Kaaron Warren – Angry Robot Author Interview

Posted on September 2, 2010 by sharl

Hi, Kaaron. I first came across your work when editing the Dead Souls anthology at Morrigan Books. That was, of course, the short story, The Blue Stream. I’ve since gone on to read Slights and Walking the Tree (including the extra novella published online via Angry Robot). You seem comfortable with all three lengths of story-telling but is there a particular format you find most easy to write?

I don’t really find any format easier. I love working with them all but there are difficulties with all of them as well. A short story has to do the work of a novel in just a few thousand words, so you have to use them very well. You can end abruptly, and with a surprise ending (so long as it’s telegraphed or at least hinted at).

It’s fun because you can let the central conceit be the point of the story and get away with it.

A novella you can stretch yourself out a bit more, fill in some of the details, let the story spin out a bit further. You can’t get away with a surprise ending or a single concept, the way you can in a short story.

A novel; of course you stretch even further. You can explore the backstory of the character, and follow the leads as they present themselves. You can follow minor characters and see where they go, what they do. You can have awful things happen on the sidelines and let them add to the texture of the story. You can research wildly and absorb some of that into the story; sometimes the research will take the story in a different direction. You can do that in a novel. You’re not confined to your original idea.

Do you enjoy researching then? I get very mixed reactions when I ask this question. Some authors love this side of the writing process, others seem to view it as an unwelcome intrusion.

The research stage is really important to my writing process. Often, it’s the way I formulate my ideas and what I discover in my reading helps to direct what’s going to happen in the story, and what sort of characters will people the story. So I love it.

A story sometimes starts with a snippet which catches my eye and my imagination, so I’m excited to learn more about it. At the moment I’m researching lace making and seamstresses; this research took my family and I to the Victorian Artists exhibition at the NSW Art Gallery. Good excuse for an adventure!

I love that moment of original spark and will often take pages of notes before even thinking about writing the story. It can be just a title, like Cage Life, used to describe the life of Mustafa 1, who was kept imprisoned for 14 years by his brother.

I think perhaps the intrusion comes when you are right in the middle of writing and you suddenly realize you don’t know when ball point pens were invented, or if a particular food was eaten at a particular time, that kind of thing. For that sort of research, I’ll make a note to myself and check it later. My work is full of these kinds of notes. True? Or not invented yet? Where did they keep the dogs? What was his wife’s name and how many kids did they have?

Really glad you brought up the subject of notes! As part of the “extras” at the end of Walking the Tree you have included some of your notes. As both a reader and an editor, I was as fascinated by these notes as I was with the story itself. How did the decision to include the notes come about and what sort of feedback have you had on them?

Walking the Tree was a very complex novel to write, with all the different groups of people, the plot strands, the themes I wanted to convey without seeming to convey them, and the different characters. So I ended up with more ‘threads’ than I usually do. I’ll often have a page or two, seeded through a short story, notes to myself to ‘make sure to mention her again’, or ‘remember grief reaction’, that kind of thing.

For this novel, I ended up with about 40 pages, single spaced. I ‘threaded’ most of the ideas into the novel, but not all of them. A lot of them were the stepping stones, I guess, that helped me get to the final point.

When Marc Gascoigne and I were talking about what the ‘extra’ should be for this book (given that the novella “Morace” was too long and that we wanted it as a separate thing), I suggested including a few pages of the threads, so that readers could see further into the process of creating a layered world like Botanica.

Readers seem to really like it. I think, even in that layout, it helps give further meaning to the book, and that’s a good thing! A slightly new way of telling the story, I guess.

What’s an average writing day like for you? Do you have a particular place where you feel more focused or any odd little rituals that aid the process of sitting down to get the writing done?

Having children knocked any rituals out of my writing, I’m afraid. When they were young, I didn’t have the luxury of finding the perfect place or the perfect time. I wrote one story in a frenzy, while cooking (I can stir one-handedly very easily!) pushing the pram over a bump and singing (that’s what they tell you to do if the baby won’t sleep), looking at trucks (quite peaceful, really) and pushing the swing. I learnt that even twenty minutes is useful. That I didn’t need a three hour block to get anything done.

Now, I do have something of a routine. The family fully supports me in my writing, meaning we’ve decided as a group that I don’t go out to find a day job. My job is my writing; they’re all behind that, which is brilliant.

So, mornings the kids go off to school, husband goes off to work, and I spend an hour or so sorting the house out, cleaning the table so it’s usable, checking emails and twitter and drinking coffee.

Then it’s a solid two or three hours of writing. Sometimes more, if it’s going well.

Kids get home at three and it’s afternoon tea, homework, friends and dinner.

Evenings I’m doing interviews and guest blogs and articles, and also catching up on emails.

Of course I check Twitter and emails all day, unless the internet is cut off in which case I can’t think!

Ah, Twitter, that most popular of time-sinks! Do you enjoy using social networks and blogging, especially as a means of communicating with your readers?

I do enjoy tweeting and blogging. I love how connected it makes us all, that I can have friends all over the world and keep in touch with them. It is time consuming, though, and sometimes it feels a bit overwhelming. This weekend, we had visitors, and the Australian Election, which means parties and volunteering, cakes, drinkies, all that. So I didn’t read Twitter for a couple of days and trying to catch up is extremely daunting!

Do you see yourself as a very specific kind of genre writer, in the sense of being strictly within the sci-fi or fantasy field, and how do you feel generally about being labelled a genre writer? Do you feel it restricts you personally as a writer in any way or, perhaps,  in the marketing of your books?

I am labelled a genre writer and I don’t mind that. I love the community, the readers, the fans. But I do also feel that my stuff can be read outside the group of people who call themselves spec fic readers.

It certainly doesn’t restrict me as a writer; in fact it gives me the freedom to write the best possible story about whatever I want to write about!

Marketing; yes, there I do feel it restricts me. Labelling can stop a person who thinks they don’t read horror from picking up a book they might otherwise enjoy.

I’ve been looking at your WorldCon schedule. So hectic! Do you enjoy the book conventions and is there anything in particular you’re looking forward to seeing/doing at this year’s WorldCon?

It is kinda crazy, isn’t it? But my philosophy (as far as writing commitments go, anyway!) is to take advantage of every opportunity. I haven’t been to a convention since Worldcon in Montreal last year, so I guess I’m squishing a year’s worth of panels and readings into one week!

I love conventions. It’s so much fun sitting with the people I communicate with online. I love the chance to hear people I admire talking on panels, and I really, really love hearing people read their stories.

I’m looking forward to: having dinner with friends, catching up with people, launching my new short story collection and also Angela Slatter’s short story collection, being on a panel with Robert Silverberg, reading erotica on Thursday night (am still trying to decide what to read), buying books, getting books signed by brilliant writers…all of it! It is a bit of a tiring prospect, because you’re ‘on’ the whole time. No slouching in front of crap TV for those few days!

Ok, let’s talk about your two books with Angry Robot; Slights and Walking the Tree. They are incredibly different books. Slights is an intense and uncomfortable read, a deep exploration of a young woman’s withdrawal from society. Walking the Tree, by contrast, has lighter moments but is still focused on the thoughts of one young woman’s move into adulthood. Was it a clear decision on your part to have female protagonists in each story or was there a time when you were considering a male lead character? Do you feel more comfortable writing from a woman’s perspective?

Slights started as a short story, and Stevie was male then. When I started working on the story as a novel, two things became clear to me. The first was that the character worked better as a female, and the second was that it was a very intense, internal novel and I wasn’t sure I could write a male character with such depth.

I do like to write male characters, and have written plenty of them in my short stories. In this case, though, I wasn’t sure I could make Stevie believable as a man. Once I started to tell the story, it seemed a female’s voice to me.

Walking the Tree was always going to be a female protagonist. As I wrote it, however, the voice of Morace, the young male student, became so strong, I wrote his story as well.

So Slights started as a short story? How do you know when a short story is going to become something longer? Is there a definitive moment when it turns from a short piece of fiction into a novella or novel or is it more accidental than that?

It’s both definitive and accidental. Most of my stories start short. Once I start researching and thinking about the story, sometimes the short form is perfect, and sometimes it’s confining. I love the freedom of the short story to give that short, sharp shock, but I love expanding background and experience with a novel.

There usually comes a time when I say, “This needs to be longer.”

Two final questions, Kaaron. Mistification is the next novel you’ll be publishing with Angry Robot Books: is everything on track for its UK release in 2011? You also have a new collection of short stories, Dead Sea Fruit, published by Ticonderoga and launching at WorldCon. What’s next for you, any new novels in the pipeline?

I’m working on two novels at the moment. One explores the nature of people who are at the end of their line and don’t care what comes next. The other is about a woman who can see ghosts of battered women around the shoulders of people who die that way. Both books are obsessing me, but luckily they take it in turns! I’m also working on a series of short stories and another novella, so my brain is busy.

Thanks for the interview, Kaaron. Best of luck with the US/Canada release of Slights and hope you’re having a fabulous time at WorldCon.

Thanks, Sharon. It’s been great to have the chance to think about my stories and how I create them.

Slights was published in the UK & Australia in July 2009, and Sept 2010 in the US and RoW. Walking the Tree was published in February 2010 in the UK & Australia. It’s set to take on the rest of the world in early 2011.

Publisher – Angry Robot Books.

Post to Twitter

Posted in Angry Robot Special, Interviews | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Press Release – John Jarrold Literary Agency

Posted on September 2, 2010 by sharl

Rjurik Davidson

James Frenkel, Senior Editor at Tor Books in New York,  has concluded a two-book world rights deal for Australian SF author Rjurik Davidson, for a good five-figure sum in US dollars. The agent was John Jarrold.

The first of these books will be Davidson’s debut novel. It is presently titled CAELI-AMUR after the city in which it and its sequel take place.

James Frenkel said of Rjurik Davidson, “He’s a unique talent, with a fabulously imagined world that is both enticing and strange, the sort of place that makes one at the same time afraid and excited, thrilling to discover as its many secrets are revealed. Peopled with engaging characters who seem entirely real, it’s a world with a rich, deep history and a strange, compelling destiny.”

“Rjurik’s writing is wonderful,” said John Jarrold.  “I’m very happy that this marks my first direct deal with a major US publisher. I know that Jim has admired his short fiction for several years.”

Rjurik Davidson is a freelance writer and Associate Editor of Overland magazine. He has written short stories, essays, screenplays and reviews. His short collection, The Library of Forgotten Books, was recently released by PS Publishing. His work has been published in Postscripts, Years Best Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy, Volumes One, Two and Four, Australian Dark Fantasy and Horror 2006, SciFiction, Aurealis, Borderlands and elsewhere. He has been short-listed for the Ditmar Award for Best Short Story three times, the Aurealis Award once and won the Ditmar award for Best New Talent in 2005.

Contact John Jarrold for further information:

John Jarrold: e-mail j.jarrold@btinternet.com phone 01522 510544.

Post to Twitter

Posted in News | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Zoo City – Guest Review

Posted on September 2, 2010 by sharl

ZOO CITY - By Lauren Beukes

It’s not often that you read a book that really, truly sticks in the mind. Sure, there are good books, lots of them, and some of them are even great. But memorable, that’s probably rarer than you think. And I don’t mean a book than in a year from now you’ll think, “oh yeah, that was pretty good.” I mean a book which becomes a fundamental milestone in your own reading experience. The Name of the Wind reintroduced me to fantasy after steering well clear for almost twenty years. Under the Dome introduced me to horror. These are the books – the rare handful – that you carry with you (figuratively, at least!) forever.

After the good – great, even – Moxyland, South African writer Lauren Beukes was clearly a name to watch. Her second novel, Zoo City, was a long time coming, first announced then delayed by the behind-the-scenes changes at Angry Robot. Having read the blurbs, seen the mighty William Gibson get excited, and drooled over first the US cover art and then the stunning monochromatic South African cover (also used on the UK edition), I was champing at the bit to read it.

It was worth the wait. I was not disappointed. Zoo City is one of those books: a book to get excited about, a book to tell all your friends about. A book to remember.

Zinzi December, 419 scammer, saddled with a spirit sloth following the death of her brother in murky circumstances, is hired to track/coerced into tracking (take your pick) down a missing pair of teen pop-stars, having received a magical ability to find lost things along with her animal. As an ‘animalled’ citizen, Zinzi ekes out an existence in ‘Zoo City’, a dilapidated, semi-lawless and unofficially segregated district of Johannesburg where others like her are forced to live. Caught in the shadow of her Former Life, the missing persons case seems like her only way to escape Zoo City and to clear the colossal debts owed to her 419 agent.

Zoo City might be described as a dark and grim urban fantasy, but that’s really doing the book a disservice. The narrative moves from depressing kitchen-sink drama to fantastical weirdness with the turn of a page – I’d be tempted to call it “magical realism” if that term hadn’t already been hijacked by the literary crowd. Zoo City is strange, no doubt about it. But despite being populated almost entirely by broken, flawed and desperate characters, it is also beautiful. Zinzi might have killed her brother, might have made wrong decisions in life, but she’s sympathetic and realistic. She’s also smart and works hard to stay in control of the situation throughout, not matter what obstacles are placed in her path.

The story is pacy, and the prose zips along thanks to Lauren’s characteristic first-person, present-tense style. As someone not overly familiar with South African culture and slang, some of the language and dialogue was initially tricky to navigate, but it does feel very natural once you get the hang of it. For a book about people paired with spirit animals – including the famous cannibal penguin – Zoo City is remarkably believable, mostly because it’s all so matter-of-fact. Some people carry their guilt in the form of an animal. The animalled also have magic powers. Get over it.The central concept – that of becoming animalled – is fascinating, and while we’re given a few scant hints on the how and why of it, part of what makes Zoo City so good is what Lauren holds back. The animals are ‘spirits’, yet they are living creatures and need food and water, and indeed they can be killed, as we see in the book. Separating the animal from their host has dire consequences for both. And all the while, the animalled fear the Undertow, a mysterious, almost mystical power ready to drag their souls to hell.

There is even the implication that being animalled is like having a terminal disease – even if you and your animal are never separated, one day, eventually, the Undertow will drag you down. The scene where an animal – a grizzly bear – is gunned down and the Undertow manifests to claim the host while Zinzi and others watch is shocking and terrifying. They know what is happening, and what the Undertow is, and why it is. We, the reader, only get clues. This feeling that everybody in the book knows more about what’s going on than you do, and are not going to tell you, lends Zoo City a tremendous atmosphere of intrigue, making the reader turn page after page. What information we are presented with about the world, the animalled, and the Undertow – including quotes from a prison interview and the abstract to a scientific paper (guest-written by Sam Wilson and Charles Human, respectively) – is limited and only adds to the mystery.

While Zoo City cements Lauren’s position as a pre-eminent genre writer, I can’t help but wonder if this is the book to take her to a wider audience. Zoo City is as fantastical or as ordinary as you want it to be, and while probably too outlandish for a lot of mainstream tastes, it’s exactly the kind of book that should get her on late night US chat shows as it is carried up the New York Times Bestseller list. Yes, it’s that good. Zoo City is major league writing. It is effortless, easy and, quite frankly, astonishing.

But it’s only her second book, so there’s no rush. World domination can wait, and for the moment Lauren is ours, and we can enjoy her work until the time comes when we look back and say “Hey, remember when Zoo City came out? That was quite something.”

Zoo City was published in the UK & Australia in September 2010. It’s due to published in the US & Canada in early 2011.

Publisher – Angry Robot Books.

Zoo City was reviewed by Adam Christopher.

Post to Twitter

Posted in Angry Robot Special, Guest Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Mike Shevdon on Fantasy – State of the Genre

Posted on September 1, 2010 by sharl

Mike Shevdon

Reading around the blogs and reviews, you would be forgiven for thinking that fantasy as a genre has been given over to vegetarian vampires and tame werewolves.  Some even point fingers at publishers and whisper the words ‘Twilight’ and ‘treachery’ in the same sentence.  How can fantasy prosper, we are asked, when we are served up with such a monoculture?  Where is the variety, the originality, the hope for tomorrow, when the death knell of fantasy has already been rung?

At this point I smile.

I was introduced to fantasy in the 70s when I was given C S Lewis’s, Narnia books as a Christmas Present.  At that time there were two other fantasy books on the shelves.  No, that isn’t true – of course there were more books than two, but nevertheless, it seemed as if two writers dominated the bookshelves.

Their names were J R R Tolkein and Anne McCaffrey.  On the one hand there were the various editions of The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and occasionally The Silmarillion and on the other you had the Dragon-riders of Pern and their various adventures.  In certain High Street bookseller-newsagents, that was pretty much all they had.  If you wanted to find Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising you needed a bigger town and a better bookshop.  Roger Zelazny’s Amber was an import and there was no equivalent of Waterstones or Amazon in those days.

Dragonflight - Anne McCaffrey

Turn the clock forward five or ten years and the picture is very similar except the names have changed.  Terry Brookes is detailing the various aspects of Shannara and Stephen R Donaldson is obsessing about a white gold wedding ring and leprosy, and it wasn’t until Raymond E Feist and David Eddings came along to displace them in the mid-80s that their stranglehold on the shelves was broken.  By the 1990s, Katherine Kerr is in full flow in the kingdoms of Deverry and David Gemmell is holding them at the pass in Drenai and this tradition continued through into the 1990s with Robert Jordan and George R R Martin.

Legend - David Gemmell

From this we can see that every four or five years a new genre superstar is discovered and carries the baton forward.  Some of these authors continue writing or revive themselves periodically, finding a new generation of fans and warming the hearts of those that discovered them the first time around, but by then they are standing alongside the new titans of the genre.  It’s not a process of replacement, but rather one of reinforcement and regeneration.

Let’s rewind, though, because we missed something.  In 1976 Ann Rice produced Interview with a Vampire and it was a world-wide best-seller.  Sequels followed, but they were seen as horror and the place as monarch of that particular genre was already taken by Stephen King.  It didn’t change fantasy.

Interview with the Vampire - Anne Rice

Then in the mid 80s, about the time that Kerr was incarnating Deverry, a few authors started writing in a more contemporary style.  Robert Holdstock, Terri Windling, Charles de Lint and Emma Bull each had their own take, perhaps inspired by earlier contemporary works such as Alan Garner’s Weirdstone of Brisingamen (1960) but adding their own modern twist against the mainstay of pseudo-medieval fiction.

Hellblazer

At the same time there was a revival of the comic form in Swamp Thing, Sandman, Hellblazer and others.  These weren’t horror or fantasy, but followed in the wake of much earlier comics like Weird Tales and Amazing Stories, to create an interesting hinterland between the genres.

As we move into the 1990s, two female writers begin publishing stories about vampires.  In 1991 Tanya Huff begins her Blood series about a partnership between a Toronto detective and an English vampire and in 1993, Laurell K Hamilton’s Anita Blake first encounters the French vampire, Jean-Claude in Guilty Pleasures.  This is a turning point, but its significance does not become apparent until a new television series is broadcast in 1997, created by Joss Whedon.  From the beginning, the love interest between Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the vampire Angel is the relationship on which the whole story turns.  Here we have a love story between an ass-kicking young woman and a vampire.  Where Huff and Hamilton opened the sluice-gates, Whedon brought in the flood, peaking at over five million viewers for a single episode of Buffy in the US alone.

Angel and Buffy

This changed the landscape and opened up the fantasy genre to a readership it had never seen before.  Moreover, it was a readership that wanted fantasy, not in a medieval world of castles and sword-fights, but in the world of cars, guns and airplanes.  It wanted magic that could stand up to gun-shot wounds and survive in the world of databases and mobile phones.  It wanted urban fantasy.

The initial demand brought in a swathe of Buffy clones, but it was very quickly realised that there was not one new readership, but two.  The first was caught up in the flush of romance, the more dangerous and unsuitable (and undead) the guy, the better.  Most recently, Stephanie Meyer went for the teenage romantic jugular with Twilight.  The mix of teenage angst and the bad guy never gets old (and this one certainly doesn’t) and tapped into the hearts of an emerging readership.  Charlaine Harris followed up for the more mature readers with Sookie Stackhouse, on which True Blood was based, setting the standard for Paranormal Romance.

A second stream formed up around the idea seeded by Tanya Huff and found a hero in the form of a detective.  Whether it was Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden in Chicago or Kelley Armstrong’s werewolf Elena, the sleuth found a new home in urban fantasy, and why not?  Noir was an established form and this was just adding a touch of gothic to the black.  But why is this form suddenly so popular?  Why aren’t other forms of fantasy, equally worthy as they are, getting the attention?

The answer lies, I think, in the way that urban fantasy is personal and episodic.  The focus and the attention is on that one person, their relationships, their challenges in that stage of their adventures.  Consequently it makes a far better movie and much better television.  Can you imagine trying to make a TV series from George R R Martin’s, A Game of Thrones?  How about a movie of Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time?  It would have to be fifteen hours long and no-one would have a clue what was going on.

Peter Jackson’s beautifully scripted film of The Fellowship of the Ring was over three hours long, and only took us as far as Frodo leaving for Mordor, with the series having one of the largest movie budgets of all time at almost $300M.

The Fellowship of The Ring

Because urban fantasy is set in current reality, it becomes possible to adapt it into current time.  That’s why True Blood and The Dresden Files (and Buffy) could make TV, and consequently reach a whole new audience.  After the show is over that audience naturally wants more, and the sudden explosion of vampire romances and supernatural detectives is the result.

True Blood - Bill Compton and Jessica Hamby

Some might see this as a fragmentation of the genre – fantasy being untrue to its roots – but fantasy’s roots spread wider than most imagine.  From the neo-shamanistic journey’s of Carlos Castanada to the magical realism of Mikhail Bulgakov, fantasy has roots all over the world and in every generation.  Like an iceberg, at any one moment we see only a portion of its colour and depth.  It is a genre that continually renews itself, finding new voices and new expression for each generation.

The superstars of the genre do tend to hog the limelight, and it was ever thus, but when those readers have finished reading the last of the Harry Potters or completed the final Twilight book, they will be looking for something else to read.  They can be assured that there is a wealth of material waiting for them.  Yes, they will probably start by reading something very similar in the hope of reliving that experience, but over time their tastes will change and their choices will diversify.

And in a year or two, you’ll be wondering what happened to Stephanie Meyer and why the shelves are full of books from the new superstar of the genre.  I can’t tell you who that will be, only that there will be one and they will be everywhere.

So when someone tells me that the death-knell of fantasy has been rung, I smile and nod in the knowledge that it has been rung before and will be rung again, while the fantasy genre grows, flowers and renews itself with each new generation of writers and readers.

Mike Shevdon – author of Sixty-one Nails and The Road to Bedlam.

Post to Twitter

Posted in Angry Robot Special, Guest Blog Posts | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

Kell’s Legend – Guest Review

Posted on September 1, 2010 by sharl

Kell is a legendary hero according to the stories: of course stories don’t tell you everything and, having tried to put that life behind him, Kell married and raised a family. When we meet him the only person in the world who still seems to be speaking to him is his granddaughter, Nienna.

When an albino army marches on their home all Kell cares about is getting himself and Nienna out alive, so they run, with a couple of companions and try to stay far enough ahead of the army to warn their king. So, the bulk of the book from Kell’s point of view is spent running and fighting. That’s a huge simplification. On the other side of things we are following Anu, a vachine through her trials and her own journey of discovery. Through Anu’s experiences we learn more about who the invaders are and their purpose.

First off then, this is not for everybody: it’s violent, a bit gross at times and the female characters get an extremely rough time of it with their character development also turning up a bit late. Now that’s out of the way, I loved it!

The vachine are an absolutely incredible concept: fascinating, slightly appalling and something I would never have expected. I loved the way they worked and found their society fascinating, although clearly unpleasant.

Kell himself is an absolute bastard in many ways, his humanity largely tied to his granddaughter but he is trying to do the right thing and be a decent man. The strange relationship between him and his axe is wonderfully managed so that it feels natural and I’ll admit the axe is a great character in her own right.

I get the impression that some of the female characters will come into their own much more in the second book of the series, which I am looking forward to as there was an element of them blundering from one set of danger and abuse to another in this one. The writing was occasionally a little jarring to me, but not enough to throw me out of the story and I think that’s down to my reading preferences rather than the author’s ability.

It’s a fast and brutal fantasy adventure with some fun characters and some fantastic ideas. I am really excited to see the series develop.

Kell’s Legend by Andy Remic was published in the UK and Australia in September 2009. It is published in the US and Canada today, August 31st 2010.

Publisher – Angry Robot Books.

Kell’s Legend was reviewed by Adele Harrison.

Post to Twitter

Posted in Angry Robot Special, Guest Reviews | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Colin Harvey – Angry Robot Author Interview

Posted on August 31, 2010 by sharl

Hi, Colin. Can you tell us a little about your journey to becoming an Angry Robot author? How did it all come about?

My first novel was published by a small press in about 2005, and by the time I started writing Winter Song in early 2008, it was obvious that however much I liked the flexibility of working with small independents, I couldn’t live off their royalty payments – it’s impossible to get the sheer physical distribution that’s needed to drive sales.

Meanwhile my crit group’s reaction to the opening chapters of the novel’s draft made it obvious that I was onto something special with Winter Song. So I queried just about every publisher who took un-agented manuscripts, while simultaneously blitzing the agents as well to target the houses who only took agented queries.

But when I went to Fantasycon I had no intention of using it to pitch Winter Song. After all, Winter Song is SF, and this was a convention geared to fantasy. There’s no overlap there, I thought.

I was actually there to promote my first anthology, Killers. And in fact when I met Marco (Marc Gascoigne, Editorial Director of Angry Robot) in the bar, I was so preoccupied with the missing copies of the anthology – which were stuck in a warehouse seventy five miles away, with the hotel and the courier each blaming the other – that it didn’t occur to me for about twenty minutes to ask who this guy was who was so interested in my work!

I think, perhaps, that’s one of the strengths of Angry Robot. Their mix of genre authors is quite varied and there’s a great deal of choice with their releases. So, you write sci-fi; is this the genre you will continue to stick with or could you ever see yourself writing a horror or fantasy novel sometime in the future?

At the moment I’m having too much fun with SF!

As well as working on another novel in the (Terra)former / (Pan)tropist universe of Winter Song for Angry Robot, I’ve also written the near-future novel Damage Time, which is coming out (or came out depending when this is run) in October.

That particular novel is set forty years in the future, and over the last few years I’ve been writing stories set in alternate versions of that future, from ten years through twenty-five to fifty and sixty years time. In one we’ve made First Contact, in another we’re reversing global warming, in a third GM animals terrorize Britain’s streets – there are just so many interesting options that I feel like a kid in a sweetshop.

As long as I’m having such fun with SF, I’ll keep writing it. But almost all of my earlier novels had elements of horror in them without actually being out and out horror, and I have already written epic fantasy for Swimming Kangaroo Books – they published The Silk Palace in 2007.

At some point in the future I may well return to the world of The Silk Palace, which has the potential for lots more stories. Or I may write something completely different…

What sort of books did you read as a kid and what do read these days when not busy writing your own books?

My first SF reading was the Heinlein juveniles, some Andre Nortons, and Narnia. But then I discovered adult SF…

I borrowed Nebula Award Stories 3 – the 1967 winners – from the Library almost by accident; they had run out of Heinleins! This was when anthologies were huge, so I developed the habit of reading short fiction, and sampling *lots* of writers at short length. And this was at the end of the New Wave – at what turned out to be its final flourish – so I grew up wanting to write like Zelazny, Delany, early 70s Silverberg.

But I was a complete omnivore – so while I was reading disposable novels like Richard Avery’s The Expendables series (‘The Deathworms of Kratos’)* and Lin Carter’s Jandar of Callisto, which was a sub-Burroughs rip-off, I also devoured stories like Harlan Ellison’s ‘The Deathbird’ and ‘When It Changed’ by Joanna Russ. Sadly the original anthologies tailed away in the end through poor sales.

Nowadays I don’t have as much time and when I do read it’s usually for review.

So every other month I read F & SF, Interzone, Black Static and Albedo One, while at novel length I have Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Wind-up Girl in the queue. I’ve just bought his new novel, Ship Breakers, and I also have One by Conrad Williams to read.

For a change, I also read a lot of crime; I’ve worked my way through Henning Mankell’s Wallander series in order, and for a complete change of pace am reading Ngaio Marsh’s books in sequence.

* Richard Avery was one of the many pen names of Edmund Cooper, a British SF writer of old-fashioned SF who was moderately prominent in the 1960s and early 1970s.

How do you approach the research side of writing your books? Do you enjoy the process or do you prefer to just get stuck into the writing part?

Unless I know nothing at all about the subject, or unless I need specialist knowledge, I tend to just skim research as I’m going along. So if I need to know – for example – what the German equivalent of a Major is, I’ll Google two or three sites. My encyclopaedic first readers usually pick up anything else that I’ve got wrong. As long as the crucial details are correct, I try not to get too bogged down – after all, I’m writing a novel rather than a textbook.

Going back to these alternate futures you’ve wrote about as an extension of Damage Time, is there one in particular to which you’re keen to return? Is there, perhaps, one of these alternative futures which you feel most closely reflects the direction in which the “real” world is headed?

That’s actually two very different questions!

Let me take the second one first; all the stories take an idea – be it genetically engineered animals, the increasing resistance of viruses to antibiotics, or twenty-four hour lifestyles – and extrapolate it Campbell-style to extremes. While it’s classically SF-nal, it ignores the fact that something usually turns up to stop a trend in its tracks, such as (for example) AIDS in the 1980s; no one writing stories of Right On-ness in the early 1970s saw that one coming, and with the resurgence of the Right, and Voodoo Economics, etc, people calling for a return to abstinence and other reactions. I guess of all of the stories, Damage Time is probably the one most representative of the ‘real’ world, in that all kinds of trends are fighting each other for dominance.

If I was to return to the world of one of those stories, though, it would be Displacement, the novella I published last year as the title story of a collection from Swimming Kangaroo Books. It’s almost a prequel to Damage Time, in that the worlds are very similar; but in the novella aliens have arrived and (maybe) have helped alter the way is going by the time Pete Shah comes on the scene fifteen years later. Oh, and it’s set in Vancouver, which is a city I love, not the New York of Damage Time – which I also like a lot.

Lots of real world events and trends playing a part in your writing then! As a writer, you must look at these things with a slightly different eye to that of other people. What gets you most excited, or troubled, in real world social and technological events and developments?

I think that the whole issue of the likely end of (cheap) oil both excites and troubles me most, or rather how we handle it. Our world is hugely reliant on cheap petroleum, and there are so many fall-outs from that, yet politicians, vested interests and lobby groups all talk about climate change, emissions, Peak Oil, yadda yadda, without actually ever *really* addressing these issues – because to do so would giving something up without getting anything quantifiable in return. Yet if or when things fall apart, they will lose far more than they stand to lose now. It illustrates just how hard human beings find thinking ahead. And I’m no exception, of course.

You’ve just reminded me of something with that last response. A couple of years ago I remember coming across an item online about these guys, http://www.sigmaforum.org/. What do you make of stuff like that? Do you think sci-fi writers have an insight into futurism which is worthy of getting involved with government think-tanks?

I’m really torn about this. On the one hand I admire the majority of members of this group. And I’d like to think that as a member of the profession, that qualifies me by extension!

But as writers, we’re ideally qualified to write stories – we have no more talent than 39 other PhDs and highly qualified professionals at forecasting the future; see my comments above about stories written in the 1970s.

Just going back to your previous answer for a moment – you said, “it illustrates just how hard human beings find thinking ahead”. Are you quite pessimistic about the future? If the human race finds it hard to think ahead, are we ultimately destined to bring about our own destruction?

I’m actually quite an optimist, most of the time I think that we’ll muddle through somehow, but it will be despite – rather than because of – our efforts. I have the feeling that there are going to be less of us in a hundred years. A lot of whether the human race survives the century depends on how we cope with the end of cheap oil. If we can find an alternative to oil, or deal with the scarcity equably, then we stand a chance. But if one or other of the current or emergent superpowers makes a grab for the remaining oilfields, whether in Arabia or Alaska or elsewhere, then it could well be the basis for World War Last. We also have to cope with viruses that are increasingly resistant to antibiotics, an ever-increasing population to feed on less land, and dwindling resources. We’ll have to learn to cope with that, but I think that we will – just about.

One last question or two, Colin. How do you feel about the current state of sci-fi publishing? Is it faring well against the huge tide of fantasy titles floating around at the moment?

It depends which sort of SF you’re talking about. From what I can gather, deep space SF – or Space Opera if you prefer – is not doing so well as a few years ago, but these things are cyclical. By contrast near-future SF is ultra-fashionable, although that’s not why I wrote Damage Time!

But to be honest, I think that fantasy is always going to be the dominant force within publishing. It’s much closer to the ‘real’ world, and can be much more inclusive of general readerships who aren’t hard core genre fans (I’m thinking of Pratchett, Meyer, Rowling et al) so SF is likely to remain mid-list with a few exceptions, but even the big sellers in SF are unlikely to match the sales of the big sellers of fantasy.

Thanks for taking part, Colin. Best of luck with the US/Canada release of Winter Song.

It’s been my pleasure; thank you.

Winter Song by Colin Harvey was published in the UK in October 2009 and is published in the US and Canada today, August 31st 2010.

Publisher – Angry Robot Books.

Post to Twitter

Posted in Angry Robot Special, Interviews | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Slights – Guest Review

Posted on August 31, 2010 by sharl

There comes a time when you know, during your reading of a book, that it is going to have a profound effect on you, in terms of its engaging writing and also the message it delivers. Certain books spring to mind from my reading, classics such as: In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje, In the Country of Last Things by Paul Auster, Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë and The War Zone by Alexander Stuart. Slights by Kaaron Warren can be added to this list.

As an admirer of Warren’s prose for some time now, especially her collection, The Grinding House (Australian title, renamed with additional stories in the US, as The Glass Woman.), I was sure that this book would impress me, yet even with such high expectations, the book didn’t stand a chance of disappointing.

Slights is a first person narrative, seen through the eyes of Stevie Garland, a misfit, who loses her father early in life, suffers yet another major trauma when she and her mother are involved in a car accident, resulting in her mother’s death and her entering ‘the room’, a place where the people she has ‘slighted’ in life come to exact some sort of revenge on her. She is naturally disturbed by this room and vows not to slight anyone ever again upon her release from hospital. It is a vow she will make (and break) several times in the novel.

After the accident the book follows Stevie over a period of years, in which she retreats further away from the people who care about her and becomes more curious about death and what people see when they die. This is helped by her employment at a hospice.

The characters that play the biggest role in Stevie’s life are her brother, Peter, married to Maria, who Stevie can’t stand, Dougie Page, friend of the family, who worked with Stevie’s dad and Alex, Stevie’s dead father.

Stevie engages in hero-worship of her father and refuses to talk to any that speak ill of him (her uncle Dom, aunt Ruth etc.). She hangs up on Dougie Page more than once, when he tries to explain why it was that Alex died in the line of duty, supposedly protecting the innocents. They are truths Stevie cannot and will not face.

She and her brother Peter have a classic brother/sister relationship, complete with scars and a history of hurt intertwined with love. Neither of them seem well equipped to deal with the other and this causes pain and confusion throughout the narrative, not helped by the friction between Stevie and Maria, Peter’s wife.

Stevie’s obsession with ‘the room’ becomes too much for her and she becomes more and more problematic in ‘normal’ society, seeking answers from people who have not the capability to answer them.

As the years pass and the fascination and dread grow, more information is brought to light about Alex, first from Dougie Page, followed by Peter and finally by aunt Jessie, who has craftily hidden stories of Alex’s life in the margins of classic books, during her time at the library.

The characterisation and interaction between the different characters in this story is an honest representation of what it is to be flawed, to not fit into this society of ours. Warren picks out traits many of us share and grinds them into one thick paste of loneliness, tragedy, betrayal and ultimately murder.

There is also Warren’s prose, which manages that difficult bridge between elegant and engaging with relative ease. For while it is easy to see that this is a story that has been crafted and that the words have been meticulously examined to prove their worth, in no way does this slow down the novel or make it confusing to the reader, rather it is fresh and vibrant and matches the rather chaotic nature of its protagonist.

As mentioned earlier, Slights, is one of those books that reaches into your core and takes something from you, whilst ultimately leaving something you really aren’t sure you wanted to be left with.

Ellen Datlow states that Kaaron Warren must be read and I cannot and would not want to disagree with this sentiment. It is as simple as that.

Slights was published in the UK and Australia in July 2009. It is published in the US and Canada today, August 31st 2010.

Publisher – Angry Robot Books

Slights was reviewed by Mark Deniz.

Post to Twitter

Posted in Angry Robot Special, Guest Reviews | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Get Yourself Abnettized

Posted on August 19, 2010 by sharl

That's Dan Abnett, that is.

Angry Robot author Dan Abnett will be in London next week for the August BSFA meeting. He’s being interviewed by Angry Robot editor, Lee Harris.

Details can be found here and here.

Watch out for a forthcoming interview with Dan here at Dark Fiction Review to coincide with the release of Triumff in early September. The interviewer will be the lovely Mark De Jager of My Favourite Books.

Post to Twitter

Posted in Angry Robot Special, News | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Angry Robot Podcasts

Posted on August 17, 2010 by sharl

Not long now until the September releases of a number of Angry Robot titles. Three UK releases and six US/Canada releases are on the cards.

If you fancy a little Angry Robot fix ‘tween now and then, give your ears a treat and listen to the AR podcasts.

Podcast, the first. This one features Lee Harris and Marc Gascoigne on SF, the future of publishing, what kinds of books they want, and the history and future of Angry Robot Books.

Podcast, the second. The second podcast features Lauren Beukes (Moxyland and Zoo City) and Kaaron Warren (Slights).

Post to Twitter

Posted in Angry Robot Special, Other Stuff | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Blogging at Beyond Fiction

Posted on August 17, 2010 by sharl

I’ve got a blog post up at Beyond Fiction, a little something I’m involved with away from Dark Fiction Review. I’m reviewing the Bryant & May Mysteries by Christopher Fowler, a thus far excellent series of detective novels.

Christopher Fowler.

Post to Twitter

Posted in Other Stuff | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment