Musings of a Wannabe Speculative Fiction Writer
News items
The Regersek Zone is currently scheduled for issue 184 of Antipodean SF, published in October 2013. I’ll also record a reading for the radio show/podcast, which will be broadcast some time in October/November.
I know Nuke is always looking for new material for the Antipodean SF website, so if you fancy trying your hand at a short piece of speculative flash fiction you should check out the Antipodean SF submissions page.
I wasn’t convinced either.
But fortunately for me, not that many people had an urgent need to get from Sydney to Canberra via bus early on ANZAC Day, so I had plenty of room to myself and managed to do some reading and catch up on the Splendid Chaps podcast (well worth listening to if you enjoy Dr Who).
I arrived just in time for my first workshop, Writing to Sell with Patty Jansen, who talked in detail about issues around the publishing process, especially short story publication. A few takeaways for me:
A splitting headache sent me for a lie down and then out to hunt and gather some form of pain relief, so I missed the opening ceremony. However, I did make it back out in time for two panels later in the evening.
In the morning of the second day I had my second workshop, Polishing Your Turds with Ian McHugh. If you are a relatively new author and you ever get the chance to do a session like this with McHugh, I’d encourage you to take it up. I found his framework for self-editing very useful. I used a different short story from the one I used in Patty Jansen’s workshop the day before, and amongst other things I found that the start of this story also wasn’t really working. I’m now thinking of subtitling this post “The start of your stories suck, Webb”. Some of the information McHugh provided is on the “on writing” section of his website, I’d advise checking it out.
Lots of panels ensued, including:
I went off for dinner with a group and spent a very enjoyable evening discussing all things speculative over some lovely Chinese food. The discussions continued late into the evening with a variety of people at the hotel bar, including a very memorable group tasting of a Singaporian staple chicken floss, introduced to us by Kaaron Warren. If I didn’t already know Kaaron was a horror enthusiast, that chicken floss certainly would have removed any doubts. She claimed she was merely trying to illustrate a complex philosophical point around the nature of normality and the need to accept the radical changes in preferences that can come from immersion in an alternate cultural paradigm, but I think she just liked the faces people made when they tried to eat the stuff. I have it on good authority that it tasted like fish food. Red flakes in fish food to be precise.
It was around this point that I realised that it was after 1:00 in the morning and that I had a workshop starting at 8:00am. I immediately exited, stage left. These discussions at the bar are the best parts of conventions.
My Saturday started early, with Vivid, Vivid Characters with Karen Miller at 8:00am. Miller went through a checklist of things to consider when creating and writing characters. As mentioned in a previous post, characters is one of my sticking points in fiction, and this rundown was very helpful. I even won a set of Miller’s books in the lucky door prize at the end, which she kindly also signed for me. I chose the Rogue Agent series, the first of which I reviewed here. I was planning to get the other three books anyway, so receiving them for free was an added bonus! Miller also mentioned that she is planning to put some material (including video) about her writing process on her website (link above) so it would be well worth keeping an eye out for that.
Wiping grains of sand from my eyes, I rolled into my next 3.5 hour workshop, The Keys to the Kingdom continued: what professional writers do to stay on top of the gamewith Jack Dann. Dann mentioned that this was the last time he planned to run this workshop for a while, so I’m glad I got a chance to attend. There were 9 other participants, all of whom were significantly further along in their writing (and with a bucketload of very impressive accomplishments between them). Dann handed out some very useful material for us to read. I’d signed up for this workshop to help get a feel for the industry more generally, and while it wasn’t tightly structured I did draw a lot of inspiration from Dann’s stories of his own experiences as well as those of the other writers in the room.
At this point I ducked out to catch up with some friends (I lived in Canberra for quite a few years in the late-90s/early 2000s), so missed the afternoon’s sessions.
The Ditmar awards have been covered extensively elsewhere, including this excellent piece by Sean Wright using tweets to tell the story of the evening. Deborah Biancotti was outstanding in her hosting duties (see my previous comments on her moderating – am I turning into an apologist for the Biancotti fan club?). For those living under a rock, the results were (with a few gratuitous comments from me thrown in):
Other awards announced in the ceremony (not Ditmars but presented at the same time):
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to attend any sessions on Sunday. Some more social obligations through the morning, combined with grumpy kids who just wanted to get back to Sydney, kept me away for the whole day (and there were some good sessions I wanted to go to as well, damn it). Also, I must admit when scheduling some of my non-con activities, I had assumed that it would probably wind up around lunch time for people to get flights etc, so hadn’t actually anticipated sessions going through until 5:30. Apologies to those I didn’t get to say goodbye to!
So, all in all it was a great convention. Didn’t get to chat to everyone I wanted to, but then you seldom do. I think in future I will try to not have parallel social obligations, it was difficult to do both justice. This con was much more writer focused than Continuum was last year, so clearly the different conventions still have different slants even when they are the national convention. Lots of book launches and general celebration of community, combined with engaging panels and useful workshops. Can’t ask for much more than that.
As the word count on this post is pushing 2,000, I might leave it there. Over to you. Did you attend Conflux? Do you wish you attended Conflux? If you attended, what was your favourite part? If you didn’t, what was the part you most wished you were there for? Any comments on conventions in general? Go on, leave a comment. You know you want to.
It turns out some of my anti-spam measures have been blocking the FeedBurner attempts to access my RSS feed. Project HoneyPot maintains a worldwide list of blacklisted IP addresses. For reasons that completely mystify me, Google shares IP addresses with external parties, some of whom are spammers. As a result, the FeedBurner IP address seem to frequently make its way onto the blacklisted IP address list, and FeedBurner stops working for those that have implemented anti-spam measures that utilises Project HoneyPot.
I have hopefully implemented the correct work around. If you subscribe via email, please let me know if you get this post (and come to the site and check out what you’ve missed over the last month).
My apologies for the inconvenience.
It was very difficult to pick out workshops, there were often a couple on at the same time that I would have loved to go to. I chose sessions on the basis of how much they might help with my own writing (it needs all the help it can get!). My final selection included:
It was disappointing to see that several workshops had to be cancelled because of lack of numbers (including a couple of very interesting looking ones I couldn’t get to because of scheduling clashes). On a selfish level (the level where I work best), I’m glad the workshops I selected all remained on the schedule. I guess the cancellations might be a reflection of the fact that Conflux is as much a fan convention as a writing one, so not everyone attending would be interested in the workshop topics.
Of course there is a lot more to Conflux than just workshops. Excellent panels abound and the tantalising opportunity to catch up with people from the full spectrum of the field cannot be resisted. Ditmar awards will be handed out, interesting guests of honour will be probed by insightful interviewers and I suspect that good times will be had by all.
I’ll be in and out a bit through the conference, I used to live in Canberra so my time is being split between conference attendance and catching up with friends. But if you’re attending as well, make sure you come up and introduce yourself if we haven’t met already (or even if we have!). Perhaps we can have a chat over a refreshing beverage or two.
The recent review I did of Bitter Seeds by Ian Tregillis was narrated by yours truly on the latest edition of the podcast. It kicks in at around the 44m mark.
Enjoy!
I’m not going to repeat all the nominations here (follow the links above), but I did want to draw out a few highlights.
Firstly, Kirstyn McDermott and Jason Nahrung have cemented their place as the Australian speculative fiction writing power couple by securing nominations in all three awards. In previous posts I’ve expressed my love for their recent work, Perfections, Blood and Dust and Salvage. All three appear in this year’s awards, which is especially impressive considering Perfections and Blood and Dust were only released just before Christmas 2012.
Secondly, Sean Wright (or Sean the Bookonaut) is up for several Ditmars in the fan writing/publications sections. Sean is an excellent contributor to the Australian speculative fiction scene, made even more impressive by the fact that he does it all from a secret (1) rural South Australian location with dodgy internet connections. If you’ve not come across his work before, it is well worth your time to track down his site and podcast.
Thirdly, Antipodean SF (who published a few of my flash fiction pieces last year) are up for best fan publication in the Ditmars. It is amazing how many established writers I talk to who say “Oh, yes – Antipodean SF is where I got my first story published”. Ion Newcombe is an excellent editor and generous contributor to the Australian speculative fiction scene. If you’ve never seen Antipodean SF, I’d encourage you to check the site out. (2)
Finally, I really enjoyed Kaaron Warren‘s collection Through Splintered Walls last year. I can see the stories from this book (and the collection itself) sprinkled all through these awards list. A fantastic book, well worth checking out.
I’ve decided that after I’ve finished my current reading, I’m going to make a concerted effort to plug some of the gaps in my Australian reading using these award lists as a guide. What about you? Have you read much of the work doing the rounds in this year’s awards season? Anything stand out?
(1) The secret thing may not be entirely factually accurate
(2) I help out preparing the e-Book edition of Antipodean SF each month, so I’m not entirely without bias here.
I started off badly, having somehow got it into my head that the day started at 10:30am. I turned up to a full car park, but couldn’t find any people. Imagine the fierceness of my blushing when I realised everyone was in the first session, which had been going for over 1/2 hour. I decided to wait for the second session to save the stinging embarrassment of entering 5 minutes before the end. It also let me pre-order my lunch. Win-win in my books.
My second problem came when the lovely people manning the front desk realised my badge had been taken! An impostor was roaming the rooms of the festival, having stolen my identity and slipped comfortably into the persona of a complete neophyte writer with no paid publications to his name.
Wait, why would someone do that?
I was assured that they had seen my badge that very morning, but now it was nowhere to be found. A hastily constructed replacement around my neck, I set forth to conquer the festival.
But I kept an eye on every name badge I passed, I can tell you.
So, the second session of the day and the first I attended was titled Publishing Into the Future, chaired by Russell Farr (of Ticonderoga Press) with panel members Zoe Walton (Random House Australia), Joel Naoum (Momentum) and Dionne Lister. The general answer to the question “what is the future of publishing” seemed to be “buggered if we know”, but there was some interesting exploration of the mix of publishing options and a general expectation that the book would survive, in some form or another. Phew. I enjoyed the panel, although some answers were a little verbose, I think they could have covered a lot more ground in the time available. That being said, there was some interesting reflections on the changes in marketing that have accompanied the rise of the eBook. If I ever publish a novel in eBook only format, I’ll have a lot to think about.
I also got to hear Joel Naoum’s theory relating interactive books to masturbation. I can’t do it justice. Next time you’re talking with him, bring it up.
The second panel, The Allure of Epic Fantasy, was chaired by Ian Irvine and included Melina Marchetta, Pamela Freeman and Garth Nix (a last minute substitute for Duncan Lay). The panel ended up focusing more on the authors writing style (plotter vs pantster) and their general approach to writing. Garth Nix was a very polished presenter (obviously gets a lot of practice). Actually, all four panelists were excellent in this session, and while it was only tangentially covering epic fantasy, I found this the “inspiring” session of the day.
All inspired, I then enjoyed lunch with the inimitable Lynda Young. Lyn has been a great support to me in my writing and I always enjoy the chance to catch up. Lyn had a story published in a US based anthology (Make Believe) last year, and I really enjoyed hearing about her experiments in marketing in that environment (I had to admit that while I bought the anthology and read her story just after it was released, I hadn’t quite got to the other stories in the anthology and so hadn’t done a review on this website. Bad writing friend. Must fix that as quickly as possible).
Towards the end of lunch we were joined by Patrick Keuning, a relatively new writer who has recently got his first paid publication with a story in the new In-Fabula Divino anthology. Patrick was (justifiably) as pleased as punch, and I saw him actively promoting the book throughout the day. He has documented his experience of the day on his website, go and have a look to hear more! Rick has also provided excellent feedback on my work in the past, I’m looking forward to seeing more of his writing in the future.
After lunch I attended Oh the Horror! The Future of Weird Fiction. I was excited about this panel, it contained three of my favourite authors – Deborah Biancotti, Kirstyn McDermott and Jason Nahrung. Actually, now I’m worried that the fourth member of the panel, Robert Hood, might feel left out. Robert, I know you probably read the blog. I have to admit I haven’t had the pleasure of reading your work as yet. But I’m sure you would be one of my favourite writers if I had, based on nothing other than the company you keep.
In any case, I digress (did someone mention “too verbose” earlier in this blog? Friends, let’s not quibble). The panel tried to define “horror”, in contrast with “weird”. I really liked Nahrung’s characterisation – horror tries to take something known and make it unknown and leave the reader unsettled, while weird tries to take something known and make it unknown, but leave the reader with a sense of wonder (he said it better than that, but that is why he is a name brand author and I’m writing this blog post).
A very interesting dissection of the broad horror genre ensued. Horror is one part of the speculative fiction spectrum that I’ve struggled to grapple with and I always like the chance to hear skilled practitioners debate the craft.
This session was also notable because in it, while listening to a brief aside about the atheist nature of zombies, I was suddenly struck with a new angle to a story I’ve been struggling with for ages. I really liked the angle as well. To be honest, I would have considered the whole day a success just for that. Good times.
In any case, I ended that session suitably creeped out.
The next session I attended was Short and Not So Sweet: writing and publishing short fiction, chaired by Cat Sparks and including Angela Slatter, Lisa Hannett and Dirk Strasser. An interesting discussion on the short story market was had, with some great thoughts on whether we were on the edge of another short story boom as people seek out bite-sized content to consume on the go. There was universal agreement that one should start submitting to the pro-markets immediately, but I did keep in mind that this was a group of multi-award winning short story writers. With their skills, I’d probably focus on the pro markets as well. I’m pretty sure there are no awards in my near future, but still the advice to aim high is good advice.
As an aside, Cat Sparks (who is the fiction editor at Cosmos, which is a pro market) noted the lack of Australian submissions to her publication. I thought to myself “Well, she’ll get a few more on the back of saying that“, but I notice that Cosmos is currently closed for submissions. As is Aurealis, where fellow panel member Dirk Strasser holds court. I suspect there are a lot of disappointed newbie writers out there today!
I popped out to stretch my legs before the last session, and bumped into Jason Nahrung. We started chatting about his new book (Blood and Dust, which I reviewed here and is available from Amazon or at the publisher Xoum’s website). It was an interesting conversation, covering everything from the challenges of marketing in the eBook world, through to my experience of reading Blood and Dust and even Jason’s process in working on his next novel (which I’m very excited about!). In fact, it was so interesting that I completely forgot to attend the last session of the day. Oops. I’m sure others have covered in admirably in other blogs.
Some further brief but interesting chats with Ben Chandler on his role in evaluating grant applications in South Australia and Richard Harland on his upcoming steampunk release (Song of the Slums). Before I knew it, the book launch of Prickle Moon by Juliet Marillier from Ticonderoga Press had started. So over a glass of red, I had the pleasure of listening to some excellent readings and general discussion of the book.
Sadly, it being after 6:00pm and my wife having been stuck with enjoyed the company of the children all day, I had to head off. Just like last time, I found the festival to be a great re-charger of my enthusiasm batteries. I look forward to many more.
Next stop – Conflux.
Oh, and I never did find my doppelgänger.
I’ll be updating this list as more information comes to hand, so be sure to return to the post that is all Ditmar all the time. If you know of any other Ditmar eligibility lists out there, comment below or send through an email with the details and I’ll add it to the list!
Also there are a lot of authors and other creators whose work I’ve enjoyed over the last year but who have not yet published an eligibility list on their blogs. I personally like it when people summarise their award eligibility. Hint, hint.
Notes:
(1) inclusion on this list does not imply any endorsement by me. Hell, I haven’t read half the stuff listed above (too many good things out there for one person to get through in any given year). Just trying to keep track of who is posting about what. Think of this post as a community service.
(2) Simon Petrie has also posted a list of other lists related to the Ditmars, which includes a link to this list. As well as other lists. Which I think makes this a list of lists of posts, as well as a list of posts, to do with the Ditmars.
I’m not sure it can take another layer of recursion.
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For anyone active in the Australian speculative fiction scene, the annual national SF award, the Ditmars, are now open for nominations. Why not nominate your favourite speculative fiction story or novel by an Australian author from 2012?
The Ditmars also include lots of ancillary categories for fan writing, artist etc. There are a lot of excellent reviewers out there in the Australian scene, such as Sean the Bookonaut or Alex Pierce, that are worth your attention.
Speaking of what to nominate, if like me you don’t remember what was released in 2012, or how long your favourite story was, you can go to the excellent Ditmar eligibility wiki here.
Get your nominating skates on! Nominations can be lodged here.
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The speculative fiction podcast Galactic Suburbia has given out their annual award for “activism and/ or communication that advances the feminist conversation in the field of speculative fiction in 2012”. And this year the award went to Elizabeth Lhuede for the Australian Women Writers’ Challenge.
Details can be found here, as well as links to the podcast where they announce the award.
I enjoyed my participation in the 2012 challenge, and found it an excellent catalyst for expanding my circle of reading. Congratulations to Elizabeth, a very well deserved award!
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One of the most frequently reviewed books in the 2012 Australian Women Writers’ challenge, Sea Hearts by Margo Lanagan, has been long listed for the inaugural Stella Prize, a new major literary award for Australian women’s writing. See the full long list here and more details about the prize here.
There have been many reviews of Sea Hearts, including one by yours truly here.
Congratulations Margo!