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Irregularity (and "Fairchild's Folly") Reviews

26/8/2014

Irregularity has only been out for a few weeks, but it is already gathering reviews, and very good ones at that! What is completely new for me is seeing my story reviewed. I'm so lucky to be included with so many amazing writers, but to have my strange little historic fantasy story about a rather quiet scientific moment called out is a thrill!

The Eloquent Page says that Irregularity is a collection of 'fourteen individual, impeccable formed, visions of literary minds', and the reviewer gives a description of each story, calling "Fairchild's Folly" a 'tragically bittersweet denoument'.

The Speculative Scotsman calls the anthology 'incredible' although he says that it 'starts stronger than it finishes.' However, he does end the review by quoting the ending lines of my story!

A Fantastical Librarian calls Irregularity 'clever, subversive, and just so much fun.' She then describes the five stories that really 'hit it out of the park' for her, and 'Fairchild's Folly' is on that list as the ending story that closed the anthology out 'with a bang'!

I promise I've not read these more than, oh, six or seven times :)

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Constravaganza: A More Personal View

22/8/2014

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I’ve already described my ‘professional’ experience at Nine Worlds and LonCon3, but doing panels is still new for me and the majority of my experiences at cons these past years has been as a fan. This was the case this month, too.

Last year, Nine Worlds was held at two hotels, the Radisson Edwardian Blu and the Renaissance Heathrow. The former was used for some of the gaming tracks (IIRC), the latter for the bulk of the con. This year, the whole con was held in one hotel: the Blu. While having all of the con in one hotel is a great idea so that con-goers who are following one track don’t feel cut-off from anyone, my main complaint about the con was that the service at the Blu was dire. The hotel is constructed strangely, with small gathering areas (as compared to the large, open ground floor lobby and bar in the Renaissance) and a lot of staircases, and we experienced rude service, with ‘optional’ but still tacked-on service charges for *everything* at the hotel. This wasn’t the fault of the 9W crew, but by the end of the con my friends and I were looking forward to getting out of the hotel.

Nine Worlds is an amazingly fun and inclusive con. People are free to express themselves in whatever way they want, and I appreciated seeing the loos with labels on them describing what could be found in the room (urinals, sanitary-item bins, etc.) rather than who was ‘allowed’ into the room. I further appreciated the colored tags that we could attach to our con badges to indicate to others whether or not we welcomed conversation. I didn’t grab any but knew that if I felt I needed one I was welcome to them.

Because it’s a smaller con, there wasn’t the feeling of separate ‘classes’ of people: that is, fans and pros. Everyone hung out in the same bar. This was a contrast to LonCon3. The first day of LonCon, a YA author friend asked me where the bar was where people were hanging out. I had to tell him that I had no idea (likely because I’m not—yet—a novelist and so not part of that world). And that’s when it hit me: we were in a conference centre, not a hotel. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I was recruited as part of the exhibits hall volunteer crew a year ago when Farah Mendlesohn asked me if I could build an exhibit for the hall: some sort of fantasy garden. This matches my PhD topic, so of course I said yes, and over the past year I attended meetings where several of us gathered around her dining room table to plan the Guest of Honor booths. Unfortunately, because of the time and energy I’ve had to give to my PhD (as well as teaching and life stuff and sleeping every now and then), I had to drop out of building the garden, but Farah had plenty of exhibits by then so it was all okay. I was still ready to help with the ‘move in’.

I got to the ExCel the day before the con started, a day or so after most everyone else volunteering for set-up; the exhibits hall already had booth walls but there were boxes everywhere, empty tables, etc. We spent all day putting the Robin Hobb booth together: hanging fabric on the walls, hanging the figureheads Kirsty Harris (a fellow PhD student) created, hanging a giant dragon (that Serena Culfeather built) and decorating with herbs, both real and fake (to represent poisonous and medicinal herbs in Hobb’s books).

That dragon. That damn dragon. It’s gorgeous and huge and did NOT want to be on that wall! We spent hours trying to get it to stay, ended up rigging up a sliced-in-half-lengthwise cardboard tube and sewing it along the dragon’s underjaw to keep it from falling off. We were so nervous about that dragon that we had ‘Do not touch the dragon’ signs printed. We all checked that dragon every morning and throughout the day to see if it was still there, sure that it had fallen in the night, taking the figureheads and a small child with it.

It Never Wobbled!

WICKTORY!

So, spent all day Wednesday in Hobb’s booth, and the spent the first half of Thursday moving benches, moving walls, setting up the Gomoll booth, collecting and arranging pigeons for the Wizard of the Pigeon exhibit, and doing whatever needed to be done. It was nearly one o’clock before I realised I hadn’t registered and the doors were about to open to the hall, so I booked it downstairs and was allowed to jump the hour-plus-long queue and get my tag (the power of the blue LonCon vest—but it didn’t get me my panel sticker or packet; I had to go back later for them).

And then the con began. And I was asked almost immediately where the bar-con was going to happen. I had no idea. In hindsight, I think the ExCel was a good place to have World Con. Though it’s far from central Lodon and we were sort of stuck eating wherever we could find in or near the halls, as others have noted, I never had to queue for a loo or for food. The only time anything felt crowded was when I was in panels that ended up being booked in rooms that were too small for the audience (and, really, the schedulers couldn’t know what was going to be that popular).

It took a couple of days for the con to feel ‘intimate’ to me, or close to as intimate as a smaller con feels, just with more people, if that makes sense. My first con experiences were in the US, where there are room parties at night hosted by publishing houses, and I am usually on the lookout for info on where and when parties will be held. I ended up with a couple of invitations to ‘room’ parties, held in the loooong hallways where rooms S19-30-ish were. But what was so cool was the Fan Village, where there was always something going on, free books to be found, free food and drink at tent parties (or at the volunteer tables in the back, a fab perk of being a helper!). There was, however, still that feeling of separation. One night we ended up at the Aloft and crashed the Gollancz party for a while. But after the Hugos, we only saw two of the winners come down to the Village with their awards, meeting people and getting photos taken. And I heard a story about a novelist friend who was completely snubbed in the green room by another novelist. I can understand how annoying it must get to be hounded by people wanting your autograph or a photo taken (well, I can try to understand; it’s nothing I’ve ever experienced and am not likely to, and that’s okay). But this is where the contrast was strongest between these two back-to-back cons.

The extras at LonCon more than made up for that, however. The exhibits hall had so much STUFF going on. There were a dozen panels and events at any one time. I pre-scheduled myself, choosing what I wanted to do (and often had 3 or 4 things ticked at the same time), and ended up at only 2 or 3 panels each day. I felt bad about that, but when meeting Emma Newman she said something that stuck: ‘People before panels.’ I never even made it to the art show. On Sunday I got to help Dr Bettina Beinhoff in her Alien Languages panel; I was her lovely assistant, handing out and collecting survey packets. I danced at a ceilidh. I ended up with 11 free books. I met some amazing people. And I got to go to the Hugos, something that I never expected to ever do. It felt like a bit of a mix between ComicCon and Nine Worlds. What helped it feel smaller was something I didn’t expect: social media. Twitter was the means by which my friends and I kept track of what was going on elsewhere in the con: what panellists were saying, what meetups were happening, who was doing what and where. It became everyone’s message-board to share dinner plans, photos, lost & found, kudos and complaints.

Planning LonCon3 took the people involved a year, and I saw them all working hour upon hour during the con. Their hard work and vision showed, and I can only add my voice to the crowd when I say how much I appreciate what they did and what a success it was.

In the end it was all rather overwhelming and I am still sorting out ideas in my head. There may be another post on that in the near future.

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I need a TARDIS...

19/8/2014

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...because I completely forgot to post here that I was on the schedule at LonCon3 (World Con) in London this past weekend.
I was so tired after Nine Worlds that all I had time to do was come home, unpack, do laundry, repack, and head back to London to help with the exhibits hall set-up, and then five (5!!!) days of con.

My panel participation:
Sex in SF&F: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (Saturday, August 16, 11 am-noon): me, Darlene Marshall (Mod), Terry Jackman, Jennifer Stevenson, Madeline Eve Robins
This panel had a different vibe from the similar one at Nine Worlds (suddenly I'm the 'sex in SF/F panel' girl!). Part of it had to do with the feel of the con overall. Nine Worlds is a small con in a single hotel, and LonCon was 8,000 people strong held in a huge convention centre. The other difference was the panelists. At Nine Worlds, we were a combination of erotica and SF/F writers and people who write about gender. At LonCon, much of the panel consisted of romance writers (or, writers who seemed to consider themselves as mainly in the romance genre over other genres). While romance is placed under the 'genre' label, there is a tendency for SF fans to reject anything smacking of romance/relationships and vice versa.
Before the panel, the moderator and I were in the green room and were approached by a gentleman who couldn't help but tell us that he thinks that sex scenes don't belong in literature full stop, especially SF. THAT was an interesting start to the day! I didn't expect there to be disagreement among the panelists themselves about where romance/sex belonged in lit; one panelist didn't think anything smacking of sex/relationships should be in a book if it wasn't advertised 'on the cover'--that is, if a cover's art said SF, it should be SF. I had to disagree, however: no matter the genre, stories are about characters, and characters (people) have relationships and sex. At one point I said "Sex is part of our lives, even if we're not getting any" and "Romance/erotica is about how people feel, and SF is about how things work, and you can bring these things together." My final comments were about mushing together genres. Why not? I think cutting out aspects of human behavior because of these ideas of what 'belongs' in a certain genre does a disservice to the stories that we are trying to write.
Overall, however, it was a lot of fun to be on that panel and great to hear different points of view on how to depict relationships in SF & F. Also, I discussed the recent popularity of cryptozoological erotica; I was pleased to get two panels out of reading that story!

The Wrong Apocalypse (Sunday, August 17, 1.30 pm-3 pm): me, Nina Allan, Jeff VanderMeer, Ivaylo Shmilev, Ramez Naam (Mod)
This panel made me nervous because it was populated with scientists and writers who have written novels or non-fiction books on climate change and environmental concerns, and I study gardens! But I didn't have to be afraid because the moderator was *on point*. He was sure that all of our different backgrounds were utilized in the conversation, and we went deep with the topic: it was so much more than a conversation about which TV shows and films have covered climate change correctly or incorrectly. Our conversation ranged to points on culture, class, status, politics, etc. I was deeply honored to have been on the panel with such amazing, intelligent people. (Plus, I made Jeff VanderMeer laugh at one point, which made my day.)

Wrap-up of Nine Worlds Geek Fest:
I should probably recap that con here as well (I'm tired and at this point unable to remember what day it is let alone what I blogged recently).

Love & Sex: An intimate exploration (6.45-8pm, Friday August 8): me, E Saxey (Mod), Rebecca Levine, Sarah Lots, Laurie Penny
This panel was such a hoot! It started with Saxey handing out 'love notes' to each of us that included a question each of us had to answer. Mine: 'Which characters do you wish were not in love?' My answer: Edward and Bella. This elicited groans of agreement from the audience. After we each answered our questions, Saxey jumped right in with asking me about dino pr0n, which many in the audience hadn't even heard about. I gave a quick summary of the story I'd read in the sub-genre and we were off on a conversation that swing from the no-nos of erotica writing to how to write what we write to what is freeing about it. At one point an audience member asked why only women were on the panel, and I asked him if he knew of any men who wrote erotica. When he said that he wrote it from a female pov, I did a short interview with him. The panel felt loose and ready for anything, and I believe the audience enjoyed us; there were a lot of raised hands at the end. And later in the hallways strangers came up to me and told me how much they enjoyed the panel.

School Stories: prefects, headmasters and tuck shops, oh my! (10.15-11.30 pm Friday August 8): me, Aishwarya Subramanian, Zen Cho, Emma Viceli, Ewa Scibor-Rylska (Mod)
I have to admit that this was a strange panel for me because the only SFF 'school stories' I can remember reading are Harry Potter and The Magicians; the other panelists had so many other series they're familiar with. Some of that might have to do with my generation (HP came out when I was an adult, and the series following in its footsteps aren't familiar to me). My initial contribution to the panel was to tell the audience to 'hold on to your seats' because I was going to describe a bit of theory! I explained that schools are a type of chronotope: they are an intersection of a place that exists in a certain time (a grade). A school has a cast of set characters (headmaster, etc.) and how they act when you are in primary school is going to be a bit different from how they act when you are at secondary or uni. But that they have a structure and a writer setting a story in a school has a structure--physical in the form of the school/ground itself as well as referring to the school calendar and the events that take place while one attends school--to use. I used my hands a lot, creating a sort of 'ball': this became a silly thing and we had the audience play along (someone--I can't remember who--said that the hand gesture was repeated at a later panel too). I was amazed at the other panelists because they knew their school series and mentioned so many things I'd never even heard of. I love how I learn so much from my fellow panelists as well as the audience at cons.

New Voices Reading! Saturday August 9, 10.15-11 pm
This was the second of two nights of new writers getting five minutes each to read. My friends and I had gone to dinner beforehand and waited an hour for our meals, leaving me about 10 minutes to scarf down my curry and rush back to the con to make this in time. Luckily I was last on the list so every time the audience clapped a fellow reader I let out a bit of a burp, terrified I'd burp into the microphone during my reading! I'd printed off my novel excerpt, but the toner in the machine is such crap that when I made a few changes on the paper, the ink flaked off, leaving the pages nearly unreadable. So I handwrote my excerpt to read--very old school! The room was *packed*, which was a total surprise, and my reading went pretty well I think. Later, a few established writers came up and told me they'd enjoyed it: a lovely result :)

So two cons, two very different vibes, but overall wonderful experiences. Next up is British Fantasy Con in two weekends with two new panels for me to be on.

IN OTHER NEWS:
On Friday night I got an email while at the con that I have made a story sale! It's a time-travel story, which I suppose means I can now say I write SF as well as fantasy, historic fiction, horror and erotica. More info to come as I get it.

But now, I need to recover after all of the travel and talking and panels and etc. I have come down with a minor case of con-crud and all that will restore me is meds and much sleep.

What I'm Reading Right Now:
Irregularity, ed. Jared Shurin (I figured it was time to get around to reading the anthology I was recently published in)
Between Two Thorns (book 1 of The Split Worlds trilogy) by Emma Newman
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

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Guest Gig at Nine Worlds Geek Fest 2014!

5/8/2014

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I was announced recently as a guest at Nine Worlds GeekFest 2014 (scroll way down to find me!)

I attended the con last year (its first), and it was a LOT of fun, so I am so excited that my very first (and hopefully not last!) guesting gig is this weekend at Nine Worlds.

I'm part of the ALL OF THE BOOKS track and scheduled to be on panels Friday night:
Love & Sex: an intimate exploration at 6.45
School Stories: prefects, headmasters, and tuckshops, oh my! at 10.15

And I'll be part of the New Voices Class of 2014 fast & reading event on Saturday night at 10.15. It took me a while to figure out what to read for this, and I finally decided on an excerpt from Threading the Labyrinth, my PhD novel.

I can't wait to spy the chapbook of my short story "Fairchild's Folly" in the wild! And I'm looking forward to seeing old friends, and making new ones.

What I'm reading right now:
How to Read and English Garden by Andrew Eburne & Richard Taylor
Postscripts to the Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
The Scottish Prisoner by Diana Gabaldon

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Irregularity (and "Fairchild's Folly") Reviews

Constravaganza: A More Personal View

I need a TARDIS...

Guest Gig at Nine Worlds Geek Fest 2014!

Tiffani Angus

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