Category: fiction

Still focussing on little things

personby Gillian Polack
schedulePosted on

An Australian prime minister got into much trouble for quoting (many, many years ago) that “Life wasn’t meant to be easy.” We’re so busy focussing on the big picture and the life-threatening health issues that sometimes the small pass us by. I’m a constant reminder to others that the small is also important. And that life is not always easy and it’s seldom simple or straightforward.

I turned sixty on 25 April, and had a good (but small and quiet) birthday. I wanted to do All the Things, but pandemic is pandemic. It’s just as well I wasn’t impossibly ambitious because I had a bit of an infection in a joint on my right hand. It became quite severe very quickly and I’m still on antibiotics for it. Today is the first day I’ve been able to type anything that long since then. Everything hurt, including sleep.

That’s my reminder. Turning sixty is no big deal. Ignoring a sore finger can become one, if one doesn’t take care.

I needed the reminder, because around me all kinds of people have moved back into normal life… and I can’t do anything like that until I’m vaccinated. I receive my first shot on 21 May.

I’ll be very busy the next few days, for I have until Friday to catch up on everything delayed due to the hand-that-would-not work. I can’t put any of it off, for the edits of a novel are about to come through. The novel was delayed by pandemic ramifications (it affects our lives in so many ways) and I’m really looking forward to seeing what a US editor makes of my Australian voice. So I’m going from bad to wonderful, via a busy path.

Today was an in-between day. I was well enough to do an hour’s work and three hours of meetings. The rest of the time I complained at people, obtained more medication, and told everyone “May the Fourth Be With You.” I watched a bit of Star Wars, for it seemed the right thing to do.

I started writing this after midnight. This post, then is my first step towards much writing of various kinds.  In fact, you are the first readers of anything more than two painful sentences in nine days.

I’ll report back in a fortnight and let you know how everything went. In the meantime, don’t do what I did! If something hurts and you have no idea why, take it to the doctor as quickly as possible.

Because of the pandemic, I planned to celebrate my birthday for as long as it takes. I’ll start again when I stop hurting. Soon. Very soon.

Our prime minister complained for the rest of his life that we’d all missed the critical second part of his quote. Malcolm Fraser had paraphrased George Bernard Shaw and was trying to tell us all that life could, nevertheless, be delightful. Like my birthday. Like seeing friends through Zoom. Fraser made a tactical error in assuming that the press cared about communicating the second half of his quote but right now… his idea wasn’t far removed from my everyday.

Nancy Jane Moore Is Reading This Week

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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I’m doing two readings online this week.

The first is on Wednesday, April 21, at Story Hour, at 7 PM PDT on Zoom or Facebook Live.

I’ll be reading “Thank God for the Road,” which appears in the new anthology edited by Shannon Page Black-Eyed Peas on New Year’s Day: An Anthology of Hope.

I’ll also be reading “The Founding of New Crockett, Texas,” which appeared as part of the Uneven Earth website’s Not Afraid of the Ruins series and will be included in a print anthology of those stories coming out later this year.

On Sunday, April 25, I’ll be part of the FOGcon Authors Read! It runs from 5-7 PM PDT and is headlined by Marie Brennan and Effie Seiberg. I’ll be doing a five-minute selection from For the Good of the Realm, my novel coming out June 1 from Aqueduct Press. To attend, sign up here.

Cavalcade of Audiobooks

personby Jeffrey A. Carver
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The Infinite Sea audiobook coverI didn’t start out thinking I would discount the entire Chaos Chronicles series in audiobook format. But when Chirp Books approved a special promotion on The Infinite Sea (just $2.99! right now!), one thing led to another. They suggested I steeply discount some of the other books in the series to keep the hoped-for wave of sales going, and I thought that sounded like a fine idea. By the time I was done, I’d put the entire series on sale! Even Blackstone Audio, which publishes the first book, Neptune Crossing, has graciously joined in.

That’s six audiobooks, all discounted at up to 80% off list price. All narrated by the incredible Stefan Rudnicki. Limited time, folks. Limited time only. These prices will never be lower!

If you’re not familiar with Chirp Books, it’s an audiobookstore owned by Bookbub, and they offer daily super-deals of really good books, just like Bookbub. Except in the case of Chirp, they actually sell the books, and don’t just advertise them. (You need the Chirp app to listen to them. But it’s a good app, similar to the Audible app. I use it myself, all the time, because I like deals on audiobooks.)

SNAP THEM UP NOW

Seriously, though, why am I doing this? With these discounts, I won’t make much on any individual sale. But it can help put these books into the hands (ears?) of lots of readers. And that’s the real reason. I want people to be able to download, and enjoy, the whole series without spending a fortune. And, I hope, the resulting momentum and reviews will spur further sales—and help me earn back the cost of producing these books within my lifetime.

So, if you try these books and you enjoy them, please do me the return favor of posting reviews. It really makes a difference!

By the way, probably because I’m out of my mind, I’m also applying a similar special promotional discount in the Apple store. So all you Apple purists, come on down!

While supplies last, limited time only!

Cover Reveal: For the Good of the Realm

personby Nancy Jane Moore
schedulePosted on

My fantasy novel For the Good of the Realm is coming out from Aqueduct Press on June 1. Here’s the cover, designed by Aqueduct’s Kath Wilham using art by Ruby Rae Jones.

Cover of For the Good of the Realm

I am very happy with the cover along with being very happy to have a book coming out. Continue reading “Cover Reveal: For the Good of the Realm“…

Science Fiction Story Bundle from SFWA!

personby Jeffrey A. Carver
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SFWA Story Bundle - book covers

A terrific new Story Bundle has just been released, and I’m part of it! It’s called the The Expansive Futures Sci-Fi Bundle, and it’s curated and sponsored by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). It’s a great way to get a big pile of great new books for almost nothing, and support a good cause in the process. It’s a terrific deal. https://storybundle.com/scifi

I’m going to let Amy Duboff explain it. She’s the one who oversaw the curation of the package: Continue reading “Science Fiction Story Bundle from SFWA!”…

The Great Gatsby Isn’t

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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[Author’s Note: I read recently that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short novel The Great Gatsby is now in the public domain. That makes me hope that someone will write a version of it that demonstrates how destructive the Gatsbys are to the world in which we live. Or at least, that someone will pen a vicious parody.

Though perhaps it would be even better if it faded away into irrelevance. Back in 2013, after hearing a radio program lauding the book, I wrote the following post. My opinion hasn’t changed. You will note that I mentioned Donald Trump in this piece, so I remind you that I wrote it long before he spent four years wrecking our country. The last line of this piece feels horribly prophetic.]

The radio program Studio 360 devoted an entire hour in 2013 to The Great Gatsby as part of its American Icons series. Various writers and scholars, including Azar Nafisi, author of the delightful Reading Lolita in Tehran, and the novelist Jonathan Franzen, waxed poetic about the book, which the Studio 360 website describes as “the great American story of our age.”

At some point in the program, one of the speakers — I think it was Franzen, but there’s not a transcript available and I’m not willing to listen to the whole show again to check — said something to the effect that Gatsby was a great dreamer. As I understood it, he thought the story was about someone with a great dream who got shot down for it.

“No, no, no,” I said to the radio (I yell at the radio a lot). “The trouble with Gatsby is that he had the wrong dreams. He wanted the wrong things.”

At least, that’s how I remembered the book. Gatsby’s obsession with being rich and being taken for a person with “old money” seemed to me to be worthless dreams. But the only time I’d read the book was back in high school and the only thing I remembered about it was Gatsby showing Nick and Daisy around his mansion.

Figuring that I might have missed something back then, I re-read it. And had the same reaction. Continue reading “The Great Gatsby Isn’t”…

Some Days…

personby Gillian Polack
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My brain is switched on to food references this week. I’m writing a paper on food in Australian fantasy novels. Even if I’ve read the novel before, I’m re-reading it, because I need to apply that brain-switch and analyse everything for food. It’s hard work. I’m placing references into ten different categories. The net result of this was I had no energy to cook yesterday or today.

This never happened when I was younger.

I was going to write a long screed describing food, because it’s my current (and absorbing) work, then I changed my mind and wanted to explain that chronic fatigue is impacted by emotional fatigue, which is why food research led to such a state of exhaustion. The events of the last eighteen months welled up and I missed all my lost friends and I became a mewling mess. I decided you didn’t need a long piece today, for the world is a difficult place right now.

Take this as a moral. Have early nights when life is stressed. Eat comfort food. Cry when you have to.

And I’ll be working on foodways for a bit longer, so maybe one day I’ll tell you about how writers use food to create miracles in fantasy fiction. Except when they don’t.

A New Book

personby Crow, Editor
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coverThe humans in the treehouse think they can sneak things past us, but we crows see all. One of the humans, Pati Nagle, has just published a book, Intermezzo: Household Matters by Patrice Greenwood. That’s not the name she uses around here, but humans are funny sometimes.

This is a short book, all about characters in a series of mysteries. Here’s the announcement she tried to sneak by us.

She calls this an ebook, which seems to mean that it exists only in the imagination, but she says there will be a version on real paper soon, with a shiny cover. Those are more fun for us.

Chaos 1-4 Tor hardcovers

Etsy and Me, and Coffee* Makes Three!

personby Jeffrey A. Carver
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Chaos 1-4 Tor hardcovers

Back in the day, I used to sell autographed copies of my books from my website, by way of a simple pricelist page that could be printed and mailed to me. I didn’t sell a lot, but it helped me connect with some readers. Then the web got more complicated, and sales tax got more complicated, and I gave up on that model. Now, I’m selling autographed books through Etsy! Yes, that place you go to (statistically more likely if you are female) to buy crafts and things. It turns out you can sell books there, too, and a number of authors and booksellers do just that. Now I am, too.

Here’s what I’ve got in my StarRiggerBooks store so far:

All autographed and personalized as requested. Great gift ideas, right? Come and be my customer! Or share it with a book-loving friend!

*You didn’t think I could build an Etsy store without the help of coffee, did you?

Gillian Polack Wins A. Bertram Chandler Award

personby Crow, Editor
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Gillian Polack at work The Australian Science Fiction Foundation has named Dr. Gillian Polack the 2020 winner of its A. Bertram Chandler Award for outstanding achievement in Australian science fiction.

The Chandler Award, which is juried, is given for lifetime achievement in science fiction. In announcing the Gillian’s selection, the Foundation noted her significant work in fandom as well as her outstanding fiction, including her Ditmar-award-winning novel The Year of the Fruit Cake.

We here in the Treehouse are delighted to see Gillian’s multifaceted skills and projects recognized by the Foundation. Congratulations to Gillian for the award and to the Foundation for making such an excellent choice.