1. The Merlin trilogy by Mary Stewart

Mary Stewart was famous for her thriller romances in exotic locales (man, Madame will you talk? is a brilliant debut and brilliant title). In the 70s she surprised everyone with her Merlin trilogy, an imagining of the King Arthur legend from Merlin’s first person perspective. In this series, there is a focus on historical realism over fantasy and magic, and I have the entirety of the series to thank for my obsession with the historical basis for the legend. As a young teen, I liked The Crystal Cave best with some of The Last Enchantment (with the sexually promiscuous Morgause) also an eye-opener at that age. I thought the ending to the series in The Last Enchantment was particularly beautiful.

You can buy the entire trilogy from Book Depository

2. The Dragon Prince and Dragon Star trilogies by Melanie Rawn

Sometimes I wonder at my mother. There was A LOT of sex and violence in these books and I lapped up every moment. My favorite characters by a long shot were Sioned and Rohan and I liked the original trilogy more than the second because of this. One of the first times magic and dragons felt well done for me. People accuse these books of being soapie, and I guess to some extent they are, but there were (and still are) moments of genuine emotion for me, particularly around Pol mucking everything up and Andry too. I liked the combination of Machiavellian politics and magic and in the first book, Roelstra and his children sure were terrifying villains.

You can find the entire series on Book Depository starting with Dragon Prince

3. The Deverry Saga by Katharine Kerr

I don’t much care for this series past The Fire Dragon (which in my opinion was the perfect place to end the saga), but I did love this series to death as a child. My favorite sections were the ones where Rhodry and Jill had adventures and bested the dark dweomer as silver dagger outcasts and I think the series lost its lustre when Kerr pulled back from this. I understand she wanted to get away from the swords and sorcery generic trope, but she was onto a good thing with those two.

This series pulled at my heart strings like no other. I cried a lot. I wanted to throw books across the room a lot. There are still lines I can remember off my heart because in my opinion they were just that damn good. I’ve written poetry about Jill. I’ve participated in livejournal comms and started livejournal blogging as a result. I even won a signed copy of The Silver Mage. I still re-read this series up to The Fire Dragon every couple of years. Also Arzozah is the best dragon personification I’ve read in fiction ever. Period.

Again, Mum, not sure how I got away with these. There were rape, incest, sex, blood sacrifice, graphic battle and death scenes galore. But they all served a purpose and were necessary to the story.

You can find the first book in the series, Daggerspell here

4. Agatha Christie crime novels

I was bored at my grandma’s once and found a copy of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd to read. The shock ending caught me well out and I was sold on the genius Christie ever since. Endless Night made quite an impression, scarring me a little for life and it is probably still my favorite Christie. And Then There Were None, Halloween Party and The Clocks also made strong impressions.

My love for Christie never died. I still re-read her on and off and I am currently in the process of re-reading all of her novels in publication order. I’m up to the 1940s and will blog my least favorite to most favorite Christie’s once I finally finish (see you in another three years, interested reader). In 2016 when I met with a friend in London, it was a dream finally fulfilled when we saw The Mousetrap together.

My favorite Christie by a long shot is Endless Night and you can find it here

5. A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket

Anyone who has ever met me knows I like this series A LOT. The Netflix show will be reviewed on this blog shortly. I have reviewed Snicket’s newer series All The Wrong Questions before. I was going through a tough time as a carer and my Mum and Dad divorced and my Granddad died when I was 15. I found it oddly comforting to know that those three children had it worse than me. I loved trying to solve Snicket’s tantalizing asides, the word play and the absurdism too.

The Bad Beginning and the next few in the series may be a little formulaic, but it’s best to start at the start. You can purchase the first book here

6. The Sevenwaters trilogy by Juliet Marillier

I’m sure my best friend, Tegan, would agree with me; this series by an Australian author is seriously good! Beautifully written, full of good research, beautiful romances and held together within an Irish first person oral story telling framework, this is some of the best modern fantasy you’ll ever read. Daughter of the Forest must be one of the strongest fantasy debuts ever penned and is my favorite of the series. There’s one scene that is brutal and is guaranteed to make you cry or throw the book across the room. Anyone who’s read this will know the scene I mean. Keep going. It’s a scene with purpose. Trust me. The trilogy’s end in Child of the Prophecy is one of the best fantasy endings to a series I’ve ever read too.

Find Daughter of the Forest here

7. Harry Potter

What can I say about this series that hasn’t already been said? I didn’t much like the series post Book 5, but there’s no denying the power of the original Potterverse. How I longed to visit Honeydukes and drink butter beer, or journey through Diagon Alley. How I wished I’d get a letter from Hogwarts (I did once. From the President of UOW Harry Potter Society anonymously I believe). I lined up at crazy hours to get the next book in the series and stayed up all night to avoid spoilers (how dare people spoil Dumbledore’s death in book 6!). I got to see the first two films with school as a library monitor and the last two on exchange in the UK(!). I’ll never forget the surreal experience of sitting in a packed theatre at Oxford to watch the final film and the sound of tissues rustling and everyone sobbing their hearts out at the Snape mini film section.

After all this time?
Always.

You have a heart of stone if that doesn’t get you. I made a lot of friends through this fandom and did a lot of crazy things (like dress as Boggart Snape for a Yule Ball Party once).

I’m not bothering to link to Harry Potter. If you don’t already own it there’s something wrong

Honorable mentions: Everything by Isobelle Carmody but especially the Obernewtyn series and Alyzon Whitestarr. I only omitted her because I included her in my tender years too. Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. The tried and true staples: The Chronicles of Narnia and Lord of the Rings.

I have such fond memories of these long Saturdays with books, that I thought I’d write two posts capturing my favourite discoveries. This first post covers primary years. The second post will track early high school.

And now in no particular order…

1. The Asterix comic series

I read them all, but a few stick out as being particularly memorable. I still can’t read about Cleopatra without imagining Caesar and everyone else she came into contact with commenting on the quality of her nose. I enjoyed Asterix in Britain with the constant tea drinking and the football match. I can’t think about the country Switzerland without seeing the comic strips from Asterix in Switzerland of Roman legions engaging in orgies and gorging on too much cheese fondue. Asterix and Obelix all at Sea highlighted the bond between the two friends and I also liked the stories set in The Middle East.

2. The TinTin comic series

There’s a strong theme happening here. Once my brother and I had devoured all of Asterix, we started on TinTin. Excluding the first two (let’s pretend they never happened), most are great mysteries. TinTin in Tibet is the most emotional, but I also loved the Incan two parter, The Calculus Affair and The Red Sea Sharks with an unhealthy obsessive love. Most loved of all was the first appearance of Captain Haddock in The Crab With The Golden Claws. Best. Comic. Ever. The relatively good animation is now available on Netflix.

3. Enid Blyton. All of them.

They aren’t politically correct. They aren’t high brow literature. They are often racist. Blyton novels may be all these things, but by jove how I wished I was one of the featured children off on my next adventure. I never warmed to The Secret Seven as much as The Famous Five, and I liked The Faraway Tree series better than The Wishing Chair series. Strangely, none of the popular ones were my most beloved. The Adventurous Four and The Adventurous Four Again as well as The Adventure series became firm favourites. I’m ready for a re-read…

4. Nancy Drew series

I even owned the computer game of Secrets Can Kill (Number 1 in the Nancy Drew files) as a child. That game was scary, hard shit. My best friends and I spent hours and hours trying to crack that mystery and I don’t think we ever managed it. Anyway, Nancy Drew. I loved everything about her stories. There’s so many and I’ve mixed them up so often in my head, I couldn’t pick a favourite, but I seem to remember loving one about a Chinese girl getting kidnapped and another involving candles containing chloroform or some such. I did get into The Hardy Boys, but they were no Nancy Drew.

5. The Obernewtyn Chronicles

Back when I was a kid, some bright spark in government decided to get children to read more books with The Premiere’s Reading Challenge. I’m all for reading challenges, but my ten year old heart broke when there was a set reading list, 90% of which wasn’t genre fiction. Getting through the reading list was torture, but there was one small ray of sunshine.* The librarian handed me a copy of Obernewtyn by Isobelle Carmody. The story scared the shit out of me, but I loved it, and thus a stubborn persistence to wait for the series to end was born. I finally read the final book in the series last year. It felt like coming home.

*All right, I exaggerate a little. I also discovered Emily Rodda through this challenge and Deltora Quest was some seriously cool shit (the book cover artist came to my primary school once and it was the best). And around this time I discovered Geoffrey McSkimming and Cairo Jim which was tongue in cheek fun of the best kind.

What about you readers? Any favourites from your youth you want to share?

Lemony Snicket

Publisher: Put Me In The Story

First Published: 2015

RRP: $16 US

Regular readers of this blog and my Goodreads account know that I am an enormous Snicket fan. I love the word play and the ambiguities and the sadness and the grey moral pit which is humanity and the quiet humanism which underpins both A Series of Unfortunate Events and Snicket’s newer series, All The Wrong Questions. Regular readers also know that in some ways I love this newer series more: the writing is sharper and packs more punches, the characterizations are all spot on and the film noir spoof suits VFD’s early days perfectly. So it was a delightful surprise when I received an email from American publisher, Put Me In The Story, requesting a review of the customized reprint of the series. Children have always loved placement in stories, especially detective style ones where adults are wrong and children fix things (and adults who are young at heart love these too) and I could see immediately that the Snicket world of VFD, book readers beating out followers of violence and a story filled with codes and secret handshakes would suit a customized medium perfectly. Snicket had practically gone there with An Unauthorized Autobiography anyway. I leaped at the chance.

In this final story, Lemony Snicket must board a train returning to the city to finally uncover Hangfire’s diabolical plot and help his friends try to save Stain’d By The Sea one last time. At first I was afraid the story was a spoof of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express. It wasn’t at all. Strange and bitter and sad, instead the story reveals the source of the VFD schism, the corruption already alive in VFD long before Olaf came along, and the beginnings of Snicket’s lonely journey to being both a part of, and seperate, to his secret society. The ending definitely leaves room for a follow-up series exploring Snicket’s romance with Beatrice and subsequent parting as the schism saw them labelled to different sides.

I have always loved Snicket’s ambiguity about people and their actions. The third story in this series saw Snicket make a rousing speech about literacy and decency and passive fights and him and his friends seem to be all on the same side. By this novel’s end, we feel sorry for the hapless and confused Theodora S Markson, the fatherless Ellington Feint and the wild and disillusioned Hangfire. The mysterious villain is revealed to be deranged, but not without cause, and it is a mark of how brave this series has been that Snicket is forced to do wrong to save the town and his friends and concede to some of Hangfire’s perspective. It is clever, if deeply tragic, that Snicket loses his friends to save the town.

Ellington Feint and her terrible coffee have always been an interesting component of the series and the story picks up the second she spars with Snicket: ambiguous, lost, alluring and childish. Snicket’s love for her is a precursor to how he loves Beatrice; with all of his heart and soul and damn the consequences. Her imprisonment with Kit leaves open many possibilities. All of them interesting.

I recently attended a Writers Party where someone said Lemony Snicket was a children’s author. Maybe that’s how he is marketed. That’s definitely not how his series can be read. Yes, the early Series of Unfortunate Events books are juvenile. But later books, and this most recent series, teach adults as well as children and make us question our values about good and bad, right and wrong. For there is still a kernel of hope if you see beyond the terrible waste and sadness of the ending to this series, just as there always was in A Series of Unfortunate Events. Tor books had a great review exploring this element here

“We are an aristocracy,” Snicket tells Moxie in “Shouldn’t You Be In School?” “Not an aristocracy of power, based on rank or wealth, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate, and the plucky. Our members are found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between us when we meet.” He goes on to say, “Our schisms and arguments might cause us to disappear. It won’t matter. People like us always slip through the net. Our true home is the imagination, and our kingdom is the wide-open world.” It is a beautifully telling quote amongst a series of beautifully telling quotes. Yes, people are good and bad like a chef’s salad, including Snicket himself, but if we can try to be good and kind and decent and well-read, perhaps we can leave the world a little better than when we began in it. It’s the perfect story to share through customization because it’s the moral all of us want for our children.

All four books were presented  as an associate’s training guide, and include:

·         Personalized covers with the reader’s name and initials cleverly integrated in the front and back cover art

·         Reader’s initial designed into the opening artwork page

·         Photo of the reader included on a character portrait page

·         Unique customized letters and interactive messages to the reader from Lemony Snicket

·         Two of the reader’s friends’ names incorporated in the letters and messages

·         Dedication page for the gift giver to write a personalized message to the reader

 Only the most recent book was printed in hardcover. The rest are paperback.

My brother loved this Christmas gift. He loved the messages addressed to him and the photo on the opening page of each book and the references to places and people he knew, as though he himself had joined VFD. And he’s twenty-three. So what are you waiting for? Interested in children’s books with meat? Go forth and purchase!

“Why Is This Night Different From All Other Nights?”: 4/5 inky stars

All four books in this series were supplied by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

http://www.putmeinthestory.com/favorite-characters/lemony-snicket

What’s a 50 in 50 list?

A list of things I want to do or achieve by the time I hit the youthful age of 50! I have tried to divide mine by type of thing. Let’s just say I’ll be busy for awhile!

Maureen’s List:

Writing:

1. Finish a full length novel manuscript
2. Do a script-writing course at NIDA
3. Submit a script to the BBC Writers Room
4. Get a drama commissioned by the ABC or BBC
5. Write a Doctor Who audio for Big Finish
6. Write an episode of TV Doctor Who
7. Publish novels through a mainstream publisher
8. Do a Writers Residency overseas
9. Do a Writers Residency in Australia
10. Collaborate on a writing project with another author
11. Sell 10 000 books
12. Record my overseas cousins life stories and make it into novels

Careers:

13. Run my own kick-ass NGO
14. Work for Community Catalyst UK
15. Work inside Westminster
16. Make my own inclusive tour company all about pop culture themes
17. Create my own cafe and secondhand bookstore micro business

Cons/Festivals:

18. Go to the Agatha Christie Festival in the UK
19. Go to the UK CrimeFest
20. Go to World Fantasy Con at least once
21. Go to San Diego Comic Con

Travel:

22. Go to Broadway and see a musical
23. Design and do own self-tour of Cornwall/Wales around ‘the historical’ Merlin and King Arthur
24. See the Aurora Borealis ie Northern Lights
25. Make like Kiera Knightley on a cruise in the Carribean ie a pirate’s life for me!
26. Go to Cambodia/Laos/Vietnam
27. Walk Macchu Pichu
28. See The Sphinx and the Pyramids and do a Nile cruise
29. See Paris and the French countryside
30. Ride the Orient Express and read Murder on the Orient Express as I do it
31. Go to PEI and do the whole Anne of Green Gables thing
32. Bike ride across Europe

In My Community:
33. Learn to sing
34. Be in an amateur play
35. Take German lessons at Community College
36. Learn to dance ‘the Tango Maureen’

Celebrities:

37. Meet Helena Bonham Carter and tell her that she’s awesome
38. “I’ll be there, I’ll be seen/having tea with the Queen/I’ll forget everything/That I’ve ever, ever been” but only the once
39. Meet The Eleventh Doctor
40. Have a conversation with Phillip Pullman
41. Work on a project with Neil Gaiman or Amanda Palmer OR BOTH
42. Have an actor read my poetry onto audio beautifully

Miscellaneous:

43. Fall passionately in love
44. Have a library in my house with the words ‘The World is Quiet Here’ on the door frame
45. Have a classic Disney DVD library
46. Have a TV drama library
47. Dye my hair a crazy colour/s
48. Take part in a mass historical re-enactment
49. Join the circus
50. Re-live ‘If Life Were a Musical’ with a flash mob!

1. Tell us a bit about Christmas Press and its imprint Eagle books.

Christmas Press is a small children’s publisher, a partnership business between four creators: myself; illustrator and designer David Allan; author and illustrator Fiona McDonald; and writer and editor Beattie Alvarez. We started in 2013 and to date(March 2015) have published 4 books – three picture books featuring retellings of traditional tales – fairy tales, folk tales, myths and legends by well-known authors(to date, Ursula Dubosarsky, Kate Forsyth, and myself, with more to come this year) and lavishly illustrated by emerging illustrators – in this case, David and Fiona (though more illustrators will come on board next year). We have also published a Christmas anthology, Once Upon A Christmas, with poems, stories and illustrations by lots of different authors and illustrators.

Christmas Press itself will continue to concentrate on those sorts of books but we have just started a new fiction imprint for young people, Eagle Books, which will concentrate specifically on adventure fiction. And very excitingly our launch title is the first new English translation in over a hundred years of the great Jules Verne classic, Mikhail Strogoff, which will be translated by Stephanie Smee, whose previous translations of the great classics by the Countess de Segur have been bestsellers.

2. What made you interested in setting up a small press?

We felt there was a gap in the market–and that there WAS a market for retellings of traditional stories, the kinds of books we weren’t seeing around but that we’d all grown up on, loved, and been inspired by. And then as Christmas Press developed, we felt there was also an opening for the kinds of very adventure-focussed fiction that Eagle Books will focus on.

3. What is your long-term vision for each imprint?

Christmas Press will very much concentrate on those twin elements: beautiful picture book retellings of traditional stories, and one Christmas-themed title a year. We may also consider other possibilities in the future, such as standalone picture books or reprints of out of print books. But that’s for later. With Eagle Books, we’ll be concentrating on adventure fiction: whether set in historical, contemporary or fantasy backgrounds, and with a mix of classic and modern authors. We feel it’s important for a small press to not try to do too much and go haring off in all directions. So our lists are very focussed.

4. What is your top learning from starting your own small business?

Do your homework regarding sales possibilities, pitching to distributors etc: very important you get that right!

5. What opportunities are there for people to:

a) get involved?
Have a look at our books, check out our websites and Facebook pages and let us know what you think!

b) support your press?

Right now, it would be great if people might have a look at our crowdfunding campaign for Mikhail Strognoff and consider contributing to and/or publicising this fantastic project.

Thanks Sophie for some great insight into your latest projects! Please do consider backing Sophie’s project here. You can like the facebook page for Eagle Books here and for Christmas Press here. You can find the Eagle Press website here and the Christmas Press website here. I will be interviewing others involved with this project in coming weeks so stay tuned…

About Sophie:

Born in Indonesia of French parents, and brought up in Australia and France, Sophie Masson is the award-winning and internationally-published author of over 60 books for children, young adults and adults, published in Australia and many other countries. Among these are her bestselling historical novel for children, The Hunt for Ned Kelly (Scholastic Australia), which won the Patricia Wrightson Prize for Children’s Literature in the 2011 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. She has also written four popular YA romantic thrillers under the name of Isabelle Merlin. Under the name of Jenna Austen, she has also published two romantic comedies for tweens and early teens.

You can follow Sophie’s blog or read her website

My interest is predominantly in depictions of people with intellectual and/or sensory disability and autism but the complete list is below and includes, authors, book titles, publishers and specific short story or anthology suites. I hope to build on this list as I go and review the books on the list. Contributions are definitely welcome! This has a strong Australian focus given that most of my list knowledge here comes from the Australian writing scene.

Novels:

Vorkisigan saga by Lois McMaster Bujold – features a physically impaired protagonist (Sci fi)
Gridlock by Ben Elton – the protagonist has cerebral palsy (Sci fi/Ecological Disaster)
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes – the protagonist has intellectual disability (Sci fi)
More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon – two of the protagonists have intellectual disability and Down’s Syndrome (Sci fi)
Diamond Eyes and Hindsight by Anita Bell – depicts protagonists with vision impairment (Sci fi)
The Homecoming Saga by Orson Scott Card – a mainish character, Issib, is in the world equivalent of a wheelchair (Sci fi)
Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert – the main protagonists is blind (Sci fi)
The Rosie Project by Graeme Simpson – the protagonist has Asperger’s Syndrome (Romance)
The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon – the protagonist has autism (Sci fi)
Hover Car Racer by Matthew Reilly – an important secondary character has autism (Sci fi/action/thriller)
The Starkin Crown by Kate Forsyth – a protagonist has epilepsy (Fantasy)
The Starthorn Tree by Kate Forsyth – a protagonist has a physical disability (Fantasy)
The Beast’s Garden by Kate Forsyth (Forthcoming 2015) – has a protagonist who has synaesthesia (Historical fiction)
The Obernewtyn Series by Isobelle Carmody – a mainish character is blind (Fantasy)
The Twelve by Justin Cronin – has a protagonist with autism (Horror)
A Song of Ice and Fire by George R R Martin – has multiple protagonists with physical disability at various points (Tyrion, Bran, Arya, Jaime) (Fantasy)
The Millennium Trilogy by Steg Larson – Salamandar has Asperger’s Syndrome (Crime)

Short Stories

‘Tam Likes Green Bananas’ by Kate Eltham – the protagonist has synaesthesia (Fantasy)

Comics:

Marvel Universe, Hawkeye is blind

Publishers:

Visibility Fiction

Anthologies:

Kaleidoscope (Twelfth Planet Press) (YA Fantasy and Sci fi)

1. You write across a lot of genres and markets. Have you always been so eclectic or when you started out did you have a ‘go to’ market and genre?

Wow, what WAS I thinking when I started out? Feels like it was a long time ago.

I think I mostly just suck at knowing what the genre boundaries actually are. My reading is pretty eclectic, hence my writing is, too. I was surprised when people started telling me I was writing horror. I never really set out to write horror, but it was a big influence on me in my teen years so it inevitably appeared in my writing. Maybe that’s the reality of writing: you become your influences.

I don’t recall having a ‘go to’ market or genre. Not on purpose. Starting out was all a bit random.

Nowadays what I most love to read and write are stories with a contemporary setting and an element of the weird or supernatural. But even then, I don’t stick to that preference completely. I’m always going to need something different and new and maybe even apparently random in my reading and writing life.

2. You got your writing break by publishing short stories over a number of years. What are your top tips for writing a powerful short story?

Oh, man, there’s probably a different answer for every short story writer — or every short story. Short stories are a sprint, whereas novels are a marathon, so the needs are different. What I like in a powerful short story is the sense that the story has ended before it has finished. If you know what I mean? I like the feeling there’s *more* to the story, but the storyteller just didn’t have the time or space to share it. That, for me, provides a kind of urgency to the telling. You get to the end and start to wonder what in hell is about to happen next.

For example, powerhouse Karen Joy Fowler ends her story Younger Women with two possible ways forward. But you just know there are more options she’s not telling you about. And you leave the story wondering which way it went after Fowler ended it. Check it out here.

But that’s just one answer and I’m sure there are dozens more ways to think of powerful short story writing.

3. While we’re discussing short stories, which is your favorite short story that you’ve written and why?

My favourite short story is always whichever story I’ve just finished writing. Srsly. It really is. I spend quite some time thinking my most recent story — whatever it is — is the best work I’ve managed so far. And then I replace it in my affections with another, newer story. My newest short story is coming out in Fablecroft’s Cranky Ladies of History later this year and features the Countess Bathory. So you just know that’s gonna be a blast!

And apart from always loving my newest story, I admit to being particularly proud of No Mercy For The Executioner which appeared in the Review of Australian Fiction in late 2014. (So, it’s my second-most-recent short story.) That story began in a dream, which turned into the first line: ‘When the world ends, it’s the Jewish guy who brings the sake.’ I grew up on post-apocalyptic stories: when I was a teenager, we all thought nuclear war would decimate the world any second. Plus, as a kid raised quasi-Catholic, I can remember earnestly discussing the imminent second coming in first grade. But I’ve never been much attracted to actually writing post-apocalyptic stories until I wrote Mercy and then I just kinda let loose. Teenagers, holed up underground, drinking the last of Earth’s liquor and eating tinned peaches. And then the violence begins… Oh, yeah, that’s a fun story.

4. Bad Power mixes police procedural with speculative fiction. What are your top 3 crime reads? How about top 3 spec fic reads?

Ooooohhh!! Top reads! I love questions like this. Yeah, BAD POWER mixed two things I love. Well, maybe three. 1) crime stories 2) spec fic, and 3) contemporary settings.

Okay, top 3 crime reads would have to start with Kate Atkinson’s CASE HISTORIES, which I loved. I grew up on Agatha Christie books, and THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD stands out. Then maybe Nicola Griffith’s THE BLUE PLACE counts as crime. But it was probably Walter Mosley who made me want to write crime, so I’m going to sneak in DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS (plus, this is really five now, but a special mention to the first of Craig Johnson’s Longmire books, THE COLD DISH (which is a kind of western cosy, if you can believe that)).

Spec fic is harder because *cough* it seems so much broader (not that I want to play favourites). Also I never classify spec fic as spec fic in my goodreads reading list, so now I’m screwed trying to remember all my favourite spec fic reads. ;p

But I do have to mention Ben H. Winters’ THE LAST POLICEMAN, since it’s a mix of crime AND spec fic. And so is the excellent BAD THINGS by Michael Marshall Smith.

My all-time-favourite spec fic reads would have to include Tanith Lee, though, so let’s say THE BIRTHGRAVE. Oh! And Mary Gentle’s ASH! Aaaaaand, crap, so many others. I’m trying to think of something that’s really stayed with me, so I’ll go with Shirley Jackson’s THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE. But, y’know, so many.

InkAshlings: I am so updating my Goodreads with some of these suggestions! Also, I love Christie!

5. Will there be more books or short stories set in the world of Bad Power and can you tell readers anything, even a cryptic clue?

I didn’t actually set out to write BAD POWER, you know. It started as two stories that shared some eerily similar traits: Shades of Grey and Palming the Lady. I realised I had this strong woman cop in both stories, so I decided to make her the same character. I was probably just being efficient. I think I was also influenced by the fact a couple of early readers both said they loved Detective Palmer. Which kinda surprised me, because I didn’t have a lot planned out for her at that stage. But she’s become a bit of a hero of mine.

She’s also pretty similar to the strong woman cop I invented for my ISHTAR novella, even though I wrote those stories at completely different times. See? Random. It’s like I never plan out anything in my ‘career.’

And then, of course, the stories were saved from the obscurity of individual publishing by the Twelfth Planet Press project: Twelve Planets. TPP collected those two stories and three more that I’d only kinda started working on in one volume. We called the BAD POWER collection a ‘pocketbook police procedural.’

I did start plotting a BAD POWER novel out in my head, but certain other projects have gotten in the way. But Bad Power: The Novel might become a labor of love one day when I get some time. I mean, I had this whole structure and back story for it. Hopefully I’ve written that down someplace. Actually, y’know, even if I haven’t I still remember it pretty clearly. I’ve really got to get faster at finishing stories. I have a WHOLE BUNCH MORE I want to write.

And BTW: Fablecroft published a 6th Bad Power story in their anthology One Small Step in 2013. The story was called Indigo Gold and featured a new character, some new powers, and a hat pin. So, yeah, I’m sure I’ll end up writing more of those stories in one way or another. I love my BAD POWER world and I love all those crazy, creepy characters. BAD POWER is one project I’m inordinately proud of.

6. You are currently collaborating on a couple of projects, including a novel and a graphic novel. What does the collaboration process look like for you?

It looks like a whole lot less stress & a heck of a lot more fun than coming up with all the answers yourself! And suddenly the planning becomes really fun. The writing is pretty much just as hard (or not hard, depending), but the planning is really where collaborating shows its strength. I recommend it heartily!

7. What’s your advice for those writers that want to try collaborating on a project?

Pick someone to lead the project. You might not know who that person is at the very beginning, but sooner or later you all have to agree which member of the team owns the vision & voice. Without that, the project runs the risk of becoming a ‘writing by committee’ project. And the thing about committees is, all the best, more unique and risky stuff often gets dissolved in favour of relentless compromise. In a good collaboration, one person knows whether or not what you’re pitching is going to fit the project.

My other advice would be: if you’re NOT the leader or the owner of the vision, never stop pitching. Sometimes you might want to give up on sharing your ideas because you think they’re stupid or you think people will laugh. And people will often laugh. But the team will miss out on some good stuff if you give up on yourself too soon. Believe that!

8. You’ve also written a novella for the Ishtar collection and have an upcoming novella called Waking in Winter coming soon. What is it that appeals to you about the novella and what are the ingredients for a great novella?

I’m so excited about WAKING IN WINTER. PS Publishing bought that novella in 2013 & scheduled it for around mid-2015, so I can’t wait to see it on the page. We’ve just finished copy edits. And I’m still really proud of my ISHTAR novella with the comically long name, And the Dead Shall Outnumber the Living (for real, I started out with that title as a kind of joke, but I just love the enormity of it, so it stayed.)

I’ve only tried novellas those two times, but I’ve fallen madly in love with the format as a reader and writer. I think it lets you play with all the best aspects of novels — character, adventure, stakes, narrative — without the dross that people often have to use to make a novel more novel-length. So many novels feel like they sag in the middle, just IMHO. Or maybe I’m easily bored. Actually, yeah, I am easily bored.

I think the other thing I like about novellas is that they’re short enough to sustain the kind of mood a short story can deliver. A very mannered or stylized novel can feel very long indeed. But a stylized novella can still pack a punch without losing any momentum.

So that’d be my pick for novella ingredients: character AND style AND narrative AND mood AND momentum. Love novellas. Wish they were easier to find. PS Publishing has put out some doozies, so it’s worth checking their pages first.

9. What’s one question you’ve never been asked before but wish you had been asked?

I racked my brain for an answer to this question. Then I eventually realised that no one has ever quite asked me this: What’s the one piece of advice you wish you’d been given when you were starting out?

10. Now answer it!

Sabotage and salvation will come from unexpected sources. Srsly. Very unexpected sources. The entire idea of a writing ‘career’ is unpredictable in the extreme. The only thing you can do is keep writing. That way, you’re practised and ready for the salvation when it happens. And you can move past the sabotage when it’s delivered. So that’s it, the best advice you’ll get as a starting-out writer: Just. Keep. Writing.

Deborah Biancotti is the author of two short story collections from Twelfth Planet Press: Bad Power and A Book of Endings. She is co-author of the Zeroes trilogy with Scott Westerfeld and Margo Lanagan. Deborah’s novella Waking in Winter will be out with PS Publishing in mid-2015. The first Zeroes book is published in September. You can find Deborah online, but she spends more time on Twitter than anywhere else.

You can read my review of Bad Power here. Thanks again for a great interview, Deb!

Sometime around when I first started getting involved with the Australian spec fic scene, I told myself I needed to get my head above my comfortable reading parapet and venture to new parts of the imagination. This blog was a part of doing this. I only half kept my promise. I never read or reviewed horror. That was because I’m a scaredy cat when it comes to descriptions of violence, bodily fluids and guts being slung about and also because I am an idiot. Good horror of course goes beyond such things.

Last year at the Aurealis, I chatted with Jason Nahrung (an Australian horror writer) and told him about my horror reading conundrum. He told me, ‘Read Perfections. It is psychological horror and reads like literary fiction and even if you hate the horror, you’ll like the beautiful language.’ When Kirstyn’s novel was re-published as a physical print I took him up on his promise. I was not disappointed.

From the blurb:

Two sisters. One wish. Unimaginable consequences.

Their lives swiftly unravelling, the two sisters find themselves drawn into a tangle of lies, manipulations and the most terrible of family secrets.

Jason was right. I loved the language, but I also found myself enjoying more than that. From the big things like a story set firmly in Australia (I used to think the spec fic scene was awash with only European and American settings, which is true to an extent, but since writing myself I have found a lot of brilliant Australian writers with the seeds for their stories planted in parts of Australia. Kirstyn is another to add to the list), an outcast goth sister who I could relate to, hard truths about feminism, gender politics, sexuality and careers which didn’t make me want to murder the author and creepy plot twists that I didn’t see coming to the small things like an Emilie Autumn shout out (seriously guys, Opheliac is one of the greatest songs ever) and pockets of prose that sing like good poetry. This story has the added bonus of being accessible to both genre and non-genre readers, being planted firmly in the real world with relationship trauma and family ties and fractures explored, even as magic plays a part in the horror that unfolds.

I really enjoyed this novel of dark desires and bitter spells and hope that I can find my kindle after a spell State-side so that I can download Madigan’s Mine and the Aurealis winning short story collection, Caution: Contains Small Parts also by McDermott.

You can purchase Perfections through the Twelfth Planet Press website here. You can also find Kirstyn’s work on e-reader.

Perfections: 4.5/5 inky stars

Books

The open, sterilized jaws of
your flat beckoned, quiet

Like the yellowed pages of books
That were your long time companions.

Their old, musty scent,
Those dog eared, well worn tomes

See me bow headed, slumped.
Closer now to your essence

Than ever before.

Like it? You can pre-order the ebook on Smashwords by following this Link

1. The Time Machine by H G Wells

Though this story is not steampunk per se, it was books such as this, 20 000 Leagues Under the Sea, and Journey to the Centre of the Earth which influenced the scope of the genre. If you wanted to try another precursor type, The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde is very famous.

2. The Mortal Engines quartet by Philip Reeve

A post apocalyptic story which involves airships aplenty.

3. The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers

A time travel fantasy novel involving dangerous Ancient Egyptian magic! There’s something for everyone in this book. Incidentally, Tim Powers wrote On Stranger Tides, which Disney optioned to use for ideas in the fourth Pirates of the Carribean film.

4. Northern Lights (Book 1 of His Dark Materials) by Philip Pullman

Pullman’s alternative Oxford was plenty steampunk in this first book which sees Lyra off to find out the mystery of Dust.

5. Soulless by Gail Carriger

I have reviewed this novel previously on InkAshlings. A comedy of manners crossed with the paranormal crossed with romance crossed with steam punk might seem a bit much. Surprisingly, it works and is a heck of a lot of fun!

6. Perdido Street Station by China Mielville

This book has won a lot of literary awards for its writing style and originality. A parallel fantasy universe with steampunk technology, Mielville depicts an industrial police state tackling Victorian values along the way.

7. Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld

A young adult novel which explores an altenate World War One using the steampunk genre.

8. Worldshaker/Liberater by Richard Harland

Another young adult author from Australia, Harland explores an alternate Imperial era marked by different choices made during the Napoleonic Wars. Harland explores leftover British values of class, gender and status in these two juggernaut steampunk novels.

8. The Extraudinaires by Micheal Pryor

Yet another YA Australian author, Pryor loves the steampunk genre and writes about it often at his website. This particular series sees old school magic, adventure and steampunk settings combined to generate a whole lot of exciting reading.

9. Boneshaker by Cherie Priest

Steampunk combined with zombies in New York. Exciting stuff!

10. Infernal Devices by K. W. Jeter

A steampunkian Victorian fantasy which has recently been reprinted by Angry Robots Books. This older book features clockwork creations which were to become a mainstay of the genre.

Do you read steampunk? What are your favourites?