Book Launches at Swancon: Belong and Scary Kisses

So, the good news is: I've got my contributor's copies of Belong and it looks very pretty. I've read several of the stories and can't help thinking what an awesome job everyone has done: writers, editors, printers and British and Australia Post for getting "Belong" to Perth on time.

Thank you and hugs to Belong's fantastic editor, Russell B Farr.

Belong will be launched this Thursday at Swancon 9pm at the All Seasons Hotel, 15 Robinson Ave, Northbridge. I'll be there, along with Sonia Helbig and we'll both be reading a teaser from our stories: Sonia's is "Initiation" and mine is "Deeper Than Flesh and Closer", which is about a vastly changed future Earth that has been colonised by refugees from the past.

Also being launched at Swancon -- this time Friday at 10pm -- is Elizabeth Gryzb's anthology, Scary Kisses. The anthology is a collection of sexy and scary paranormal romance which will definitely whet your appetite. And the fantastic cover is by Amanda Rainey.



Contributors to Scary Kisses include Annette Backshall who is a member of our writer's group at the KSP Writer's centre and one amazing lady. When she's not fighting fires in Perth as a professional firefighter, she writes an awesome story and is a great critiquer as well. Date with a Vampire is Annette's first publication. Go Annette!!

If you can't make it to Swancon, both books can be ordered from Indie Books Online

--
Carol.

Don’t sweat the small stuff

Eventually, any writer who is serious about the craft will start to think about sending work to a publisher or agent for consideration. If the creator has ever attended a publication workshop or Googled for instructions, they will take great pains to “get it right” according to whatever method they've come across.

But just what does “getting it right” entail? There is a standard formatting system that is preferred by many publishers, particularly those in the short story market and more especially the American speculative fiction short story market. It involves using Courier or Courier New fonts, double spacing the lines, indenting five spaces at the beginning of lines (opinions vary as to whether or not the first line after a line break should be indented) using a hash as marker for line breaks and not using widow/orphan control. A useful version of this, written by Vonda McIntyre, can be found at http://www.sfwa.org/2008/11/manuscript-preparation/.

Yet there are many publishers who dislike Courier fonts and specifically request, for example, Times New Roman. Some say one and half spaces between lines are fine. Some want the synopsis double-spaced; some say this applies only to the manuscript. Some don’t say what they want at all.

I suspect these things are not as cut and dried or even quite as important as some pundits would have us believe. I've seen several mss by published authors that varied widely from the commonly accepted standard. For example, one uses a pair of tildes, centred, as her line break markers; one uses three asterisks, centred, and another uses a hash but prefers not to centre it. I've seen at least one ms by a published author that just left the gap with no marker at all. And I have edited material by published authors that was not even double-spaced! Mind you, these people are all fine writers, far better than I, and they could probably write the ms by hand on coloured paper and get away with it. As a new author, I would not dare do that, and neither, probably, should you!

While we need to give ourselves every chance in this wretched publication gamble, the important thing is that we have good stories, set out in a way that's easy to read. All the hopeful new author can do is read the guidelines on the publisher’s or agent’s website and stick to them to the letter, and if no guidelines are given, just use something like the above method and cross your fingers. As with all things, there's no profit in sweating the small stuff. After all, in a hundred years - or even five years - it will not matter at all!

Shades of Sentience: A Short Story Anthology

Shades of Sentience, an anthology of fantasy, horror, magic realism and science fiction short stories edited by Alanna and Lara Horgan, will be launched at the Brisbane Supanova from April 9-11. The collection is drawn from winners and finalists in the recent Shades of Sentience Short Story Competition run by sentientonline.net, a website that offers reviews, interviews and articles on everything from geek stuff to science fiction that has become real. Contributors include Joanna Fay, a member of Egoboo WA and the Speculative Fiction Group at the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers' Centre.

'Fantasy and horror, science fiction and magic realism: these terms provide only the barest glimpse of what you'll find within these pages. Enter dreamscapes and nightmares; fall with souls rocketing into oblivion and fly with others who've discovered how to glide on broken wings. Walk within the minds of angels, demons, monsters and humans, not a sparkle among them, and try to choose your side. Nothing in this book is black and white - good or evil. We all see the world through different eyes, and each story gives you a different perspective. Will any of them change yours?'

This book is a collection of twenty new short stories by award winning authors from Australia and around the world:

Thou Art by Lewis Allan
The Sound of Water by Charles Canning
A Final Glimpse of Dark and Light by Debbie Cowens
Murray the Sex Machine by Matt Cowens
Time I Am by Stephen Davey
Threadsongs by Joanna Fay
Problem Solving and Its Consequences by Chris Fletcher
Forever Young by Steven Gepp
Mirror Mirror by Alice Godwin
Loving the Gorgon by Laura E. Goodin
Lucid Dreaming by Kia Groom
Sentience by Alanna Horgan
Memorandum by Crisetta MacLeod
Special Treatment by Craig Maslowski
The Ambush by Michael Noonan
Devil?s Dinner by Melanie Rees
Incident on the Tulla by Janeen Samuel
Monster by Amanda Spedding
The Candle Suicide by Daan Spijer
Revelations by Katharine Stubbs

Belong To Be Launched at Swancon

Belong: Interstellar Immigration Stories edited by Russell B Farr (Ticonderoga Publications) is to be launched at Swancon in 4 weeks. Preorders can be made now at Indiebooks Online

Contributors include Egobooer, Carol Ryles and also, our good friend, Sonia Helbig, who are both members of the KSP Speculative Fiction Writers Group.

Belong:

23 tales that ask the question: how far would you go to belong?

The answers will amaze and astound you. Interstate, international, interstellar, beyond the grave - into the great unknown.

113,000 words of original fiction from around the world. Australia, Canada, Argentina, United Kingdom, U.S.A. and Belgium.

Contents:

"Border Crossing", Penelope Love
"Mrs Estahazi", Barbara Robson
"Norumbega", Linda L. Donahue
"Ice", Zdravka Evtimova
"United". Jennifer Moore
"Rekindle the Sun", Mary E. Lowd
"The Gift", Barry Rosenberg
"Prisoner of the Faceless", Kurt Bachard
"Merpeople", Gwen Veazey
"Feather-light", George Ivanoff
"Speaking English", Stephanie Burgis
"Green, Green Grass of Homeworld", Donna Maree Hanson
"I Belong to this Red Land", Edwina Harvey
"All Tales Must End", Michelle Muenzler
"Namug", Gustavo Bondoni
"Song of the Blackbird", Sarah Totton
"A Friendly Gesture", Chet Gottfried
"Initiation", Sonia Helbig
"Slow Cookin’", Angela Rega
"The Ballad of P’toresk", Simon Petrie
"The Hollow Ones", Kylie Seluka
"Trassi Udang", Patty Jansen
"Deeper than Flesh and Closer", Carol Ryles

Perth Writers' Festival

Some lovely spec fiction panels on at the Perth Writers' Festival today at the UWA:

Genre is not a Dirty Word:

Crime, thrillers, mystery ... It's all fiction isn't it? Michael
Koryta, Sara Foster and Marianne Delacourt explore what it means to be
a genre writer.

Chair: Grant Stone Dolphin theatre 11am-12pm

Pulp Fiction:

The new novels of KA Bedford, Lenny Bartulin and Adrian McKinty have a
Chandleresque air to them. They look at the legacy of noir fiction and
its effect on their writing.

Chair Grant Stone. Undercroft 2pm-3pm

From Cyber to ... ?:

KA Bedford, Marianne Delacourt and Garth Nix consider some of the
shifts in science fiction and fantasy writing with

Chair Helen Merrick Undercroft 3pm-6pm

To see what else in on at the festival go here

Katharine Susannah Prichard Speculative Fiction Awards 2010

The Katharine Susannah Prichard Speculative Fiction Awards are now open for short stories between 1500 and 3500 words from anywhere across the genre. Prizes range from $600.00 for first, through $300.00 for second and $175.00 for third plus 5 commended of $10.00. The competition closes on Friday, May 28, 2010.

Entry forms and Conditions of Entry are available from Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers Centre, 11 Old York Road, Greenmount WA 6056 or can be downloaded here.

Aus Spec Fic Carnival February 2010

The Aus Spec Fic Carnival Feb is out! Go check it out and see some of the fascinating discussions in Australia this month!

http://ripping-ozzie-reads.blogspot.com/2010/02/australian-speculative-fiction-carnival.html

--
Sarah

2010 Aus Spec Fic Snapshot!

(Text lifted from kathrynlinge )

In 2005, Ben Peek spent a frantic week interviewing 43 people in the Australian Spec Fic scene. In 2007, a group of ASiF! reviewers took up the challenge and did it again, this time interviewing 83 people.

In the lead-up to Aussiecon 4 in Melbourne, and the great opportunity offered by the local Worldcon to see some Australians get a shot at the Hugo ballot, some of the ASif! reviewers will be doing it again, and blogging interviews from this coming Monday until Sunday 22nd Feb.

To read them hot off the press, check these blogs daily:
http://random-alex.livejournal.com/
http://girliejones.livejournal.com/
http://kathrynlinge.livejournal.com/
http://www.mechanicalcat.net/rachel

http://tansyrr.com/
http://editormum.livejournal.com/

Will we beat 83 this time? If you know of someone involved in the Scene with something to plug, then send us an email at 2010snapshot@gmail.com

--
Sarah

What Second Drafting Has Taught Me About Writing

For me, it was all about setting...

I began thinking about this novel two years ago. Since then, I’ve had several false starts, lots of thinking and rethinking, six weeks at Clarion West, a research proposal and a couple of academic papers to write. About two months ago, I finished my first draft and celebrated. As far as novels were concerned, finishing a first draft was indeed a first.

Last November, I workshopped my novel at our retreat in Eagle Bay. My novel had a beginning, middle and an end, several characters vying for dominance and a plot that I knew would work with just a little tweaking. It felt good. My Egoboo friends pointed out its strengths and weakness. My uni supervisor did the same. Everyone gave me lots of suggestions for improvement.

Christmas came and went. While I worked on a couple of short stories, I started thinking about the novel more critically. Some of the points-of-view needed changing. Some elements needed foreshadowing. Lots of loose threads needed either developing or eliminating. And the dialogue needed work – lots of it.

But that was just the beginning.

Throughout the novel, I had mostly concentrated on plot and character, which is rather unfortunate for steampunk because, in steampunk, setting is important. It needs to function as more than just backdrop. So, I started to add bits of setting into the prose I already had, but it all looked too tacked on, like an afterthought. Worse still, I realized, if I deleted the Victoriana and turned it into high fantasy set in the middle ages, the plot would have still worked. Not good at all.

I had known this might happen, but the trouble was, when I was figuring out how to write my novel, I couldn't do everything at once. So when writing my first draft, I just let the words flow as my mood took me. Some days, I concentrated on character, others on plot and conflict. Setting was always in the back of my mind, but I was so caught up with getting to know my characters, I had not given myself a chance to write it in. I’d do it later, I told myself.

Easier said than done.

My setting needed to mean something. It did not only have to be pretty and awesome as well as disturbing, frightening and thought provoking, it had to matter. And then it dawned on me. To make that happen, I needed to put my first draft away, open up a blank page and rewrite my entire novel from scratch.

Unthinkable, I told myself. I went away and played with another short story.

The novel is part of a PhD, so I can’t leave it forever. Besides, I have 130,000 words under my belt. I know my characters well enough to understand their likes and dislikes, what motivates them and how they’re going to react when something goes right or, inevitably, when everything goes wrong. I know the paths they are going to choose, and the mistakes they’ll make, and their regrets and failures and successes. So although I’m rewriting my novel from memory, a lot of what happens will remain the same, even if the words turn out different. This could only be a good thing, I told myself. I’ve already thought of the most obvious words to use. Now I’ll discover the less obvious.

So far, things are working out well. Starting from a blank page didn’t turn out as bad as I thought. If I remember a passage I like, I look it up and paste it in. If I don’t remember it, I tell myself that, most likely, it wasn’t memorable anyway.

I have steampunk pictures everywhere in front of me -- images to inspire me and remind me that my setting must never be forgotten. It must work as hard as my characters and as surprisingly as my plot. My new first chapter begins with everything working together: setting, character, plot, dialogue, tone and focus. I didn’t have to think about it. It just flowed.

At last, my novel has a setting that matters. If I turned it into something medieval, it would no longer work.

My novel is starting to feel real.

--
Carol

Speculating on the Speculative

Last week, there was a post on the Netflow Developments blog titled “Science Fiction as a Tool for Human Survival” in which the writer laments the demise of what might be seen as a more meaningful age in terms of our genre.

“Sci-fi has for a very long time served the purpose of framing current sensitive social and political issues and putting them into a clear perspective without making people feel preached to,” says the writer. “It was a way to get people to think about issues that they normally wouldn’t or didn’t want to think about for various psychological reasons…this has always been the greatest strength of the genre and during the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, with the exception of Star Wars and a few other more trivial pieces, the genre as a whole set out to bring a multitude of social issues into the spotlight….Because of this evolution of the genre I feel that we are going to see a clear divide coming down between Sci-fi action flicks such as the last Star Trek, or Avatar and then the sci-fi that attempts to shine light on these dark recesses of our mind that we so conveniently block out such as District 9 or Soylent Green.”

The writer goes on to quote an article by film maker Alex Rivera. Speaking of his debut film Sleep Dealer, Rivera says “I love gnomes and goblins and elves, but what I'm really interested in is speculative fiction. I wanted to use this film to ask the question, ‘Where are we going?’”

The writer of the Netflow Developments blog goes on to suggest that most science fiction today leans in the direction of “eye candy”; going for visual effect, seeking to satisfy “the increasingly shrinking attention span and ever expanding mental laziness of the developed world.” The implication is that some works, which can be categorised as “speculative fiction”, are worthy of our attention, while works of the “eye candy” variety are unworthy and are therefore nothing but “science fiction”.

As a long-time lover of “science fiction” I resent this. The term “speculative fiction” has been in use for many decades — in fact, the earliest citation by Wikipedia dates from 1889! It has become a reasonably well-accepted umbrella term to cover all the speculative genres, which certainly include science fiction, fantasy and horror and can be stretched to encompass, for example, alternative history and magical realism and possibly more.

For isn’t all fiction, by its very nature, speculative? What is the difference between writing a story set in an imaginary town on Earth called Smithville, with a trio of characters called Amber, Jason and Brett, and one set on another planet with characters called Ambyria, Jasek and Bremet? Both stories would be, basically, packs of lies that set out, first and foremost to entertain the reader. And if they are worth reading, they will also explore such questions as Rivera’s "Where are we going?" For if a story does its job well, it will be a pack of lies that points the finger at an eternal truth.

I want and expect any book I read or film I see to examine some aspect of what it means to be human. If it doesn’t do this, it will not grab me, and, I suspect, it will not grab many other readers or viewers, either. The only question is “To what depths of investigating humanity’s essence does this story go?”

For this exploration of the human condition can be very deep indeed, or it can skate over the surface, even make us laugh. The difference between Star Trek and Soylent Green is purely one of degree. Both make us look at the eternal question of good and evil: Star Trek does it by entertaining us; Soylent Green does it by shocking us. I would suggest that all the arts are capable of doing both, and that the speculative genres can do it better than most through the use of allegory, symbol and metaphor. There is nothing inherently wrong in seeking to entertain first and provoke thought second, and to highjack the term “speculative fiction” and use it only to refer to those works that set out to grab the reader by the throat and shake her into considering the deeper meaning behind the story and characters is to do a gross injustice to those works that choose to instruct through laughter, sympathetic response and archetypal stories and characters — and yes, eye candy. The difference is only one of degree, and who can say where “science fiction” ends and “speculative fiction” starts?

Some people have tried — Margaret Atwood, for one — but to the average reader or viewer such distinctions are nothing but hair-splitting. If a story deals with things that do not exist or have not happened, as far as we know, at any time in human history, it is speculation. It asks what if… and, if it does its job properly, it leads us, in exploring that question, to consider some aspect of ourselves and the world and our place in it.

I am indebted* to Robert Hoge for raising the similarity between the arguments of Alex Rivera and Margaret Atwood. Both have tried to belittle science fiction: Atwood is on record as describing it as "talking squids in outer space." Fortunately Atwood has modified her stance in recent years: in an interview for The Guardian in 2005 she admitted that “science fictional narratives give a writer the ability to explore themes in ways that realistic fiction cannot”.

Bravo, Ms Atwood. Now, will someone please explain it to Mr Rivera and the writer over at Netflow Developments?

*I am also indebted to Paul Mannering for first drawing the attention of members of the Vision writers list to this discussion.