Sean Williams

Kim Wilkins wrote a very important paper last year* on the treatment of fantasy literature in mainstream media, which I'll be nominating for the Atheling this year. I urge you to do the same. If you haven't read it, click here for a PDF. Here's the summary:


Fantasy, naturally, comes out rather poorly. If nothing else, read on to see how we fare, column inches-wise, in terms of book reviews in major papers.  It's shameful, but not surprising.

* Kim Wilkins, "Popular genres and the Australian literary community: the case of fantasy fiction", Journal of Australian Studies 32.2 (2008): 265-278.

Thanks, everyone, for the best wishes (the haiku remedies particularly helped). I'm back on-deck now and pondering which news to blog first: Swancon, the launches of Magic Dirt and The Changeling, finishing The Grand Conjunction, the Ditmar Awards, my Dickless status, the wonderful rain in Adelaide...?

I guess I'll start with the first one and work my way through. Swancon was a blast. Thanks to everyone involved for putting on another wonderful show. There have been reports posted on-line and I don't see the need in repeating what's been said many times over, but the guests were wonderful, the masquerade was a hoot, and the weekend in general went by in a happy, drunken blur. "Tick...tick...tick...tick...BOOM!"

A very big thank you to everyone who attended the launches, and even engaged in audience participation when pressed to. Magic Dirt is out and proud, and available from Ticonderoga in two splendid editions. Buy it now, if only for the cover! The Changeling is just as beautiful, imho, and a very different read. The feedback has been wonderful. I hope every kid in Australia reads and is freaked out by it.

Saturn Returns might have missed out on the Philip K Dick Award (despite Jay Lake's most excellent spruiking of it on the night), but it was still a splendid spread to be part of. Receiving the Ditmar Award at Swancon was icing on the cake, really, and I'm enormously grateful to everyone who voted for it. Kudos to everyone else nominated, and congratulations to the other winners on the night. This is such a talented and good-natured community. There will never be enough awards to go around.

My damaged status had everything to do with sleepless nights and exposure to the real world, and bore no relation at all to the cold and wet Adelaide to which I returned home. Perfect weather, really, to dive into the final edits of The Grand Conjunction, the last book in the Astropolis series. It's been a long and winding road, writing this book; I'm both relieved and sad it's done. So often I don't know what books are about until I've finished them, and in this case it appears I've spawned another romance: one in which the collision of the Milky Way and Andromeda plays a role, but a romance all the same. I'm a sucker for it, I guess.

My next projects are The Scarecrow (the last of this round of kids' books) and completely reorganising my study (you know, because there's never a good time so it might as well be now). Lined up after that are a thriller, another YA novel, PhD stuff, and appearances here and there. I'll report on the latter as they grow nearer.

For now, I'm off to have some soup.

Thanks for being such a wonderful bunch of people. I am sending you all happy vibes.