ASIM Back Issues

If you're reading this and live in Australia, Andromeda Spaceways is selling random back issues - a bundle of twenty for $60, including postage. That works out at $3.00 a copy. Even if you subscribe, you can always give them away to friends and family. We're trying to raise some money and get rid of back issues before Aussiecon 4. The issue we're taking there will be #47. I've arranged the art with the wonderful Greg Hughes, who has agreed to do all the art for that issue, including the cover, and there will be some very good stories in there. But we need to get rid of some back issues!

I don't usually promote stuff here, but we've all been working hard on this magazine and it's worth promoting.

if you're interested, go take a look at the web site on

THE BOY/FRIEND By R.M. Corbet. Girlfriend Fiction 19. Sydney: Allen and Unwin 2010

Robert (R.M.) Corbet has written fiction for young adults for some time. His last Girlfriend Fiction novel, the romantic comedy Fifteen Love, was actually a re-packaged earlier novel, but this one is brand new. Like Fifteen Love, it is straight romantic comedy rather than a novel with some romance included.

Somewhere in the suburbs of Melbourne (Brunswick?) live best friends Maude and Lou (named for Louis Armstrong, in his musical family). They have lived on the same street all their lives, built a tree-house together and spent hours under the now-cut-down willow trees on the banks of the Merri Creek. Unexpectedly, Lou has asked Maude on a date. Thrown off-balance, she hasn’t taken it seriously, hurting Lou’s feelings.

What now? Does she want him after all? How does she compete with the gorgeous new member of his experimental punk rock band? Or the other female member of his band, who has extremely long legs and is an expert in setting up equipment? What does she do about the clingy Andy?

Of course, this is Girlfriend Fiction. All goes well, with the help of Lou’s sister, a rusting old BMW and a bunch of big hairy bikies.

Mr Corbet certainly enjoys writing over-the-top fiction – and who can’t remember the boy/girl friendship that changed when the boy suddenly noticed you were a girl? I still have the first gift I was given by such a boy, red-faced with embarrassment, when we were twelve…

George Ivanoff's book signing

George Ivanoff, author of the novel Gamer's Quest, which I have reviewed on this blog, has asked me to let it be known that he will be doing a book signing on the weekend (see below). George is a very funny, entertaining speaker and with luck, he will read from his novel - he also has some actor training.

If you have any children or teens in your life and want a birthday gift or very early Yuletide present, this might be a good time to go along.

Eastland is in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne and you can get there easily by train - you can see it from Ringwood train station.

Where and when:

Location: Angus & Robertson Ringwood bookstore (Shop L026a) in Eastland Shopping Centre, Victoria
Date: Saturday 8 May 2010
Time: 11.30am-12.30pm

Right book for the right person

I deal with this every now and then: finding a book for a student who doesn't like reading. Last year, it was Jacinta and a Girlfriend Fiction Book. As it happens, she read two books, willingly, that term. Perhaps she hasn't read any more since then, but you never know. One of the books was my crime book, Crime Time.

After parent-teacher night this time, a year 10 girl came to see me. She told me, lip quivering, that she was under orders to read more. She had come to - shudder! - borrow a book.

I asked her, first, what she had last read and enjoyed, which I usually do to help me.

"I've never read a book in my life!" she wailed. "No, Miss, it's true! Well, except for primary school..."

And then she muttered that, actually, she had read something that morning, during her teacher's absence from Literacy class, that she wouldn't mind borrowing, if she had to read a book.

Guess what it was?

Crime Time: Australians behaving badly. :-)

Well, it has done very well in libraries. School libraries especially. I am very flattered to know that a girl who avoids reading is willing to read my book.

Pity bookshops didn't know how to display and promote it.

A Book With My Name On The Cover

It's always exciting when you first see the possible covers for your book. Well, to be honest, I was horrified with some of the initial plans for my last one, Crime Time: Australians behaving badly, but the final product was terrific. Perhaps too terrific; it looks like an adult book till you open it up, so bookshops kept putting it into the adult true crime section, where it was a lot less likely to sell. And if they had thought it was for kids, they would have been horrified. Innocent little dears shouldn't be offered this sort of thing! But the students at my school grabbed it the minute they saw that gruesome picture on the front. And school librarians knew what their library users wanted; I think I will do quite well in Education Lending Right for this one. The cover of my Allen and Unwin books ranged from a library image of a roaring monster for the first one, through a woman with a test tube (cliche!) for the women scientists book to a delightful bewildered-looking cat and a spy with a maginifying glass for the spies book, Your Cat Could Be A Spy.

Now I've been sent three possible covers for my new werewolf novel, formerly Bisclavret, now Wolfborn. One, which I rather liked, was a blue cover clearly influenced by the cover for Melina Marchetta's Finnikin Of The Rock, had a silhouette of a wolf howling in front of a full moon with leaves and forest around. The second, which I believe the publishers favour, was red with a photographic wolf which, unfortunately, seems to be fading into the white background. I liked this least. A third had a photographed silhouette of a wolf against a bleak landscape and splashes of blood. Despite my own feelings on the matter, I've been showing these around and I've put them up in my library with the new books, asking students to vote on them. So far, the overwhelming vote has gone to the third one. The kids love it. They assure me that's the one they, personally would pick up, of the three. My bookseller said that was the one librarians would be most likely to take, but he is carrying copies of the covers on his rounds and asking for opinions. My friend Bart, a teacher-librarian at a large private school, has offered to show them there.

Whichever cover with my name on it ends up in the bookshops, I am very excited.

As always.

This year's Hugo nominees

I found this list on the Aussiecon 4 web site. No harm in spreading the news. Some British writers, especially in the short dramatic presentation, with all those Dr Who episodes. The wonderful Charles Stross, whom I have just discovered in the last few months - and others. One Australian artist, Shaun Tan - and as a teacher-librarian I am thrilled to see his name there, because I know him best as an artist/book illustrator for children/young adults, who produced the wonderful book "The Arrival" which told a beautiful, moving story without a word of text.

I also notice that there are a couple of writers who have been in Andromeda Spaceways, though with different stories. Eugie Foster has been published in ASIM a number of times. Rachel Swirsky has been in ASIM also, as has Lawrence M. Schoen.

Of course, we're planning to bring some back issues to Aussiecon. :-)



The 2010 Hugo and John W. Campbell Award Nominees

864 Total Ballots Cast

BEST NOVEL (699 nominating ballots)

Boneshaker by Cherie Priest (Tor)
The City & The City by China Miéville (Del Rey; Macmillan UK)
Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America by Robert Charles Wilson (Tor)
Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente (Bantam Spectra)
Wake by Robert J. Sawyer (Ace; Penguin; Gollancz; Analog)
The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade)

BEST NOVELLA (375 nominating ballots)

"Act One" by Nancy Kress (Asimov's 3/09)
The God Engines by John Scalzi (Subterranean)
"Palimpsest" by Charles Stross (Wireless; Ace; Orbit)
Shambling Towards Hiroshima by James Morrow (Tachyon)
"Vishnu at the Cat Circus" by Ian McDonald (Cyberabad Days; Pyr; Gollancz)
The Women of Nell Gwynne's by Kage Baker (Subterranean)

BEST NOVELETTE (402 nominating ballots)

"Eros, Philia, Agape" by Rachel Swirsky (Tor.com 3/09)
"The Island" by Peter Watts (The New Space Opera 2; Eos)
"It Takes Two" by Nicola Griffith (Eclipse Three; Night Shade Books)
"One of Our Bastards is Missing" by Paul Cornell (The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction: Volume Three; Solaris)
"Overtime" by Charles Stross (Tor.com 12/09)
"Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast" by Eugie Foster (Interzone 2/09)

BEST SHORT STORY (432 nominating ballots)

"The Bride of Frankenstein" by Mike Resnick (Asimov's 12/09)
"Bridesicle" by Will McIntosh (Asimov’s 1/09)
"The Moment" by Lawrence M. Schoen (Footprints; Hadley Rille Books)
"Non-Zero Probabilities" by N.K. Jemisin (Clarkesworld 9/09)
"Spar" by Kij Johnson (Clarkesworld 10/09)

BEST RELATED WORK (259 nominating ballots)

Canary Fever: Reviews by John Clute (Beccon)
Hope-In-The-Mist: The Extraordinary Career and Mysterious Life of Hope Mirrlees by Michael Swanwick (Temporary Culture)
The Inter-Galactic Playground: A Critical Study of Children's and Teens' Science Fiction by Farah Mendlesohn (McFarland)
On Joanna Russ edited by Farah Mendlesohn (Wesleyan)
The Secret Feminist Cabal: A Cultural History of SF Feminisms by Helen Merrick (Aqueduct)
This is Me, Jack Vance! (Or, More Properly, This is "I") by Jack Vance (Subterranean)

BEST GRAPHIC STORY (221 nominating ballots)

Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? Written by Neil Gaiman; Pencilled by Andy Kubert; Inked by Scott Williams (DC Comics)
Captain Britain And MI13. Volume 3: Vampire State Written by Paul Cornell; Pencilled by Leonard Kirk with Mike Collins, Adrian Alphona and Ardian Syaf (Marvel Comics)
Fables Vol 12: The Dark Ages Written by Bill Willingham; Pencilled by Mark Buckingham; Art by Peter Gross & Andrew Pepoy, Michael Allred, David Hahn; Colour by Lee Loughridge & Laura Allred; Letters by Todd Klein (Vertigo Comics)
Girl Genius, Volume 9: Agatha Heterodyne and the Heirs of the Storm Written by Kaja and Phil Foglio; Art by Phil Foglio; Colours by Cheyenne Wright (Airship Entertainment)
Schlock Mercenary: The Longshoreman of the Apocalypse Written and Illustrated by Howard Tayler

BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION - LONG FORM (541 nominating ballots)

Avatar Screenplay and Directed by James Cameron (Twentieth Century Fox)
District 9 Screenplay by Neill Blomkamp & Terri Tatchell; Directed by Neill Blomkamp (TriStar Pictures)
Moon Screenplay by Nathan Parker; Story by Duncan Jones; Directed by Duncan Jones (Liberty Films)
Star Trek Screenplay by Robert Orci & Alex Kurtzman; Directed by J.J. Abrams (Paramount)
Up Screenplay by Bob Peterson & Pete Docter; Story by Bob Peterson, Pete Docter, & Thomas McCarthy; Directed by Bob Peterson & Pete Docter (Disney/Pixar)

BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION - SHORT FORM (282 nominating ballots)

Doctor Who: "The Next Doctor" Written by Russell T Davies; Directed by Andy Goddard (BBC Wales)
Doctor Who: "Planet of the Dead" Written by Russell T Davies & Gareth Roberts; Directed by James Strong (BBC Wales)
Doctor Who: "The Waters of Mars" Written by Russell T Davies & Phil Ford; Directed by Graeme Harper (BBC Wales)
Dollhouse: "Epitaph 1" Story by Joss Whedon; Written by Maurissa Tancharoen & Jed Whedon; Directed by David Solomon (Mutant Enemy)
FlashForward: "No More Good Days" Written by Brannon Braga & David S. Goyer; Directed by David S. Goyer; based on the novel by Robert J. Sawyer (ABC)

BEST EDITOR, LONG FORM (289 nominating ballots)

Lou Anders
Ginjer Buchanan
Liz Gorinsky
Patrick Nielsen Hayden
Juliet Ulman

BEST EDITOR, SHORT FORM (419 nominating ballots)

Ellen Datlow
Stanley Schmidt
Jonathan Strahan
Gordon Van Gelder
Sheila Williams

BEST PROFESSIONAL ARTIST (327 nominating ballots)

Bob Eggleton
Stephan Martiniere
John Picacio
Daniel Dos Santos
Shaun Tan

BEST SEMIPROZINE (377 nominating ballots)

Ansible edited by David Langford
Clarkesworld edited by Neil Clarke, Sean Wallace, & Cheryl Morgan
Interzone edited by Andy Cox
Locus edited by Charles N. Brown, Kirsten Gong-Wong, & Liza Groen Trombi
Weird Tales edited by Ann VanderMeer & Stephen H. Segal

BEST FAN WRITER (319 nominating ballots)

Claire Brialey
Christopher J Garcia
James Nicoll
Lloyd Penney
Frederik Pohl

BEST FANZINE (298 nominating ballots)

Argentus edited by Steven H Silver
Banana Wings edited by Claire Brialey and Mark Plummer
CHALLENGER edited by Guy H. Lillian III
Drink Tank edited by Christopher J Garcia, with guest editor James Bacon
File 770 edited by Mike Glyer
StarShipSofa edited by Tony C. Smith

BEST FAN ARTIST (199 nominating ballots)

Brad W. Foster
Dave Howell
Sue Mason
Steve Stiles
Taral Wayne

THE JOHN W. CAMPBELL AWARD FOR BEST NEW WRITER (NOT A HUGO AWARD) (356 nominating ballots)

Saladin Ahmed
Gail Carriger
Felix Gilman *
Seanan McGuire
Lezli Robyn *
* Second year of eligibility

IN LONNIE’S SHADOW By Chrissie Michaels. Melbourne: Ford Street Publishing, 2010

In the 1990s, there was an archaeological dig in some historic lanes in Melbourne’s Central Business District. Thousands of bits and pieces from the 19th century, when people lived there, turned up. It has only been in recent years that people have started moving back into the CBD and those are mostly the ones who can afford the horrendous prices of city property, but a century ago there was a large migrant and working-class population living there.

In the Melbourne of the 1890s recession live four young friends: Lonnie, Daisy, Carlo and Pearl. Lonnie is working as a stable hand and about to ride in an illegal midnight race through the streets – a race he has just discovered is fixed. Daisy is a Salvation Army lass and seamstress with no parents and a dark memory that only surfaces in her sleep. Carlo drives a fruit cart and has ambitions to open an ice cream factory. Pearl has been sold into prostitution and is trying to escape from a particularly nasty madam. There are three intertwining stories and each chapter is headed by a description of an item found in the archaeological dig. Each object is mentioned, if only in passing, in thr course of the chapter.

The use of the objects found in the dig is a nice touch. There’s also a mention of the Parliamentary mace that went missing around this time – and who is to say it didn’t happen this way?

It works very well as an historical novel, if you can find some teens who like straight historical fiction, as opposed to historical fantasy. There is a strong flavour of the period in which it happened – and if you happen to live in Melbourne, as I do, it’s fascinating to imagine what your city might have been like in those days – long after the gold rushes, about twenty years before the First World War. The chapters are short and easy to read.

But you really need to persuade kids to read historical fiction these days. There are always some, but the genre has been out of fashion for a long time, which is a shame.

Talk the teenager in your lfe into reading this. It's worth it.

GIRLFRIEND FICTION #17 and #18: DEAR SWOOSIE by Kate Constable and Penni Russon, THIRTEEN PEARLS By Melaina Faranda. Sydney, Allen and Unwin, 2010

Girlfriend Fiction seems to be going strong. Unlike earlier series written to appeal to a YA female audience, these are not always romances and are often humorous. Some of them are written by male authors – Barry Jonsberg, Scot Gardner and R. M. Corbet have been responsible for some of them (although Mr Corbet’s novel, Fifteen Love, a romantic comedy about music and tennis, was a re-packaged edition of a previously-published straight YA novel). Some of the novels are better than others, but the students at my school read them all and fight over who gets them next.

Dear Swoosie is a humorous novel which reminds its young readers that their parents were also teenagers once. India and Poppy, while serving a detention in the school “attic” discover a series of letters written twenty years ago by two girls who address each other as “Swoosie”, are competing for the love of a gorgeous boy and turn out to be their mothers. Said gorgeous boy is Poppy’s father. The two women have not been on speaking terms since. But Poppy’s parents have broken up and India’s father was a short-term relationship and after some argument, the girls decide to get Poppy’s father back together with India’s mother, the girl who lost the fight over him so long ago.

Meanwhile, there is a lot of misunderstanding, two irritated boyfriends, tarot cards, an annoying Principal and junior students who believe they’re both vampires.

It’s an entertaining book that girls should have a great giggle over.

The setting seems to be the Melbourne suburb of Northcote, at a school that is probably a state, rather than private, school.

As an adult who notices things kids might not, I’d like to point out that in the Victorian state school system, at least, even the Principal can’t force kids to do Saturday detentions, nor can she make them dress up as vampires, even to reassure the younger kids – especially not if she went to school with the students’ parents, who dislike her intensely. Of course, it might be a private school.

I’ll just suspend disbelief, for the sake of a highly entertaining novel – the young readers at whom it’s aimed probably won’t notice anyway and won’t care if they do; they’re better at suspending disbelief than adults are.

Thirteen Pearls takes place in the tropical far north of Queensland. Edie Sparks has been building a boat to go around the world like her teen heroes Jesse Martin and Jessica Watson. But boat-building is expensive and she needs $4000 to finish it. When her unpleasant uncle, who owns a pearl farm, asks her to come and babysit his four-year-old stepson, she agrees immediately. The job is, of course, a lot harder than she had expected and the child’s mother, a mail-order bride, is overseas for an indefinite time.

But there are two hunky boys working on the island. Will she end up with gorgeous Eurasian Kaito, heir to a pearling empire, or blonde surfer type Leon, who is saving to travel overseas to see a backpacker chick with whom he had a holiday romance?

That is, if her little cousin Aran doesn’t drive her crazy first?

This one is a standard, though well-written, teen romance. If you’ve read enough of them, you know quite soon which boy she’s going to end up with. Which is okay, because teenagers like things to be predictable in their romances.

But it has an interesting background, as does Melaina Faranda’s previous novel Big Sky – perhaps even more so, because it’s set in the part of Australia where the author lives. There is enough description to tempt the reader to drop everything and go there – and there is plenty of humour to keep you going.

Yes, the girls will like it. This one, along with Dear Swoosie, will go on the shelves at my library very soon and will probably be out on loan before one day is over.

WITH A SWORD IN MY HAND By Jean-Claude van Rijkeghem and Pat van Beirs. Translated by John Nieuwenhuizen. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2010

We don’t know a lot about Margeurite de Male, last heiress of the Counts of Flanders. We do know what she probably looked like; the book’s endpapers show her portrait and if this is the typical flattering mediaeval nobility portrait, she must have been truly plain. We know who she married and when and how long she lived.

Other than that - who can say? The heroine of this novel, Margeurite is presented as strong, stubborn and intelligent. She hates embroidery, rides her father’s retired war-stallion, secretly trains in the use of a rapier and swears a lot. She trips up her governess with dried peas so that she can run out to have adventures with the squires. She notices boys, and goes through the pangs of being dumped.

Who can say it wasn’t just this way? Whether or not it happened like this, we feel we’re right in the fourteenth century. We can almost smell the stinks, hear the noises in the streets of Bruges, where Marguerite and her friends from the castle sneak out to watch, enthusiastically, as petty thieves and other such criminals are executed. Marguerite sees nothing wrong in this; after all, these people have had the attentions of a priest, so they’re in heaven after their horrible deaths, aren’t they? We shudder at the detailed description of the plague as it returns and spreads.

This is a beautifully-written novel, beautifully translated by John Nieuwenhuizen who, as well as being an experienced translator, also has plenty of understanding of young people and reading, from his long time in schools.

Give this to teenage girls who have had enough of the vampires.

GUARDIAN OF THE DEAD By Karen Healey. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2010

Ellie Spencer’s parents have left her at a boarding school in Christchurch on New Zealand,’s South Island, and gone on a world trip to celebrate Ellie’s mother’s recovery - or at least remission - from cancer. Ellie doesn't know it, but she has magical abilities, triggered by her encounter with gorgeous Mark, who is more than he seems.

Meanwhile, she’s helping her friend Kevin, a university student, with his production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as fight choreographer. Ellie may be big and not-too-attractive to boys, but she does have a black belt in tae kwon do.

But Elizabethan fairies have nothing on New Zealand ones. Especially when “Titania” is after Kevin. And she isn’t even the worst of them. Mythological beings from the distant past of New Zealand, before even the arrival of the Maoris, have plans. They have lost their immortality and they want it back. And they don’t care who else dies so they can get it. Ellie and Mark’s time to save the day is strictly limited - and Mark, let’s face it, is not what he seems to be...


A nice thriller/horror tale with a touch a of humour. Girls, especially, should enjoy this. What they will think of the slight twist at the end, I can’t be sure. The truly nasty curse on Mark really should have required the heroine to make a hard decision, but hey, she’s too busy saving the day to be limited to saving Mark - and she does save him. Sort of. Using a different mythology, as she has learned that you bring your own myths with you. Hopefully, young readers will check out the Greek myths and the European fairy lore thrown into the mix.

Check it out.

Old style Trek fiction

Last weekend I started having a browse around to see if any of the classic works of Star Trek fan fiction I loved reading had been published on-line. I actually found a fabulous web site which was dedicated to preserving these and had a number of my favourites. And I contacted Jean Lorrah, who used to teach mediaeval literature and write stories about Spock's parents, Sarek and Amanda.She did sell a number of novels way back when, but now, in her retirement, has gone for the e-books for children and is having a go at screenplays. I wish her all the best in this area.

I haven't written fan fiction in years. It's not just that people started handing me money to write, but that suddenly, after about 150 stories - literally! - I had run out of things to say. I think I stopped in the middle of a Robin of Sherwood story where someone from our time goes back into the past from the modern Nottingham Goose Fair and deiscovers that Robin and his men are speaking early Middle English and can't understand a word he says (and vice versa!). I'd just been to the Nottingham Goose Fair myself.

However, I still love reading the stuff, and have hundreds of fanzines with which I don't intend to part.

I discovered fan fiction existed when I read Star Trek Lives! and thought I'd have a go myself. But I also wanted to find those stories. Some of them, I did find, because they werre re-printed in the New Voyages anthologies. Some were borrowed from friends who had been in fandom a lot longer than I had.

I have been re-reading some of the fanzines under my bed and on my study book cases and some still stand up, while others I can't believe I paid for.

One of the zines I borrowed was Spock Enslaved, which everyone was desperate to read.

Even then, I found it the funniest thing I had ever read. It had a cover with a half-nude Spock chained to a pillar. When I got into Blake's 7 fiction, I wrote a story in which Avon is chained to a pillar on a matriarchal world and has to be rescued by teleport, still chained to the pillar. It was published in Susan Batho's "naughty" fanzine and that wonderful writer-illustrator Lana Brown did a delightful Svon chained to a pillar which not only made it to the cover but was re-used in following issues.

Out of curiosity, I Googled "Spock Enslaved" - no text publication as far as I can see, but lots of discussion, including whether or not it was slash fiction. Not that I can recall. It was, in fact, Mary Sue - ultra-Mary Sue of the Sweet Young Thing Dies Pregnant With His Child variety. Which, incidentally, makes its way into original Trek on TV, only "The Paradise Syndrome" was a lovely episode, Mary Sue or not.

I admit that stories like "Spock Enslaved" are guilty pleasures for me, however I laughed at the time.

I remember all the ones we wrote for "Spock", the Austrek fanzine, back before Paramount walked in and closed down Aussie zines. Probably I'd wince if I saw some of the stories I wrote back then, some with friends. I remember how we all followed a series about Spock and Chapel by an anonymous writer who turned out to be Diane Marchant and continued writing them after she lost interest. Of course, that series was finished off by "Morva Shepley", wasn't it, Morva? :-) As I recall, Chapel ended up leaving Spock and running off with the greengrocer - yes? It's been a while. It certainly gave us a sense of perspective.

And those were the days when we had to type them up on manual typewriters and so think about them before we submitted.

I know that you only have to do a Google to get as much up-to-date fan fiction as you like now, but for me, the originals are the best. I am going to print out and curl up with some of the stories I've actually found at that web site and maybe have a binge of my fanzine collection during the term holidays.

Spam comments

They're smart, these spammers. Sometimes I get gibberish in the "moderate comments" section, but today I seem to have had a comment that looked legitimate, even if it was above a link which I assumed was the person's blog. When clicked, it took me to a web site advertising essays that they would do for you in a particular subject. You pay, they write your assignments for you. And if this had been published and left there, there would have been a link from my site to theirs.

I thought I had the spam comments sorted, but it seems not. I deleted the comment and my reply and I won't do the spammer the honour of mentioning what the web site was.

One of my students, who has set up a blog for English and has kept it up must have some sort of malicious software invading his site, because every time I visit it, it redirects to an advertising site.

I will have to tell the poor kid about it and see if there's some way he can log in and do something in the settings to fix it.

And I was so proud of the work he had done.

STEPHENIE MEYER: The Unauthorized Biography of the Creator of the Twilight Saga by Marc Shapiro. London: Macmillan Children’s Books, 2010.

In 2006, a new phenomenon began: the Twilight phenomenon. A previously minor sub-genre of the vampire novel, the vampire romance, suddenly became big among teenage girls. Harry Potter was coming to an end – the final volume was published in 2007, only a few months later – and there was room for something new.

The author, a Mormon housewife and mother of three, was suddenly being compared to J.K. Rowling. Well, they’re both women who wrote something that appealed to millions of young people and their parents, although I doubt if Twilight will ever be winning any prizes for children’s literature as Harry Potter did, and if there were separate covers for adult and teen editions, I haven’t seen them yet. I suppose they have that in common.

But many folk have her to thank for the fact that they are now able to sell books in the YA fantasy genre, as long as there are vampires or werewolves in them – hey, I’m one of them! Thank you, Stephenie Meyer, from the grateful author of a YA werewolf novel!

I confess that when this book first arrived for me to review, I hadn’t read any of the Twilight novels, mainly because they’re always out. However, I felt that I shouldn’t be reviewing a book to which I had no background, and as a teacher-librarian, I really ought to be reading what the kids were loving so much. I went to Reader’s Feast in Melbourne, where I found the books in the YA section, right next to Foz Meadows’ new novel Solace And Grief (see my review below) which was facing out. Lucky Foz Meadows!

I read the first book and started on the second. It was easy reading as I had expected, because one of our ESL students read it in a weekend and her reading level at the time was about Grade 3. Other readers of the same level made their way through the entire saga without much trouble.

I found the novel pretty slow-moving, with nothing much happening till about three-quarters way through the book, but it certainly told me something about kids’ reading habits that I had never known after all these years of observing their reading: they will be patient if they are hooked early on. (Or maybe what I found slow, they found romantic?) I wasn’t hooked, alas, but I have no problem with anything that gets my students not only reading, but being excited about reading. And they are excited – the girls, anyway. I have seen them sitting curled up on steps and under trees in the schoolyard, noses deep in the adventures of Bella and Edward, and lending personal copies to friends - "Look what I've found!".

Besides, I think I may be able to “sell” Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights to students who have finished and enjoyed this series. The hero of Jane Eyre is even called Edward! (Edward Rochester, that is) He has a Deep Dark Secret, a tragic past and a good woman who wants to help him. Time to head for Collected Works bookshop with an order form in hand - the wonderful Kris Hemensley has already checked and he does have them both …

I had never heard of Marc Shapiro, so Googled him and found that he has written a fair number of biographies and was not necessarily the great Meyer fan his style leads one to believe.

Whether he is or not, he has been thorough in his research. Possibly there’s nothing here that a fan doesn’t already know from the Internet, where he seems to have done a large chunk of his research, but I was certainly enlightened. I found out that the Twilight author was named by a father who wanted a Stephen and got a Stephanie, except he added “ie” to “Stephen” instead. I learned that she got the idea from a dream and that she picked the name of the town off the Internet by looking for the wettest place in the US (and isn't it wonderful that now writers just need to go on-line to check out these things in a few minutes instead of spending hours in the State Library?). There was a list of music she played while she was writing and the information that Wuthering Heights became suddenly popular again after she recommended it to her fans. There was a good deal of information about the making of the films so far. And fans will be pleased to know that Stephenie Meyer has lots of ideas for more novels.

I actually ended up finishing this before I read the novels and quite enjoyed it; it saved me a massive trawl through the Internet. I do wonder where this story can go now. It is already more or less out of date, because the information went right up till the end of 2009, but things had already changed from some of what was said in the book. Perhaps it might have been better to wait a year or two to see how the phenomenon pans out and find out what the author is writing next and how her own life is turning out. A woman in her thirties is really too young to be the subject of a biography. Unlike J.K. Rowling, she hasn’t had a particularly interesting life. She grew up, went to university, got married and had children. Eventually, she had an idea for a novel that did brilliantly. End of story. Apart from discussion of the phenomenon and what happened when the film was being made, there wasn’t much to say.

It reminds me of when Alice Pung was speaking at a Centre for Youth Literature evening in Melbourne. She had written a book, Unpolished Gem, about her upbringing in Melbourne’s west, and it had been doing very well. Someone asked her, “Will the next book be a novel?”

“It will have to be,” she said. “I’m only twenty-five!”

THE WHALE’S TALE By Edwina Harvey. Sydney: Peggy Bright, 2009

I first read this as a manuscript. Actually, I first read it as a short story, entered for the Mary Grant Bruce Award for Children’s Literature, which I was judging some years ago. The practice was to read all the manuscripts with the authors’ names removed, prepare a short list and hand this to children to choose the winner. That year, the story the kids chose as a winner was later published as a short – very short – book. I can’t remember what it was called and I suspect it’s long out of print. It wouldn't be the first time, not will it be the last, that a story that won a prize has been forgotten while one that didn't win has become a classic. Take that book which won the Australian Children's Book Council award for picture book of the year - what was it called? Something about bears? I haven't seen it around for a while, but Animalia, which didn't win, is still going strong.

But I felt that this story, “Restitution”, had merit and deserved a Commended at least, which was in my power to give.

Edwina Harvey worked the manuscript into a novel, which got as far as the George Turner Award short list for a new piece of SF writing.

Once again, I was asked to read the manuscript, then pass it on to a teenager to read. I felt it needed work, for reasons I told the author at the time, but the teenager loved it. What can I say? Samantha now has her copy of the finished product and no doubt loves it even more in print. The issues I had with the manuscript have been well and truly addressed.

Edwina Harvey is the kind of children's writer who can write the most over-the-top things and take them for granted. "What - you mean people DON'T run into unicorns every day, or travel the galaxy with a sentient whale and a dolphin?" And that's what makes her so right for this type of writing.

We all, as writers, have the story of our heart. This is Edwina Harvey’s. And that shows in the writing, as well as a whole lot of humour and wisecracking from a sassy teenage girl.


Japanese teenager Uki, a lonely but brilliant hacker who has been using her skills to make friends, is caught stealing a file from the computer of whale singer Targe. This is some time after whales and dolphins have communicated with humans and started touring the galaxy as performers and diplomats. As a punishment, she is ordered by the court to travel with Targe and his dolphin offsider Charlie on a tour. Targe is angry about being stuck with her. Uki is not pleased either. But as the tour proceeds, it turns out she has gifts neither of them knew existed…

It’s not the first time anyone has written about spacefaring cetaceans. David Brin did it years ago. But you really had to concentrate to get the most out of the wonderful Startide Rising, which was the hardest of hard science fiction as well as an adventure. This one is a lot easier to handle and has environmental messages that don’t hit you over the head.

The cover, by rising SF artist Eleanor Clarke, is exquisite.

And who wouldn’t love to travel the galaxy in the good ship Antarctic Dancer? I sure would!

I am told that this novel has been nominated for a Hugo Award and an Aurealis. Here's hoping!

SOLACE AND GRIEF By Foz Meadows. Book 1 of The Rare. Melbourne, Ford Street, 2010

This latest publication of Paul Collins’s Ford Street Publishing is a first novel. Hearing the author speak at her launch and seeing her sign books, I think she’s going to do nicely as a professional. She’s also lucky enough to have a surname that puts her novel on the bookshop shelves right next to Stephenie Meyer’s books – and it has a snazzy black cover that will draw the eye of any teenager browsing for Twilight stuff.

The storyline is likely to appeal to young vampire fans, too. Solace Morgan is a born vampire. Her parents gave up their lives to produce her to act as a sort of saviour in a war with a nasty female vampire who has been “making” followers by addicting the new vampires to human blood. Most of the children of the night in this universe don’t like drinking human blood because it acts as a sort of heroin – once you drink it, you always need another fix. Solace has been living in a group foster home, uncomfortable out in the sun and limited in what she can eat. She is extremely strong and has other gifts that appear over time.

After some terrifying dreams, she runs away from home, into the streets of Sydney, where she meets a group of other gifted teens. Will her troubles cost the lives of her new friends? And what is her own role? Who is the faceless man? The small grey cat? Why are so many people after her?

This novel has come along at just the right time in the teen vampire fiction revolution. But it’s not quite a vampire novel, despite all the vampire politics The Rare of the title are more like X-Men or characters from the TV series Heroes. And so far, it’s not a romance, though there could be some in the next two novels, depending on whether or not a certain character returns to the group. However, the vampire isn’t the brooding Byronic male, but the girl. To my mind, the fact that this isn’t quite a vampire novel or a romance is a positive feature. Kids like “more of the same” but when they tire of that they will have something different to read.

Worth buying.

The Fascination of Web Site Statistics

A few months ago, I started keeping a counter on the number of hits this site receives. I wasn't brave enough to put it up where everyone could see it and anyway, I wanted more than just how many hits I got. As it happens, I found a lot more people than I had ever imagined were visiting this site - so far, in the several thousands, since I started keeping a tally.

One of the things that intrigued me was the kind of search term people were using that led them to stumble on my site. Some of them were fine - they were looking for reviews or information about certain books and writers or things fannish and hopefully had found what they wanted. And some were coming from the web sites of writers who were pleased with their reviews and had urged their own readers to go take a look.

Then there were kids (I assume) who wanted help with their assignment on an Andy Griffith novel and no doubt decided to cheat just a little. Plenty of folk looking for reviews on Catherine Jinks' Genius Wars. Stacks of hits looking for my review of F2M and Girlfriend Fiction books. Some looking for stuff about filk music or Tolkien's Elves, on both of which I had posted.

In the case of others, I was thinking, "Boy, have you come to the wrong web site!" Some finance web site seekers who stumbled on my post about libraries and ELR (Education Lending Right). Quite a few that wanted fan fiction about their favourite books and writers (no - I don't do fan fiction any more and if I did, it wouldn't be about Kylie Chan's novels, I never did anything but media fan fiction).

To the person looking for a way to contact Kerry Greenwood (one of the search terms), if they ever come back to this site, it's easy: she puts her email address in the back of every book and yes, she will reply. She's a nice lady. If you're that much of a fan, you should be reading the notes at the end of her books.

Someone else was looking for recipes. I don't do that either, though I am considering doing a recipe blog some time, to publish my mother's wonderful recipes. But not this one. "Quadriplegic fan fiction"? Huh? "Cats in Aida" . Maybe the person looking for that had read my short story "Nefer" in the Spinouts series, in which a mummy cat came to life, enlarged and completely wrecked an arena production of Aida while being chased by a werewolf boy who had changed when the full moon came out. There are otherwise, as far as I know, no cats in that opera. If they WERE looking for a reference to my story, I am terribly flattered!

Maybe I need to improve my tags. But then - it's fascinating to see what people look for in Google. And intriguing to think that somehow it led them to my site.

BEAUTIFUL CREATURES By Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl. Camberwell, Penguin, 2010

Ethan has lived in the same small Southern town all his life and longs to escape. The town is full of people whose ancestors have been there since before the Civil War (known to the younger generation as the War Between The States and to the older residents as The War Of Northern Aggression). The school is full of the standard cheerleaders and sports players and there are only two small places to hang out after school.

Now there's a new girl in town. Lena is beautiful and intelligent and, naturally, gets on the wrong side of the cheerleaders, as heroines tend to do in these novels, but even the boys are avoiding her, because she is the niece of "Old Man Ravenwood", the town recluse.

Ethan is in love. But Lena is under a curse, caused by an ancestress who made a huge mistake - a curse that will take effect on her sixteenth birthday. Or perhaps it won't; her family is magically gifted and has been for centuries, but nobody knows what will happen on their birthday, what gift they will have or even whether they will become good or evil.

The days are passing, and unless Ethan and Lena can find out the truth about the beginning of the curse in time, they may not have a future together at all.

This is just the sort of novel teenagers are likely to devour. Despite the standard stuff about sixteenth birthdays and curses and horrible cheerleaders and evil, it has a few original touches. The story is seen from the boy's viewpoint and the girl's family aren't vampires. And nobody tries to persuade you there's anything scientific about it. The family is magical and there's a curse, right? Simple!

The book is thoroughly entertaining. It helps that one of the authors, Kami Garcia, has worked with teenagers.

I look forward to putting it into my library and watching the fighting over who gets to read it first.

On book signings and such

The thing about book signings is that you never know how many books will be sold, if any. You can only hope. And if you're with other writers and nobody buys your book, but buys the others, how depressing is that! But you have to give it a go.

Last night, I went to the opening night of Continuum 6 on the request of my publisher, Paul Collins. The new Ford Street novel, Solace And Grief (soon to be reviewed here!) was being launched and Paul had hoped that some of his other writers might also be able to sign some books. And Paul has been very good to me over the years, so I went, though normally Friday nights are family-only for me.

The con organisers kindly agreed to let us do this. For once I wasn't going to the con; I just don't have the energy right now, though I am going to Aussiecon 4 later this year. Not after Dad's passing.

After the Chronos Awards had been handed out, Paul got up to speak briefly before heading out into the foyer to set up the book stall. Sean McMullen, who had to go elsewhere afterwards, spoke briefly about his Ford Street novel, Before The Storm, a thoroughly entertaining novel centred around time travel and a fanciful attempt to blow up the first Australian Parliament in 1901. I went up after him to talk about my own Crime Time: Australians behaving badly. It wasn't like my launch last year, when I had a fair amount of time to talk (they sold just about all the books on the stall that time), and in all fairness, it was the evening of someone else's launch, so I did my best with a minute or two, and did manage to get some chuckles when talking about the idiocy of crooks, especially those in my book.

Then Foz Meadows, the author of the book being launched, got up to speak. Lucy Sussex was supposed to launch her book, but was a little late - due, it turns out, to public transport delays. The author spoke about her attempts to sell, her writing at work because the boss was less likely to catch her than if she was on the Internet and read the opening chapter. Finally, Lucy got there and did a good launch.

After that, we went out into the foyer. George Ivanoff, Foz Meadows and I sat down to sign. Sean hung around for a little while, but had family commitments. He did sign some books, but not sitting down.

I told him about my good news, because I have known Sean since before he became a bestselling writer - actually, since before he sold anything at all! - and he was very pleased for me. It was because Sean persuaded me to join the SCA that I learned to write fight scenes convincingly.

i made sure Lucy knew too, because as commissioning editor at Hodder, she had tried to help me get the novel through, and I felt I owed it to her to know that it finally HAD got through.

The thing about non-fiction, even though kids prefer reading it, is that it's harder to sell - especially children's non-fiction. Crime Time has had some fabulous reviews and sold well enough to school libraries, but try finding it in the bookshops! Even when it has been there, I mean. It gets put into the adult true crime section. And naturally, adults who pick it up and realise it's a children's book put it down. And if you put it in the kids' section, it disappears, because bookshops simply don't know how to display children's non-fiction.


The sad fact is that nobody takes you seriously unless you've written a novel. Maybe after my new novel is out, more people will ask for Crime Time.

Meanwhile, Paul did manage to sell two copies while I was there and asked me to sign a third before I left, just in case. One jolly gentleman was happy enough to chat with me about the book, but didn't buy it. Another gent did buy it and I was happy to chat with him! And Bruce Barnes, an old fannish comrade, also bought a copy.

Maybe the third went after I left, eh?

At last!

I've finally sold my first novel. Eleven books, but only one novel as such. I wrote it some years ago and nearly - nearly! - sold it several time. And each time, I got comments and re-wrote on the basis of those comments and sent it somewhere else and almost sold it.

This time it has happened. Leonie Tyle, who used to work for UQP, knows me because I actually sent her the first three chapters some years ago and she rang me - rang Melbourne from Queensland! - to say that she liked it a lot, but they didn't publish this genre and did I have anything else? I wrote something else, but it didn't work out.

Now, I got a totally unexpected email from her saying she had heard I had a novel and could she look at it? Is the Pope Catholic?!? ;-) She heard because of an as-yet unpublished interview in Magpies magazine, by Edwina Harvey, meant to promote Crime Time: Australians behaving badly, which Magpies had reviewed favourably in 2009. Apparently, she had a hole in her schedule due to a novel that had had to be put back to 2011.

Only a few days after that interview, the thing has gone through the acquisitions committee and it will be out later this year. It does need re-writes, but hell, I'd stand on my head to get this one out! I cared about it when I was writing it and had planned to get it out and re-work yet again and see if I could sell it this time.

Who would have thought the publisher would approach ME?

And just for the record, after all I have said about fantasy novels, this one is a fantasy novel, a YA werewolf tale. But it's not fat and it's not part of a trilogy! And it's inspired by a mediaeval romance. Yay!

Specusphere interview

Astrid Cooper has just done an interview with me on that fabulous spec fic web site Specusphere - go take a look and then have a browse around the rest of the site. I have put a link to this on the side bar. Enjoy!