deborahb.blog

Via Twitter

2009-12-27T13:00:30Z

Today on twitter:

09:58 I missed you, @nicole_r_murphy! :) #
14:36 True Blood Season 2. WAAAAAAY better than Season 1, which I almost couldn't finish. Gah, Sookie, you live up to your name! #
14:55 So exciting: have discovered 'authentic' Mexican food supplier in Sydney! Via Food Safari, SBS: www.fireworksfoods.com.au/ #
21:23 One of my fave end-of-year activities: emailing the future, at www.futureme.org. #

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2009-12-24T13:01:26Z

Today on twitter:

17:50 Cocktail hour, Xmas eve, a cool breeze has started up, all errands are run. Peace to you and yours. And to all, a goodnight! #

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Via Twitter

2009-12-23T13:01:53Z

Today on twitter:

14:01 #1 Xmas gift = books! bit.ly/7n0ieG #

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2009-12-22T13:01:40Z

Today on twitter:

13:57 Last day of the sale! RT @Krasnostein: Check out the Twelfth Planet Press sale here: girliejones.livejournal.com/1514206.html #

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More on endings

2009-12-21T23:01:46Z

Over at the American Book Review, they’ve made a list of 100 best last lines from novels. Most of ‘em aren’t even spoilers. Some of ‘em really make you wonder what the hell kinda book came BEFORE that line. Check it out.

Also a note to whatever hacker tried to line up vietnameseorphansfund.org to point to my website — thanks, but I’ve deleted that now. And: what the?

Mirrored from my website at deborahbiancotti.net. You can respond here or at the other deborahb blog.

Via Twitter

2009-12-21T13:01:17Z

Today on twitter:

09:16 *sings* Holiday! Hooooliday! HOLIDAY, holiday, holiDAY! HOLIDAY! #
22:15 RT @kiruba: Love Google's New Year gift for us. www.google.com/advertising/holiday2009/ #

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Via Twitter

2009-12-19T13:01:42Z

Today on twitter:

19:59 Dexter S4 finale. Holy crap. #

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Via Twitter

2009-12-17T13:01:30Z

Today on twitter:

21:07 Ah, man. Die Hard. I love this film. And so Christmassy! #
21:11 RT @editormum75: RT: @Petermball: 7 days left of TPP stocking stuffer sale, incl. Horn: tiny.cc/VJuKH (And A Book of Endings) #
21:39 RT @Krasnostein: ok just done a check, I only have 9 copies of Horn left. Silly Season Stocking Stuffer Sale: bit.ly/76d1C2 #
21:42 RT @DeannaHoak: Laredo, Texas, pop. 250,000, soon to be largest US city with no bookstore: is.gd/5r1JX #

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In general

2009-12-17T12:13:23Z

I can’t believe how OLD Die Hard looks. Please, goddess, please, don’t let anyone entertain the idea of doing a re-make of this film. Not only because they’d screw it up, but also because who could possibly afford all the glass they’d need to break/smash/shoot in the action sequences? Rat-a-tat-a-tat!!!

In other news:

* Twelfth Planet Press is offering an Xmas sale on all Aurealis-nominated items! Buy now, skip the postage (or, if overseas, half the postage).

* Danel Olson, editor of EXOTIC GOTHIC & the upcoming TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY GOTHIC is interviewed at Bibliophile Stalker. My whole understanding of gothic lit, when compared to Danel’s understanding, would take up a space about the size of his smallest cuticle.

* There is or was a subscriberthon over at Overland, which I discovered while reading THAT article on Nick Cave, but which I now can’t find a particular link to. Did I make it up? I just can’t be sure anymore.

* A cool reference in a steampunk fanzine I stumbled across re. the Why Steampunk Now? panel I chaired at WFC this year with Ann VanderMeer, Michael Swanwick, Liz Gorinsky & Nisi Shawl, Exhibition Hall (Issue #4 — but warning! The PDF is chockful of steampunk photos & consequently nearly 7Mb). The review mainly references Nisi’s eye-opening statements on the apparently-almost-obligatory whiteness of steampunk, which of course ends in a challenge to writers to come up with new, exciting, multicultural steampunk stories. Nisi inspired me. I for one plan on investigating this further!

…the best panel I’ve ever been to on the subject of Steampunk was at the World Fantasy Convention over Halloween weekend. [snip]
There’ve been hundreds of Steampunk panels. I was on my first in 2003 at the Seattle Westercon with Alexander Irvine and Gordon Van Gelder. This one dwarfed that one.

Chairing that panel was one of the all-out highlights of 2009 for me. There was such a buzz in the audience & so much thoughtfulness & care from the panellists. I’ll post some more notes about it if people are interested.

Mirrored from my website at deborahbiancotti.net. You can respond here or at the other deborahb blog.

Via Twitter

2009-12-16T13:01:57Z

Today on twitter:

21:23 In which I am accused of being tasteless: deborahb.livejournal.com/ #

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Chastised

2009-12-16T10:17:55Z

One of the opportunities A Book of Endings created was the chance to get my writing in front of a wider audience. To see what the rest of the world might think. The Australian genre scene is so warm & welcoming that I’d grown suspicious of the kind words occasionally attributed to my work in reviews & conversations.

So I pinged a couple of wider-stream review sources to see if, well, if the Emperor really was wearing any clothes.

The Syd Uni Alumni review came out first & said: “These are unnerving and elliptical, in the main, and tread a fine line between the everyday mundaneity that never is and overblown literary style that can be tiresome when too self-conscious. Mostly they stay on the right side of the line and intrigue more than irritate.”

Yes, I spotted it, too. “Mostly”. But that’s cool. Given the book is largely retrospective I could even entertain the idea that maybe the irritating ones were the early ones, and the new ones are better. Hell, I’m occasionally optimistic that way.

The Short Review is a site dedicated to short story writing, & is definitely worth checking out. Of my book, reviewer Mario Guslandi said, “Deborah Biancotti’s debut collection left me both hopeful and frustrated. Here we have a writer with a great potential, able to produce some outstanding stories, who, unfortunately, often wastes her talent writing tasteless pieces with implausible plots and nondescript characters. When inspired, Biancotti is a top notch author. When uninspired, the author of mediocre tales can irritate, in view of what she can do when at the top of her game.”

I know, I know. Now you, like me, want to know which are the tasteless stories!

Well, I guess taste is a matter of … erm, taste. So I can’t fault Guslandi for his passionate chastisement of my choice of writing subjects. Though I am curious about it. Maybe I’ll email him to find out what he means. Since he also reviews for SF Site, infinity plus, Horrorworld and Alien Online, it’s certainly not that he’s NOT a genre reader — which would be the easiest out.

Guslandi then go on to discuss the “five sparkling gems” of the book — and this is the really interesting stuff, I find: I love finding out what stories *worked* for people. There’s no predicting it, and here again I’m surprised to find what he enjoyed the most. If I’d had to choose my 5 best stories, would I have chosen these? … Hmmm. Maybe not.

If you’ve read the book, I’d love to know what stories worked for you — & what you found positively TASTELESS! Comment or email as is your will, noble readers.

Mirrored from my website at deborahbiancotti.net. You can respond here or at the other deborahb blog.

Via Twitter

2009-12-15T13:01:55Z

Today on twitter:

09:40 Spellcheck just suggested changing my surname to Banknote. I like its optimism. #

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Via Twitter

2009-12-14T13:02:16Z

Today on twitter:

21:25 Trying to subscribe to Overland. Online form no work for me right now. Curse you, shaped-net-access-'cos-I-downloaded-2-much-this-month! #
21:28 Too late for #fridayreads, but started Camus' THE OUTSIDER today. ... Weirdly compelling. #

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And in today’s unusual discoveries…

2009-12-14T10:11:04Z

… turns out you can still buy Redsine #7, edited by Trent Jamieson & Garry Nurrish, from about 2002.

I loved Redsine and always wished it had continued for longer. It was a classy zine, and short (a good characteristic for a zine, imho: one-sitting-reading always scores well with me).

And I love it not only because it was the home of my second-ever published (and first-ever completed) story, Silicon Cast — which is, ahem, *also* still available thanks to GoogleBooks. Well, in part.

Not sure how I feel about that. *pauses to reflect* Well, pretty relaxed.

Silicon Cast feels very young to me now, but still has a relatively straight-forward horror narrative that makes me grin. I do love a bit of ‘ew’ in my reading. Terry Dowling, my first teacher, read this over for me when I was struggling and it was certainly in part because of his encouragement that I ever continued with writing. And yes, you can read a hardcopy version in A Book of Endings if you’re so inclined.

Anyhow. If you read the full version, let me know what you think of the story!

Mirrored from my website at deborahbiancotti.net. You can respond here or at the other deborahb blog.

Readers and writers and short stories

2009-12-13T03:04:09Z

Honestly? I got into short stories because it seemed like a good way to learn to write. It’s become much more than that, of course, but I’ve not paused very often to think about what place they do have for me, and further what place they have for readers.

I’ve been surprised by the amount of interest in A Book of Endings, for example, and overwhelmed by the response of readers. Enough of my friends not only bought the book but *read* it to make me think people actually are interested in the short form. When challenged, plenty of my friends were adamant that yes, they really did like reading short stories even before my book came along and yes, they weren’t just buying it out of sympathy (though I suspect some of them were!) that I thought I’d overlooked something.

I admit I always thought short stories were rather esoteric, enjoyed more by writers than readers. Short stories are often a harder read than novels, I think. Because you have to pay attention the whole way through. Novels you can drift in and out, doze off on a daybed, miss a few words because the hammock is swinging too hard — all those hiccups that occur in perfect reading fantasies. But overall it’s easier to keep track of a novel because even if you miss bits the narrative spine will hopefully pull you through.

So I was still surprised when I read this in the Syd Uni Alumni magazine review of A Book of Endings: “Biancotti is further proof of why readers enjoy the short story, even though publishers prefer to pretend we don’t.”

And over here at the Guardian, some discussion about why women, in particular, are being recognised in the short story field (are they? well, isn’t that good news).

Short stories, on the other hand, are famously uncommercial; that, coupled with the perceived exactingness of the form and its heavyweight literary lineage, means that short stories by women are taken seriously – and awarded accordingly.

That would be ironic if true: women gain more recognition in short stories because short stories aren’t coveted by publishers either.

Mirrored from my website at deborahbiancotti.net. You can respond here or at the other deborahb blog.

Via Twitter

2009-12-12T13:00:57Z

Today on twitter:

14:30 Pls RT @JohnBirmingham: Peter Watts, one of my fave authors, beaten, monstered by US border security. Needs our help. bit.ly/5Gz5Dx #

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Via Twitter

2009-12-11T13:01:23Z

Today on twitter:

21:31 Twitter. Don't abandon me. What's with the iPhone app refusing to verify the new password? Fckitt. #
22:16 RT @newscientist: Weird sky pattern seen in Norway was a failed Russian missile launch bit.ly/6E3yZc #

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Pretty things

2009-12-11T10:28:28Z

I love a good Friday night off from social engagement, committment, plans, duties, things-to-do. A Friday night on the lounge with a good book and some Law and Order episodes on TV.

And I love new pretty links.

Today:

Looking for business card inspiration, I found this awesomeness:
http://creativebits.org/cool_business_card_designs

Looking for the gift for the girl with everything? How about designing her some new shoes:
http://www.shoesofprey.com/

And here, a local blog on craft and pretty, inspirational things:
http://dailyimprint.blogspot.com/

Mirrored from my website at deborahbiancotti.net. You can respond here or at the other deborahb blog.

Via Twitter

2009-12-10T13:01:09Z

Today on twitter:

15:18 I'm on 'roids. For my dodgy ear. *roar* !!! #
17:49 RT @tweetmeme @BlackOnline HorrorScope: Book Review: A Book of Endings bit.ly/78NTdU #

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lj betrays me

2009-12-10T03:44:24Z

I’ve fallen victim to the no-emails-on-comments thing on livejournal. So if you’ve commented against my posts/comments & I haven’t responded, it’s because I didn’t get the memo. Sorry ’bout that.

Mirrored from my website at deborahbiancotti.net. You can respond here or at the other deborahb blog.

Caved in

2009-12-09T13:45:51Z

I’ve always enjoyed Nick Cave’s music, in much the same way I’ve always enjoyed Meatloaf’s music. Yes, really. In essence they’re two sides of the same coin: Cave’s music is a kind of slowed-down cock-rock, equally melodramatic in its imagery and just as catchy as the music of his colleague Meatloaf — but slightly more suited to your more mournful moods.

Yes, it is weird to read a post from me about music, isn’t it? Perhaps you’re wondering what on earth possessed me to try it this time.

Well, Anwyn Crawford possessed me, because over at Overland she busts a few myths about Nick Cave’s music & exposes some of what’s been bugging me about his position as a mainstream-acceptable misogynist.

To reaffirm my position as musically naive, let me say that I first came across Nick Cave when he teamed up with that bastion of esoteric musicality, Kylie Minogue, on the album Murder Ballads in 1996. This is somewhere over 20 years after Cave began his musical career (wikipedia informs me), so clearly I’m not fast on the uptake. But ‘Where the Wild Roses Grow’ got my attention. Quite simply, I loved how it sounded. Also pleasing: the lyrics, foreshortened by the limited vocal ranges of Minogue and Cave, make for an easy sing-along.

But I also remember being struck by the tension between the satisfyingly moody music with its brooding theme of destructive desire, and the portrayal of Minogue — this very successful (at least locally, at least by then) woman who allowed herself to be portrayed quite literally as an object. A dead object, by the end of the video, but no less pretty for that.

Isn’t it wonderful how death can preserve an attractive young woman? And not at all fantastical.

(Kiddies, I jest: there is no such thing as a beautiful corpse.)

The romantic setting and the horror of the slow-dawning discovery of just what, exactly, is going on in the video do provide a delightful frisson of pending disaster. Mmm, delicious! But the moment the snake (Freud would be pleased) slides suggestively across the crotch of Minogue’s virginally-white-dressed corpse (Freud would be ecstatically pleased, then he would need to smoke a cigarette and doze off for a time), I do remember thinking that you didn’t need a degree in symbolism to see through the obtuse phallic meaningfulness of the piece. Surely, I thought, they’re having a laugh? Surely there is some tongue-in-cheek or ironic *thing* going on here that I just wasn’t getting? Clearly I wasn’t in on the joke. Instead of mistrusting the appellation ‘ironic’, I mistrusted my own, apparently silly and over-sensitive reaction.

‘How odd,’ I thought, and continued to find the song and the singers (Cave for his coffin-chic earnestness and Minogue for her passive subjugation) fascinating. In effect, then, the song achieved what it set out to do. I bought some Cave music and each time I noticed the video on TV, I leaned in a little closer — looking for the punchline.

As to *that* book cover shown here in a more tasteful variation of the Australian version hilariously discussed over here (on a new favourite blog!), I did find myself drawn to the cover — and yet repelled when I spied the author’s name. But I couldn’t explain *what* it was about Nick Cave that repulsed and intrigued me. I kept thinking that Cave was so very mainstream, so very every-fcking-where, that I just wasn’t getting it. He writes music, and books, and stageplays, and movies. What *was* it that made me so suspicious? I could never quite put my finger on it.

But this is what interests me even more about Crawford’s essay:

His snobbery and towering ego both feed into our lingering cultural cringe: we think he’s smart because he’s popular in Europe, and we admire him because his bullish self-confidence is so different to the ritual self-deprecation that marks many Australian artists. He reads books! He lives in Brighton! The man’s a genius! In reality, Cave’s cartoon profanity is no more sophisticated or evolved than the bump’n’grind of gangsta rap

Because I’m beginning to wonder myself what price we’re paying in Australia for our tall-poppy syndrome? Through our self-deprecating approach, are we turning our artists, ourselves, into the burger-and-fries of the artistic world? Are we making it easy for the ego-maniacs to outwit us?

And would Nick Cave be any more attractive by Meatloaf’s dashboard lights?

Mirrored from my website at deborahbiancotti.net. You can respond here or at the other deborahb blog.

Auspicious endings

2009-12-07T11:04:39Z

In good news, our little book-that-could, A Book of Endings, available now from Twelfth Planet Press, has been nominated for an Aurealis Award in the Best Collection category. Yay!

Also, yay! to see such fine fellows as Paul Haines, Geoff Maloney, Robbie Matthews, Donna Hanson and Greg Egan in the collection, too. In fact, overall the AA list is huuuuuuuuge this year, with plenty of friends in the list. So I’m feeling right chuffed with the whole thing. Full list of nominees here.

(For the home viewers, yes the list should read that the editors were Alisa Krasnostein & Ben Payne, of course! Amends are on the way.)

Also: A Book of Endings now has its own page at the National Library of Australia. Apparently you can borrow it from the Main Reading Room (Australian Collection).

AND over at HorrorScope, internationally* renowned man-of-taste Chuck McKenzie waxes lyrical about the book. Really. He makes it sound frikking brilliant. Where do I buy this thing again? Oh, yeah.

—–
* Originally, I typed that as ‘internally renowned’. Which is probably a compliment in some circles. Most notably, surgical ones.

Mirrored from my website at deborahbiancotti.net. You can respond here or at the other deborahb blog.

Via Twitter

2009-12-05T13:01:13Z

Today on twitter:

19:07 RT @FelicityDowker: possibly the largest orgy of congratulating I've ever witnessed. Is there an Aurealis Award for that? There should be. #

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Via Twitter

2009-12-04T13:01:30Z

Today on twitter:

18:12 RT @scribepub: Vote for your favourite short story collection of 2009 bit.ly/7ivjb1 #

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Via Twitter

2009-12-03T13:01:26Z

Today on twitter:

14:41 Gothic essay on No Country for Old Men handed in! Only about a day late. Brain pretzel. Still love the book, though. #
18:57 I've just noticed something: it's the festive season. #

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