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Announcement time!

First of all, the launch of Baggage: http://www.eneitpress.com/news.php (we'll make sure that the formal parts of it are over in time so that everyone can attend the Opening Ceremony of AussieCon).

And then there's the Australian Spec Fic blog carnival: http://www.horrorscope.com.au/2010/07/australian-speculative-fiction-blog.html

And my new piece for Bibliobuffet: http://www.bibliobuffet.com/bookish-dreaming

There are several reviews of Baggage out. Elizabeth's going to put up regular posts on the Eneit Press website, linking to them, so you don't need to miss out. In a few weeks, I'll do a summary post, linking to all the reviews I know, but not today. Today my life is full of deadlines and I didn't even have time to code URLs.

I have a real entry, with content, for later in the day, but I'm saving it as a reward to myself for finishing half the things that need finishing today. I'm not even nearly there yet, alas, so please be patient. In the meantime, check out those links and feel the sense of connectiveness. Or eat some chocolate.

PS I'll be taking a lunch break round this time today week, in Sydney. I'm still not sure where I'll be (there are a few places I can do research, and I need to get past these deadlines to think about which I need most right now) but all except one is in the city and the other is Fisher Library, so if anyone wants to meet up for lunch and can get to the city, please hoy me. I can possibly do coffee in the late afternoon, but that's harder. I guess I could meet up for coffee at breakfast time, too, if that's what's going to help me see friends. Anyone up for an 8 am meeting in the Sydney city area? How about at QVB?

Baggage is part of Life: Simon Brown introduces his story

The heading makes it sound as if there's a 30 book series where speculative fiction writers deal with big issues. That'd be cool, wouldn't it? Not thirty volumes, but a few, anyhow, looking at all sorts of aspects of life and culture and country in ways that challenge. Cultural baggage is all you get from me, and that only from an Australian direction.

Tonight the Baggage post is from Simon Brown. I asked him some questions and he wrote me a seamless answer, so I dumped the questions and you get pure Simon. This is a good thing. Simon's short stories are very special, for those who haven't encountered them yet. Most people know his writing from his novels, but I'm one of those who prefer his short fiction. I suspect it's a matter of reading lots of both and making up one's own mind. And that's really enough from me.

Simon says:

I've been writing since I was nine years old, and from the very start wrote science fiction and fantasy, influenced largely by SF I'd seen on television. I didn't start reading SF until I was 11, starting with Captain W. E. Johns' Kings of Space series, then quickly moving on to "juveniles" by Heinlein, Nourse, Norton and Southall. By the age of 14 I was determined to become an author, and wrote pretty well every day. It took a long time to sell my first story, and a very long time to sell my first novel.

For the most part, I approach my work impersonally, and as objectively as possible. I regard my characters as narrative tools, and I am ruthless in doing to them whatever's necessary to make the story work, including cutting them out entirely. I very rarely feel I have any emotional investment in a story, even if the story is written to spark an emotional response in the reader; getting the reader to feel involved in the story, to "react" to it, is my job.

I can spend years writing one short story (I think my record is 12 years), so the short time it took me to write "Welcome, Farewell" was something of a relief. Having said that, however, I spent a solid couple of weeks thinking about how the story would work, and what elements I would use to keep it moving. One element, the burying of stillborns and miscarriages in the back yard of the midwife's house, is historically true, not just for Milton but for country towns all over the world, and is something I've always wanted to include in a story, but until "Welcome, Farewell" did not have an appropriate vehicle, so in a sense I suppose this piece was years in the making.

I'm influenced by every author I read. Even bad writers can still teach you a thing or two (how not to do something, for example). If I had to list those who've been most important to my own development as a writer, it would go on for pages. One author I always recommend to new writers, however, is John le Carre, because his dialogue is brilliant, and dialogue is one of those essential elements in fiction that new writers often find most difficult. The only other advice I consistently give new writers is to remember to describe the world with all their senses: how things smell and sound and feel and taste, not just what they look like; this is something I constantly have to remind myself about, as well.

What Australian writers should people be reading now? Lord, where do I start? Just in our own field there's Nix and Douglass, Williams and Dedman, Warren and Biancotti, Lawson and Broderick and Dowling and Lanagan and Sussex and Dann ... if I go on I'm afraid of missing out someone who deserves to be included. Start with anthologies to get a taste of how they write and what they're interested in, and follow up the authors whose stories you like the most. You'll be surprised at the extraordinary range of stories you can get in one anthology, even a "themed" anthology like Baqggage.