Narrelle M. Harris's Blog, page 19

Review: The Atlas of Monsters and Ghosts by Federica Magrin and Laura Brenlla

I loved the idea of a kids’ book charting the location of monster stories around the world – it’s in part what I look for in a destination!

The Atlas of Monsters and Ghosts by LonelyPlanetKids.com is a gorgeous looking book, with Laura Brenlla’s fabulous Tiki-esque style (which reminds me a bit of Shag’s art). It’s an atlas, so the large maps of continents and regions give a cute overview before each section, and an appendix introduces various water monsters of the world as well as a checklist of the ghosts of famous figures, including Anne Boleyn.

The conceit of the whole book is given in the introduction, where Dr Van Helsing welcomes young readers to his version of Monster Hunting 101 on where to find all these creatures and what to do if you encounter them.

Because The Atlas of Monsters and Ghosts is aimed at young readers (9-12 years) the entries are fun and on the silly side. For some readers they might be a little light on, though some better known beasties, like Dracula, have double-age entries with more detail.

The book also places folklore, urban legends and fictional characters all on the same footing without mentioning origins. An entry on Frankenstein’s Monster makes no mention of Mary Shelley any more than the one on King Kong mentions RKO Pictures or creator Merian C Cooper. Actual locations thought to be haunted, like hotels and ghost towns, are noted with the same weight as indigenous folklore. (Having said that, I was amused to see drop bears and bunyips listed with equal weight in the Australian section.)

I don’t know if kids will find that as frustrating as I did – it’s a shame that the origins of these stories aren’t acknowledged, especially for entries that have an individual creator.

Still, The Atlas of Monsters and Ghosts is a charming book and a great starting point for doing some extra googling on folklore, fiction and urban legends before heading for these parts of the world!

Buy The Atlas of Monsters and Ghosts :

The Atlas of Monsters and Ghosts (Lonely Planet) The Atlas of Monsters and Ghosts (Booktopia) The Atlas of Monsters and Ghosts (Dymocks) The Atlas of Monsters and Ghosts (Amazon US)

The Atlas of Monsters and Ghosts (Angus & Robertson)

Review: The Secret Art of Poisoning by Samantha Battams

When I first moved to Melbourne in the late 1990s, I lived in Richmond. At some point during my five years there, before I moved to the city, I learned about Martha Needle, the woman who lived on Bridge Road in the 1890s and poisoned her husband, three children and the brother of her fiance.

That’s as much as I knew, but that little conjured an image of a sly, vicious woman, disposing of unwanted encumbrances to get her own way and maybe a spot of insurance money.

As with all true stories, however, a lot more complexity is unravelled when you start to explore the details. Martha Needle’s guilt, on the face of it, is undoubted, and she was hanged for her crimes – but author Samantha Battams does an excellent job of uncovering the details of Martha’s tragic history and the circumstances of her crimes in The Secret Art of Poisoning: The True Crimes of Martha Needle, The Richmond Poisoner.

Martha Needle circa-1892. Photo: Australian Manuscripts Collection, State Library of Victoria

Battam goes into Martha Needle’s life in detail, beginning with the life of her mother, Mary Newland, who arrived in Adelaide in 1852, one of many women who came to be brides for the male-dominated colonial outpost.

The Secret Art of Poisoning: The True Crimes of Martha Needle, The Richmond Poisoner is a very thorough account of Martha’s harsh and difficult life, her precarious mental health and the deeds she committed and for which she was punished. Biased news coverage, many personal letters, the court proceedings (including the judge’s summing up) and other primary documents are quoted at length, and the final chapter brings together Battams’ observations on the social and historical influences that are so deeply embedded in the fate of Martha Needle and her victims.

On the technical side, a more stringent proofread before publication would have caught some of the more obvious typos and inconsistencies in punctuation which caught my eye and interrupted the reading flow, especially in the early chapters, but it’s a minor niggle in the presentation.

It’s a solid account, but if there’s a disappointment, it’s in an early promise not fulfilled. Battams reveals in the introduction how she stumbled across Martha Needle’s story by first encountering the story of how one Alexander Lee poisoned his wife and children in the 1920s. Lee was Martha Needle’s nephew.

The early suggestion of looking at how these two relatives and their fates were connected is only lightly touched on. I’d have enjoyed a bit more analysis, involving a more explicit look at their parallels, especially since the introduction specifically notes “I was also curious to know, did Alexander Lee know his Auntie Martha and grow up with stories of her infamous deeds?’ while the back blurb reads “What strange quirk of fate led these two relatives… to commit virtually the same crime?” Any answer is inferred rather than fully examined.

Although my curiosity is left largely unsatisfied, The Secret Art of Poisoning: The True Crimes of Martha Needle, The Richmond Poisoner is a thorough examination of a horrible crime, trial by media, the treatment of poverty, trauma and mental health by the 19th century justice system, and how the truth is always so much more complex than a sobriquet like “The Richmond Poisoner” can ever hope to show.

Buy The Secret Art of Poisoning: The True Crimes of Martha Needle, The Richmond Poisoner :

The Secret Art of Poisoning (Booktopia) The Secret Art of Poisoning (iBooks) The Secret Art of Poisoning (Readings) The Secret Art of Poisoning (Nook Book) The Secret Art of Poisoning (Kobo) The Secret Art of Poisoning (Google Play Books) The Secret Art of Poisoning (Angus and Robertson) The Secret Art of Poisoning (Amazon US)

Join my Patreon in August 2019 and get special rewards!

From 1 to 12 August 2019, I’m running a special offer for those joining my Patreon!

What is my Patreon?

At my Patreon, my supporters get sneak peeks of works in progress, cover reveals, research tips and writing tutorials! Some posts are provided a week ahead of my regular blog while others are exclusive to my supporters.

A key reward for my followers there are the Duo Ex Machina ebooks, but there are plenty more rewards depending on the support tier.

My supporters have already helped me to produce three novellas in the Duo Ex Machina series, with the fourth and fifth due for completion in 2020.

August Special Offers



Every new person who joins at the Class Act Level ($5/month) or above will get a free Scar Tissue and Other Stories ebook! Everyone who joins at the Name that Tune Level ($10/month) and above will receive a cross-stitched bookmark, hand-made by me! Each bookmark is unique and relates to one of my stories. Everyone who joins at the Booked Out Level ($20 in Australia; $25 everywhere else) will receive all current 2019 books, sent out over 2 months (ebooks by the end of September, paperbacks by the end of October).

New patrons will be charged up-front on the day you sign up – and have immediate access to three novellas to download and all the posts relevant to your tier!

Rewards will be fulfilled by the end of September 2019 (as I’ll be off in Dublin for WorldCon and travels in the UK from mid-August to early September).

For access to ebooks right through to tutorials, sneak peeks and other rewards – Become a Patron! from 1-12 August 2019.

My Melbourne: Saluting Cyril P Callister

Headstone for Cyril P Callister, plus a jar of Vegemite as tribute

In days gone by, I created an app all about the peculiarities of this city I love so much. Among the tributes to the strange and beloved was a post about that most Australian of foodstuffs – Vegemite.

Australians grow up on the stuff and think nothing of it, but migrants and visitors to our shores have to be taught how to enjoy Vegemite. Many never really manage it.

I used to suspect that Vegemite was concocted in some terrible laboratory accident, but it was in fact invented on purpose. 

Marmite is a whole other controversial foodstuff, also dividing folks into the ‘love/hate’ camps. Australia’s much saltier version came about because the exports of Marmite from Britain to Australia were limited as a result of attacks on ships during World War One. 

Our nation, swearing never again to be desperate for a yeast-extract spread, turned to Cyril Percy Callister. 

Cyril was born in Victoria and schooled in Ballarat. With his Masters of Science from Melbourne University and experience developing explosives for the Brits during The Great War, he invented a process from scratch using spent yeast from the Carlton and United Breweries. I’m not sure where the explosives expertise comes into it, but he scienced like anything and produced the goods!

Vegemite: The Final Product was released in 1923, although it didn’t become popular until the late 1920s.

Cyril also worked on cheese products for his employer, Fred Walker & Co Pty Ltd, which may explain why cheese and Vegemite work so well together – though most Australians prefer it thinly spread on hot, well-buttered toast.

Callister was super-smart and very savvy in the ways of food technology and was all round a pretty decent guy.

Cyril P. Callister passed away of a heart attack in 1949. He is buried in Box Hill Cemetery near the Middleborough Road end, in plot 14 of section 158. Pass by sometime and pay your respects from a grateful nation.

(The jar of Vegemite I left as tribute all those years ago is probably gone now, though.)

And if you’re a non-native and want some tips on how to eat Vegemite like a local, ask away!

Book Launch: Kitty & Cadaver – 3 August 2019

Kitty & Cadaver was revealed to the world at Continuum Convention in June 2019. It was a delightful little do, but restricted to convention attendees and because of the panels going on in rooms all around us, we weren’t able to have any live music as we’d planned.

Now we can welcome Kitty & Cadaver in musical style and to a wider audience!

The official public launch of Kitty & Cadaver will be held at the new queer bookstore, The Back Room, which lives at the back of Carlton bar, A Fan’s Notes, starting at 5pm.

Along with a speech and a reading or two, Jess and Pat of Bronze will be performing five songs from the book: The Rain Song, Down, Song for the Dead, Bury My Heart and Gretel’s Lullaby.

As a taster, here’s an older version of Song for the Dead, which Jess performed a few years ago!

You can RSVP on the Facebook event page or just show up on the night.

Q&As from the Scar Tissue Launch

I recently held an online launch for my collection Scar Tissue and Other Stories. Part of the launch involved me answering questions, so I thought I’d share that Q&A here for anyone who missed it!

George asked: Will there be a third book for Gary and Lissa?

Yes there will! Once I’ve finished editing my latest Duo Ex Machina novella (which is being serialised on my Patreon) I’ll be writing the third book in the Vampires of Melbourne series!

The working title is “Beyond Redemption” and when it’s done, Clan Destine Press will be re-releasing The Opposite of Life (which is out of print, but I have the rights back for it now) and Walking Shadows with a matching set of covers!

Scar Tissue contains a story set after the end of Walking Shadows: “Bad Night at Bite Club”.

Margaret asked: Will there be more adventures in Australia for Holmes and Watson?

The Holmes and Watson from The Adventure of the Colonial Boy appear in the Scar Tissue story “The Beekeeper’s Children”. I would like to write a short story collection for them, but as a project that is at the back of the queue for now.

I am considering writing a modern Australian alternative universe series for them in my Patreon when the Duo Ex Machina novellas are finished next year, riffing off my short story from The Baker Street Irregulars: The Game is Afoot where are a pair of Aussie hipsters running, solving mysteries while they run a cafe called The Sign of Four. Does that count?

Sally F asked me if I ever put people I dislike into my books and then killed them off.

My Library: New Acquisitions

3 books acquired for my research

I really need to stop buying books faster than I can read them.

*pause for mad laughter*

Yeah, we know that’s never going to happen. So while we’re recovering from our hysterical mirth, let’s have a look at three of my most recent acquisitions!

The Outcasts of Melbourne

ed. Graeme Davison, David Dunstan and Chris McConville

The Outcasts of Melbourne

In February, I attended the “Marvellous Smellbourne: early Melbourne’s noxious trades” talk at Docklands Library, presented by John Lack of the Docklands History Group. He spoke about the tanneries, abattoirs and glue factories that gave Melbourne its unflattering epithet, and how the city cleaned up its filthy air and waterways. He also spoke about this book, for which he’d written about the noxious trades.

I’m reading as much as I can about 19th century Melbourne, particularly about the working classes and the era’s social history as well as contemporaneous attitudes towards queerness (rather than what we *think* went on from a 21st century perspective).

The Outcasts of Melbourne offers insights on Chinatown, crime, poverty, disease and “low life” so it should be a rich source of period detail and plot ideas!

Inventing the Victorians

Matthew Sweet

Inventing the Victorians

I found out about this book during the recent broo-haha when author Naomi Wolf discovered she’d misinterpreted data about the death sentences for men convicted of homosexual sex in the 19th century. The radio host and author who highlighted the error live on air was Matthew Sweet, an expert in the era.

I’d been considering getting Wolf’s book, Outrages: Sex, Censorship, and the Criminalization of Love , partly because its claims of the number of men executed for sodomy seemed at odds with some of my other reading (notably Graham Robb’s Strangers: Homosexual Love in the 19th Century).

I’ll still get Outrages in due course – a later edition with the corrections Wolf is said to be making, having found out that ‘Death recorded’ in the old records actually didn’t mean an execution took place. However, the whole thing introduced me to Matthew Sweet, so I’ve picked up his Inventing the Victorians to see what he has to say about what the Victorians were actually like instead of what we only *think* they were like. I’m looking forward to reading what the Literary Review says “overturns cliche after cliche”.

(One thing I keep discovering in my reading is that what people think the Victorians were like has a lot more to do with film and television and narrow interpretations through current social lenses than actual social history.)

Pages Passed from Hand to Hand: The Hidden Tradition of Homosexual Literature in English from 1748 to 1914

ed. Mark Mitchell and David Leavitt

Pages Passed from Hand to Hand

I don’t now recall where I read of this title, but it came up in relation to all the commentary on the Matthew Sweet/Naomi Wolf commentary.

Among the things that interest me (or agitates me) is how some people like to insist that if two men or two women in the historical past had an intense relationship that ‘they were just good friends and stop trying to make everything gay you’re spoiling it la la la la I can’t hear you!’. I mean. Maybe it was intense friendship and hello, maybe they were lovers negotiating their love in a difficult time when they couldn’t openly acknowledge it, and either is a reasonable view maybe, but statistically a good number of those relationships were in fact deeper bonds and all my reading suggests quite a lot of them were, in fact, and so shush now, and stop pretending gayness never existed before people started labelling it. Shush now.

Ahem.

Pages Passed from Hand to Hand is an anthology of stories published before E.M. Forster’s seminal Maurice that contains the rich coding by which queerness was explored, hinted at, subliminally supported or otherwise threaded into writing during periods where same-sex sexual practices (and by association, same-sex affections, desires and hopes for established relationships) were under the shadow of the law.

The anthology contains stories and extracts by Herman Melville, Ambrose Bierce, Henry James, Kenneth Grahame and many others.

If nothing else, I’ll know which tomes to put subtly into the hands of my 19th century queer characters – from my interpretations of Holmes and Watson to other inhabitants of my historical fiction.

Research: The (invented) Hobart Kites

In the new Duo Ex Machina novella, Kiss and Cry – currently being serialised on my Patreon – I have my muso couple, Frank and Milo, hitting their late thirties and a bumpy patch in their relationship.

While Frank is working long hours as a producer now, Milo is burning the candle at both ends keeping his charitable foundation running. One way he’s doing that is by competing on an ice dancing show – Icing it!

One of Milo’s fellow celebrity contestants is Adam Wills, Indigenous star mid-fielder for the Hobart Kites, Tasmania’s Australian Rules Football team.

Sharp-eyed Australians will know that at present in real life, Tasmania does not have an Australian Football League (AFL) team playing in the nationals.

I decided to invent an AFL team for this story because of the kind of off-field shenanigans some of Adam’s team-mates get up to. Real life AFL is full of scandals and misbehaviour, but I felt for Kiss and Cry, it would be better if I assigned any such activity to a not-real club, so that I wouldn’t be perceived to be accusing anyone of anything.

Thus the Hobart Kites were born – the club coming from Tasmania’s capital and given a bird motif (common among the clubs). Tasmania has four kinds of native kite – a predator bird. Tassie boasts eagles and hawks as predator birds as well, but other clubs in the AFL have already adopted those as mascots. So far, no Kites are in the big league.

(The Tasmanian Devil or the Tasmanian Tiger might have worked too, but of course such obvious names are already in use by other sporting teams in Tasmania and/or those mascots are also already claimed within the AFL!)

The colours for the Hobart Kites –  green, yellow and maroon – are the state colours of Tasmania, so it made sense for the Kites jerseys to be in those hues. I’ve attempted to make a mock-up of the jersey (using a template) but please excuse my terrible Paint skills. 

Tasmania would LOVE to have an AFL team and have a website to promote it – I’ve no idea when or if it will ever happen. I honestly don’t know that much about the rules or the current AFL ladder, though I’ve been to games in the past and support the Richmond Tigers because that’s where I lived when I first moved to Melbourne (and they have the best club song!).

tl;dr – Tasmania does not currently have a team in the AFL. I invented one to use in Kiss and Cry to avoid any unpleasantness with real people and clubs and reiterate that the Hobart Kites are not based on anyone or anything in particular.

Scar Tissue and Other Stories: Online Launch 3-5 July!

Scar Tissue and Other Stories came out in early May but what with Continuum Convention and getting Kitty and Cadaver ready for that, I never held a proper launch for the short story collection.

So now I’m organised and will be having an online launch for the book from 3-5 July: over three days there’ll be Q&As, some sneak previews, and some giveaways for copies of Scar Tissue, Ravenfall, Kitty and Cadaver, Walking Shadows and The Adventure of the Colonial Boy!

In the lead-up to the launch proper, I’ve been posting about elements of the stories for the collection.

From a reader:

“And their stories are interesting, some painful, some hopeful, some funny; there are apocalypses, and vampires, humans and werewolves. There are even a couple of poems. And oh, god, I love them, all of them.”

If you’re interested, join the Facebook event and check out the posts all this week and for the three days of the launch!

Giveaways are open to people from any country and won’t be finalised until after the launch, so everyone has plenty of time to participate.

It’s an open event so please join in, invite anyone you think might enjoy it! You can even pop in and leave any Q&A questions you might have about my writing, my books or anything else that occurs to you

Review: A Night with the Knight of the Burning Pestle by Julia Bozza

A Night with the Knight of the Burning Pestle

Technically, this curious and charming book is A Night with the Knight of the Burning Pestle: Full of Mirth and Delight by Francis Beaumont and Julie Bozza. Beaumont wrote the original 1607 play-within-a-play that forms the central part of the story. Julie Bozza has added another layer of metatextual storytelling with the relationship between two of the play’s performers, Dale and Topher.

The Knight of the Burning Pestle was an unusual play in its time: performed once only in 1607, published in 1613, it’s a satire on chivalric romances of the time and considers the fourth wall as less than the dust beneath its feet.

First, to precis the Beaumont play: a group of actors are putting on a romance called The London Merchant. To the surprise (I expect) of all the punters, two audience members – a grocer and his wife – complain loudly about the representation of the middle classes. The grocer sends his apprentice, Rafe, onstage to show what the middle classes are made of. Rafe is dubbed the Knight of the Burning Pestle and seems not to notice that it’s not kindly meant. His antics keep bursting in on the plot of The London Merchant until it tangles up with that story.

A Night with the Knight of the Burning Pestle swirls another layer into the parfait with a behind-the-scenes love story. Dale, who plays Rafe, and Topher, who plays Jasper, had a one night stand in the past. Anything more didn’t gel with Dale’s grand Life Plan. Now, on the last night of the play’s run, Topher wants Dale to reignite their connection and see there’s something worth sharing for the long term.

Dale resists – it doesn’t fit with the plan – and over the course of the night, their relationship clashes and transforms as this 17th century satire offers some meaning to their 21st century lives.

1613 cover

A reader might fear that the layers of story – actors playing actors in The London Merchant interacting as actor/character with audience members playing Rafe and his sidekicks – will render the whole too muddled to follow.

Fear not, reader. You’re in good hands with Julie Bozza. She’s always been a skilled storyteller with a grasp of the complex, and her knowledge of and affection for theatre and for the Beaumont play are clear (she acknowledges several influential productions).

She handles each layer of the story with clarity, delicacy and warmth, allowing the crossovers of relationships, themes and centuries room to develop without ever overwhelming you.

2017 Paperback cover

The Dale/Topher romance underpins the story rather than being the whole focus – there’s as much joy to be had in how the play actually unfolds as with these two lads getting their romantic act together – but that feels rightly balanced with what also feels like a love letter to an obscure play that was a failure for its playwright at the time. I do hope Francis Beaumont knows, somewhere, that Julia Bozza loves him. And at the end of this book, so do I!

A Night with the Knight of the Burning Pestle is an ebook release of the 2017 paperback and can be found at:

A Night with the Knight of the Burning Pestle (Kobo) A Night with the Knight of the Burning Pestle (Google Play) A Night with the Knight of the Burning Pestle (Booktopia) A Night with the Knight of the Burning Pestle (Bookdepository) A Night with the Knight of the Burning Pestle (Barnes and Noble) A Night with the Knight of the Burning Pestle (NookBook) A Night with the Knight of the Burning Pestle (Angus and Robertson) A Night with the Knight of the Burning Pestle: Full of Mirth and Delight (Amazon US Kindle) A Night with the Knight of the Burning Pestle: Full of Mirth and Delight (Amazon US)