What we’ve been doing

The Handmaid’s Sisters panel. From left to right: Margaret Morgan, Simone Corletto, Melissa Ferguson



Continuum 15

I spent the week before last off work sick. I recovered just
in time for our local speculative fiction convention here in Melbourne,
Continuum. It was good, and I was over the bug, but everything passed in a
haze.

I was so exhausted post-bug, post-convention that I couldn’t
even get the energy to post a late blog.

Standouts that I remember include keynote addresses by both
guests of honour, Kate Elliot and Ken Tan. Some interesting deep dives—Sherylyn
especially liked Stephanie Lai’s deep dive into sand (Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of
Sand).

The Regency SFF panel chaired by Kathleen Jennings was a lot
of fun and an affectionate look at Georgette Heyer and her impact on speculative
fiction and the whole genre of regency romance. Did you know that once Heyer
realised people were imitating her work she started to make up facts for her
novels? People imitated that, so she’s one of two people in spec fic (and in
romance) who has made up a world. The other is Tolkien.

One panel I enjoyed a lot, which I wasn’t truly expecting
to, was The Handmaid’s Sisters, with Melissa Ferguson, Simone Corletto and
Margaret Morgan. It was at 9:00pm on Saturday night, and to be honest, I only
went because Sherylyn had volunteered to do desk duty then, but I don’t love dystopia,
and the Handmaid’s Tale and stories of their ilk are a little too factual right
now to be anything but downright scary. There were only four of us in the audience
(one left early, but they packed the desk up early so Sherylyn made a second
fourth). It was a good panel. Very enjoyable.

Copyedits

We received the copy edits for Stars Beyond on Thursday. We
have two weeks to get them back to the publisher.

Sherylyn does this part, so I’m relaxing by writing a new
book.

I must say, a copy editor’s style guide is a beautiful thing
for a writer. It’s the kind of document you want about two, three, edits before
the final one you send off to the editor. So you can make the story consistent.
It has a list of words and how they’re spelt, proper nouns, descriptions of characters,
and so on. Everything you put in your book is in the copy editor’s style guide.
Including, if it’s part of a series, everything you put in the prior books,
too.

Love it.

I just wish we could do the same thing about four drafts before.

Worldcon

We booked our tickets for CoNZealand, Worldcon 2020. If any
of you are coming, see you there.

Fun fact, did you know Melbourne and Sydney are closer to cities
in New Zealand, than they are to Perth, Australia?