I Would Like a Sandwich Please

The Pressure to Consume

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 10:01:10 GMT

Every year it gets worse. I first started to feel it at Uni. There were more books to read than there was time to read them.

But it's gotten worse every year since. More books get added to the pile, and fewer get completed. At times it feels like an uphill battle.

Since I started working it's become a much bigger problem. Whereas before, my budget limited what I could add to my to-read pile, suddenly I had a lot more money and a lot less free time. And suddenly it was not just books. It was music. Where once I might have bought a new CD once a month or so, suddenly I was drowning in them.

Then I started reading short stories. And there were thousands of them! And it was part of my duty as an editor and wannabe-writer to read them all, to find out for myself where the good ones were. And I joined a group of people dedicated to reading every SF/F story published in the world during the year.

Sometime in there came the internet. With heaps and heaps of free music and free stories, not to mention all the blog posts, news sites, and social media sites to keep up with.

At some point I realised that I had fallen behind with all my favourite TV shows. I started a stockpile of DVDs to catch up on. Right after I finished rewatching all the Buffy episodes.

And then there were comics, with fifty years of back issues to catch up on. And more and more and more of all of the above.

And I just couldn't keep up. And every year the pressure of all that *stuff* that I wanted to read/watch/listen to but couldn't find the time to… all that pressure just built up like a weight on me. I started making spreadsheets to keep track of what I was consuming and all the things I had to get through. And although I wouldn't say I stopped enjoying things… I still love a good novel or a good story or a good album as much as ever…. when I'm reading one thing I have to work triply hard to block out the clamour, the din, of all those un-consumed works of art outside my mental door, banging to be let in, saying "Me next! Don't forget me! You don't want to miss out on me… do you?"

And progress? My to-read pile is bigger than it was ten years ago. My iPod has more music on than ever before, but I struggle to listen to all of it more than once every month or two. I have read thousands and thousands of stories but I have forgotten most of them and every month there are hundreds more to read.

And at a certain point, I guess, you have to just… stop.

Books and music are my chief vices, but all around us, in whatever field you like to spend your money, it's the same. We are surrounded by more and more choices, more and more things clamouring to be let into our lives. And there's just not room for them all.

At some point you have to admit defeat. I am just not going to read all the books I would like to read. I am not going to have the time to listen to every interesting album that comes out. I don't *want* to have to keep up with every short story ever written. I don't want to have to keep a tight grip on my daily schedule, to manage my time strictly and with no room for spontaneity, just to try to keep up with it all. What does it even mean, to have kept up?

But it's not easy to let go. I have made an effort over the last six months, to relax my grip, to allow myself to just be, to stop thinking about what is still waiting to be consumed, and to just enjoy what I'm reading/watching/listening to *now*.

But it's hard. Oh how hard. A dozen times at least I have backslid, have pulled out my spreadsheets, have had a flurry of reading, have updated all my iPod playlists to see what music I need to listen to to have kept up this month.

And each time I have to say to myself, take your hand slowly off the spreadsheet and step away from the book stack. Take a breath. Accept that you can't do everything. Accept that you can't be everywhere, in every moment. You can't experience it all. All any of us can hope for is to experience the one life that we have.

You can try to cram it all in. But all that really achieves is to take away from the experience you're having right now. To distract you from enjoying the here and now by reminding you of all that is left to do. It doesn't make you happy. And when will you have ever achieved it all? It's not possible.

The most we can ever hope to achieve is to be here, now, present, as fully as we can. To give our attention as completely as we can to what we are doing at this moment. And to let go of the guilt, the pressure, of all that we must leave unconsumed.

The same could be said for our achievements.

It doesn't come naturally, to me. But I'm working on it.

Music: Tuesday - The Hummingbirds

Some thoughts on 2012

Sun, 30 Dec 2012 12:40:50 GMT

So now that the obligatory best-ofs are out of the way, what did 2012 mean to me?

Overall, I'd say it was a great year. Probably the best I can remember.

A large part of that was due to having the chance to travel and see some of the world. People who've known me for years may laugh at that, because I have always been somewhat cynical about travel. But I can honestly say that it was the best experience of my life. Just being some place totally unfamiliar and having the chance to absorb and learn and experience it. And to do it alongside Jen and others we love. It was awesome.

I haven't written much here about our trip, largely because I'm not sure how to put it into words. It was challenging at times. I read somewhere before I left about being an introvert and travel, and how it brings with it its own set of challenges. But I think I prepared myself well and was careful to take time out at times, I meditated every morning and I think that those things really helped to centre me. And as it turned out, I think I was probably happier and more "present" during our trip than I have felt for years. It really helped me to avoid over-thinking (one of my greatest flaws) and just go with the flow of the day, to be open to what was happening and just enjoy it. And I think for somebody like me that was an achievement. I set the goal for myself before I left to be a positive, calm and kind person on the trip, and I did my best to achieve that.

The next challenge has been to try to continue that after coming home. I have had some success and some setbacks, which is to be expected, I guess. But overall, I think that the trip helped to make me a happier, more confident person.

I've also been a lot happier at work this year. I have been acting in a different section at work, and have discovered that it *is* possible to have a workplace where people support each other, and are positive and kind, rather than stabbing one another in the back. Who knew?!!! Anyway for the first few months I was still tense and worried but gradually I have adjusted and I have discovered that it is possible to have a job without it making you feel miserable and constantly watching your back. So that's a plus!

As mentioned, I have started meditating this year, properly, after flirting with it for years but never doing it properly. I wouldn't say I'm in any way an expert at it, but I've at least made it into a habit, and I can honestly say it has made a huge difference in my life. I have really noticed a difference in how I approach my day and the way I deal with stresses. And the times when I don't do it, I always regret it, because I can feel that equilibrium is lacking. Of course, you still have good days and bad days, whether you meditate or don't. But it just sets me on a better platform to deal with the things that come along.

Some of my major goals this year were working on being more "present" and less in my own thoughts. I think I've definitely succeeded to some small extent, but I still have a long way to go. That's just who I am; I've always been an over-thinker. There are benefits to that, and drawbacks. But I'm working on finding a greater balance and living more in the "now". Part of that is having fewer expectations; about accepting the world as it is without wanting to bend it to the way I think it should be. Well, sometimes I still try to bend it (because I'm right, dammit!). But I'm working on it.

I have deliberately stripped away a lot of the goal-setting in my life over the last few years. Part of that was trying to be more available to the present moment, rather than always working toward some imaginary future. And part of it was trying to find more stillness and silence, to enable deeper thought and creativity. That's something I'm still working on; it's hard not to fill your time with busy-ness. And it's natural, isn't it, to want to read more, watch more, learn more! But I've learned that constant consumption tends toward shallowness of response, and I'm working hard toward allowing myself room for deeper reflection.

That can be challenging at times; like a lot of people, I have used busy-ness, in the past, to avoid being alone too long with my own thoughts. But as I've become happier and more centred, that's something I have gradually become better at. Again, it's a work in progress.

I've learned a lot about myself, too, and have read a lot of books this year about self-growth, or whatever you want to call it. Which sounds naff, but some of them have been really helpful. I have faced the fact that I am probably always going to be somewhat introverted and over-sensitive, and I need to find the best ways I can to manage living in that way, rather than comparing myself to other people who are more outgoing and confident. Again, easier said than done, and some days I still beat myself up about my lack of social skills, my inability to develop friendships and my apparently inexhaustible supply of ways to sabotage myself in social groups. But I try not to be too hard on myself; that's just who I am, and nobody has all the answers. We all just manage as best we can.

One thing that I have learned is that if your intent is good, a lot of the other complexities in life just melt away. If you turn up, and do your best, then that's all you can do. Yes, self-reflection is part of that. But you will never have all the answers. You can try to learn from any experience, but in the end all you can do tomorrow is turn up again, do your best again, and hope for the best.

Anyway, that's probably enough self-analysis for me this year. Did I mention over-analysing?

I hope whatever physical and emotional events have shaped your year, that you have come through them stronger, wiser and kinder. May your 2013 be full of laughter, learning and love.

Peace out!

Favourite Comics of 2012

Sun, 30 Dec 2012 11:58:38 GMT

A lot of my reading this year was comic books. This was the first full year I've spent following comics for some time, and it was great to discover how many good writers there are out there.

Anyway, the books I particularly enjoyed and found well written this year were:

Batwoman

Animal Man

Batman

Aquaman

JLA

Swamp Thing

Red Hood & the Outlaws

Wonder Woman

Marvel

All New X Men

Uncanny X-Men

Astonishing X Men

X Men: Legacy

Avengers vs X-Men

Wolverine & the X-Men

As you can tell, I have become a bit of an X-Men fan. I also really enjoyed reading some of the collections of seventies Chris Claremont written X Men. I intend to read more of those this coming year.

Favourite albums of 2012

Sun, 30 Dec 2012 10:57:25 GMT

(including a couple from late 2011)

The albums I really enjoyed this year were:

Wild Flag… Wild Flag (2011)

Yuck… Yuck (2011)

Hushabye Mountain… Stacey Kent (2011)

Let's Go Eat the Factory… Guided by Voices

The Lion's Roar… First Aid Kit

Old Ideas… Leonard Cohen

Tramp… Sharon Van Etten

The Stars Are Indifferent to Astronomy… Nada Surf

Renditions… Slow Moving Millie

Sees the Light… La Sera

Wasteland Companion… M. Ward

Kisses on the Bottom… Paul McCartney

Nightlife… Kate Miller-Heidke

Aufheben… Brian Jonestown Massacre

Electra Heart… Marina & the Diamonds

Chesapeake… Rachael Yamagata

Bloom… Beach House

Secret Symphony… Katie Melua

There's No Leaving Now… Tallest Man on Earth

Class Clown Spots a UFO… Guided by Voices

Like a King… Danielle Ate the Sandwich

I Know What Love Isn't… Jens Lekman

Emerald City… Knievel

Long Wave… Jeff Lynne

Transcendental Youth… Mountain Goats

What albums did you enjoy this year?

Books Read in 2012

Sun, 30 Dec 2012 10:45:50 GMT

I felt like I got nothing read in 2012, but looking back I read quite a bit, at least by my standards (slow reader). And I got three quarters of the way through War and Peace, which took a substantial chunk out of my reading time.

I found my reading drifted more toward non-fiction this year. I don't know if this is a sign of getting old :-)

Anyway, those in bold are the ones I would highly recommend:

Fiction

Sue Townsend, Adrian Mole and the Small Amphibians

Charlotte Bronte Jane Eyre

Sue Townsend Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years

Penni Russon Only Ever Always

Ann Patchett State of Wonder

Julianna Baggott Pure

Hilary Mantel Bring Up the Bodies

Dave Eggers A Hologram for the King

Julie Zeh The Method

Sally Gardner The Double Shadow

Katy Stauber Revolution World

Hal Duncan Ink

Miyuki Miyabe Brave Story

Julie Czerneda Beholder's Eye

Lee Child Killing Floor

Carlton Mellick III Warrior Wolf Women of the Wasteland

Katharine Kerr Daggerspell

JV Jones The Baker's Boy

Non Fiction

Eckhart Tolle The Power of Now

B Allan Wallace The Attention Revolution

Rodd, James Wagner, Carter 12: The Elements of Great Managing

Leo Babauta The Effortless Life

Melvin McLeod (ed) The Best Buddhist Writing 2010

Daniel Goleman Working With Emotional Intelligence

Robin Sharma Leadership Wisdom from the Monk Who Sold His Ferrari

Lama Suraya Das Awakening the Buddha Within

Jonathan Safran Foer Eating Animals

Lodro Rinzler The Buddha Walks Into a Bar

John Pomfret Chinese Lessons

Bob Ellis Suddenly, Last Winter

Elaine Aron The Highly Sensitive Person

Dalai Lama A Simple Path

Joshua Fields, Ryan Millburn, Nicodemus Simplicity: Essays

Chloe Hooper The Tall Man

Sarah Gamble The Routledge Companion to Feminism

David Miche Buddhism for Busy People

Lieve Joris The Rebels' Hour

Julian Baginni The Ego Trick

Juliet Barker The Brontes

Zadie Smith Changing My Mind

Richard Watson Future Minds

Philip Zaleski, Editor The Best Spiritual Writing 2012

Katharine Kerr Daggerspell

JV Jones The Baker's Boy

Trent Jamieson The Business of Death

On the decline of conversation

Sat, 29 Dec 2012 12:43:50 GMT

This is becoming one of those blogs where every new blog post starts with "It's been a long time since I posted here".

I must admit that some days I miss the old Livejournal days. It seemed like there was a lot more conversation and back-and-forth on lj, in part because the blogging platform made it easier to do that. Most other platforms are not conversation friendly, I find. The very act of commenting on your average blog takes so many steps that I often lose interest mid-way through typing some impossible-to-decipher code to prove I'm human. And then there's the whole tracking of replies thing, which some blogs do ok and some don't do at all, but none seem to manage as well as LJ did.

Other times I wonder if this is why conversation about the local reading/writing scene seems to have declined. Or perhaps it was already declining, or moving elsewhere, and that was just a symptom.

At any rate, I don't find the whole blogging experience as interesting these days; it feels more like a lot of people just talking at you, rather than conversations.

I know twitter and Facebook have taken up some of that role, but they're not the same. You can't have an in-depth conversation on either, I find.

Perhaps I am just behind the times. Is there really interesting discussion about the local scene happening some place I am not aware of? Or has it really gone quiet?

I know we are part of a broader scene, now. The Australian focus of the early 2000s seems to have dissipated, to a large degree. And there are many benefits to that, to being part of an international community of writers. But I wonder whether we have lost something too.

For the last decade and a bit, the Australian small press SF scene has been a large part of my life. But lately it has felt like there is an increasing absence where it used to be. I don't know if that is just my own perception. But I don't really feel like I'm part of it any more. And I'm not sure where I'm drifting *to*.

Anyway, perhaps that helps to explain in some small way my silence here. I guess I need to work out what this blog is for.

Slight Return

Fri, 23 Nov 2012 10:55:34 GMT

I just discovered the last time I blogged here was in August.

Part of the reason for that was that I have been, as many of you know, a-travelling. More about that in another post, some time.

While we were still connected overseas, I spent a lot less time online, and it was just what I needed in terms of getting some headspace. While I love the online world, and some of my best friends are internets, I have to admit that sometimes it gets me down, and I feel that its critics have a point when they argue that the internet creates the illusion of closeness to a lot of people, while actually often making us more distant and alone.

It's certainly true that we tend to be much more judgemental of one another online, and the self-righteousness with which we criticise others is amplified. I don't think the internet creates that tendency; it's too common in everyday life. But it certainly seems to encourage herd mentality and sharp divisions.

I've been reading a few books lately about slowing down our thinking, giving ourselves the space to think deeply, and to allow ourselves to do nothing, and how valuable that is. Sometimes it's easy to drown in a sea of input, and the internet certainly contributes to that possibility. We can become mired in shallow thoughts and feelings, not giving ourselves the time and space to think against the grain.

I've certainly been guilty of seeping myself in input, of taking on too many things, until every moment of my day is allocated. I've tried to reduce that by dropping projects, but often I've simply replaced them with other, less obvious ones. Or filled my time with reading, with watching good tv shows, with all the myriad forms of culture that I want to imbibe, but which I can never, no matter how I struggle, keep up with or get through. The result is just more of the same, drowning in input, filling up with immediate reactions, and not having any time to step back, to allow the thoughts and feelings to percolate and bubble around the bowl.

I don't want to create a false dichotomy between online and offline life. It's just as possible to live offline the same way, full of busyness and surface level experiences and lacking in space.

And online life still offers a lot of potential. I think we just need to work out the best ways to make it work for us.

So being away helped put some distance between me and all the stupid internet wars and hate-ons. It made me realise how stupid all of that side of things is, how little it matters in the wider world.

But more than that, it gave me some space to sit and just be. And I found myself thinking deeper… not necessarily intelligent or interesting thoughts… but deeper in some way all the same.

I found myself wondering if the reason I've struggled to put metaphorical pen to paper in recent times, to create anything either fictional or non-fictional that I was happy with, was due to the fact that I was too busy trying to fill my time with worthwhile endeavours, with reading great books and watching great films and chatting to interesting people, that I hadn't left myself any room, any place for thoughts to gestate or emerge.

I don't know what the answer is, exactly. It's a thought progression in progress. But I know that I am looking to put more space, more nothing time, into my life to just be. To allow myself to think again, to step back from it all and look with fresh eyes.

Because sometimes in trying to live, to consume, to cram it all in, we miss something important about what living really means.

On Internet Bullying

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 12:39:12 GMT

So today the newspapers report that Charlotte Dawson is in hospital following some very aggressive attacks on twitter toward her. I assume this means that she made some kind of suicide attempt or self-harm. I don't have any particular knowledge of Dawson or feelings toward her one way or the other, beyond sympathy that she reached such a bad place. Nor have I read the tweets in question, beyond a few quoted in newspapers.

I am not surprised, though, to hear of something like this happening, and I have felt for some time that it is only a matter of time before we see more and more people driven to despair by the treatment they are dealt online. I don't think that the online social sphere is any worse than real life, necessarily, except insofar as the fact that such large numbers make it easy for a flashmob to appear, drawn by the debate, and for things to spiral beyond anyone's control within a short period of time.

I have never been at the mercy of an internet flashmob, and I'm grateful. It's hard enough when you upset somebody in real life. Maybe at some time in your life you have been ostracised or verbally attacked by a former friend. Maybe even a group. No matter how much we might believe ourselves strong or independent, most of us are at heart social animals, still. It *hurts* to be disliked by people. Most of our worst reactions, our anger, our aggression, come from fearing that other people are judging us, that they dislike us. I don't think anybody doesn't know what it feels like to be an outsider, on occasions.

I can only imagine the visceral, physical hurt that can come from having hundreds of people you've never met suddenly turn on you, judging you, insulting you, hating you because of something you've said. It's awful to think about that kind of hurt, and it's easy to see how somebody could be overwhelmed by it, could feel like everything is ruined, like there is no way back.

The more smug internet commentators use this point in the conversation to suggest that this is why you must be careful with what you say online, to not upset people that way. I say that's a fucking compassionless attitude, and what's more, not a realistic one. It ignores the fact that nobody says something they believe is fucked. People say things because they believe them to be right.

Having said all that, I sympathise with Dawson, I feel truly sorry for her. But I don't like the way it's being portrayed as something a select group of people have done; a certain group of trolls who we must catch and punish and whose identities we must make public as an example, because bullying is something the other, the "they", people who are not like us, do to us. It's not something that the "we", the "us", those we empathise with as fellow protagonists, could ever be guilty of.

No, we don't bully. We "call out" people on their mistakes. Because sometimes people deserve that. People act badly, and that needs to be pointed out to them. And if we are aggressive in doing that, it is because their behaviour caused that reaction in us, because our anger and judginess is justified by their faults, right? And if a lot of our friends also agree with what we are saying, and also point out to the other person the error of their ways, that is just because their belief or statement was so out of step with common decency that "we" could hardly be expected to act otherwise.

And we don't need to feel compassion or sympathy toward the person that all of us are educating. Because they are the "they", and we are the "we", they are the antagonist and we are the protagonist, our actions are entirely relatable and even our mistakes are understandable and forgivable, and their actions are always ill-motivated and must be judged and punished. And why should we have to think about how they feel? They are the ones that offended us. Their intent doesn't matter. They should apologise, they should admit their mistakes and learn from them. We are the wronged, we are the ones who are badly done by. Why should we have to think at all about their feelings?

And if that person, that other who we called out and shunned and attacked; if that person kills themself or self-harms, well you know, that's sad, but hey, they did bring it on themselves. That's a totally different thing to this situation, where one of us was hurt and shunned and made to feel like crap by a bunch of them. If you can't see how that's different, well, then...

The thing that really gets me is this: There are so many people who believe it could never happen to them. Because I am so goddamn righteous that there is no way that public opinion could ever turn against me, that I could ever be judged and found wanting, turned upon, shut out.

I see right wing trolls being arseholes and I shake my head and I think "idiots" and it doesn't really get to me. But what really gets me, what really upsets me and breaks my heart is watching left wing people who share my beliefs, my ideals, treating other people like crap. I know it's naive to be shocked by that but it still gets me every time. Because we were supposed to be the good guys.

But I guess the moral of this is that there are no good guys, or rather, we are all good guys, who have learned to treat one another like crap.

I was watching Go Back Where You Came From on SBS tonight, and thinking wow, the beauty of the show is not only that it manages to humanise refugees to us (and presumably most of the show's core audience is open to that already), but that at the same time it manages to humanise right wing bigots, which is perhaps an even greater feat. I was watching people like Peter Reith or Michael Smith and seeing the human side to them, the doubts, the confusions, the undertones to their surface. I still don't agree with them, but I can understand them a little better.

And I thought, fuck, that is what it should be about. And then I went online and read some of the comments from people who share my political beliefs, who were attacking them, not just their beliefs, but as human beings, and I felt ashamed. And I know that's just a small percentage of people, not everybody.

But the point is this; maybe there is no good guys or bad guys. Maybe there is just here and now; this action, this moment. And in this moment you can choose to work toward understanding and kindness, or you can choose to work against them. And I don't care if your cause is righteous, I don't care if somebody deserves your anger, I don't care if they are the most unequivocally wrong person in the history of Wrongtown. Either you are working toward kindness and understanding, or you are working against them.

I don't know, I feel like I need to think more about these things. But I'm tired of it all… I don't believe that the internet is some kind of dark beast that needs to be muzzled or it will destroy us all. The internet is just the venue. It is as capable of good, of communication, of love, of understanding, as it is of cruelty. But we need to use it well, we need to treat it with respect and thought. Because we are fucking it up.

And so much of it at the moment just looks like some place I don't want to go….

Ranty Rantface Eats His Ranting Erbs and Goes on a Rant

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 11:39:32 GMT

(Beware, ranting follows)

Lookit, I don't care how much I agree with your essential argument, or otherwise. You can be saying my exact mindscape in eloquent phraseology to the tune of my favourite album. I don't give a shit whether I agree with you or not. I am happy to listen all day and all night to people who I disagree with. Just be interesting.

If all you are doing is saying what every other mother-freakin' person in the blogosphere is vomiting out of their own word-holes, just a little less well-phrased and a little lazier in the logic and a little louder and more angry, then what, just what, is the fucking point?

(I'm not talking to you, gentle regular reader, for you are always erudite, immaculately dressed and pretty)

If I wanted to listen to people back-slapping themselves while spouting opinions that have been through more blogs than I've been through candy bars, lazy half-arsed agreeable non-controversial this-is-what-everyone-else-is-already-saying kinda posts that I could have pulled from under my left nostril without having to blow, if I wanted to slowly lower myself into the morass of nothing that is intellectual debate in this country with a fat grin and glazed pupils, losing form as my body becomes indistinguishable from the tepid waste that has flowed from innumerable inseparable public mental orifices, I would just cut myself a slab of greased pig-luncheon and sit down to share my evening with The Shire.

If, in short, your argument contributes nothing to the debate beyond self-satisfied certainty about how fucking right you are, and how clear, countable, calculable, inarguable, undisputed king of the hill kind of blatantly obvious are the flaws of your foes, how their ideology is so unmistakably unshakeably wrong that you don't even need logic (luckily) to demolish it, just smugness, how all you need to do is slap the wet kipper of your fawning platitudinous verbal self-gratification against the jellied eel hull of their sinking inflatable steamboat and shout "Ha! Brought you down, enemies!" because the unstoppable *rightness* of you is just so overwhelming in its goodness, bigness and moral indignation that their sinking happened ten years ago before their boat was even a glint of moral depravity in a big boat's yardarm….

If, in shorter, you are just here for a haircut…. then your contribution to our world's debate and cultural knowledge and understanding counts for naught.

Whatever happened to depth of discussion, debate, what happened to listening, that ancient druid-craft that lies buried in legend from the smoky time before talking went from something you did with people to something you did *at* people. What happened to Benjamin Bunny's famous exhortation to "brush against the grain", the notion that we might actually question and find it desirable, even admirable, to stand out from the tide and ask "but what about", even if, especially if, we are brushing against what we ourselves believe? What the fuck happened to genuine, multi-faceted complexities, to admitting "I don't know", to recognising that, just as I have been wrong about seven thousand, eleventy hundred and one seventh of the things I have argued for in my life up to this point, it is *just possible*, just an outside chance, that one day, not today, noooo, but some day, I may even once be wrong again.

Even I'm doing it, right now, with this infernal diatribe from "me", the enlightened positioned protagonist, made from a puffed up sack of wind with a couple of jelly beans for eyeballs, shouting at the imagined "you", the incorrect, scandalously transgressive imagined octagonist who if he ever existed as anything other than a crumpled receipt at the bottom of my bag of ideas, would surely have given up reading and lost interest hectares ago. So stop listening to me, in the name of all that is righteous and holy!!

I can only assume that somewhere, sometime when we weren't looking, weren't concentrating, the INTERNET GOT IN US. And now it is all through us, poisoning us, forgetting for us, losing those parts of us that used to believe in sharing, in society, in communality, in kindness, in sympathy, in empathy, in attempting, however hamfisted in our gauche paraphrasery, to understand the other. The Internet is in us, and it is all that we are, all that we have left to prop up these empty husks, to keep them running with the wind long enough to stay together.

Don't listen to me, friends, don't listen to me. I am ranting, just like any one of you. But if you have the courage, if you have the heart, if you have a small voice deep in your stomach trying to shout up your neck at your brain, then run, run…. there may still be time for you.

Until next time. Have a nice day.

My Con Report, by Ben aged [unreadable]

Tue, 12 Jun 2012 09:44:12 GMT

I was very grateful to be able to make Natcon this year, after not being sure I would be able to. I hate missing Natcon, for the simple reason that two years between catching up with a lot of good friends is far too long. But luckily I was able to go along.

I'm not going to go into detail about what I attended or who I dined with. I'm not going to list all of the wonderful people I had conversations with, because I would forget somebody, and in any case those kinds of lists just tend to make people feel bad if they couldn't come along. But I will say that I had a lot of really fascinating conversations about writing, about the scene, and about life. I met some new people who were fabulous and thoughtful, I saw some old friends who I hadn't seen for five years or so, and I caught up with a lot of my regular con-buddies and got to spend the sort of quality time that it's hard to achieve online.

I used to get quite bad comedown after cons; largely because in my early congoing days I was quite insecure and spent a lot of time overanalysing all the conversations I'd had, wondering whether people liked me or not. These days I am a bit more mellow about it all; I try to be as nice to people as I can, I try to be as genuine as I can. I know there will be times I say idiotic things, but that's life, isn't it? All I do is wake up each day and try to meet the new one the best way I can.

For me this con was a great reminder of just how many lovely people we have in our community. It's easy sometimes in the online world to focus on the disagreements, the controversies. That's a lot harder when you are talking to people face to face, and you realise that at heart, most people are good and kind. And that we are all working toward, all care about, the same things, really.

It was also, I think, the first time I've gone to a con as neither an editor nor a writer. (Well, I still consider myself a writer but haven't had anything published in living memory). Even at my first ever con, I was already a publisher of Potato Monkey and co-editor or ASIM, and that definitely helped me to fit in and get past some of the "I don't belong here" factor. In the last five years, a lot of my friends have gone on to greater and greater successes; they've graduated from fellow newbies to being the big guns of the scene. And I feel as though I've almost gone the opposite way; partly through circumstance, partly through choice, I feel like I'm in many ways back at ground zero in my career, starting it all from scratch.

So I was worried a little that I'd feel a little bit like a pretender at this con, and I admit I arrived on Friday dreading the first time someone asked me "so what are you writing?" I wondered if I had anything useful to engage with, or whether I would feel like somebody with nothing to offer.

But the truth is that I arrived, and almost immediately was caught up in so many interesting conversations that I didn't even have time to think about it; I was too fascinated and having too much fun talking about art, about reading it, about creating it, about what matters and what obstacles get in the way. I started to feel like a writer again, even though I hadn't written anything for an age. And talking to other writers about their own difficulties, their own stumbling blocks, made me feel like I did still belong, because this road is not a cosy A-B-C road to success. We all have our setbacks and our moments in the sun, to differing degrees. We all take a few steps forward and a few steps back. And being around other people who share and understand that is just so valuable.

And I was fortunate enough to be around good friends who like hanging out with me, just because of who I am, regardless of whether I have any talent or opportunities to offer. Go figure. Those people are nuts!

A few people were lovely and kind enough to share with me nice thoughts about my own writing, enough to regain some of the enthusiasm I've been missing. From kind words about stories I've had published, to my writing on my blog, to works in progress people have read, to Kirstyn yelling "write your fucking novel, Payne" numerous times at the bar. All of that stuff combined to give me a shot in the arm and make me feel like maybe I can do it after all.

There are a lot of other things I could blog about; good food, good wine, lots of laughs. But those are a couple of things that made me realise how grateful I am to be part of this community, to attend a con like this. I hope we keep inspiring and nurturing one another's talents for many many years more.

Snapshots! Part Twenty-two

Thu, 07 Jun 2012 11:36:21 GMT

Grant Watson

I think a core appeal of the fanzine is that it isn’t transient. Individual episodes of podcasts and blogs in particular feel very ephemeral and disposable. Since each issue of a fanzine is a discrete, concrete object, it feels like is has a bit more weight to it than other media.

I don’t think fanzines are likely to ever go away, but they’re certainly never going to be the predominant form of fan expression ever again. One thing that’s definitely keeping them around is e-publishing: there’s a fantastic resource calledwww.efanzines.com where you can download a regularly updated range of fanzines from the UK, USA, Australia and other countries. Anyone who says “I’ve never read a fanzine, I don’t really get what they’re about” should definitely go download a few and get a better idea.

Andrew McKiernan

Maybe editors and publishers are paying attention when it comes to novels, but I don't think so with short stories. Again, I still hope that the story is the important thing there, and not whether you've got a 1,000 followers on twitter. I am on Facebook and Twitter, but I don't really use them as tools to further my writing career. There's nothing worse than being bombarded with messages about some author's latest self-published e-book release on Smashwords. It actually turns me off the thought of reading their stuff, and I'm sure it's the same for a lot of others too. Using social media soley as an advertising tool seems like a very bad idea to me. Using to engage with your readers? Well, that's a totally different thing and I feel that as long as I'm being myself and posting the sort of things I and my readers are interested in then I'm doing the right thing.

Felicity Dowker

Yes, it can sometimes be difficult to balance family commitments with writing commitments, as I’m sure every writer who is also a parent or carer knows. I also work fulltime Monday to Friday; again, I’m sure I am no different to many other writers in this respect. With my husband’s support, I structure writing time where I can squeeze it in around my main priority, which is and always will be my family. It can sometimes take me longer to get things done than it may take others whose situations differ from mine, but that’s life.

I don’t believe social media and/or blogging has played a significant part in the development of my writing career. It can have a role to play (especially when you’ve written just one story and nobody has ever heard of you or of it) but at a certain point that usefulness can become exhausted, and can turn into negativity and distraction. I personally found blogging was sucking up far too much of my time and creative energy – not just writing my own blog, but reading the blogs of others – with far too little pay-off, and so I made a conscious decision to cut that out of my schedule quite some time ago. It freed up a huge amount of time. I’ve replaced it with ventures like Thirteen O’Clock which I feel contribute much greater value to me personally and also to my community. Regardless, I have never identified as a “blogger”. I have always been a writer.

I wouldn’t say writers should “improve” their use of social media (although I will say it sometimes bemuses me that some editors, more so than writers, seem unable to spell or punctuate on social media!). I think they, and everyone else, can use it however they like. It can be an effective promotional tool, but if it’s used solely for that, without at least some personality in between, it becomes ineffective spam. Personally if I want to see promotional material and nothing else, I will visit a publisher’s website (for example). If I want to see the human being behind the words, I’ll look at a writer’s social media, if it’s available. I might then find I don’t much like the writer, but that doesn’t mean I can’t still like their work (or vice versa). I prefer to see people being real people, not automatons. Go on with your bad self and cut loose on your social media. Use naughty words. Have fights. Whatever. At least it’s honest. I don’t really care!

Joanna Fay

I’ve only been identifying as a SpecFic writer for three years. I’ve only been involved on the fringes of ‘the scene’ and don’t have a long view of its evolution. But the big change that has swept all genres and the publishing industry as a whole is, of course, the rise and rise of e-books. I know writers who are self-publishing, others publishing with traditional publishing houses, others going with indie press from micro to mid levels. The ground under all this is a moving carpet, and adaptability is called for. Interesting times indeed!

Alison Goodman

I suspect a bit of both. In terms of genre, I go where the story takes me. When I have the initial idea for a book or series, I take note of where it seems to fit in the genre market and think about the conventions of that genre. If some of them work for me, I’ll use them (either with or against the expectations). However, I don’t feel obliged to stick faithfully to the conventions or, indeed, to one genre. I do like to meld genres, which can bring a whole bucket load of problems with it but is a lot of fun to write.

In terms of themes within a novel, I usually find that I may start with an idea of a thematic line – developed from the plot and character – but find that other, stronger themes emerge as I write. Having said that, the thematic starting point is not usually the driving force for me in my writing process – I am more engaged by character and plot and these supply the passion that propel me. So, I don’t feel that I pick stories to write by the appeal of their themes. Still, it is not really possible to separate out those three elements – plot, character, and theme. They are so deeply entwined in the development of my fiction that at least some of each needs to be in place before I start writing.

Brendan Duffy

I can’t really claim to have my finger on the pulse of the beating heart that is Aussie spec fic because these days I’m more a truant or vagabond than an ongoing genre contributor locked into dynamic dialogue with the zeitgeist. I haven’t been keeping in touch with the scene at all, and of late there have certainly been many anthologies I’ve not contributed to or even been aware of (and I rue that fact), so I can really only answer this question with one eye open. I write less than one short story a year, and hope to place it well, so was thrilled to get into AbE with a freight train of great writers. AbE is an exciting read with some truly wonderful stories, yet I was surprised by the lack of online buzz it generated and wanted it to achieve a larger presence, including more reviews and some discussion on what the antho had to offer and how it dealt with the theme. On the other hand, the genre itself formally supported AbE with AA nominees and a winner. And as far as the future goes, I would like to see more anthos.

But thanks for asking how Space Girl Blues came about. I grew up in green-belt suburban Eltham among sylvan trees and dams, where Don’s Party was over and the children of those mud-bricked hippies grew up to be football hooligans or fist-fodder. My high school was staunchly proud of its statistically aberrant processed white-breddedness. My older brother fled Beer-Garden Australia and mailed care packages back from London that contained all kinds of cultural oddities for those remaining behind enemy lines, including music from another planet; some strange band from Akron Ohio that couldn’t get a deal anywhere had found an indie label in London to press limited runs of post-punk new wave 45s. One of these was a song from 1978 called Automodown about the Kent State massacre, and sandwiched behind this with no pregap was an unlabelled two minute add-on called Space Girl Blues with offworld lyrics and theraminesque riffs that made me know my teenage brain was buttered on the sci fi side. This song stayed with me, engendered a ferment that I knew one day would write itself a story. The internet allows you to mine, commodify and recolonise your past with the methodical relentlessness of BHP, the pedantry of a trainspotter, and I now have over 49 of their albums, demos, outtakes, alternate versions

Clarion South was wonderful, and I left ultra-positive, enthusiastic, and with a feeling that things would move a touch quicker than have. Its ironic that Clarion South is now a fictional world in itself, the intensity, the workload, the think-tank environment; and as I boldly tread through a brave new world of used nappies, bills and play-lunches the memories of that wonderful time crystallise into hallowed things of legend from an Eden lost and gone. Clarion South generates Australian culture. It had a major impact on my life, helping to clarify my goals and aspirations with surety. I don’t really have a ‘career’ as a writer yet, its more an MO for a few short bodies of genre bladework, but many writers from CS have carved niches as short story writers, while others have gone on to become successful novelists. I hope to join the latter and have my novel out shortly. Don’t ask what shortly means.

And so endeth the lesson.

I hope you've enjoyed reading these summaries and indeed the full interviews! I've certainly found it fascinating to tease out the themes and conversations, and look forward to reading them again at more leisure later.

See some of you at the con! If I've missed any interviews, let me know and I'll do a catch up post later.

Snapshots! Part Twenty-One

Thu, 07 Jun 2012 11:08:34 GMT

Matthew Chrulew

>Two years on from Aussiecon 4, what do you think are some of the biggest changes to the Australian Spec Fic scene?

The rise of self-promotional spamming as a way of life

Simon Brown

Difficult to assess from a distance, but surely the big development not just over the past two years but the past decade has been the increase in the number of Australian specfic writers and the quality of their work. I thinkClarion South has a lot to do with this (and by implication Clarion South’s organisers), as well as the continued and it seems to me against-all-odds existence of short fiction markets such as Aurealis and Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine.

The other big change has been the slow but inevitable move in Australia from ink to phosphor dot and LED, including e-books and online magazines. We’ll have to wait a year or 10 before properly assessing what effects this has had on writers and writing. If I’m still around, feel free to ask me again in 2022.

Rjurik Davidson

Oh, I have several responses, all pretty contradictory. My first response is that the division is false. Writers like Atwood, Ishiguru, Houllebecq andWinterson are clearly writing SF. On the other hand, there are plenty of SF writers writing very ‘literary’ science fiction: Gene Wolfe or M John Harrison, for example. Partly the division is invented by the marketing departments of publishing companies, partly there’s an inherited prejudice against SF in the ‘mainstream’ (which I find ignorant and repulsive), but there’s also quite often a self-reinforced ghettoisation from the SF community also.

I find it all pretty frustrating because there are all sorts of deleterious effects of the division. SF writers are unfairly ignored and ‘literary’ writers writing SF too-often claimed as ‘original’ when they’re really borrowing tropes that have been around for decades. At Overland we try to be inclusive: we’ve had special SF editions, publish SF stories and articles, but I do feel fairly sad that the SF community pretty much ignores us — something reflected not only in terms of our submissions but reflected in things like awards, links to our online articles and so on.

Another passed-down quirk of the division between the literary and SF worlds is the over-emphasis on plot-driven narrative in genre. Genre writers, readers and editors probably do want more ‘action’ than the literary world (which could often do with more action!). I’m not sure that’s healthy. Having said that, the SF community is a really welcoming and in the end, in terms of fiction, that’s where I happily exist.

Rocky Wood

The King who would burst into the literary consciousness only four years later was fully formed in this story. I am grateful that Steve later allowed me to publish it in my book, ‘Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished’ so now all King fans and those who want study his development can read it. Here is a true horror story and like so much of King’s fiction it’s not supernatural but examines the horrors that people will commit against each other, given certain pressures.

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Which brings me to the horror literary community – it must be the most supportive community there is. My ‘colleagues’ all over the world rushed to deliver many projects and spread the word for every fundraiser I had, large and small. The Australian Horror Writers Association, particularly Geoff Brown and Talie Helene, were instrumental in organizing a worldwide online auction to raise funds and to organize a Halloween event we held in Melbourne last year. They are both special, generous people.

Stephanie Gunn

I’d like to say that the state of the horror novel in Australia is an anomaly, but honestly, I feel like the true horror novel has been on a decline. If you look back at the history of the awards, you can see some stellar books shortlisted and winning: Kaaron Warren’s “Slights” (which still haunts me), Kim Wilkins’ novels and Kirstyn McDermott’s “Madigan Mine” are all examples. Books like these just aren’t being published in Australia frequently now.

Maybe the success of so many Australian fan tasy novelists is edging out the shelf real estate, maybe it’s just a general decline in traditional kinds of horror. It’s hard to be afraid of things that go bump in the night when the world is filled with other kinds of terrors, sometimes. I think the rise of other subgenres like paranormal romance are also impinging on traditional horror; while there is a lot of fun and well-written PR being published, not a lot of it is truly award-worthy, if I’m honest about it.

Amanda Rainey

Yes, they're quite different. With print, you need to focus on getting the page right, whereas with ebooks you need to focus on flexibility, on making sure it works well on each ereader, and with their individual settings. And covers are different too. Print covers have to look good on a shelf next to other, similar books. With online sales of print and ebooks, covers need to look appealing at thumbnail size, and it's more difficult to predict what covers will be viewed alongside it.

But there's also more flexibility with online. Covers don't have to appeal to generic booksellers, they can be more adventurous and aim at smaller niche audiences. And the wide availability of technology means that more people can create their own books and covers. That can mean some ugly results, but it will also lead to more creativity and experimentation.

It's all completely up in the air at the moment. We're trying to predict the future, we're trying to predict what we will do. But we're the ones who are making the new rules. I think the best thing I can do as a designer is to pay attention to what's happening and make the decisions I think are best. Rather than trying to predict what others will do its great to have this opportunity to be part of creating something new. That's what I love about Twelfth Planet and FableCroft. They're trying new ideas, and expanding the range of writers and stories in the world. It's an honour to be part of that.

Robert Hood

Fragments Of A Broken Land: Valarl Undead – Fragments, for short — has been a long-running obsession. It’s a fantasy novel in the “other-world” mode, both straightforward and paradoxically complex, that was begun several decades ago, and has been re-worked many times since. It has a long history of near publication and I’m quite serious when I say it’s only the enthusiasm of Jack Dann that has stopped me from abandoning it altogether. Jack enthused about it – and did a thorough structural edit on it – before I knew him as more than one of science fiction’s greats. He has become a good friend since and has tried hard to get the book into print, driven by his enthusiasm for it — without success, until recently. Why that is may be open to conjecture, but two agents who also tried to sell it both claimed it was the novel’s unexpectedly literary nature that lies at the heart of the problem. I’m not entirely sure what that means, but it’s been a struggle and has caused me to work at the book, on and off, for many years. Now Borgo Press – a long-established US small-press that has become an imprint of Wildside Press – have contracted it and it is due to appear, in various formats, either toward the end of this year or the beginning of the next. I await that Event with mingled fear, excitement and relief.

Snapshots! Part Twenty

Thu, 07 Jun 2012 10:26:21 GMT

John Richards

My dream is that we would make any science fiction for adults at all. I had a meeting with a TV executive recently who seemed terrfied I was going to mention spaceships. He kept saying “no spaceships!”. So obviously now I want to make something about spaceships. I’ve always been interested in doing a Star Trek style thing cast entirely with Indigenous actors – to have some great Aboriginal heroes on screen for kids to look up to. But I’d love to see us do a great Buffy/Almighty Johnsons style series. I think we could do that and get away with it. And I really enjoyed Spirited.

Amanda Pillar

Patience; that’s the personality trait you need. You have to be very, very patient and your co-editor also needs to be the same. Before you both begin reading, it’s really important to sit down and discuss what you want – so that you’re both on the same page (so to speak) when reading submissions.

With slushpiles, it’s not always a matter of good story/bad story. It is about the ‘feel’ of the anthology (I know there are some authors who want to hurt me for saying that). I have rejected stories that have gone on to win awards; but they just didn’t play well with the other tales in the book. So picking stories – on your own, or with a co-editor – really comes back to remembering the guidelines you set and the end product you want to make.

Sara Creasey

It’s hard to track book sales quite that accurately, but I noticed a resurgence of buzz about the book after the Philip K. Dick Award nom – this was 9 months after the book’s release, and most of my sales had been in the first few months. I think it’s probably true what they say, though, that word of mouth is the main source of sales. You can blog and do book signings and get award nominations till the cows come home, but ultimately you need readers talking about your book to other potential readers (and the internet is invaluable there, of course).

Scott Robinson

Joys: my books is out there in the world for people to read. I’ve had some great feedback from readers and really can’t get enough. The sorrows: not as many people are reading them as I would like.

Marketing has always been a problem for self-published authors, but these days I have to be compete against the good stuff out there as well as fighting the negative image created by the ‘writers’ who decided to knock up a book over the weekend and make their fortune. At least in the old days, the wife or husband or other keeper of the funds was something of a gatekeeper. Now, it takes no time or money as all to publish a book. Apparently, for some, it doesn’t take any effort, either. So, I just keep hoping for some word of mouth to kick in (The Brightest Light got a great review on Amazon the other day) while I work on the next book.

Jack Dann

The main challenges of putting together an (original) anthology… Well, as I said, you need to come up with a killer concept, get the best authors to commit to writing a story, find the right publisher (and the right money!), work out the contract, and that’s just the beginning. One of the main challenges (and I consider it a rewarding, often joyful challenge) is the back and forth between author and editor to get a story that’s “almost there” over the editorial bar. Admittedly, this is subjective on my part. No excuses. The challenge is to work with the author to produce the story s/he is really excited about. To put it bluntly, the editor’s challenge is to assist when needed and not “piss in the soup.” I’ve been told I’m a pretty good story-doctor. But for the real skinny, you’d have to talk to the authors.

Nick Stathopoulos

I’m not sure if the genre has become more marginalised or whether it’s now so ubiquitous as to render fandom irrelevent. The face of publishing has changed dramatically over the last ten years. It’s taken a while, and there has been a great deal of resistance from publishers, but e-books/publishing have finally challenged the hard copy book as the prefered delivery system. We’ve seen the rise of small ’boutique’ publishers geared directly to serving a specific fan base. The major publishers have consolidated themselves and their products along demographic lines. We see less hard SF published and more high fantasy written for, by, and published by (older/mature age) women…whereas once upon a time it was predominantly a college-age male dominated scene. Fandom has also taken a hit. The traditional Worldcon is no longer the premier event…certainly not in terms of attendance figures. We’re seeing fandom (as I knew it) aging and dying. Technology has rendered the fanzine obsolete. In fact, as a one-time cover artist, I feel sidelined and utterly obsolete. When I was younger I dreamed of being Chris Foss or Bruce Pennington or Michael Whelan. But the reality as been a bitter, harsh, and ultimately futile struggle. I find myself often wishing I had pursued a fine art career a lot earlier in life. But it’s all been grist for the mill.

Kate Eltham

Two things. Firstly, the larger trade publishers have finally woken up to the value and appeal of genre fiction. It used to be the case that there were really only two publishers to whom a writer or agent could submit speculative fiction novels with any realistic expectation of a fair reading, particularly adult science fiction. Today, I can think of at least six off the top of my head, with a bunch more who publish it (but are still cloaking it beneath the more respectable shroud of "literary fiction"). I've had endless discussion with friends and peers about why this might be so. Partly I think its generational. There are some younger editors who have finally made it into positions in publishing houses where they can influence the titles being acquired. In more recent months, I believe it is almost certainly influenced by the wild commercial success of genre fiction in ebook format. It has helped make more visible what we speculative fiction writers and readers have known all along. People actually want to read this stuff.

Secondly, I also see a new professionalism and confidence among the growing indie publishers. If ever there was a moment in publishing to build a business around a niche audience (or "vertical" as some like to say) this is it. And there's absolutely no reason a smart and entrepreneurial small press from Australia can't build a global readership for its titles. I'm pretty encouraged to see some of them attempting this and even more excited to see the early successes of it. Not that it's easy or fast, but it's possible, and I think that has led some publishers to realise that small press doesn't have to be amateur.

On a final note, it feels at least anecdotally true that the Aussie spec fic scene is more and more based around writers, and less so fans. I think fan culture of speculative fiction has broadened and migrated to places like Supanova. Given how overwhelmingly young (and massive) the audience for Supanova is, I can't help but feel this is a good thing for both creators and fandom generally. But it's a little sad for the older fan communities around the Natcon and other long-running conventions who have failed to attract the next generation. On the other hand, every other person I meet at a con these days is a writer or editor so perhaps it's simply that this community has focused itself around the professional aspects of the artform/genre.

Snapshots! Part Seventeen

Wed, 06 Jun 2012 10:58:48 GMT

Anna Tambour

But yes, living in a place uncluttered by humans constantly slaps me with how little I know, and pricks me, often literally – about this roiling mass of curiosities and contrarinesses that is the world. But it doesn’t matter where one physically lives these days. Almost everyone has the ability to shut off observation and contemplation, the more we are Connected; and the more we accept that to write, one must firstly, be taught, and secondly, write every day. The greatest unwritten modern horror story is that of the auditorium in which the victims of creative writing are laid out without their consent, probed and dissected (in front of underage children, no less!). To then think that any student would want, afterwards, to love these defiled creatures is a fiction that is oddly, not a subject in any story I’ve read, but deserves Poe.

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And better than any writing course are life experiences, especially two things: failure and cross dressing (and if the shoes rub, all the better). Writers who haven’t failed (and I don’t mean just getting rejection slips for writing!) tend to be shallow; and writers to whom characters are components, are only themselves, mere machines producing at best, unpreservable junk food. The writers we love, lived everywhere from Mannaville to hell itself; but for the most part, followed their own unprescriptions.

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I’m also not only very much looking forward to reading the novel that Ben Peek is working on, but hoping that it gets an international readership that Peek deserves. Although he could bore anyone with details of structure, his fiction shows nothing of that pedantry. Instead, he is what the bloated Thing maybe was, before Mieville’s hungry Ego hadn’t, when he was very young, mistaken him for a vanilla shake. What I admire about Peek is that his passion about society and the people that are its components are real, yet this fierce interest doesn’t hinder him from writing lucid, visceral fiction of great power and thought-provoking resonance – minus melodrama, manifesto, and Peek.

Thoraiya Dyer epitomises the ideal writer, in my eyes. She has so many interests, talents (that she hones), and could be called to be an expert witness in several fields. I especially love her fiction when it relates to science and the natural world. Yet she is always invisible in her fiction, and is like many people of true worth – so modest that to open her up, you need an oyster knife.

Sean McMullen

Without humour a novel cannot be realistic. Humour is everywhere in our lives, so how can anyone leave it out of fiction? Humour helps us cope when we’re staring into the abyss, just as it gets us through the mind-numbingly boring bits of our lives. We use it to deflate the pompous, to take the edge off tragedy, to get over loss, and to resist the temptation to take success too seriously. I can’t write anything without humour sauntering in and making itself at home. I’m particularly proud of getting some laughs into my PhD thesis and still passing (warning to other PhD students: don’t try this at home, I was probably just lucky). So what does humour add to an otherwise enjoyable story? Realism, as far as I’m concerned.

Talie Helene

There is an amorphous danger zone of gender politics in the speculative fiction community in Australia, and in horror more than any other genre. It is in part due to a disparity in theorised feminism, because writers range from all walks of life – can I say thank fuck? That is something I can appreciate from both sides, because I’m not a theorised feminist myself. (I don’t have a degree, and while I do read feminist musicology with interest, I’m truant on Feminism 101.) I think the sticking point is that horror is often violent, and historically violence precedes from the patriarchy, so there has been confusion in separating confronting language from gendered language.

As horror editor of the Year’s Best, I’ve had to remain silent on feminist issues I might have otherwise been very vocal about, because I have conflict of interest – and I support people in their artistic practice who have completely contradictory views, including views that I don’t agree with. It doesn’t mean I’m not participating in the discourse, because I will recognise writers who are disrupting and interrogating those issues in their work, and that becomes an influence in my editorial process. I want the anthology to be a powder keg of awesome! My philosophy is stolen from an old 3RRR Radio Station ID: ‘Diversity in the face of adversity’.

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The unfortunate melee that Robin Pen hilariously sketched as ‘Ballad of the Unrequited Ditmar‘ seemed to cause a lot of hurt – factions seem delineated, which I think is a pity because in a scene this small we all move forward together. (Who knew I was such a hippy?)

Simon Petrie

Well, the zombie apocalypse seems to have fizzled out … and I also have the sense that the horror scene has been a bit quieter of late. In fact it sometimes seems as though the local spec-fic scene in general is in a bit of a lull. I mean, there’s still plenty happening, a good number of exciting new writers appearing on the scene. But there’s a sense in which Aussiecon 4 was a crescendo towards which the scene was building, and things have been that bit quieter since then. I haven’t been around fandom long enough to know whether that’s always the way it goes, but maybe it is.

On the flipside, I will miss Paul Haines, lost to us at the peak of his powers; and Jimmy Goodrum, who was just starting out as a writer. We should’ve had novels from both of these guys.

In terms of broader changes to the scene – the biggies would seem to be e-books, and the (related) proliferation and rehabilitation of self-publishing as a valid way of ‘getting the stuff out there’. I’d like to hope that these things will be a force for diversification. We need variety, we need people willing to take the genre into new and unexpected directions, and I hope that happens. Time will tell.

Stephanie Smith

Lovely to be called the Voyager Queen; I think the new Voyager publisher, Deonie Fiford, will quickly establish herself as the Voyager Queen in her own right! It was wonderful to be able to be at the forefront of SFF/speculative fiction publishing in Australia for 20 years. When I started on Voyager, Louise Thurtell had already commissioned Sara, Sean Williams, Traci Harding and Simon Brown. So the groundwork was there and I was proud to be able to acquire authors such as Fiona McIntosh, Jennifer Fallon, Russell Kirkpatrick in those early days, and others such as Kim Westwood, Kim Falconer, Duncan Lay and Paul Garrety in later years. I'd love to list all the authors as stand-out experiences, but I'll spare you that! It is amazing to be able to phone someone and say that their book has been accepted for publication by HarperCollins … the delight on the other end of the line is always very heartfelt and warming. A standout experience for me personally was receiving the Peter McNamara Achievement Award in 2004 … that sort of support and feedback and appreciation from professionals in the genre was and always is appreciated by those receiving such an award.

Zena Shapter

Well, it depends on what you want to get from social media. Social media is important to me because I get something from pressing my finger into the pulse of the communal psyche that is social networking – I guess it nullifies the existential loneliness that I would otherwise have to bear sitting alone at my computer all day! I also like to be social with both colleagues and fans. Plus, it helps me to stay up-to-date with the latest news and events – while the past and the future both fascinate me, I do enjoy being in the ‘now’ of living, and I love popular culture. So, if such things are important to other writers then, yes, they too should establish a social media presence.

However, I don’t think that any degree of social media presence can win you a publishing contract, an agent or fans – in that, your writing has to stand for itself. There are plenty of writers whom I admire with only the simplest website where you can read more about them, no interacting, and I still buy their books.

There are also plenty of writers whom I only heard about through social media, but that’s not to say I wouldn’t have eventually heard of them through some other route, and it’s also not to say that I enjoyed their writing enough to buy again. Story is more important to me than social media presence, and I’m guessing the same is true for most readers.

Strategies? Just be yourself, keep your manners, but have fun. Connect with readers and other writers, have LOLs with them, and you’ll soon build yourself a huddle of unmitigated support.

Liz Grzyb

At Worldcon Russell and I were talking about the idea, and how fun it would be as a tribute to the Datlow and Windling Years’ Bests. I don’t read a lot of horror, so we needed to find a joint editor. Talie was a great choice, as she’s got a thorough background in the horror genre in Australia and we work well together.

I’ve found the Year’s Best a really interesting process to read for: quite different to the way I read for original anthologies. To start with, only reprinting stories means the choice becomes immediately more difficult – most stories are of a pretty good standard because they’ve already gone through the slushing and editing process! In the end, the pieces Talie and I choose have to jump through a lot of other hoops as well as being a great tale – we try to not include too many stories from any one anthology, from any one author, and we like to have a range which reflects the breadth of each genre. Then we argue about whether a particular story “belongs” in Horror or Fantasy … and there is a lot of Australian writing in the past couple of years which really straddles both genres. Lots of fun!

Snapshots! Part Sixteen

Wed, 06 Jun 2012 10:20:32 GMT

Abigail Nathan

A traditionally published author usually comes to editing through a publisher (although yes, they may have hired an editor to polish their original manuscript for submission). The editing process is provided for them – and forced on them, really; they might retain the right to refuse certain changes or resist editorial suggestions, but there’s no way they’re getting published by a traditional publishing house without being edited. Even if the manuscript is squeaky clean and the story engages every person who reads it, it will still go through the editing process.

By contrast, a self publisher could publish their first rough draft if they wanted to. If they don’t want to, if they want the services of a professional editor, they have to pay for those services. With traditional publishing all those editing costs (whether they’re in-house or outsourced to freelancers) and any delays resulting from this process are swallowed by the publishing house. For a self-publishing author those costs and delays are personal. A self-publishing author has to decide, at every step, whether they can afford to pay for another round of editing – and whether or not it is worth it to them, to their project, perhaps even to their writing career, to do so.

So I think self-publishing authors and traditionally publishing authors come to their editors with different values, ideals and requirements. I do get the impression most authors, once they have been through the editing process – no matter whether they self publish or go through a trade publisher – understand what an editor can bring to their work. All those queries and track changes and pencil marks have to be worth something, even if the authors don’t agree with any of them!

Gilian Polack

The shape of the scene has changed. The non-public side of it is quite different from the side that gets seen on awards nights or from the outside. It’s still burgeoning delightfully, but we’re beginning to set up gatekeepers and opinion makers, which worries me somewhat, as we also seem to be struggling to regain the complex and fascinating criticism that was the hallmark of the earlier industry. Many of those critics are still among us and doing good work, but they are read mainly within academia and not noticed by the wider community any more. Our awareness of our own history and of some of the best sources of interpretation and understanding among us is sadly low.

We have some fabulous small press work being produced and some equally fabulous work coming out of the larger press.

We’re affected enormously by changes in technology, but it hasn’t quite reached the stage where we find out what is going to go where and what the scene will look like. I find myself wanting to do diagrams and cultural analysis to see who goes where and what happens.

It’s a very exciting time to be a fan/writer/critic/editor of speculative fiction, and Australia is a rather exciting country to be all these things in.

Jay Kristoff

Victory without sacrifice feels cheap to me. If I read a book or see a film in which all that was required to beat the Big Bad Guy was a little sleight of hand or some sharp-shooting, I feel cheated. I want to be afraid for the characters I love. When I’m in a book or film, I want to know not everyone I love is going to make it out alive, or intact, because to my mind, that makes me love them more. And I’m not talking about pathos for pathos’ sake. I’m talking about the [redacted spoiler] in Serenity, or [spoiler redacted] by the slake moth in Perdido Street Station — that kind of thing. Characters feel more real and tangible and alive to me when I know they could be gone at any moment, because that’s what real life is like. Triumph means more when it’s purchased with the things heroes hold dear.

Kyla Ward

No, no, no: it’s the audience who are supposed to get the chills!

Being able to read your work in public is a great resource for a writer. They are the most difficult aspect of a work for the general public to ignore, or pirate. Readings can make a launch or signing into an event. Readings can be filmed and placed on YouTube. Plus, nothing displays the artistry of a piece, the flow of sentences and the aptness of words, like performance — assuming that the performer doesn’t freeze up and treat gripping prose like it’s a list of ingredients on a cereal box. The life is all there on the page, you simply have to release it out. Practice is the key: first getting used to the sound of your own voice and then learning how to control it. In my case, I can’t pretend that lengthy drama training didn’t help.

Gaston Lacanto

I have always been a genre fan having been inspired by not only the best writers of the 80s and 90s but by the amazing artists whose work adorned many a book cover. Artists such as Michael Whelan, George Underwood, Patrick Woodroffe, Bob Eggleton to name but a few. As I’m new in the field there isn’t much visual diaspora from me currently but that will change as time lurches forward.

Kitty Byrn

The con was everything I had hoped, and much better than I expected. I had a fantastic crew working with me to make sure everything got off the ground. I set out to make it as woman-friendly as possible, which was not an easy task. As progressive as the SF community likes to think, it can still be just as sexist as the rest of the world. I benefited a lot from having people in the committee who shared my vision, so when I said I wanted to promote female work and female achievement no one questioned it. More than just supportive, the committee was actively trying to think of ways to make this happen.

There were a few moments that made me quite proud. Most of these moments weren’t inside the con itself, but part of the organisation of it. When the programme books came back from the printers complete with an Anti-Harassment Policy I was over the moon. Every time I had a woman tell me they were excited to be on a panel item I felt glee.

Karen Healey

Definitely asexual teenagers who write thanking me for portraying an asexual character in Guardian of the Dead. But that also makes me really sad, because Kevin is not a main character, and may not even be a terribly good portrayal of an asexual person, and yet I get these emails saying "This is the only time I've ever read about someone like me in young adult fiction," and that shouldn't be true! There should be dozens, hundreds of acknowledged asexual characters in our cultural products, on account of asexuals exist.

Snapshots!! Part Me!!!!

Wed, 06 Jun 2012 09:24:48 GMT

Well no, I'm not quite egotistical enough to post my favourite quotes from my own interview.

So you'll just have to read the whole thing :-)

Originally posted at David McDonald's blog:

2012 Aussie Snapshot: Ben Payne

Ben Payne was born from an egg on a mountain top. During his time in the house, he has editored verious publicatons with varying decrees of succest. As a writer, he makes a great baker.

Since the last paragraph he has travelled to the outer climbs of North Angria with a pleasant garlic sausage, where he unearthed a mysterious pot composed entirely of lintels. Out of this pot he has written eleven masterpieces. But he will only allow them to be published preposterously.

You’ve been a perceptive and passionate commentator on the Aussie Spec Fic scene for a number of years now, and have never been afraid to present ideas and opinions that might not be popular. How effective do you think the Aussie Spec Fic community is at keeping itself accountable? Do we do open and frank discussion well?

Well, that’s a tough question. I’ve never courted controversy, but it’s in my nature to brush against the grain. I’ve always had a particular distrust of consensus, groupthink and conformity, I guess.
So in instances where I’ve felt differently to other people I often feel a kind of obligation to speak out. No doubt sometimes I miss the mark. That’s part of life. But I’ve always tried to speak honestly and to adhere to my own principles.

I think as a community it’s a tough balance to tread at times, between mutual support and encouragement on the one hand, and a vibrant and intelligent critical discussion on the other. The two aren’t always easy to reconcile. But I think that, on the whole, we do pretty well at creating a scene where both critical intelligence and community can exist side by side. There are times when we might err toward one or the other, but on the whole I think it all balances out.

I’ve always tried to maintain a balance between discernment and kindness in my own criticism and commentary. And I’ve probably failed on plenty of occasions. But that’s how it goes. The most important thing, I’ve always thought, is to keep the conversation alive. Silence is the biggest enemy of all writers.

As the inaugural editor of Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, you must be delighted with its longevity and how it has become a pivotal part of the Aussie landscape. What do you think it is about ASIM that has allowed it to thrive for so long while so many other Aussie Spec Fic magazines have closed or had to radically change to survive?

I don’t think there would be a single member of the original ASIM collective who didn’t think, at heart, that it was a crazy idea with no hope in the world of succeeding. We didn’t admit it too often, out loud. But it really was a crazy shot in the dark kind of venture.

I haven’t been a member of ASIM for about five years, now, so I can perhaps see it with some objectivity. To my mind, its success is attributable to two factors. One; it coincided (not accidentally) with the small press boom of the early 2000s, and rode a wave of goodwill from new readers and new writers. I think that goodwill got us through the early years as we found our way. When I look back at Issue 1 now, I don’t think it was the greatest thing I’ve produced in terms of quality (I was much happier with the second issue I did). There were some good stories in it, but I look back on it more as an artefact, a time capsule or photograph of a particular time, a particular energy that was present in the scene at the time.

The second factor in its success is that most of the original crew buggered off before it became jaded. I think the rotating editorship, for all the problems it brings, has helped to keep the magazine fresh and to keep the enthusiasm from waning. So I like to think I helped save the magazine by jumping ship

You’ve been responsible for creating some fascinating and wonderfully named projects in the past. Do you have any ideas for new ventures, or anything in the pipeline?

Not at all, actually.

When I started editing and publishing, there were a lot of writers looking to break into the scene, and very few venues where they could be published. I think when Potato Monkey began, there was only Aurealis, Eidolon and Altair on the scene. And so it felt like I could really contribute by providing a venue where new writers could get a break.

Since then, a lot has changed. With online publishing, it has become a lot easier to read and to write for international publications. And the local scene has grown to such an extent that, I would argue, we now need good writers and stories more than we need one more publisher.

Looking back with a little distance, I think I’ve been a better editor than a publisher. I like to think I’ve had a good eye for stories, and how to improve them. But I have never had the drive or ambition to really dive into the business side of things, to create a publicity machine and to generate the buzz that you really need to create to compete with the best in the world. People like Alisa are doing that better than I ever could.

I actually said, just over a decade ago, that I would devote ten years to the scene, in terms of editing, publishing, criticism and behind-the-scenes work, and then concentrate on my own writing. And soon after I said it I thought well, that was a vague throw-away line that I’ll probably forget about and never stick to.

But here I am, oddly, a decade later, and I think it’s time for me to devote some time to my own writing, for better or worse.

What Australian works have you loved recently?

Twelfth Planet is producing some awesome stuff. I should disclose that I’m friends with Alisa, and so I might be biased. But I usually don’t find myself judging my friends’ work overly generously. If anything, I’m harder on them because I have higher expectations So I mean it when I say that Alisa is publishing stuff that I read for genuine pleasure, not out of any kind of loyalty. The recent collections by Sue Isle, Tansy Rayner Roberts and Deb Biancotti, as well as Ben Peek’s novella, were all first rate stuff.

There was a lot of other great stuff published last year. Paul Haines’
collection deserves special mention. Brimstone did a great job and Haines is a unique talent. I like a lot of what Peter Ball does, too.
And there are plenty of other great writers working in the scene at the moment.

I am a bit out of touch at novel length, I’m afraid. I’ve been telling people for years that they should read Penni Russon, who I genuinely think is one of our most powerful and talented voices, but who is often overlooked because she writes YA. Her novel Only Ever Always is simply beautiful. I don’t think anybody else in this country is writing prose as gorgeous as Penni, and there is a warmth and heart to her work that I just love. I am predicting she will be the writer people remember in a hundred years.

Two years on from Aussiecon 4, what do you think are some of the biggest changes to the Australian Spec Fic scene?

I wasn’t at Aussiecon 4, sadly, so I can’t specifically talk about that con. In terms of how the scene has developed over the last few years, I think we’ve seen an increasing professionalism. If the early part of the decade post-2000 could be defined by a vibrant, optimistic amateurism, I think the second half can be defined by a growing professional focus and higher quality works, both in terms of the writing and in terms of production values. People like Alisa, and Russell at Ticonderoga, and others, are producing genuinely good looking books.

We’re seeing more authors being collected. A whole bunch of authors who cut their teeth in the late nineties, who formed part of the nucleus of the small press boom of the early 2000s, are now reaching the stage where they’re producing world class collections and/or novels. I’m thinking of people like Trent Jamieson, Kaaron Warren, Deb Biancotti, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Kirstyn McDermott. You could probably count Margo Lanagan in that group too, although she was writing a little earlier. And we’re seeing the next generation of writers, people like Peter Ball, Ben Peek, Cat Sparks, Rjurik Davidson, Angela Slatter, making regular international sales, and those writers will probably be big names in five years too.

So we’re in a good place at the top end of the field. I am probably less well placed to see where the new voices of the generation after that are coming from. The scene at the newer end of the spectrum feels a lot more diffuse. But that’s exciting too.

If anything it feels like expansion is no longer a problem. We could keep growing and growing. The challenge in the next decade, I feel, will be in finding focus. It’s easier to publish than it used to be, and ebooks are gonna make it even easier. Increasingly, it’s not getting published that’s the hard part, it’s being *read*. That’s always been the case to some extent, but self-publishing and ebooks are going to make it more so. The challenge for publishers and authors in the period to come, I think, will be in finding a way for their voice to cut through the signal to noise ratio, to find an audience and connect.

It’s going to be interesting times, and if the last decade is anything to go by, unpredictable. I can’t wait!

This interview was conducted as part of the 2012 Snapshot of Australian Speculative Fiction. We’ll be blogging interviews from 1 June to 8 June and archiving them at ASif!: Australian SpecFic in Focus. You can read interviews at:

http://thebooknut.wordpress.com/tag/2012snapshot/

http://kathrynlinge.livejournal.com/tag/2012snapshot/

http://helenm.posterous.com/tag/2012snapshot

http://bookonaut.blogspot.com.au/search/label/2012Snapshot

http://www.davidmcdonaldspage.com/tag/2012snapshot/

tansyrr.com/tansywp/tag/2012snapshot/

www.champagneandsocks.com/tag/2012snapshot/

http://randomalex.net/tag/2012snapshot/

http://jasonnahrung.com/tag/2012snapshot/

http://mondyboy.com/?tag=2012snapshot