Why Seattle

A friend asked me yesterday why I chose to apply to Clarion West, Seattle over San Diego and Brisbane. I've got to say, it was a difficult choice. All three Clarions have an excellent line up of tutors this year and I've heard excellent reports about all three from past students. If I'd had to base my decision on that alone, I would have ended up just pulling a straw out of a hat. Even when I sat down and thought hard about it, there were pros and cons on all three sides.

Brisbane Clarion, unfortunately is bad timing for me. January is Aussie summer and school holidays and the only time of the year all five of us are operating on the same wavelength. I'd hate to miss out on that. San Diego and Seattle Clarions, however, are right in the middle of Aussie winter. The kids have a 2 week break and Phil can take time off work to spend time with them. That leaves only 2 1/2 weeks of school either side of school hols. My 16 year old has end of semester exams, but my plan is to harass her into studying a few weeks before so she's at least a bit better prepared than she would have been if I were there. My 18 year old will be on uni break and my 13 year old will be simply cruising, as usual. So hopefully, when the time comes, I won't feel too guilty about leaving them. Next deciding factor was climate. Seattle is mild, San Diego is hot. I'll take mild over hot anytime. Also, I visited San Diego about 20 years ago, but not Seattle. Plus, Seattle has an enormous volcano (Mt Rainier) which might have some snow on top while I'm there, and will definitely have some walking tracks and spectacular woodland around it, so that's where I'm heading after the workshop: Mt Rainier for a day walk (or two).

I still can't believe I'm actually going!!!!

Edit: Another reason why it's better for me to do Clarion in June rather than January is that I'd be doing it early in my PhD rather than a third of the way through. That gives me more time to use what I learned, I reckon.

Still Flabbergasted About Clarion

Today I really want to get my 500 words done, plus make headway on my PhD proposal, which of course, means lots of reading and thinking and 15 pages of theoretical writing. The trouble is, I want to do it all at once. And now I want to write a short story or two as practice for Clarion. I've been working on this novel for months, planning, writing, experimenting. I think I'm finally getting a good idea about what I want to do (Steampunk fantasy! who would have thought!). The world building has come together nicely. I have six very troubled characters and a tangled plot, which is possibly a reflection of my mental state at the moment (in a good way).

I also have an idea for a short story set in the world of my novel. I'm wondering if I should just let it ferment a bit in my head, then write it at Clarion in week one, to get me started. Last time I did that, with the 'Bridal Bier' -- a story I pretty much wrote over a week when I was supposed to be writing an English Essay on 'Why is Frankenstein' more than a gothic novel' -- I ended up with a pretty neat story, which ended up in Eidolon 1 and a couple of shortlists. At the time, it felt like a fluke, but now I think it was more the product of a few months of fermenting in my head.

This blog entry seems a bit stream-of-consciousness unfocussed, I know. But that's how my head's operating at the moment. Tomorrow, I'm booking my flight: most likely Seattle via Tokyo. Plus I'm back on hunter-gatherer food again, trying to keep the migraines at bay. Haven't had one in two weeks, so I guess it's working, probably because I'm not getting any refined sugar or msg (or basically, anything processed). Last time I did the hunter-gatherer thing, I remained migraine free for 8 weeks. It's hard on the will power, but worth it. Well worth it! And once you get the hang of it, it's easy to do: fresh fruit, veges and good, natural protein like eggs, fish, meat, nuts.

And the good news is...

I've started my PhD. I'm writing at least 500 words of my novel per day. Daylight savings ends this weekend. I'm going to see Miss Saigon on Saturday. I'm going to the graduation ceremony to pick up my Honours on Monday. I get my first pay check from my scholarship soooon....

and this morning I got a phone call from Seattle.

I'm going to CLARION WEST!!!! YAY!!!!

Review: Tumble by Trent Jamieson (Podcast)

Online at Pseudopod 74 25th January, 2008

I’m a big fan of podcasts, especially literary ones. I wack them on my ipod, then go for a walk around the burbs for an hour or two and come back well exercised and a little bit happier for having achieved two things at once. So when I discovered Pseudopod – a free horror podcaster – I thought I’d give it a try.

Horror is a genre I approach with trepidation. I’ve got to be in the mood to willingly stick with a character who, by dint of some twisted literary convention, is doomed. If I’m tempted to read horror, I look for stories that promise more than a vicarious shudder.

After listening to the first paragraph of Trent Jamieson’s Tumble with its juxtaposition of the fantastic and the believable (tiny cockroaches hissing in Mother Beet’s eyeball, perhaps irritated by the smoke of her cigarello) I knew I'd found something worth reading (or more accurately, listening to). The language is mature and convincing enough to give me more than one “aha” moment. When the narrator, Grieve, waxed philosophical, I knew exactly what he was on about, despite having been dropped into his strange and frightening world only minutes before.

Mother Beet is a scary crone in a world where demons run riot, where cities outside the main city (named Wish) are falling to ruin. Mother Beet’s son, Daniel, is even worse, a cold blooded murderer who has been known to eat the still-beating hearts of his victims. Grieve is ordered by Wish to eliminate Daniel and, although Grieve is no lawman at heart, he’s addicted to Wish and cannot refuse.

I found this story interesting because the horror works on two levels. In the big picture, there’s this science fictional world where people are literally addicted to a city that both nurtures and controls them. This is a neat statement about the way today’s city dwellers are addicted to and controlled by consumerism. It not only provides an unusual backdrop to the story, but also adds to the inevitable horror at the story’s conclusion.

On the second, more personal level, we have Grieve who is street-wise and driven, but terrified of the evil he chases. He must face it head on, no hesitation, no backing down. Even so, his success is not guaranteed even after the battle is over. That’s the trouble with evil. By the time I neared the end I was hoping that maybe, just maybe, things would work out for Grieve. But this is horror, right? Things do work out in horror, but not how you want.

Fortunately (for me) the gory bits are not overdone. Some is told with minimalist precision, enough to make me shudder but not enough to make me want to switch my ipod over to something a little less confronting. Other bits are told by evading the usual signifiers of violence and referring instead to peripheral happenings or memory. I found myself shocked by Mother Beet’s murder (told in flashback) almost as much as if I’d been shown it all in stream-of-consciousness detail.

Reading horror is one thing, listening to it is another. You absorb the words at a slower pace. There’s time to let them marinate and work up a stew of emotions. There’s inflexions and emphases that only a speaker can impart. Cheynne Wright’s voice is decidedly creepy in this podcast, and certainly adds a dark tone to an already dark story. After listening to the story twice (I walked 9 km during that time), I switched off and, for a few moments, felt a tad disorientated as if I'd returned from somewhere else. Suddenly, the Perth city skyline looked really pretty in sunlight.

A brief Getaway

One reason why I love Eagle Bay



But three days isn't enough...
Now it's back to work. My MA (soon to be PhD) has begun...

Human v Inhuman II

Review: Pahwakhe by Gord Sellar

Online at fantasy magazine 21st january, 2008

Spoiler Warning: Maybe this is more of a critique than a review. I don't like spoilers, but found it hard to write about this story without giving (what some readers may think) too much away. I don't think I have, but I thought I'd warn you just in case.

A tale of paternal love that is undermined by selfishness and greed. A man forces his daughter, Pahwakhe, to marry a ghostly visitor: a musician who takes her away to a place beyond the limits of the living. A year later a child is born – part-human/part-ghost – but it does not fit into its ghostly father’s world, so Pahwakhe returns to her parents, hoping her child can fit in here. Human love, it turns out, has the potential to either save this child or destroy it.

Pahwakhe is told mostly in the form of flashback and from first person point of view. This works really well here because, by choosing to leave certain emotions unsaid, the narrator (Pahwakhe’s father) exposes his flaws. His tragic moments are often understated yet at the same time illuminated.

The story feels very much like a tale told by a fireside. It is framed by two scenes set in the present which serve firstly to foreshadow the conflict and lastly, to reinforce the magnitude of that conflict. The prose is sometimes stark, sometimes lyrical and filled with images of startling clarity:

The singing voices out on the water are moving, sad fiddles calling out like broken birds. They’re coming here. I never imagined them returning.

The setting has an unearthly feel to it, possibly because there is little in the way of description of the normal world. The reader senses that the village is somewhere in North America from keywords such as ‘longhouse’ and ‘chiefs’ and ‘pemmican’, however the lack of reference to any distinctive feature does not rule out that this story could also be set in Polynesia, perhaps on a volcanic stony beach. But this does not matter. What’s important is the overlap between the worlds of the living and the dead: the fog through which the visitors arrive, the unsettling music, the ghostly faces.

On my first reading, I wasn’t sure if the narrator’s claim that the visitors were ghosts was meant to be taken literally or not. It rings true with indigenous people’s first encounters with Europeans, where they believed that pale skinned people were returned spirits, where poor farming practices damaged the land. I like this ambiguity. It grounds the story in both the real and the fantastic. Not knowing what is really happening until later is more unsettling than being told outright.

Although the narrator often understates his emotions, he is clearly miserable. This misery can be felt through his observations, eg, the strangers’ words were “heavy like stones” followed up later with “I cannot find the words. They’re heavy on my tongue, too, now.” His strongest emotion however – the one he dwells on the most – is his yearning to possess first his daughter and then later, his grandchild. Disturbingly, it is not love or sadness or remorse that he articulates most clearly, but his need to possess. For me, this is yet another of the story’s strengths.

Interesting to note is that where the previous story I reviewed (How To Hide Your Heart by Deborah Coates) focuses on acknowledging one’s humanity as a means to survive, this story does the opposite by showing humanity in a far from ideal form. Rather than bring people together, it drives them apart.

If I say any more, I’ll give away the ending. Instead, go read it yourself. It’s a neat little story with a lot to say.

On Reviewing

This reviewing thing is a new experience for me. I’m new to the genre of fantasy, new to being a full-time writer/student. In the meantime, I’m just finding my feet – figuring out what’s new in fantasy literature, what’s old, what’s over-used, what’s different., what can and can’t be done. At this stage in my studies, I’m not sure. So most of my early reviews will not be taking historical aspects into consideration. I’ve yet to learn which themes have been done to death and how, what’s cliché and what’s not. I have a fair idea, but that’s all. I’ll need to read some more to make sure. Hopefully I’ll learn how to make old themes look original (if such a thing is possible). So right now I’m reading and reviewing purely for the pleasure of it. Purely for the story.

I’ve started by looking up Duotrope’s Digest (A Resource for Fiction Writers and Poets). This generated a long list of online fantasy magazines to sort through. Thus begins this current leg of my journey…

Human v Inhuman

Review: How To Hide Your Heart
by Deborah Coates

Online at Strange Horizons
21st January, 2008


Max is a hunter of ‘Things’: inhuman creatures (or maybe demons) that take the form of ‘not-zombies’, ‘not-vampires’, ‘not-wendigoes’. When not hunting, Max attempts to deny his own humanity by remaining homeless, indulging himself in brief liaisons with “girls whose hearts won't break.” When hunting, he is helped by people who do not understand what they are helping with.

Then he meets Beth. Plain, sloppily dressed, Beth’s only promising feature appears to be her prowess at driving cars. But Beth, it turns out, knows more about ‘Things’ than Max realizes. Max wants to use her for her skill and then forget her; but Beth is much more world-wise than she looks. Her connection with Max has the potential to make or break him.

There’s a lot I liked about this piece of urban fantasy. I liked the way the inhuman creatures mean different things to different people. The reader doesn’t really get to ‘see’ what they look like – or even understand what they are – but mostly ‘feels’ their effects: the fear they provoke and the deadly chase where the stakes are not exactly spelled out but are implied as being more than just a loss of life. Even in the story’s two violent encounters we see only darkness, shadows and claws. The only thing we are really sure of is that there’s going to be a battle.

Without the added strength provided by the tentative relationship between Beth & Max, I think this story would have ended up as just another ‘let’s go kill monsters’ story'. On the other hand, without the monsters, Beth and Max would never have connected, let alone found common ground. As unlikely as it seems (in Max’s mind), the two spark from the beginning, albeit reluctantly. This compelled me to read on and although the ending is by no means a resolution, it is certainly a satisfying exploration of human need struggling in the shadow of inhuman aspiration.

Reviewing

I'm certainly not a practiced reviewer, but I thought I'd have a go at writing one a couple of times a week. I'm pretty sure there's a handful of friends who are interested in reading and writing as much as I am. Satima? Helen? Sonia? Jessica? Anudhara?

Okay, so I'm blogging my thoughts on people's stories. I'm only going to write about the ones I like at this stage. Plus I'm currently learning about reading fantasy (in the past I've read mostly science fiction), so hopefully this will give me a better understanding. Did I tell you my thesis is about fantasy?

Oh...and if I don't review your story, it doesn't mean I didn't like it. There's way to many stories for me to blog them all, let alone read them :)

Many successes

My KSP buddy Sonia Helbig has won second prize in the fourth quarter of the Writers of the Future Contest. Huge congrats to Sonia. Another friend, Ian McHugh, has also won a prize in the third quarter of the same contest. Ian used to be a member of KSP, but now lives in Canberra. Great to see people's hard work start to pay off. Best wishes and many more successes to you both.

I'm also feeling chuffed as UWA has offered me a scholarship to do an MA in Creative Writing, which I'll most likely upgrade to a PhD at the end of 2008. All this means, of course, is that now I absolutely must finish my novel, so I'd better get writing.

Aurealis Award Nominations 2008

Aurealis Award Nominations 2008 have been announced over at the award website here. Big congratulations to all nominees. I've read and enjoyed a few of the works listed so it's good to see these people getting recognition.

The Novel Takes Over

Dear Blog,

Sorry I haven't blogged for a while. I've been working on my novel and now I have 10,000 words. That can only be a good thing. 90,000+ to go,

Will finish blogging Denmark Bibbulmum when I need time out.