a guest writer on the bonus audiobook for the Season 3 Kickstarter (in the Digital Stories reward level and above)

How did you get involved in Night Terrace?

When Ben McKenzie asked me to write a tie-in story for the Kickstarter, I didn’t hesitate to say yes.

Why did you get involved?

It’s a fantastic, unique Australian show with an awesome creative team behind it. Why wouldn’t I want to write for those characters?

What do you love about the show?

I really appreciate how it grew out of Doctor Who fandom – you can see how so many of the creative choices are in dialogue with some aspect of Doctor Who history, tradition (or responds to areas that Doctor Who has fallen down on). But also it’s very much it’s own thing, as well. I adore audio science fiction, going back to Hitchhiker’s Guide, Earthsearch and the Foundation series which I first discovered on ABC Radio.

What’s your favourite line/quote from NT?

“Have you seen the cows?”

What’s the best feedback you’ve had about the series?

I haven’t had much yet because only Ben and John have read my story! But they liked it a lot, so I’ll take that. My story is very Eddie-centric, so submitting it to Ben was a bit nerve-wracking! If he thinks I got the voice right, I must be doing OK.

What key skill would you bring if you ended up travelling in time and space with the crew?

I have a good memory for weird history and celebrity trivia, and I feel that would come in super handy if the scriptwriters were kind to me. I’m also very good at drinking cups of tea made by other people.

Would you like to travel in time and space with Anastasia, Eddie and Sue?

Hard no! If I was going to travel in time and space I’d prefer it in a house than anything else, but I’m quite content on this planet, thank you very much. I’d happily have the gang over to my place to chat about their chaotic adventures, though.

Really?

Yeah, no, if I’m travelling in time and space I want an itinerary, and a reliable source of transport. Sorry, Night Terrace! I only want to admire you from afar.

Would you like to be part of the next season of Night Terrace? Zip over to Kickstarter to listen to the very first episode, and pick your pledge level!

The Neighbours of Night Terrace: George Ivanoff

The Kickstarter for the third season of the brilliant radio SF comedy, Night Terrace, is entering its final third. In celebration, I’m interviewing a number of people involved with the previous two seasons and the current series!

Today it’s:

George Ivanoff

Whose roles in Night Terrace include being the Scientist in Hello, My Name is Eddy; the Scribe in season 2 ; and a short story writer for the Season 3 Kickstarter (in the Digital Stories reward level and above)

How did you get involved in Night Terrace?

It started off with a small role as a rather incompetent scientist in the prequel mini-series Hello, My Name is Eddy. I guess the lovely people who make the show thought I did okay, as they then offered me the role of Scribe in the second season episode “A Verb of Nouns”. [I blogged about the experience] And now I’ve been asked to write a short story for the Kickstarter campaign. Which I am super excited about.

Why did you get involved?

Because I’m a fan of the show. OMG… I love it so much!

Right after listening to the first season I started emailing the creators begging them to let me be involved in some way… any way at all. I would have been happy with a one-liner. Oh… so if any of the creators are reading this… you could have my voice back for season 3, you know. I’d happily come into the studio just for one line. Or one word. Maybe you need a random dying scream? Hey, you know, I could buy one of the Kickstarter packages that gets me a line in season 3. Sorry… getting distracted. Now I’m getting the chance to write a story.

Did I mention that I’m super excited about it?

What do you love about the show?

Everything!

It’s funny and smart; it’s full of pop culture references; and it’s kind of Doctor Who-ish without being a rip-off. I love the cast. The three leads are awesome, but what I really enjoy is picking through the who’s who of the Australian entertainment industry in the guest cast. And I adore the fact that this show is Australian. Yay, Australia!

What’s your favourite line/quote from NT?

There are so many that I love. But I’m going to have to go with one of Scribe’s lines. Actually, I can’t pin it down to one line. There are three that I really loved delivering…

“I’m so sorry your majesty, was I scribing too loud?”
“Strangers in both custom and dress. They had weird hair as well. But who am I to judge?”
“Oh there are many ancient traditions and rights that the people must observe. Or else the Beast of Sevdalis will tear their hearts from their living flesh and eat their souls.”

What’s the best feedback you’ve had about the series?

On a personal note, I had feedback from several people I know saying they didn’t realise I was voicing Scribe until the end of the ep where they tell you the cast. As an actor, that is really nice.

But overall, I’ve been really stoked by the feedback the series as a whole has got from Neil Gaiman. I’m a HUGE Gaiman fan, so him liking the show is a wonderful collision of fandoms for me.

What key skill would you bring if you ended up travelling in time and space with the crew?

The ability to spot a pop culture reference at ten paces.

Would you like to travel in time and space with Anastasia, Eddie and Sue?

Seriously? Would I like to be lost in time and space with Susan from Neighbours? You bet!

Really?

Well… Maybe!

Review: The Great Divide by LJM Owen

LJM Owen, known previously for her archaeology-related Dr Pimms crime fiction (Olmec Obituary et al) has branched out into dark, contemporary crime with The Great Divide.

Set in the fictional small Tasmanian town of Dunton, The Great Divide follows Jake Hunter, a Melbourne policeman who’s taken a job in what he expects to be a quiet country town while he sorts through the fallout of a recent personal crisis.

Not a week into the job, the body of a woman is found, oddly mutilated, in a vineyard. She is the former headmistress of a now closed girls’ home and the more Hunter digs, the stranger things become.

Hunter’s investigation seems to be obstructed at every turn, by witnesses, the townspeople, potential suspects and even colleagues – though whether this is through ignorance, inexperience, incompetence or malevolence is murky for a good long time. Hunter’s own baggage and concerns also play their part.

Owen has painted a town with a creepy Stepford quality. It’s all surface good neighbours and small town community, but something rotten seethes underneath. Jake seems welcome enough, so is the whole town covering up something sinister, is it simply narrow thinking?

From casual, persistent misogyny to insular assumptions on who the ‘good’ or ‘bad’ people are, the reader shares Jake’s frustration as he picks his way through a tangled fog of lies, prejudice and ugly truths.

Owen’s engaging style draws you into a world that is, in contrast, dark, complex and repellent. It’s a great step into the modern era for this writer, though I admit it makes me reluctant to visit small town Tassie!

Buy The Great Divide

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Review: The Case of the Misplaced Models by Tessa Barding

Improbable Press, recently acquired as an imprint by Clan Destine Press, has released two new books already under the new banner. I’ve reviewed the first – A Question of Time, a collection of 50 short stories with illustrations – and have just finished this new novel by Tessa Barding.

The Case of the Misplaced Models takes place in a contemporary London and is narrated by a John Watson who is fitting back into his old life. He works in a local surgery, keeps fit while keeping an eye on the limitations of his reconstructed let, and has an eye for a hot guy – especially when one shows up outside consulting hours needing a gash in his leg sewn up.

Dr Watson ends up in a flat share with this same enigmatic and attractive man – Sherlock Holmes of course – and before long they are sharing morning runs, simple breakfasts and a frisson of attraction. Yet while John is falling in love, it’s less clear what Sherlock wants. Sex, certainly, but is his heart in the game?

While John gradually becomes involved in Sherlock’s cases, he’s also keeping in sporadic touch with his university friend, the perpetually busy finance broker, Karim Halabi. Halabi’s stumbled across an odd algorithm in the figures he’s modelling – and then one day disaster strikes.

Barding has created a rich, modern life for Holmes and Watson. John’s relationship with Karim is believably deep for all the trouble they have getting their schedules to match up. It’s easy to respond to John’s magnetic attraction and confusion over Sherlock’s feelings and intentions as well.

Holmes is, as always, fascinating. His hard-to-read emotions suggest a troubled past that readers of the original Doyle stories (or viewers of modern interpretations) will recognise as an old drug habit. He’s odd and unpredictable, not always picking up on the social and relationship cues, yet still likeable, as he should be.

Barding’s Sherlock is brilliant and eccentric. His affectionate relationship with his brother Mycroft is a lovely throwback to canon, and his warm working relationship with DI Gwen Lestrade a nod to Conan Doyle’s work describing the DI as being “the best of the professionals”.

A special shout-out goes to Bodie and Doyle, John’s pets in this iteration.

The Case of the Misplaced Models zips along at a great pace, scattered with several cases before Karim’s trouble takes over the focus. The sex scenes are hot, and the emotional growth attached to them satisfying. I’m hoping Tessa Barding will consider bringing more of this John and Sherlock to us!

At the time of writing, Improbable Press is offering a very cool deal. Buy all three of its most recent paperbacks – A Question of Time, A Study in Velvet and Leather and The Case of the Misplaced Models – and you can get another two ebooks from its or Clan Destine’s range – for free. Details are on the Improbable Press website.

Buy The Case of the Misplaced Models

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Review: Lonely Planet – The Universe, A Travel Guide

This guide to all the lonely planets in our solar system, as well as our sun and further flung celestial bodies, is a treat. Written in conjuction with NASA, it’s full of up-to-date information (at least, up-to-2018, which is when the info was compiled before the 2019 release).

While confident the science is all correct, I’m also delighted that the book is easy to read, the language accessible to those of us without PhDs in astrophysics. The combination of co-authors includes travel writers, space enthusiasts and Dr Mark A. Garlick (the one with said astronomy-related PhD experience). Several NASA scientists are also thanked, including its chief scientist, Dr James Green.

One of the fun things about this book is the humour. I get a little frisson of delight whenever I see the usual LP sidebar headings of ‘Getting There and Away’, ‘Top Tips’, ‘Five Facts’ and the Highlights, even for places like Neptune and Mars.

In keeping with current scientific thought, poor old Pluto isn’t a planet but still gets a write-up as Dwarf Planet.

Bill Nye’s lively introduction, which touches on global warming and the Earth’s (so far) unique role as the only planet supporting life is followed by other essays introducing the reader to current scientific thinking about our solar system and the universe at large, including naming conventions, some tips on how best to use the book, and the history of manned spaceflight.

This guide is ambitious beyond the solar system, mind you. The Sun and all its planets only take up the first 300 or so pages of the 608 in this book. It goes on to explore other non-planetary objects in the solar system, asteroids and the Kuiper belt, dwarf planets, comets, the Oort cloud, exoplanets, other stellar objects, and galaxies, including colliding galaxies and galaxy clusters.

Yes folks, this book has the universe as we thus far know it at your fingertips. And it’s all presented in easy to understand bites, with highlights, pull-out boxes, gorgeous images and clear explanations for the lay person, along with all the stats a numbers person could wish for.

The writers haven’t neglected pop culture either, with references to Arthur C Clarke and Isaac Asimov, HG Wells, Star Wars, Jules Verne and even Jupiter Ascending. Even Freddy Mercury scores a mention!

If anyone in your life is fascinated by our world and the stars beyond it, you can do worse than give them The Universe! Hell, give yourself the far heavens as well. Dip in and out of the book for the armchair travel among the stars, and be reminded that our planet is small and special in the vast universe and needs better care than we have given it, if we’re all to survive.

Buy Lonely Planet: The Universe

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Review: A Question of Time by Jamie Ashbird

Improbable Press, recently acquired by Clan Destine Press, has come of of its new gate with two new books: A Question of Time by Jamie Ashbird, illustrated by Janet Anderton, and The Case of the Misplaced Models by Tessa Barding.

A Question of Time is the third in IP’s 221B series (which began with my own A Dream to Build a Kiss On and then K. Caine’s A Study in Velvet and Leather) and continues the theme of writing Holmes/Watson love stories a succinct 221 words at a time. (The last word of each short story begins with ‘B’, hence the 221B name for the form.)

The Blurb

Sherlock Holmes
whether he’s a grimy student in 1980, a consulting detective in 47BCE, or a smitten neighbour in 1969, will always find his…
John Watson
whether he is a military doctor in 1917, an angry Saxon with an axe in 1086, or a priest in 1603.

A Question of Time is an illustrated journey through the ages told by our heroes, by their friends, and by a scorched manuscript.

This new collection begins with 221 words set in 2085, a bittersweet eulogy for two men who loved each other all their lives, delivered by their child. There is so much love and humour in these words you feel like you’ve known the three of them. The illustration of the twined elm trees is a lovely, evocative symbol of the emotion of this window into their story.

The remaining 49 stories flit about through time, from 19,873 BCE (oh, how heartstrings can be tugged in 221 words about ochred hand paintings!) through the disco years [and two world wars and molly houses and Jack the Ripper’s London] to a lovely two-parter in 2019 where an appreciative and babbling Watson meets a busking Holmes.

Each is a delicious little tale, woven into history yet standing alone as a snippet of a time and place. Huge amounts of personality, delicious wickedness and humour are part of the weave; as are darker moments during the black plague and its 20th century counterpart during the 1980s with the AIDS crisis.

All the cleverness, compassion, giggle-out-loud-at-the-cafe quirks are turned into double delights with Janet Anderton’s illustration: the orchids, bees, coins, singed manuscripts and strange paraphernalia, and glimpses of hands, mouths, eyes in each setting highlighting elements of and adding dimensions to each story.

In short, A Question of Time is small and perfectly formed, the delights of the text enhanced by the charms of the illustrations, and if you like your Holmes and Watson to be in love, no matter where in time they exist, you’ll get 50 little hits of joy.

Buy A Question of Time

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Review: Year of the Queen by Jeremy Stanford

Jeremy Stanford’s 2006 begins when he’s invited to work with Simon Phillips (then Artistic Director of the Melbourne Theater Company) and others on workshop Priscilla: Queen of the Desert into a stage musical, playing Tick (the part made famous by Hugo Weaving).

What follows is a year in a life of both an actor and a play, from workshop to full-blown Aussie musical, as Stanford juggles the commitments of family and career, auditions and rehearsals, returning to singing after an 8-year gap, creative inspirations and clashes, and all the emotional and professional dramas inherent in the acting life. Along the way, Stanford learns to embrace his inner drag queen and uses parts of his life as touchstones for bringing out Tick’s story.

Theatre life is full of strange pressures and the balancing acts of ego and collaboration to make a story work on stage. So often the whole enterprise seems on the precipice, but hard work, dedication and often sheer bloody-mindedness somehow forge hugely successful musical out of the furnace.

Seeing the theatrical world through Stanford’s eyes reveals layers of how such a world works. It’s lovingly told, but Stanford doesn’t hold back on revealing the days when tempers are frayed, emotional wellbeing is disintegrating and Jeremy himself is at a low, low ebb.

It’s a little gossipy, a little self-deprecating, and it’s more than a little stressful as the rehearsals go badly awry – but Stanford’s easygoing writing style and personable, honest approach keeps everything moving quickly towards the finale, where success will have to be wrought from a complex show and a pretend bus that keeps breaking down.

If you love Priscilla: Queen of the Desert, musical theatre, actorly memoirs or some combination of the three, Year of the Queen is the book for you!

Buy Year of the Queen

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Review: Circus Hearts 2 and 3 by Ellie Marney

Almost immediately after reading and reviewing All the Little Bones – the first in the Circus Hearts series – a began reading the second, All Fall Down. Once I finished that I went straight onto number three, All Aces.

If nothing else, that will tell you how easy these books are to read, and how easy is it to want to read them. So here we go, with me telling you why these next two books (and the whole damned series) are so good.

Circus Hearts 2: All Fall Down

While the first book, All the Little Bones, follows trapeze artist Sorsha Neary, All Fall Down is about Fleur Klatsch, who looked set to be Sorsha’s worst enemy in the first book.

The aftermath of the final events of All the Little Bones are infused in the opening of All Fall Down, where Fleur is dealing with the consequences of her actions. There’s also the little matter of the accident that could have killed her.

Fleur is determined to make up for her mistakes and face her responsibilities full on. She is, after all, the ringmaster’s daughter and one day she’ll be running Klatsch’s Karnival.

One day happens sooner than she’d like, when a series of accidents, which are very obviously not accidental, put her father in hospital and the whole circus at risk. In the meantime, she’s confronted with the return of her childhood best friend, Marco Deloren, who against all stereotypes ran away from the circus.

Fleur is hard-headed and domineering. She’s also loves her father, is passionate about the circus and, despite some of her history, has the potential to be a great leader. All of these things are put to the test as she’s thrust into leadership. Marney draws a textured picture of someone who could easily be unlikable, and instead makes Fleur complex, deep and sympathetic.

Like All the Little Bones, there’s romance here, and it’s elegantly balanced and entwined with the story of the dangerous acts of sabotage, the history of Klatsch’s and its rivals, the personal histories of the players and Fleur’s transition from a bossy child to a substantial woman.

Marney’s depiction of Klatch’s is also fantastic – you can damn near smell the greasepaint, the sawdust, the sweat; the smoke and the fire.

None of the books indicate what city, or even what country, Klatsch’s
and its rivals might operate in. I think it’s a good choice. Circuses
operate as worlds of their own, and the only truly ‘real’ places in
these books are within the canvas and wooden walls of the carnivals, and
with the people who inhabit them.

Circus Hearts: All Fall Down[image error] (Amazon US) Amazon AUKoboNookiBooks



Circus Hearts 3: All Aces

All Aces, like the first two books in the series (All the Little Bones and All Fall Down) is written in the first person from the point of view of the young female protagonist. It was a great way to introduce Sorsha and then Fleur and give them great agency.

Getting inside the head of Indonesian-born contortionist Ren Petri is also fantastic, and even more so because Ellie Marney has found a distinctive voice for her. Along with being supremely bendy, Ren is studious, kind, very organised and very brave. She’s sharply observant and has some behaviours that indicate a degree of neurodivergence, which serve to make her unique perspective even more engaging. She’s also surprisingly impulsive: where others run away, she’ll run towards. That impulse prompts some of the best and the worst things that happen to her throughout All Aces.

All Aces, like All Fall Down, begins with events that overlap the previous installment. Circus worker and card sharp, Zep Deal rescued Ren from a fire and she’s still suffering health issues. The repercussions for Zep, whom some believe to have been criminally involved with those events, are different but just as unpleasant.

At the same time, Ren is juggling family obligations and is keeping some secrets, but not as many as Zep, who joined Klatsch’s circus to escape his father and a shady past. Far from keeping them apart, these secrets and their efforts to untangle Zep from his draw the two of them more and more closely together.

Once again, Marney winds the YA romance intricately together with the overall plot so that it’s perfectly balanced. It’s also perfectly charming and delicious. It’s a pretty sure bet that things will work out in the end, but the superbly written trick of it trying to see how on earth it will.

Like Ren’s extraordinary and graceful contortions, the plot bends and loops and provides plenty of surprises – and like Zep’s exquisite skill with a deck of cards, it’s all sharp and snappily paced, with Aces appearing from nowhere with perfect timing.

I’m sad it’s the last of the Circus Hearts stories: the whole world Marney has built is so lively and textured. I’m going to miss it a lot.

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Review: Love and other Perils – A Regency Novella Duet by Emily Larkin and Grace Burrowes

It’s always delightful to have a new Emily Larkin story to read, and when Ms Larkin announced this duet novella with Grace Burrowes, both stories with a prompt to include cats, I (naturally) pounced.

Given both novellas contain Regency era manners, cats and a love story, they’re very different while both being very charming!

Lieutenant Mayhew’s Catastrophe by Emily Larkin

Lieutenant Mayhew’s Catastrophe doesn’t contain any of the fantasy elements of the Baleful Godmother series, but it does trip along with all the vivacity and wit I’d expect.

Willemina Culpepper, who grew up around army camps with her family and father, Colonel Culpepper, is on her own now but determined to get back to having an adventurous life, which she’s definitely not getting in the quiet village where she lives with her aunt. She’s meant to be going to Twyford to become a companion for an ambassador’s children, but when she helps a fellow passenger – Lieutenant Mayhew – find the wayward kittens he’s taking as gifts for his niece and nephew, they both miss the coach.

A series of mishaps keeps them in strife as they try to meet the coach, find new modes of passage or just keep from falling in the mud on their way to Twyford. Willemina – Willie to her friends – has an absolute delight in the unpredictable, and Mayhew’s honour, good humour and chivalry make all their trials more of a friendly adventure than anything dangerous.

The escalating ridiculousness of their predicaments and shared laughter are comical, and a final disaster turns out to be perfectly timed for the happy ending. It’s all a confection of fun and fluff, and an adorable read on any day when you need something light and uplifting.

Catnip and Kisses by Grace Burrowes

The courtship of Antonia the prim librarian and Max the unkempt scientist commences when Max brings an unsolicited cat to the library to act as a mouser. But there’s a lot more to Antonia than her perceived spinster primness, just as there’s a lot more going on behind the scenes for Max Haddonfield.

Max, mostly raised by his sisters, is as big as a bear and gentle as a lamb, fostering stray cats and a stray pickpocket as well, as he carries out scientific studies he hopes will improve the lot of his fellow human beings. Antonia is not as isolated a bluestocking as she appears, and is plagued with a cousin who thinks their ‘inevitable marriage’ will keep the money in the family, and seems incapable of seeing that this is not, perhaps, the way to woo.

These two unusual people who defy stereotypes set about falling in love in their own distinctive way, with obstacles (largely but not solely in the shape of the obnoxious cousin) to overcome and wider lessons to be learned.

Their unexpected journey is witnessed by a lively supporting cast, including the two elderly Barclay sisters who haunt the library. Max’s young, thieving protege, Dagger, is a fabulous too, and the scene where he reveals the fears stoking his behaviour is one of my favourites.

Catnip and Kisses contains a lot of both cats and kisses, which is as it should be, made fun and light with a pair eccentric characters whom you can’t help loving, and cheering for.

Buy Love and Other Perils

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Review: Lillian Armfield by Leigh Straw

Leigh Straw, who has previously written about infamous Razor Gang crime boss Kate Leigh, has picked up the threads of the first female detective, Lillian Armfield, who played a significant role in policing the 1920s ‘Razor Wars’ between Leigh and Tilly Devine, in Lillian Armfield.

There was a lot more to Lillian Armfield’s trailblazing policing work than those infamous and bloody battles in Sydney, and Straw has set to unfolding Armfield’s life in the police from the earliest days, when she and Maude Rhodes were recruited in 1915 as the only two members of the Women’s Police.

Straw has pulled together a comprehensive view of Lillian Armfield’s professional life, and a some of her closely guarded private life, by working from a variety of sources – including contemporaneous newspaper reports, articles from the Police Gazette and other periodicals, published histories of the events (including Rugged Angel, Vince Kelly’s 1961 biography of Armfield based on interviews with her and witnesses of the events and times) and interviews with surviving family and Sydney locals.

After a glimpse of her work helping to apprehend cocaine dealer “Botany May” Smith in 1928, Straw backtracks to examine Armfield’s family history, with its First Fleet convict connections and Hawkesbury River settlers through to Lillian’s early life in Mittagong.

What follows is a detailed study of Lillian Armfield’s life and work, first in an asylum and then as a police woman who worked for 35 years, until her retirement in 1949. The quality of her dedication, compassion, toughness and skill becomes clear very early on, particularly as it served as a beacon to others. She was even respected (if not actually liked) by her arch-enemy, Kate Leigh.

Straw takes the time, throughout the book and particularly at the end, to look at Lillian Armfield’s legacy; the way she argued for more women to join the force, for their work to be taken more seriously, and the success of the Women’s Police which led to police services around Australia eventually recruiting women to active roles in detection and policing.

I particularly liked both the Epilogue, highlighting some of the women who have followed “In Her Shoes”, and the Afterword, which looks at an unsolved mystery in the public understanding of Armfield’s private life which may suggest a key in understanding the attitude she took with her into working with women, children and communities on the often mean and sometimes bloody streets of Sydney in the first half of the 20th century.

Lillian Armfield is an excellent study of how one determined and gifted woman changed the shape of Australia’s early policing and women’s roles within it.

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