World Fantasy Convention 2020 - Day 1!

At the start of this year, I was hoping to attend one science fiction convention, ConZealand, this year’s Worldcon. Due to COVID 19 the face to face con couldn’t happen, but as you will know from earlier posts here, the committee rejigged the whole thing and went virtual - and others have done the same. As a result, I have been able to enjoy conventions I would never be able to travel to. I was able to do NASFIC for free, a generous offer by the con committee. 

And today I began my third convention for the year, the World Fantasy Convention, something I have only ever heard of, never attended. 

Due to the difference in time zones(we are 17 hours ahead of Salt Lake City in Utah), it was still Wednesday over there when they held their pre-con workshops, so not really Day 1, but for me it was Day 1, and much enjoyed.

The first webinar, which I saw at 6.00 am my time, was World Building, by David Farland(the pen name of David Wolverton) a man who has done a huge amount of it in his writing life, which has included writing Star Wars novels and bestselling novels in his own worlds, teaching creative writing at university, judging, film production and editing. I confess I’d never heard of him, but he was very interesting and entertaining to hear, and I felt I was learning a lot. Even for his Star Wars novel The Courtship Of Princess Leia he created a planet of his own.

World building, he told us, can be as big as a planet or as small as a room, and should show only the tip of the iceberg. He spoke of the worlds of Dune and Middle-Earth, and pointed out that yes, Tolkien wrote classics, but spent so many years creating his world that he didn’t have time to write much else besides the two novels for which he is famous. I do see his point, though I remember Frank Herbert, whom I met at a session at Space Age Bookshop in Melbourne, saying that he had not written a single world of his classic novel Dune till he had the universe completely worked out. And it’s the only book I have ever compared in my mind to Lord Of The Rings, due to the amazing world building, though I prefer the Tolkien book because I loved the characters, while I didn’t particularly like the characters in Dune. 

But as a pantser, not a plotter, I feel there is much to be said for doing your research, yes, then just getting on with the story bubbling in your mind. I would certainly never get anything written if I did all the work Herbert did before writing my book! 

He went on to talk about all the details you really need to consider when creating your world, whether it’s a planet or a generation spaceship. Even a fantasy world needs to make sense physically. He did say a planet with multiple moons was okay, as long as you had them far enough from each other in orbit not to break each other up. Nice to know, as my world in Wolfborn had three moons, and I hoped it was correctly worked out. 

He had got as far as animals and plants when he was given his ten minute warning. This was a two hour session, but not finished. I would have loved to hear more, or at least see the rest of the slides, which looked intriguing! 

I had time to get up and do a few necessary things while listening to the second session, by David Butler, on query letters, whether for publishers or agents. That was also entertaining and useful. David, another very successful writer, gave sound advice about what to put in and what absolutely not to put in, and why. He said that when you send a query, it should, if possible, contain three paragraphs, 1. This story sounds good. 2. Ooh, this story sounds really good and 3. Business. He got us, as an exercise, to do 1 and 3. Number 1 was basically the sort of thing English teachers tell you to do - the character wants something badly, has a problem achieving it, so sets off on the quest because if they fail there will be consequences. I used this template to write a three sentence blurb for Wolfborn, and he liked it. 

He said this blurb was an exercise his wife’s agent makes her do every time. Number 3 was Business, where you tell them how long the story is, whether it is stand alone or is part of a series, or has potential for a series and paste in the first ten pages, and ask if they want to see the rest. You do not tell them you once had drinks with them at a bar or mention the name of someone famous they represent(why should they invest time in your first novel when they have that big name as a client? Especially if you have written the same type of fiction Famous Author writes!). It’s all common sense.

He said you should keep sending inquiries to agents who don’t answer until they say no. He also mentioned Publishers Marketplace - expensive if you keep subscribing, but you can invest the price of a book in a month’s subscription and use it to find a list of agents to query. They are all professionals, and none of them is running a scam - they are vetted before being included. 

He sent us three templates he uses - of course, I included my email address in the list when he offered.

My final session was a 50 minute panel on the subject of horses. It was three horse-expert ladies, led by Joyce Reynolds-Ward. It was very useful, like the others, and my friend, Gillian Polack, who was in the audience, gave some links to historical coach timetables, much like bus timetables, which gave some idea of how long it would take to get between various places in England.

If you write fantasy fiction you have to use horses sooner or later, let’s face it! And they are all too often treated as furry machines. They need a lot of food and drink. They have to graze to get fibre - oats are not enough. There was talk about how, no, horses are not like dogs, though some authors make them that way, because dogs are predator animals, while horses are prey animals. 

This panel went for 50 minutes. Again, I enjoyed and felt I had learned something new.

Tomorrow morning I’ve set the alarm for even earlier than today, 5.00 am, for a session on Collecting First Editions. It is being presented by Ken Sanders, who is on Antiques Roadshow, and knows a lot about rare books. 

At 8.00 am our time the Virtual Book Bag will  be open and I will have access to a huge number of free ebooks! 

Oh, and I have already bought my first book for this con, a horse-themed story by Joyce Reynolds-Ward.

With all those freebies, surely I won’t be buying more?  

An Interview With Will Kostakis

Aussie writer Will Kostakis is the author of several YA novels and some short fiction. His first novel, Loathing Lola, was published when he was in his teens. I was lucky enough to hear him speak at the Centre for Youth Literature at Melbourne’s State Library when only his first book had been published. Since then, every book has been different from the one before, and it has always been a pleasure to discover something new with each. 

The Sidekicks was published in 2016 and is about three schoolboys mourning the death of a mutual friend. I reviewed it here.

The First Third, which was very popular at my school, is about a Greek boy carrying out his grandmother’s bucket list wishes, to get his family together again. Here is what I had to say about it.

I bought his fantasy novel Monuments at the Melbourne Writers Festival last year, and reviewed it here. We didn’t have to wait too long for the sequel, Rebel Gods, which came out in August this year. I thoroughly enjoyed both books. 

 I don’t want to go into too much detail about Monuments here, in case you haven’t read it and want to, because spoilers, but my review will give you enough information to go on with. 

Today, Will has been kind enough to answer some questions about the duology. Here they are! 

GR: Let’s start with a basic question: how did you get the idea for this duology?

As a kid, my mind would wander. I would press my head against the window of Sydney trains and imagine a sprawling fantasy epic playing out across its rooftops. It was never anything particularly well-formed, and then as I started to tour schools and hear the different rumours about each campus, I realised there was a fantasy idea there: kids raiding the secret dungeons under high schools.

GR: Although all your books are different from each other, they have all, so far, been contemporary fiction. What made you decide to have a go at fantasy? 

I had that idea, but I was fearful of giving it a crack. It helped that after the one-two punch of The First Third and The Sidekicks I was worn out. I needed to write something that would make my teenage heart sing. So I returned to that fantasy epic I was dreaming up… What if gods were real and they had been hidden beneath Sydney’s schools, only to be discovered by teenagers.

GR: Many YA fantasy novels either kill off the parents early on, or send them off somewhere far away so that the hero/heroine can get on with their adventures. What made you decide to allow two of your three main characters to have families - and give the parents personalities of their own?

At first, I thought Monuments (at least, the first book), would be almost parent-less. The gods would be the only family I explored. I quickly realised that it felt hollow. My family has played such an important part of my life, writing an absent parent story felt unpleasant to me. So I beefed up Connor’s mother’s role, and it was like the novel came alive. One of my goals with Rebel Gods was to flesh Locky out, he was no longer the “love interest” we’ve known for three days. I felt it was important to see how his family informed his worldview, in the same way that Connor’s informed his. It was also important that Sally, who tragically lost both her parents, was given a story that trended towards hope and healing, and becoming a sister to Connor and looking to his mum as a mother figure was a part of that. Long story short, I set out to write a story that wasn’t family-focused, realised families are a big part of what make my books my books, and then wrote two family-focused books with gods in them. 

 GR: You have three very different protagonists in these two books. They have to learn to work together quickly, very soon after they meet, yet have different ways of seeing the world. Tell us about Sally, Locky and Connor - and did you plan them out as characters who would be able to work together to save the world? 

I always pictured our three heroes would work together to save the world – and have a few arguments in the process, so they needed to be distinct. They are each quite driven characters, but driven by different things: Connor by family, Locky by politics and Sally by grief. Who they are as characters sprouted from there.

GR Is any of the incident where Locky plants that rainbow lawn and annoys the Red Fern pastor inspired by real world incidents you know of? Obviously not the magic, but a late-night guerrilla action of some sort. 

It isn’t inspired by one particular incident … More a shout-out to moments of rebellion.

GR: Sydney is almost a character in these two books. How much is real and how much imagined? For example, how many of those places where the Monuments are hidden are based on real places?

The hiding places are inspired by different schools I’ve visited, some merged together, others poorly disguised. But overall, I tried to capture Sydney in its ordinary 2020 splendour, so that there was something for the fantasy elements to pop off.

GR:: Are you considering having another go at writing fantasy? If so, tell us about it. 

I would love to return to fantasy some day, but I’ve scratched that itch for the moment. I have a few ideas percolating, but I’m desperate to return to contemporary. The world has changed so much since I wrote The Sidekicks (released early 2016) that I really want to dive into realism again. 

GR: Are you basically a plotter or a pantser? Or something in between? You would, of course, have had to plan out Monuments and Rebel Gods to make them work, but are you the sort of writer who prepares elaborate detailed plots or just rough outlines? 

I plotted the duology extensively, then Monuments changed so radically in editing that my plan for Rebel Gods had to be tossed out. I’ve found what works for me is: settle of 10 essential scenes and an ending, and thread the needle between them. 

GR: What are you working on now? 

I just completed The Greatest Hit, a novella partly set during the Melbourne lockdown, which is out October 27 that I am incredibly excited for people to read. There are a few projects I’m tinkering away on, but mostly, I’m focusing on getting some rest. It’s been a taxing year, professionally and obviously personally (points to everything 2020), so I want to pace myself a little. But you won’t have to wait long for a new book, promise.

Thank you so much, Will, for your great interview. That is especially amazing about your having done such a major re-vamp of your first book and your plans for the second! 

If you’d like to to get these, or any of Will’s other books, they are available in ebook format either in Apple Books( ePub) or Kindle, but the paperbacks are also available at any good online store, except, for the moment, Book Depository, which is out of stock with Rebel Gods, but does have everything else.  

Just Finished Reading...Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff. New York: HarperCollins, 2016

     I confess I bought this book because the trailers for the TV series looked interesting - and scary! I still haven’t seen the show, as I don’t have the pay TV service that would let me watch it, but I can wait.

     Meanwhile, I have just finished the book, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and I have to say, it’s not particularly scary. It’s good fun. Yes, there are a few monsters from the Dawnatime, as you’d expect from anything with the name Lovecraft in the title, but they are nowhere near as frightening as the racist humans encountered by the main characters. 

     This is not so much a novel as a series of linked stories, each seen from the viewpoint of a different character introduced early in the book, in the first, title story. 

     The year is 1954. Young African American Korean War veteran Atticus Turner is returning to Chicago, his home town, after an unpleasant time spent in Florida, which is part of Jim Crow country. He has a frightening encounter on the way - oh, and also meets some Lovecraft type monsters.

     Atticus is a science fiction/fantasy fan, as is his uncle George, so they both know a Lovecraft creature when they see one. Atticus, George and Letitia, a childhood friend of Atticus, go in search of Montrose, Atticus’s father, who has been kidnapped, and find an over-the-top lodge of sorcerers, the Order of the Ancient Dawn, who want Atticus, not Montrose...

     Each main character who appears or is mentioned in this story gets a viewpoint story of their own. They are good, strong characters, who deal with the issues thrown at them, and in the end, it’s not the ghosties and ghoulies who are the problem, but humans. 

     There is a sort-of-villain who isn’t all that villainous, really, or not towards the black characters, anyway. He does pressure them to do things for him that he can’t do, but compensates them well. However, they find him more annoying than scary. 

     I won’t say more, because of spoilers, but it’s well worth a read, unless you are a devoted horror fan, in which case you might find it not scary enough. I don’t think it’s intended to be too terrifying.

     You should be able to buy it in the usual on-line bookshops; I bought mine on Apple Books, which also has audiobook, but if you want a print edition, or Kindle, that will be easily available too.   

 

And The Last Trump Shall Sound: A Future History Of America, Caezik, 2020

    

 This is three linked novellas by that master of alternative universe, Harry Turtledove, author James Morrow and former SFWA president Cat Rambo, who wrote a guest post here on the release of her novel Hearts Of Rabat.

     The premise: in the near future, Trump is dead, from a second wave of COVID 19, and Mike Pence is President. A number of West Coast states have seceded and formed a new country, Pacifica. 

     The first story, “The Breaking Of Nations” by Harry Turtledove, is seen from the viewpoint of Nicole Yoshida, former Governor of California, now leading the group of states seceding from the US, where things have become very bad. It’s the set-up story, so has the heavy lifting to do in this book. But as it is the set-up story, you have to assume that the secession will work out, as it does. 

     James Morrow’s “The Purloined Republic” is a quirky, humorous tale set a couple of years after Pacifica begins. In it, Polly Nightingale, a former porn star, now running an experimental theatre in Los Angeles, is commissioned to carry out a job that might make a huge difference and persuade more states to leave the US.  She is offered enough money to keep her theatre going. 

     The job? To impersonate the President’s spiritual adviser, Walker Lambert, who has been captured and is imprisoned in Pacifica. She resembles him enough that some Hollywood make up and prosthetics will help her pretend to be a man. The plan is to make Pence look crazy enough to sow doubt about him. 

     The story is hilariously over the top, and is my favourite in the book.

     Finally Cat Rambo contributes “Because It Is Bitter”, a story seen from the viewpoint of GoogleSoft tech Ernst, who has been sneaking in his own research during work time, to complete his late grandmother’s project, involving an empathy serum. When all his files and notes are stolen in a break-in at his office, he must follow the woman he believes has stolen them over the border from Pacifica to the US. There, only six years after the split, the situation has become very bad indeed. Pacifica has its problems, but the US is far worse. 

     And Ernst discovers why he was really lured over the border, and it isn’t pretty...

     I enjoyed the book, though it was scary because so many elements were so very believable. The technology in Cat Rambo’s story was more developed than I would have thought possible in the fifteen-odd years between now and the time of this story, but who knows? After all, only a few years ago Skype was a lot more fiddly to access than it is now, and the Internet as we know it has not been around that long. So, why not? 

     I bought my copy on Apple Books, but it should be easily available on the usual web sites, including Amazon and the Book Depository.

On Researching Selkies

 I’ve been researching selkies for a story - you know, the seals which take off their skins and become human? And then put them back on and turn back into seals? They are a northern thing, mostly Orkney, but also Scandinavian - well, there were Viking settlers up there. It really irritated me some years ago to read a YA novel, Tempest Rising, in which there was a HAWAIIAN selkie! They couldn’t find a genuine Hawaiian sea creature?

   The best selkie story I’ve read was Margo Lanagan’s gorgeous novel Sea Hearts(Known outside Australia as The Brides Of Rollrock Island). I reviewed it here.

Anyway, I had recently written a story - still out on submission, so I won’t tell you about it yet - with a selkie girl in it, and that gave me an idea for another story, of which I’ve written the first 700 words today. 

But it does need more research. I started writing because if I didn’t the story would never get written. I can always rewrite. I usually end up doing around four drafts anyway. Just so you know. Being a pantser doesn’t necessarily mean you are sloppy! It just means you don’t do an elaborate plan first. 

So, I started with a basic Wikipedia search. Amazing what you can find in Wikipedia, including a bibliography and footnotes, which usually give you somewhere else to go. There were other web sites I checked out as well, but that one is a good place to start. I discovered that there is a book by Duncan Williamson, The Land  Of  The Seal People. It was available in Apple Books, and turned out to be one of those books of Scottish/Celtic folk tales, told to the author as a child or a teen by wise old men... Mind you, one of those stories which he said was told to him by a “traveller”(Roma?) was out of the Arabian Nights! Told with a Scottish accent, but definitely one of Scheherezade’s 1001 Nights! Maybe the elderly Roma just knew it and told it to the young boy without knowing he would assume it was a local folktale? 

The book is not all about selkies, though the selkie tales are interesting in that the seal people in it have long sealskin coats, which they seem to wear casually every day, while living as ordinary villagers, instead of taking them off to dance naked in the moonlight. In one story, a selkie gives his coat to a young man who really needs it, saying it’s okay, he has another one. There are none of the sad stories about seal brides who can’t return to the sea because some loser who can’t otherwise get a girl steals their sealskins...

Another resource was a film I read about during my research, and yesterday I discovered it on Prime Video, so I settled down and watched it. It’s an Australian film, called simply Selkie, and was made in the 1990s. It was something like the films made by the Australian Children’s Television Foundation. 

It was a rather sweet story about a teenage boy, with Scottish ancestors, discovering quite by accident that he is a selkie. In this film, you can live your whole life as a human without ever knowing what you are, although at the start of the film he is shown looking at his webbed hands, and sitting in the bath having visions he doesn’t understand, but he doesn’t change till he dives into the water to rescue a girl who has fallen off the pier and hit her head. And suddenly he is a seal - no need for a skin, he doesn’t even have to take his clothes off. There is, however, another selkie on the island, an old woman who is desperate to return to the sea, but needs an ancestral sealskin in a shipwreck off the coast to get what she wants...

It didn’t get very good ratings from the film critics, but I liked it very much. I guess I recognised it as basically a children’s film, and they didn’t. 

I see there are some more films around, at least one of them on Prime, so I’ll watch them, for lack of documentaries on the subject! I might be able to find some documentaries on the history of Scotland in general. 

Wish me well in finishing my story and getting it right! 

Jane Routley: A Guest Post

 

Today’s guest is Jane Routley, Aussie author of some great fantasy novels, including two winners of the fantasy section of the Aurealis Award.  Jane was a guest on this blog a while back. She has recently released a new novel, Shadow In The Empire Of Light, which looks amazing! 

Here is the blurb: 

Shine’s life is usually dull: an orphan without magic in a family of powerful mages, she’s left to run the family estate with only an eccentric aunt and telepathic cat for company.

But when the family descend on the house for the annual Fertility Festival, Shine is plunged into dark intrigue; stolen letters, a fugitive spy, and family drama mix with murder, sex and secrets, and Shine is forced to decide both her loyalties and future...

Intrigued? I’ll let Jane tell you all about it! 

                                    ###

I wrote Shadow in the Empire of Light because lately, I’ve got a bit fed up with how miserable most of fantasy worlds are for women. The forced marriages, the enslavement, the working in brothels, the dangerous childbirth and -most of all - the endless, endless sexual violence. (Yes I’m looking at you Game of Thrones)  I mean pleeease, that’s not fantasy.  That’s my reality if I walk through the wrong park late at night. 

It seems crazy to me that fantasy should be sexist just because most of human history is. 

Maybe I’m reinventing the wheel. There are historical-style fantasies that are female friendly.  Elizabeth Moon’s The Deed of Paksenarrion is one of these.  I’m hoping readers of this post will suggest others.

You write what you want to read so I thought I’d make the kind of fantasy world I might like to go adventuring in. That’s why I created the Empire of Light. 

Some of the principles I followed in my world building:

1. Estates and names are passed down along the female line.  After all, everyone knows who their mother is.  Fathers not so much. (Something which has been a trial for women in our own world since time immemorial)  Sure you can and should make provision for your sons, but the farm goes to the daughters.

2. Since the daughters are heirs they also get more power in the marriage game, which is a nice change.  Also, since they own the farm, they can have a family without marrying at all.  No one minds if they have a husband or not.  In a matrilocal society it’s often the woman’s brothers who act as the male parent anyway.  

3. Reliable contraception.  Women in my Empire of Light only get pregnant if they eat meat.  . Vegetarians don’t get pregnant.  It’s an idea I got from the animal kingdom

You still have to work out how to protect and provide for your family but since you inherit the property you’re much less likely to fall into the single mum poverty trap.  

4. You don’t have to be a tough fighter.  I’ve given men and women fairly equal strength so   you don’t have to be exceptional to beat the guys in a fight, just as skilled as they are.  Anyway, in the Empire of Light, magic -which is gender neutral - is the real source of power. 

5. I’m tired of slut shaming too.  Women can be as chaste or as promiscuous as they want to be and no one is going to call them names.  It’s amazing how often women still get shamed in fantasy books (or in real life for that matter) for even mild sexual misbehaviour.  Just be respectful to people, folks.  

6. I’m tired of insults being feminine.  In the Empire of Light there are no bitches or cows or any insults called after female body parts. There are pigs, rats and, if you’re feeling really annoyed, roosters.  

Of course, a truly equal society would not favour either sex in terms of inheritance or in any other way.   In Shadow in the Empire of Light, however, mothers do prefer to have daughters and I know that’s sexist.  But it was so nice to make adventures in world where I was the winner, rather than the second-place-getter, that I went with it.  

You can contact me at www.janeroutley.com or on rebeccalocksley@netspace.net.au, and find the ebook and the audiobook at:

https://rebellionpublishing.com/product/shadow-in-the-empire-of-light/

or 

https://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Empire-Light-Jane-Routley/dp/1781088349

Jane’s other books are also available on Amazon, if you look her up there under her name, or you can get them in ebook on Apple Books. 

The Last Of NASFIC!

 My second night of watching NASFIC 2020 was as enjoyable as the first. Again, I had to set the alarm so I could watch from my bed, but no matter. 

There had, unfortunately, been some technical problems, so my first choice, a discussion of filk music between Juanita Coulson and Tom Smith, both big names in filk music, didn’t happen. Juanita is also a fantasy novelist who wrote her first book in 1967, when I was in Year 8 at school. You can find some of their work, both of them, on YouTube.

Filk music, in case you aren’t familiar with the term, is basically science fiction themed songs, usually sung to existing tunes so that anyone can sing them as long as they get the words. Traditionally they are sung late at night at room parties. Some of the big names in SF writing have been filk singers and composers. I’ve even written a few filk songs myself, many years ago. Here is a link to a post I wrote about this on this blog. https://suebursztynski.blogspot.com/2006/06/filk-music-remember-when.html

Although I missed out on the Coulson/Smith panel, I did get to hear some filking later. 

Meanwhile, after a lit of fiddling around, I arrived in the middle of a discussion of “Worldbuilding: Rituals And Symbols”. This was not quite what I had expected as it was less about the subject of Worldbuilding than about “my favourite rituals in books and rituals that happen in my books”. That would have been good, and some of it still was, but we were not really told why these rituals were interesting and, in one case, not even what the rituals were!

That was 1.00 am and I hovered between wake and sleep for ten minutes till the next panel, which featured my friend Gillian Polack and two others, discussing the matter of older women in SF and fantasy. I should say that Gillian’s heroines are mostly older women and she waved around her recent book Year Of The Fruitcake, in which an alien observer is part of a group of older women in Canberra, where she lives, who are likely to be discussing chocolate. (This book is available on Amazon if you are interested, including on Kindle)

There was a fair amount of discussion of “What is old?” for women. As I recall, Lois McMaster Bujold’s heroine Cordelia Naismith, mother of Miles Vorkosigan, said in one of the books that middle age was about ten years older than whatever age you were. There was some discussion of Cordelia, in fact, but what I found particularly interesting was the panellist whose day job is in the theatre. She said bluntly that in acting a woman is considered old at thirty! The roles tend to fall off after that. Not for men - for women. 

“Researching The Golden Age” was a chat between two Hugo shortlisted non fiction authors who have written about the Golden Age of SF, Alec Nevala-Lee and Farah Mendlesohn. Farah was on this year’s Related Work shortlist for her book The Pleasant Profession Of Robert A Heinlein. I have a copy of that from the Hugo packet we got before the convention. I was also lucky enough to hear her speak to my SF club, the Nova Mob, just after the con. The book was more or less academic, a study of the author’s work rather than a biography. Although it has only sold about 1500 copies, it was published by an academic publisher and she said that was about three times more than the average academic text! She urged us to read Heinlein’s final book, the one everybody hates, because his portrayal of women is at its best. 

I don’t have anything by Alec, but a look at some titles onApple Books made my mouth water...

The hours were strange on this side of the world, so the midnight open filk session on Sunday was at lunchtime here. I turned off my video and just listened. The first several songs were not to my taste, being just bawdy stuff left over from the previous session, without recognisable tunes or SF themes. I was considering leaving the Zoom session when the songs began to improve, with SF themes related to stories by Anne McCaffrey and even Lois McMaster Bujold, though not her space opera, which I prefer, but to her fantasy. Still, these were sung passionately and, in some cases, beautifully. I hung around till it was clear this session was going far longer than I could give to it. I did consider joining in, but I’ve forgotten most of the lyrics of my favourite songs. Instead, I burned a CD of a file on my laptop, filk songs sung by my pen pal the late Linda Short, a British fan who died far too early. Linda recorded it especially for me on audiotape for a Christmas gift because “I didn’t know what you had”! Hah! Much more precious to me than bath oil or a knick knack!  I saved it to my computer, because audiotape wears out, and then burned a few copies for friends of mine and of Linda, to remember her by. 

My final panel was Sunday night my time, on the theme of  Jewish fantasy, and may be my favourite of the con. A group of Jewish writers, including Gillian, talked about their own work and the work of others, including some classics from the Golden Age. There was a discussion of “What is Jewish fantasy?” and everyone had a different idea of what it is. For some, it’s not enough for the author to be Jewish, but one panellist mentioned Maurice Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are. It’s not Jewish-themed, but it is based on his relatives pinching his cheeks when he was small and saying “I could just eat you up!” (As someone with an Eastern  European Jewish background I winced in sympathy). 

It was also pointed out that being Jewish is not monocultural. It’s diverse, with Jews all over the world, with their own cultures. Jews are often automatically considered white, but aren’t necessarily - and the word Gillian used for Australian Jews was “off white.” She said there are very few Jewish fantasy writers here, writing on Jewish themes, anyway. 

Gillian’s fantasy novel The Wizardry Of Jewish Women was about  being a Jewish woman in Australia. Here is an interview I did with Gillian about this novel a while back. https://suebursztynski.blogspot.com/2016/12/gillian-polack-speaks-about-wizardry-of.html I liked it very much. 

Her novel The Time Of Ghosts featured three older women in Canberra, one of whom was Melusine, the mediaeval French water fay, who long ago converted to Judaism! I liked this one possibly even better than Wizardry Of Jewish Women, but I loved both of them.  You should be able to find them in ebook, either on Apple Books or Bookview Cafe.

I suddenly realised that another panellist, Valerie Estelle Franklin, was the author of many entertaining books on Dr Who, Harry Potter, Lord Of The Rings, Star Wars and others. You can get most of them cheap or free on Apple Books and on Kindle if interested.

This was my final panel. I couldn’t stay awake for others and by the time I got up this morning, the con was over. 

But it was an enjoyable event. Next on my schedule is the World Fantasy Convention in October - I can’t wait! 

Of NASFIC And Other Virtual Conventions!

 A few weeks ago I was talking about ConZealand, the World Science Fiction Convention 2020. It was online, the first Worldcon to be completely digital. I enjoyed it very much, bought far too many books and saw four catch-up panels just before they were taken down. They were on subjects that interested me - 

Urban fantasy in the 21st century, Writing Alternative Universe, Golden Age of SF Movies and TV In Space. It’s probably a bit late to be writing about them now, but they were all enjoyable. 

I wrote a post with the shortlist for the New Zealand awards, the Sir Julius Vogels, and mentioned that we had not received them in time to vote. However, since then we have been sent a SJV packet just so we could have them. So, another pile of goodies to read! I did buy three books before I knew we were being sent these, but still plenty of freebies, and hopefully I will have time and energy to review some.

Since then, other conventions have moved on line. I have joined the World Fantasy Convention, which I believe is more of a professional development for authors than just another con, but that’s fine - I’m a writer, and it’s always good to learn something new. This one will be about 16 hours behind Australia, possibly 17 hours behind, as we will be on Daylight Saving Time by then, the end of October. I paid by PayPal, where I had nearly half the fee already, due to having been paid for my story in Oz Is Burning. Nice! 

If you are interested in joining this convention, here is the link.

http://www.worldfantasy.org/ - do check it out, even if you aren’t a writer. Anyone can join.

This weekend I am “attending” another con, NASFIC, which is being held in Columbus, Ohio, but run online. The organisers have very generously decided to make it free, due to having to do it all online, though you can still make a donation. I might just do that before it’s over, but there is no requirement to donate. Here is a link for you https://columbus2020nasfic.org/how-to-attend.html.

Columbus, Ohio, is 14 hours behind Melbourne, so last night I set my alarm for 2.00 a.m and “attended”(curled up in bed) a panel on the subject of using history in fiction. It was good fun and featured my friend historian and novelist Gillian Polack. 

There was very little, if any, talk about historical fantasy or SF, just historical fiction, but it was well worth waking up in the middle of the night to watch. There were some very good points made in the discussion. For example, Regency romance writer Georgette Heyer vs Jane Austen. One of the panellists described Heyer’s work as basically Jane Austen fanfic, which is true, but suggested that Jane Austen would not be happy with it(the actual word used was “horrified”), because she never portrayed aristocrats sympathetically, whereas Heyer - and, for that matter, other authors of Regency romance - did. Think about that for a moment. Okay, Darcy of Pride And Prejudice is related to the aristocracy, in the form of Lady Catherine DeBurgh, but until late in the book he is very snobbish, though never truly awful. Think about his first proposal to Elizabeth! 

In Regency romance, the hero is usually a Duke of this or a Lady Whoever. Austen’s heroines might be rich, like Emma, but are not usually Duchesses. 

There were discussions of missing cultures in Regency fiction - as Gillian commented, there were no Jews in Heyer , except as moneylenders. There was a mention of Moors/Muslims in Robin Hood stories - yes, there was a Saracen Merrie in Robin Of Sherwood and another in  Robin Hood, Prince Of Thieves, plus a Saracen female Merrie in the BBC Robin Hood. That’s true. And all of them were there for a reason. The Assassin Nasir(Robin Of Sherwood) had come to England with a returning Crusader. The one in Prince Of Thieves had returned with Robin, when both had escaped from a prison in Jerusalem. Djaq, the Saracen woman, had been brought to England as a slave, with a bunch of others, and joined the band, warning them she was “rubbish at cooking”, so Much the Miller’s Son kept having to do it. 

That was all fine, but when someone on the panel said that they had been in the original stories, as opposed to film and TV, I said, “Huh?”  I read a whole collection of mediaeval Robin Hood ballads and can’t recall any. It was a long time ago, of course, I may have forgotten. There were, yes,  Muslim knights in the Arthurian legends(they end up converting to Christianity if they are the good guys, and they never get the girl! Not if there is a good Christian knight available, anyway.). But that is not Robin Hood.

There was a mention of Zen Cho, who has written some delightful Regency romance fantasy with Malaysian characters. I read the first one and enjoyed it, some months ago.

After this panel, I slept a few hours lest I find myself watching panels all night when I had to be up early to make breakfast and warm the kitchen. 

Waking up, I managed to see a panel on urban fantasy and  COVID, and that was also very interesting. Much of it was, should we be writing COVID stuff right now, while people are still affected by it, and really don’t want to have to deal with it in fiction as well? Someone gave as an example the post-9/11 US. Fiction written at the time was often set ten years later. 

But a lot of the panel was fun speculation on how, say, werewolves and vampires were going to deal with it. Werewolves have bodies that can heal, so would a werewolf have to keep changing to deal with the nasty side effects of COVID? What about vampires? How do you bite your victim while social distancing? Would it affect you anyway? Someone reminded us that, in Love At First Bite, Dracula got drunk from biting a homeless drunk! Would vampires have to get jobs delivering pizza, with everyone locked down? But they would also have to deal with being invited in. 

There are so many ideas floating in my head from this discussion, though my only urban fantasy so far is an as-yet unpublished novella with a couple of werewolves doing detective work to catch up with vampires who have been sneaking into Australia via teenagers using paranormal romance web sites. It’s hard to sell a novella these days, but I could use the same characters again...

Anyway, I will enjoy the con again from bed late tonight! 

If you’re interested in doing the same, check the web site. It’s very simple to join, so check it out.