News From A Foreign Country

I’ve already blogged about new NZ short story collection
A Foreign Country: New Zealand Speculative Fiction, edited by Anna Caro and Juliet Buchanan. But now there’s more news worth sharing, courtesy of the anthology’s indefatigable publishers Random Static:

Au Contraire Competition

Many of the stories in A Foreign Country were selected via the open competition run in conjunction with Au Contraire.* Entries were judged by author and Au Contraire Guest of Honour Sean Williams, who commented:

“This was VERY difficult. Each of the top three was brilliant in its own way. Weird how themes of parenthood, dreams, and loss weave through all of them.”

And the winners were:

1st Place – ‘The Future of the Sky’ by Ripley Patton
2nd Place – ‘Dreams of a Salamander Nation’ by Susan Kornfeld
3rd Place – ‘Cry of a Distress Rocket’ by Brian Priestley
Honourable Mention – ‘Beneath the Trees’ by Claire Brunette

*(Tim adds: the other stories were solicited. By solicitors.)

Availability

A Foreign Country is now available from an ever expanding list of bookshops including Parsons, Unity and The Bookie in Auckland and Arty Bees in Wellington (some of these may not have it on the shelves right now, but they should soon). If your local independent bookshop is not on this list, please mention the anthology to them.

Bookshops which don’t have copies in stock will be able to order them in for buyers on request – you’ll need the ISBN: 978-0-473-16916-9. There will also be copies for sale at the Going West Festival, Armageddon in Auckland and other events to be confirmed.

Looking Forward

Random Static is currently catching its breath before tying off a few loose ends and continuing to market and sell A Foreign Country. They also have a few new projects planned – due for release soon is Barking Death Squirrels by Wellington based writer and A Foreign Country contributor Douglas A Van Belle.

(Tim adds: I’m planning to interview Doug for this blog in a couple of months.)

Random Static is soon to engage in a major overhaul of its submission guidelines: “Whilst another short story anthology isn’t on our immediate horizons, any of you looking for a publisher for a novel, novella or comic book may want to check our website in a few weeks.”

(Tim adds: Random Static is going from strength to strength! I’m especially pleased that they are looking to publish novellas – the novella is a great length for science fiction, but they are usually very hard to place. If only I had a desk drawer full of them…)

Blogging Au Contraire: Day Three, Part 2: So Many Panels So Close To Home

Normally I’d be posting a Tuesday Poem around this time – but I’ve decided to get my Au Contraire blogging finished instead. Normal poetic service will be resumed next Tuesday.

I put up a rather bleary-eyed post in the early hours of Monday morning expressing my happiness at Voyagers winning a Sir Julius Vogel Award – but a whole lot of other good stuff happened on the Sunday of Au Contraire. Here are some personal highlights from the day:

Jay Lake Kaffeeklatsch

Though I moderated two panels and ran a live Q&A on the day, my personal highlight was a kaffeeklatsch with Jay Lake, a prolific (and very talented) author of short fiction and novels. The half-a-dozen of us who spent an hour with Jay in the Con Suite were treated both to his engaging conversation, and to an impromptu tutorial on the state of SF short fiction markets in the US, and what sort of story to submit where – priceless information from one who really knows the score.

(You can read one of Jay’s stories at Tor.com – I enjoyed it, but as the comments show, the political fissures that run through the US run through its SF readership as well.)

Panels: Joss Whedon and SF Poetry

To those panels: the first was “Joss Whedon Is My Master Now”m with Patrick Nielsen Hayden, myself, and Alistair -aargh, surname recall fail – as the three panelists. This was a fun panel with lots of good discussion, much Whedon-love and some cogent criticisms as well. As a Buffy fan first and foremost, I was impressed how many others shared my preference – though a small band of Firefly diehards made a bold stand on the edge of Alliance space, swearing colourfully in Mandarin as they did so.

Next was the SF poetry panel with my fellow panelists Janis Freegard and Harvey Molloy. Though it was not so well attended as the Joss Whedon panel, the discussion was good, with both considerable optimism and some pessimism on the future of speculative poetry in particular and poetry in general – is flash fiction the new poetry? I particularly loved the way in which, moments after Harvey read a poem which he said he wasn’t going to submit anywhere, one of the audience put up his hand and asked if he could publish it!

Patrick Nielsen Hayden Q&A

My third commitment was to run a live Q&A session with Tor Books Senior Editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden. Having already been to Patrick’s kaffeeklatsch and sat besuide him on the Whedon panel, I’d stopped feeling nervous, and it wasn’t a hard job to let the questions flow and hear a great deal of accumulated publishing wisdom – and a surprisingly optimistic take on the future of publishing – at close quarters.

In other circumstances, I would have attended Juliet Marillier’s panel on reviewing SF, but that was my only chance to catch up with US fans Pat and Roger Sims, whom Kay and I met in 1994. It was lovely to see them again, and catch up across the years and the oceans.

Than it was dinner (a yummy dinner, at Balti, organsied most ably by Martyn Buyck), and back to the con hotel for the awards ceremonies – not just the Vogels, but all the Convention awards.

Final thoughts on Au Contraire

Final thoughts? Overwhelmingly positive: this was a stunningly well-run Con, and the women behind the convention deserve an enormous amount of credit. I was especially impressed that two key players in the convention committee could pull off publishing and launching a collection of original fiction at the same time as being convention organisers.

There’s lots of great photos from the Con, plus reports that cover a lot of what I missed, at Joffre Horlor’s blog. Check it out, and see you (I hope) next year in Auckland.

Blogging Au Contraire: Day Three, Part 1: The Sir Julius Vogel Awards

I’m a tired but happy little Tim tonight, ‘cos I got one of these on the mantelpiece.

Of course, I can only keep it for six months: it’s the Sir Julius Vogel Award for “Best Collected Work” which the anthology Voyagers: Science Fiction Poetry from New Zealand won at Sunday night’s awards ceremony at Au Contraire. Voyagers was co-edited by Mark Pirie and I, so Mark gets to share the award – as should all the poets whose work is included in Voyagers.

The diversity and strength of the nominated works shows the good health of the New Zealand speculative fiction scene, and a lot of good work was recognised. For all the Voyagers winners and nominees, see the awards ceremony livestream.

So that was the personal highlight of a long, tiring, but rewarding day. Tomorrow, when I’ve had some sleep, I’ll blog about the rest of Sunday at this excellent and well-run convention. From chats with authors to SF poetry, there’s a lot to talk about.

Update

Author Jo Walton has made an interesting and much appreciated post about the Vogels on Tor.com.

Blogging Au Contraire: Day Two: SpecFicNZ launch, Getting Published in NZ Panel, Why I’m Not A Bookseller

Plenty of highlights at Au Contraire today – some of which I attended, and others of which I heard about – but a diminishing level of energy to blog about them. So hey ho, let’s go.

SpecFicNZ

The new Speculative Fiction Writers of New Zealand organisation, best known as SpecFicNZ, was launched this evening by Ripley Patton and other members of the SpecFicNZ team. As the organisation’s web page says,

SpecFicNZ is the association for creators, writers and editors of speculative fiction in or from New Zealand.

It was founded in March 2009 by Ripley Patton and eleven other humans passionate about promoting and encouraging the speculative fiction genre in their own country.

All their work since 2009 has paid off in an organisation that seems to be well focused on meeting the needs of NZ speculative fiction writers in general, and emerging writers in particular. There was a long queue of people joining up after Ripley’s speech, and as one of those newly-signed-up members, I’m looking forward to what happens next.

Getting Published in New Zealand

My talk on this topic, part of the excellent writers’ stream at the Convention, was on at the same time as Elizabeth Knox’s Guest of Honour speech – which was a pity, as I would have liked to attend this, and heard afterwards that she spoke very well.

Nonetheless, about 20 people attended my talk. It isn’t easy to get speculative fiction published in New Zealand, although the recent advent of an NZ speculative fiction magazine (Semaphore) and an NZ science fiction publisher (Random Static) is beginning to make a major difference.

I explained how, in various unlikely ways, I had managed to get quite a few SF stories – including Transported, a short story collection that’s between 1/3 and 1/2 SF – published by “mainstream” fiction publishers and magazines here, and suggested some strategies to follow for doing this: strategies which seemed to chime with the experience of others around the table. I’m going to write this talk up for SpecFicNZ.

Why I Am Not A Bookseller

Some people have got the knack of selling books at sales tables. I haven’t. At the Convention’s Floating Market, I shared a sales table with Pat Whitaker and Lee Pletzers. They sold books. I didn’t… until right at the end. As soon as I started to pack my books away, people came up to buy them!

So I think I have discovered the secret to successful bookselling: every ten minutes, start to pack all your books away. Then, when the purchasers lured by this move have bought their books and moved on, put all your books out again. Repeat every ten minutes, and wealth shall be yours!

Tomorrow…

… I want to catch up with lots of people I know are attending the Con, but whom I haven’t seen yet. I am moderating a panel on SF poetry with the excellent Janis Freegard and Harvey Molloy. I am doing a live Q&A with Patrick Nielsen Hayden. And, at 10am, I have to explain why “Joss Whedon Is My Master Now”. I’m going to advance the radical thesis that it’s Jed Whedon, Zack Whedon and Mo Tancharoen Whedon we should really be watching out for… sorry, Joss!

Blogging Au Contraire: Day One: “A Foreign Country” Book Launch

I’m pushing it a bit when I say that I’m blogging Day 1 of Au Contraire, since all I attended today was the launch of new short fiction anthology A Foreign Country: New Zealand Speculative Fiction. I’ll be much more thoroughly present at the Con tomorrow and on Sunday.

But here are some quick observations:

* The book launch was short but sweet. Anna Caro introduced the book, Claire Brunette read her story from the collection, “Beneath The Trees”, and then much signing and photographing was done.
* The production quality of A Foreign Country is excellent. Publishers Random Static have done a great job of design and production.
*A Foreign Country has 22 stories in its 266 pages, costs $24.95, and is available from independent bookshops – such as Unity and Parsons in Auckland and the University Bookshop in Dunedin (I didn’t catch the whole list). You can also order it from the Random Static website.
* If you want to order it from a bookshop that doesn’t stock it, the ISBN is 978-0-473-16916-9
* The Con looks like a great place to catch up with old friends as well as make new ones. In the short time I was there, I met several people I hadn’t seen for a long time, and a quick perusal of the guest list shows plenty more old friends to catch up with.
* Holding the Con a week before the World Science Fiction Convention, Aussiecon 4 in Melbourne, has meant that overseas attendees actually outnumber the New Zealanders. There are 150 overseas fans attending out of about 240 total.
* The Convention Committee are doing a fine job & holding up well so far. Running a science fiction convention is one of the most tiring jobs I know – I wish them all the best for the rest of the weekend.

So let’s leave you with the A Foreign Country cover and press release.

The Future Is A Foreign Country

Imagine worlds where strange creatures roam the hills of Miramar, desperate survivors cling to the remains of a submerged country, and the residents of Gisborne reluctantly serve alien masters.

Those are just some of the visions painted in a new volume of speculative fiction by Kiwi writers. Published by Wellington-based small press Random Static, A Foreign Country: New Zealand Speculative Fiction features work by best-selling author Juliet Marillier; poet, musician, and writer Bill Direen; and several Sir Julius Vogel Award winners, prominent writers, and talented newcomers.

Popular and award-winning Australian author Sean Williams, who will be in Wellington at the time of the launch, was impressed by his sneak preview, describing the anthology as “richly populated with the frightening and the fabulous, the thrilling and the thoughtful, the inspiring and the inspired.”

Co-editor Anna Caro hopes the works in the collection will both provide points of familiarity to readers, and take their imagination to new places. “Many of the stories are set in New Zealand, present or future, and portray worlds which are both instantly recognisable and nothing like the country we currently live in. This anthology showcases some of the remarkable range of New Zealand’s world-class speculative fiction writers.”

Getting Ready For Au Contraire

I’m looking forward to Au Contraire more than I’ve looked forward to a science fiction convention for a long while.

My convention-going extends back to 1980 and the second New Zealand National Science Fiction Convention (Natcon) in Wellington. I have been to a couple of World Science Fiction Conventions – Aussiecon Two in 1985, and ConFrancisco in San Francisco in 1993, where I was daunted by the sheer scale of the event – and I’ve attended other conventions in Melbourne and Edinburgh.

But my con-going has been sporadic at best in recent years. I’ve popped along to Wellington Natcons, and it has been nice to catch up with friends there, but the conventions themselves have seemed subject to the law of diminishing returns.

So why am I so excited about Au Contraire? Well, part of it is the programme, which has a strong bent towards written rather than watched SF this year.

Part of it is the very strong lineup of guests, many of whom are proceeding on to Aussiecon 4, the 2010 Worldcon, held the weekend after Au Contraire – unfortunately, I’m unable to make the journey. The lineup of visiting guests includes Hugo Award winners like Cheryl Morgan and Patrick Nielsen Hayden.

Part of my excitement is because I’m more involved in the convention programme than I have been for a long time. I’ll be taking part in or attending:

– The launch of NZ SF anthology A Foreign Country, which includes my story “The Last Good Place”, and a whole bunch of stories by authors whose work I’m keen to read.
– The panel I’m running on “Getting Published in New Zealand”.
– The launch of Speculative Fiction Writers of New Zealand (SpecFicNZ) – I haven’t been involved in setting this up, but I’m impressed by the dedication shown by those who have.
– A panel I’m on called “Joss Whedon Is My Master Now”. As a good anarchist, I will of course respectfully dissent from the panel title, and argue that, instead, “Jed Whedon Is My Master Now”. (Sorry, Zack. Sorry, Mo!)
– The panel on SF poetry I’m on with Janis Freegard and Harvey Molloy.
– A live Q&A session I’m doing with Patrick Nielsen Hayden.
– The Sir Julius Vogel Awards ceremony, where Voyagers is up for “Best Collected Work”.

And after all that, I think I might take Monday morning off!

Status Report! Status Report!

Unless I’m spruiking a new book, this blog sails along in parallel to my writing, sometimes close but never together.

So it feels like time to give an update on what’s been happening with my writing, and what’s coming up.

The Immediate Past

I started this year aiming to finish two manuscripts: my third poetry collection and my second novel. I’ve met one of those two goals: my third poetry collection, the one I’m calling “Men Briefly Explained”, has now been completed and sent out to its first port of call (I hope it’s the final port of call, but it is never wise to get one’s hopes up too far in such matters.)

The novel isn’t quite so far along: I have put it through several revisions, and I have some more revision tasks to do before sending out to those who have kindly agreed to be first readers for me – of which more later.

A lot of what normally qualifies as my writing time in the second half of last year was taken up with doing promotional work for Voyagers: Science Fiction Poetry from New Zealand, the anthology co-edited by Mark Pirie and myself. The work – notably the book tour organised by Voyagers’ publisher Interactive Press – paid off: Voyagers has sold well for an anthology of its type, and it made the Listener “100 Best Books of the Year” list for 2009.

This year, my writing time has indeed been taken up with writing – OK, when I haven’t been distracting myself with Twitter – but I did have a very enjoyable change of scene with two visits to Newlands College over the past couple of weeks. The first was to present the prizes in a Poetry Day poetry competition I’d judged, and the second, with the financial assistance of Creative New Zealand, was a full-day Writers In Schools Programme visit arranged through the New Zealand Book Council.

I’ve been on the books of the Writers in Schools programme for a while, and had even done some school visits outside that programme, but this was my first “official” school visit. I spent the whole day at the school, running mini-workshops and giving talks. And, despite a nagging cold which necessitated the frequent intake of Strepsils, I had a really good time. The teachers were friendly, the students were interested, and if given the chance, I’d love to do it all over again.

The Foreseeable Future

My main writing focus for the rest of the year will be to get the novel manuscript to the point where I can send it to those kind souls who have volunteered as first readers – at least one of whom has been waiting for an unconscionably long time now! Right now, I’m on the last few chapters of the third full revision. After that, I need to:

  • take all those pesky square brackets which say things like [check this] and [add para here] and replace them with things that a reader might want to read. (Or maybe I should just leave these square brackets in and “crowdsource” the answers? What would Jane Austen do?)
  • do a “dialogue run”, in which I’ll go through each character’s dialogue in turn and say it out loud to check that it sounds like them and not like me.
  • and read the whole thing through once more for luck.

Also, maybe I should finally give the novel a title. I’m given to understand this can be terribly effective.

Once that’s done and out to the readers, I’ll be able to turn my attention to the short story ideas that have been bouncing around in my head for a while now, waiting for their turn. I haven’t written many short stories since Transported was published, and it’s high time I did.

There’s also Au Contraire to look forward to at the end of next week, with its full hand of literary events including the launch of short story anthology A Foreign Country; the October launch of New Zealand cricket poetry anthology ‘A Tingling Catch’; and a poetry reading I’ll say more about soon. It should be a good few months.

Why You Should Be At Au Contraire

I’ve banged on a couple of times on this blog about how voting on the Sir Julius Vogel Awards will be taking place at Au Contraire, this year’s New Zealand National Science Fiction Convention, taking place from Fri 27 to Sun 29 August 2010 at the Quality Hotel, Wellington

But what I should have stressed is how good Au Contraire is shaping up to be.

The convention gets a sizeable helping hand from taking place the weekend before this year’s World Science Fiction Convention, Aussiecon 4, takes place in Melbourne. A number of luminaries are taking the chance to attend both conventions. Subject to confirmation, this is the current lineup of guests and programme participants.

If you look under “Other Programme Participants”, you’ll see the following people:

* Jonathan Cowie (UK science writer and part of the Concatenation team)
* Jennifer Fallon (Australian SF/F author, The Tide Lords series and other works)
* Peter Friend (NZ short story author and multiple SJV Award winner)
* Tim Jones (NZ author of short stories, novels, and poetry)
* Russell Kirkpatrick (NZ author of the Fire of Heaven and Husk trilogies)
* Juliet Marillier (NZ/Australian fantasy author)
* Cheryl Morgan (prominent UK fan)
* Patrick Nielsen Hayden (Hugo-winning senior editor at Tor Books)
* Kathryn Sullivan (US author and EPPIE Award winner)
* Sonny Whitelaw (The Rhesus Factor, Stargate novels)

All excellent people (well, apart from the reprobate who has snuck into fourth on the list), but in particular, if you’re a science fiction or fantasy writer, you would be very well advised to make the acquaintance of Patrick Nielsen Hayden, one of the best and most well-connected editors in the field. I’m also particularly looking forward to catching up with well-travelled fan, writer, energy economist, and passionate rugby/cricket/football follower Cheryl Morgan.

Au Contraire has also released its draft programme. Again, it’s all subject to confirmation at this stage, but if even most of these panels and events go ahead, this will be one of the best-programmed conventions ever held in this country, with the programme track for writers a particular highlight.

I’m involved in three programme items: an SF poetry panel (warning: potential panellists have still to be approached!); a session I’m running on getting published in New Zealand, something which SF/F/horror writers have historically found difficult; and the panel submissively entitled “Joss Whedon Is My Master Now” – “no guru, no method, no teacher”, say I, but the opportunity to spout Buffy trivia to a supportive audience is too good to pass up.

I’m also looking forward to attending the launch of the NZ SF anthology A Foreign Country, in which I have a story; the official launch of SpecFicNZ, the New Zealand organisation for speculative fiction writers; and the Sir Julius Vogel Awards ceremony.

When I’m not doing any of those things, I expect to be on a book sales table with Lee Pletzers and Pat Whitaker, selling books – although this often turns into chatting with people and forgetting to sell them books, which is very naughty of me.

So I hope you’ll think about coming along. And if you haven’t been to a science fiction convention before, and you will be in Wellington, do drop in: there’s a lot of good stuff going on.

How To Vote In The Sir Julius Vogel Awards

Voyagers: Science Fiction Poetry from New Zealand, the anthology I co-edited with Mark Pirie, is on the final ballot in the Best Collected Work category at the Sir Julius Vogel Awards – and there are many fine works nominated in all the categories.

The administrators have now released this handy guide on…

How to Vote

To be eligible to vote, you must be a member of SFFANZ or an Attending or Supporting member of Au Contraire – the 31st New Zealand National Science Fiction & Fantasy Convention (taking in place in Wellington on 27-29 August 2010).

If you wish to vote but are not attending Au Contraire, postal and email voting options are explained here: http://sffanz.sf.org.nz/sjv/sjvNominations-2010.shtml

Postal and email voting starts now and will continue until 20 August 2010 inclusive. Voting actually started as soon as the email voting form was available, so if you have already voted, it is valid assuming all eligibility criteria has been meet.

If you are attending Au Contraire you may vote at Au Contraire. Please keep a look out for the SJV Ballot Box and SJV Table.

If you wish to vote, but are not a member of SFFANZ, you can join for NZ $10.00 and send in your vote with your membership fee. Cheques should be made out to “SFFANZ”

You may vote for one, some or all of the categories.

Many of the works are available at your local library or bookshop. There is plenty of time to read or preview the nominated works before voting closes. We also have more links to the nominated works at http://sffanz.sf.org.nz/sjv/sjvNominations-2010.shtml

Some of the nominated works are available to download whole, free-of-charge.

If you have any questions, please contact June Young, press (at) sffanz.sf.org.nz