'Sea-Hearts' is up for a World Fantasy Award!
Yes, it's true! And in fine company. Congratulations to all nominees.
One of my big jobs for August is done. The Australian/Vogel Award is judged, to all three judges' and A&U's satisfaction. Now we just have to all keep the result under our hats until May next year.
The next week and a bit will be wall-to-wall grant applications. Possibly the weekend after next I'll get to work on a short story. Possibly.
One of my big jobs for August is done. The Australian/Vogel Award is judged, to all three judges' and A&U's satisfaction. Now we just have to all keep the result under our hats until May next year.
The next week and a bit will be wall-to-wall grant applications. Possibly the weekend after next I'll get to work on a short story. Possibly.
posted by Among Amid While at 6:01 am
8 Comments:
That is awesome. Congratulations! I nominated without much hope, because it seemed like not many people actually had their hands on X6. But...yay!
Thoraiya
Congratulations on the nomination!
Fingers crossed!
Keith x
Where can I read it, Margo?
Judy (and anyone else who's curious), you can get hold of 'Sea-Hearts' in Keith Stevensen (ed.) X6: A Novelanthology, coeur de lion, 2009. Also, soon, in Prime Books' The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2010, edited by Paula Guran (coming out in October).
Congrats! I can't wait to read your next short story. I just read "singing my sister down" and I am excited about your new work! (:
I also just read "Singing My Sister Down". Two questions: How did you come up with the inspiration for "Singing My Sister Down", and how do you come up with ideas for stories like that?
Here's the relevant bit of an interview I did with Locus magazine a while ago: "Some people say 'Singing My Sister Down' sounds Aboriginal, but it was more African than anything else. The genesis was a documentary I saw on our version of PBS, the Special Broadcasting Service, part of the 'Global Village' series (originally French documentaries). This one was about some ex-French colony in Africa where there were these big tar pits right on the edge of town, and sometimes people would drunkenly drive their trucks into the tar, not realize it, and go down. There was also the image that in winter you go there to warm your feet, but you can't stand there too long because you sink. While I was watching, I was thinking of human uses to which that tar pit might be put. You could let all sorts of problems disappear into that pit, couldn't you? And it all went from there." (This andother extracts can be found at http://www.locusmag.com/2005/Issues/06Lanagan.html)
So you can see that ideas can pop up from things I watch on television; but that's just one source of ideas. When you start making yourself into a writer, you also start making yourself into an idea-collecting machine, noting down ideas for stories from signs you misread, conversations you overhear, lines from songs, odd otherwise-useless but interesting thoughts that pass through your head. Then when it comes time to begin a story you have notebooks and notebooks full of starting points; you then choose the coolest of those and begin.
At the back of my Black, Red and Yellow collections of short stories, I've included a section that lists as many of the story-beginnings as I can remember. From these lists you can see that ideas come from pretty much anywhere, once you've got used to catching them.
I hope this is useful! Best wishes, Margo.
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