Fae Visions of the Mediterranean – Call for Stories

The wonderful folk over at The Future Fire (who brought us We See A Different Frontier) have just extended the cut off date for their latest venture Fae Visions of the Mediterranean.

To be edited by Valeria Vitale and Djibril al-Ayad, Fae Visions of the Mediterranean hopes to showcase the Mediterranean sea, and all the myths, legends and history related to it.

Here’s the Call for Stories:

Quivering mirages, ghost ships, glossy scales slipping away beneath the waves; we are seeking progressive and inclusive short stories about wonders, terrors, omens, sea-monsters, apparitions and other folk creatures and horrors from throughout the Mediterranean region. You might find inspiration in medieval bestiaries and the margins of maps and manuscripts; stories whispered by pirates in the long nights at sail; horrible and marvellous visions shaken travellers barely dare to recall; names of creatures known by everyone in the streets around the harbour; particularly troubled nightmares you had or someone shared with you.

 

You have until September 30 and the guidelines are to be found here. 

It’s worth noting that they are also running a Kickstarter for the Tenth anniversary of The Future Fire Magazine on Indiegogo. Check that out here.

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Tor open for Novella submissions

For the month of May,  Carl Engle-Laird and Lee Harris will be reading unsolicited submissions.  Check out the post at Tor here for specific details.

It should be noted that they are actively seeking works from underrepresented populations:

In addition, both Lee Harris and Carl Engle-Laird actively request submissions from writers from underrepresented populations. This includes, but is not limited to, writers of any race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, class and physical or mental ability. We believe that good science fiction and fantasy reflects the incredible diversity and potential of the human species, and hope our catalog will reflect that.

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TOC of The Mammoth Book of Steampunk Adventures released

For Steampunk fans you will be glad to know that the TOC forthe Mammoth Book of Steampunk Adventures has been released.  Lots of good names including some up and comers like Benjanun Sriduangkaew.  The release dates are advertised as August 2014 (UK) and October 2014 (US), so I am guessing that Australia might get it at the same time as the UK.

• Introduction by Ann VanderMeer
• “Smoke City” by Christopher Barzak
• “Memories in Bronze, Feathers, and Blood” by Aliette de Bodard
• “Love Comes to Abyssal City” by Tobias Buckell
• “Canary of Candletown” by C.S.E Cooney
• “On the Lot and In the Air” by Lisa L. Hannett
• “Beyond Calais” by Samantha Henderson
• “La Valse” by K.W. Jeter
• “The Colliers’ Venus (1893)” by Caitlin R. Kiernan
• “Benedice Te” by Jay Lake
• “Good Hunting” by Ken Liu
• “Selin That Has Grown in the Desert” by Alex Dally MacFarlane
• “The Curse of Chimère” by Tony Pi
• “Tanglefoot” by Cherie Priest
• “Ticktock Girl” by Cat Rambo
• “Edison’s Frankenstein” by Chris Roberson
• “The Governess and the Lobster” by Margaret Ronald
• “I Stole the D.C.’s Eyeglass” by Sofia Samatar
• “The Clockworks of Hanyang” by Gord Sellar
• “The Return of Cherie” by Nisi Shawl
• “Five Hundred and Ninety-Nine” by Benjanun Sriduangkaew, original
• “Green Eyed Monsters in the Valley of Sky, An Opera” by E. Catherine Tobler, original
• “Harry and Marlowe and the Talisman of the Cult of Egil” by Carrie Vaughn
• “Terrain” by Genevieve Valentine
• “A Mouse Ran up the Clock” by AC Wise
• “Anna in the Moonlight” by Jonathan Wood, original

Source[http://oldcharliebrown.livejournal.com/390630.html]

Good news for Anderton Fans

Fablecroft announced this week that they would be publishing Unbound, the final book in the veiled worlds series by Jo Anderton.  The first two, Debris(see my review) and Suited were published under a two book deal with the UK’s Angry Robot.

Fablecroft have been a supporter of Jo, having previously published her short story collection The Bone Chime Song and Other Stories.

You can check out further news at the Fablecroft page

 

 

 

 

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Twelfth Planet Press News

I am reliably informed that Cat Sparks, previously slated to bring us one of the Twelve Planets tomes, had to step away from the project – *le sigh*

but there is a silver lining…

the Evil Dr’s Brain i.e. Lisa Hannett and Angela Slatter have combined once again to give us something that will no doubt be delightfully good in their collection to be called Baggage.

And I notice that we have a name for Deb Kalin’s collection too - THE APPORTIONERS.

Livia Day fans will already be aware that the sequel to A Trifle Dead has been announced – you can fins out the details on DROWNED VANILLA here.

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Dr Who 50th Anniversary Special going 3D

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Twelfth Planet Press gets a makeover

One of my favourite Australian Small Presses, Twelfth Planet Press has just received a makeover, gearing up for what I will hope will be a bumper year for them.

Go and have a gander, perhaps buy some books.  Whether it’s paperbacks, hardbacks or eBooks, they do really have a diverse range of Australian speculative fiction.

If you re not sure where to start I can recommend the following books which I have reviewed:

eBook Review–Through Splintered Walls by Kaaron Warren

Book Review–Salvage by Jason Nahrung

Book Review–Showtime by Narrelle M Harris

Book Review–Cracklescape by Margo Lanagan

Book Review–Nightsiders by Sue Isle

eBook Review–Love and Romanpunk by Tansy Rayner Roberts

Adventures of a Bookonaut: Book Review–Bad Power by Deborah ...

Book Review–Thief of Lives by Lucy Sussex - Adventures of a ...

eBook Review: Horn by Peter M Ball

Book Review–Glitter Rose by Marianne de Pierres

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ASIF Departs this mortal coil

I received the sad news today that Alisa has after much thought wrangling decided to close down the Australian Speculative Fiction In Focus Website.  Here is the announcement:

It’s taken me a long time – about a year – of soul searching to finally come to this place. But it’s time. I’ve decided to close ASif! at the end of this year. This is a project that I have felt passionate about from conception and over the last 8 years. I’ve enjoyed working with everyone who has ever been involved and I’ve met so many people and formed many firm, life long friendships through ASif!

In 2004, we set out to build a review website to focus on and highlight Australian speculative fiction and to offer a place of honest critical review to support our local scene. ASif! achieved these goals. After 8 years, the principals of this project are now looking to direct our energies into other activities in continue to build and grow the Australian SF/F scene. And for this, we walk away proud of what we created.

ASif! will close as of 31/12/2012, with old reviews remaining available for now. [read on]

So I raise my glass to Alisa and the team. 

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Submission Call: Year’s Best YA speculative fiction

 

This is more for authors and publishers but you should know and be excited about Twelfth Planet Presses plans below:

 

Twelfth Planet Press announces a new Year’s Best reprint series, the Year’s Best Young Adult Speculative Fiction.

 

Editors Alisa Krasnostein and Tehani Wessely are now reading internationally for the inaugural anthology, and are seeking Young Adult speculative fiction first published in 2013 for consideration.

 

Our goal is to uncover the best young adult short fiction of the year published in the anthologies dedicated to the form, the occasional special edition of a magazine, and individual pieces appearing in otherwise “adult” anthologies and magazines, and bring them together in one accessible collection. So many young readers are avidly reading speculative fiction in novel form; we want to introduce them to the delight that can be found in the short story as well.

 

[read on]

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Aurealis Subscriptions–Get one now, especially if you are an Aussie Writer

I have fond memories of Aurealis, back when it was a print magazine and one of those rare finds on my newsagent bookshelf in the early 90’s.  The digital revolution has happened and it now comes to our email inbox 10 months of the year, full of up to date news and new stories by Aussie authors.

Now I have been hanging out for them to sort out the subscriptions under the new digital production schedule and they have, with some interesting and positive outcomes for Australian Writers.

Aurealis are attempting to get 1000 subscribers by the end of 2013 which will:

1. enable them to offer 5 cents a word for stories (pro rates)
2. qualify them as a pro market which will then
3. allow writers published in Aurealis to get publication credits towards membership of the SFWA

Additionally if you sign-up before the 30th of October (as I just have) you’ll get not only the 10 standard issues for 2013 but this years last issue as well.

How much you ask?

$19.99 but wait, there’s more

If you are some one who submits work to Aurealis, being a subscriber also gets your stories placed at the front of the Readers’ queue and fast-tracked.

How’s them apples?

Go here and sign-up now your country needs you.

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Spineless Wonders November Gig

For those Adelaide folks or those coming to Adelaide you might want to catch an evening at The Wheatsheaf Hotel. Stories penned by award winning authors and performed by talented actors.

See the info below:

You can find out more here

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Some links with a bit of crunch

Okay so today I resolved to start another story.  More or less to keep the practice up.  I am reworking an old folktale Iron Hans by the Grimms (or at least recorded by them).  I’d never heard of it before.  It’s ostensibly about little boys growing up to  be a good man etc.  I will be subverting it a little.  At the moment I think its probably going to morph into a novella or at least a long short story.

But along the way I got way laid by a migraine and some crunchy discussions that might be worthy of you reading. Both have  a feminist slant to them. The first is by Tansy called :

Cheesecake Fantasy and Other Good Causes

October 24th, 2012

Fantasy, as a genre, is often embarrassing. I like to tell myself that it’s not as bad as it used to be, in the days when Gor novels were sold unironically, and almost every book cover had some kind of gross, bizarre representation of the “female” form in chainmail/fur bikinis, regardless of the contents of the book itself. (Worse of course was when the books did reflect the art, but for every awful sexist fantasy novel you could almost guarantee the cover would be twice as bad) [read on]

The next is some commentary on the The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 23 by Pornokitch:

 

New Releases: The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 23

This year's edition of The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror contains some good stories, with tales by Joan Aiken, Ramsey Campbell, Christopher Fowler, Mark Samuels, Alison Littlewood, Paul Kane, Gemma Files and many others.

If you're looking for a book of good horror stories, there you go. This book does what it says on the tin. I'd read a few of these in their original publications, and it is good to see them all in one place. And for a good price. Etc.

Where the book gets a little more controversial (and therefore fun to review), is in its introduction. Editor Stephen Jones begins the book with a lengthy summary of the year in horror. For the most part, this is pretty dry. It is, after all, a survey, and the poor man has a lot to get through. Still, there's some cool stuff in here: auction prices for Universal Movie posters, for example, and a shout out to Stories of the Apocalypse (woo!). 

However, there are also some more provocative inclusions. Since I don't have my own Mammoth Book in which to respond, I figured I'd crack out a review instead.

After some deliberation, my issues with Mr. Jones' introduction fall into two broad categories:

1) He's using a professional platform to air personal grievances. Don't get me wrong, if I had something like Best New Horror at my fingertips, I'd be tempted to sneak in the occasional "hi mom" as well. But this isn't the place to settle old scores.

2) I disagree with his interpretation of events. Mr. Jones has the right to his opinion - he just can't let it colour what is set up as an authoritative review of the year in horror.  

2b) I've also got a big problem with his opinion.

[Read on]

And with that I bid you good night.

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Trucksong from Twelfth Planet Press

 

Twelfth Planet Press has acquired Trucksong by debut novelist Andrew Macrae, to be published in September next year.

To give you the lowdown:

In a post-apocalyptic Australian landscape dominated by free-wheeling cyborgs, a young man goes in search of his lost lover who has been kidnapped by a rogue AI truck – the Brumby King.

Along the way, he teams with Sinnerman, an independent truck with its own reasons for hating the Brumby King.

Before his final confrontation with the brumbies, he must learn more about the broken-down world and his own place in it, and face his worst fears.

This genre-bending work of literary biopunk mixes the mad fun of Mad Max II with the idiosyncratic testimony of works like Peter Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang or Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting.

Hell Yeah!

 

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Shine Light out soon

Shine Light third volume in Marianne de Pierres’ Young Adult series is released on November 1st.

If you’re quick you can snag a pre-order from Booktopia today for $14.95 and if you put SALE in the coupon section that's all you’ll pay. Take a look around because you can chuck any number of books on that order and pay no postage –see here for links to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Bargains.

 

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Great News for Rowena Cory Daniells’ Fans

 

A couple of news items for Rowena’s fans:

• I have just finished editing and interview i did recently for Galactic Chat, so keep your eyes peeled and your ears open.
• Rowena has the rights back to her now out of print first T’En trilogy.  She will be releasing it herself under the series title Fall of Fair Isle – see her website for the new covers designed by Daryl of R&D Studios
• She’s hard at work on the fourth book in the King Rolen’s Kin Trilogy

 

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TQ7S9TF96832

Sunday afternoon links:

I appear to have reliable internets again (knocks wood) so here were some links I managed to snare while chasing a signal in the back paddock.

First is Jim Hines, who displays the skill and thoughtfulness that saw him win the  Hugo Best Fan Writer Category this year in:  Crap people say about sexual harassment.  It’s a round up of the types of discussions that occur when we try and discount the significance of harassing behaviour- especially at conventions. 

From various posts and conversations around the internet…

“If you obviously can’t handle the social interactions at an SF Book con, then perhaps you need to seek some education … I suggest that you never, ever leave the confines of white, educated middle class North American society. In Nigeria and Saudi Arabia they take people like you and kill them with rocks.”

1. The assumption that “people like you” are treated even worse in some other part of the world does not mean you should just shut up and accept how you’re treated here.
2. If we’re taking “people like you” to mean “women,” then guess what — white, middle class North Americans kill an obscene number of women too.
3. I suppose harassment and even assault could technically be defined as “social interactions,” but trying to normalize this kind of behavior and suggest that anyone who isn’t tough enough to take it should just stay away? Yeah, bite me. [read on]

You should read the comments too as they are mostly articulate and civil.

Along similar themes is an article by Rose Fox who was part of the team that rectified the Readercon debacle.  Rose calls into question two things; how we should approach the running of conventions (ie professional/business like) and that in harassment cases their seems to be far to much emphasis on the perpetrator.

Please check out  What Conventions Are and Aren’t.

…Conventions are not communities in the traditional sense of the word. They are not townships. The conchair is not the mayor; the head of safety or security is not the chief of police; the concom and the board are not tribunals or juries. The organizing bodies are not directly or representationally elected and are almost never demographically representative of the convention-attending population.

I think that treating conventions as in some way parallel to real-world communities governed by law is a really bad idea, especially when we get into these crime-and-punishment discussions. Conventions are not in the business of dispensing justice. They aren’t designed for it or equipped for it, and no one–especially not anyone involved in running a convention–should behave as though they are, even for a moment. [Read on]

If you have ever been confused about the male gaze and it’s relationship to writing, I encourage you to read Kate Elliot’s guest post at SF Signal : The Omniscient Breasts: The Male Gaze Through Female Eyes.  It’s equally good for male and female writers.

My reading experience of fantasy & science fiction over forty years is that it is mostly written with the male gaze. By this I don’t mean it is written from the point of view of a male character, although that is often the case. Nor am I speaking about the gender of the writer: a  male writer does not automatically write every line of every book with a male gaze just because he is a man; in fact, a male writer can write with a female gaze, and women can (and often do) write with a male gaze. [Read On]

And last a reminder to pick up Rabia Gale’s post apocalyptic, cyborg infused Rapunzel tale, Wired, while its free on Smashwords.

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Indigenous Literacy - Booktopia With Free Shipping

In honour of Indigenous Literacy Day Booktopia are donating all their profits from the 5th September to the Indigenous Literacy Project.

The also offer free shipping up until Friday midnight if you type the word READING into the appropriate coupon field.

Note: profit from Items purchased Thursday and Friday don’t go towards the literacy project.

Stuck for some ideas to buy your Specfic loving friends?

You could go local and pick some Sean Williams - always a proud supporter of Indigenous Australian Literacy.

or perhaps you could go with recent Nebula and Hugo award winning best novel Among Others by Jo Walton.

Or you could support Indigenous Australian Writers and purchase works by Kim Scott or Anita Heiss.

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Christian School give Harry Potter the Expelliamus

This may be embarrassing for the liberal Christians among you or those who have a modern Christian outlook. Or who can tell fiction from non-fiction.

From the SMH again:

MEDOWIE Christian School in the Hunter has defended a decision to ban all witches and warlocks from its annual Book Week parade and the Harry Potter series from the school library.

The school was one of many that marked Book Week recently by asking children to dress up as their favourite book character for a parade.

Read more:

 

So a tale in which a small boy whose parents are killed, but who uses special powers to defeat their killer and the great evil of the world is not okay, but characters from Star Wars are?.

I know its the witches word isn’t it.  Cause you know Medowie believe in

• the existence of Satan and the reality of spiritual warfare. (not metaphorically, for realz)
• the jurisdiction of civil authorities except in matters conflicting with the
  biblical witness and/or conscience

I wonder if they follow the direction put down in Deuteronomy 21:18-21 or conduct corporal punishment?

I guess they aren’t gay friendly either ( apart from love the sinner hate the sin). If it was me I’d be checking their science curriculum around evolution and global warming.

Oh and this was a pearler:

In respecting that right [we] do not stock books from the Harry Potter series, or indeed other titles which are the subject of polarising public discussion.

Yes don’t let the kiddies read anything that might get them to inspire or question. I wonder what the senior curriculum is like.  No Macbeth?

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WSFA Honours Aussie Authors

The Washington Science Fiction Association has honoured two Aussie authors in their list of Finalists for  the 2012 WSFA Small Press Award for Short Fiction:

“A Militant Peace” by David Klecha and Tobias S. Buckell, published in Clarkesworld Magazine, edited by Neil Clarke, November 2011.

“Flowers in the Shadow of the Garden” by Joanne Anderton in Hope, edited by Sasha Beattie, published by Kayelle Press, October 2011.

“Lessons from a Clockwork Queen” by Megan Arkenberg, published in Fantasy Magazine, edited by John Joseph Adams, September 2011.

“Sauerkraut Station” by Ferrett Steinmetz, published in GigaNotoSaurus, edited by Ann Leckie, November 2011.

“The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees” by Lily Yu, published in Clarkesworld Magazine, edited by Neil Clarke, April 2011.

“The Patrician” by Tansy Rayner Roberts in Love and Romanpunk, edited by Alisa Krasnostein, published by Twelfth Planet Press, May 2011.

“What Ho, Automaton!” by Chris Dolley, in Shadow Conspiracy, Volume II., edited by Phyllis Irene Radford and Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff, published by Book View Cafe, February 2011.

“Yesterday’s Taste” by Lawrence M. Schoen in Transtories, edited by Colin Harvey and published by Aeon Press, October 2011.

The winner will be announced in early October

So congrats Tansy and Jo, worth recipients if my reading is anything to go by

Coeur De Lion – proudly DRM free

Coeur De Lion have proudly decided to go DRM free. While it’s dreadfully easy to crack any DRM currently on the market, it’s a show of good faith in customers. It allows those who just want to move books between their devices as they upgrade or replace ( I am on my second device), do so without effectively breaking the law.

Keith Stevenson had this to say in his announcement:

All ebooks purchased directly from Coeur de Lion are entirely DRM free. That’s because we believe you have the right to read your file on whatever device you choose. We also value and trust you [...]

Thanks Keith.

And in other related news Adam Browne’s Pyrotechnicon will be available for purchase as a both hardcover and ebook as of midnight tonight (Tuesday 21st).

Head over to the store and camp out.

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