adelaidesean | Entries tagged with magic dirt

Once upon a time, I used to think being a writer meant, well, writing. All the time. If only that were true! When between books, as I am at the moment, I don't even attempt to stick to my 1500 words/day target. There just isn't time. Here's what I got up to in the last week (Monday 5 to Sunday 12), for anyone interested in what I actually spend most of my time doing.

I delivered re-writes of all four Fixers books to my editor at Scholastic;
re-wrote outlines for The Resurrected Man and The Crooked Letter TV shows, as per feedback received while in LA;
reread the story notes of Magic Dirt, seeking inspiration for a podcast about my fifteen year-old story "A Map of the Mines of Barnath";
ditto my story "Ungentle Fire" in the forthcoming Dragon Book;
was interviewed live on ABC radio at the Royal Adelaide Show (and ate a large amount of junk food afterwards);
attended the Ruby/ABAF Awards;
had a Skype conversation, transcribed some notes, and looked over an outline for a project I haven't mentioned here yet (ooh, mysterious!);
attended a meeting of the SA Writers' Centre Board;
took Christobel Mattingley's place on the SA Writers' Festival "Fact or Fiction" panel, down at the beautiful Wirra Wirra vineyards in the McLaren Vale, and chaired the "First Book" panel;
read and annotated submissions for a retreat I'll be co-taking in a few weeks;
signed up to sit on a grant assessment panel doling out money for young South Australian writers;
suggested some spec fic titles for the Big Book Club's December/January selections;
caught up on the parallel import situation for the Australian Society of Authors;
revived my LJ and wrote this post. :-)

I also bought the new Steve Roach album, Destination Beyond, and Deepspace's World Ocean Atlas. (That's not really work, I know, but these albums will probably comprise my main writing music for the coming weeks, so it's kinda related.)

This wasn't an exceptional week, but it probably was a little busier than normal, thanks to the awards night and the festival.

How was yours? Did you manage to get some writing done? If so, well done. I am jealous!

Here's the press release:

In celebration of the 2009 Ditmar Awards, Ticonderoga Publications is offering fans of Sean Williams a special deal. For every order of Aurealis Award-winning Magic Dirt, we'll send you a free, signed copy of Ditmar-nominated Earth Ascendant. Offer available until the announcement of the awards at Conjecture in Adelaide.

To take advantage of this excellent deal, simply order Magic Dirt now at indiebooksonline.com

Reviews for Magic Dirt

"This is a book no self-respecting lover of Australian speculative fiction can afford to be without." — Aurealis

"This is an enthralling collection." — ASiF

I reckon that's a pretty good deal. Pass it on to anyone who might be interested.

It's Ditmar time!

Yes, I am very late posting to that effect. And no, I'm not going to repeat what everyone's been saying elsewhere (except for this: rules here; nominations to Ditmars at conjecture2009 dot org; anyone can vote). I just want to say that if you're thinking of nominating anything of mine, the two novels I'd ask you to think about (to avoid spreading the love too thin) are Earth Ascendant and The Changeling. Oh, and Magic Dirt: the Best of Sean Williams is worth remembering too, for the collection category. Russell needs his props too.

I have a stack of Earth Ascendants lying around, currently unemployed. If anyone would like a freebie, just drop me a line in the comments and I'll mail it to you ASAP.

Thanks!

A while back I was interviewed by Valerie at the Sydney Writers' Centre. The podcast and transcript are now available right here.

It's handy having a transcript because sometimes I forget what I've burbled on about. This time I can tell you with 100% confidence (and reveal via the tabs below) that we covered pretty much everything. :-)

I'm on my way home from the Aurealis Awards bash, killing some time at the Brisbane airport before my plane departs. Just wanted to say huzzah to everyone for a wonderful night. The champagne flowed hard; I mixed up everyone's names (not just yours,

readerofasaph); my head was pounding hard this morning. Could these facts be related? (Beloved Clarionites, I blame you for leading me astray.)

I also wanted to say that I am excited that Magic Dirt received the first ever Best Collection gong, and sad at the same time that Rob Hood and I couldn't share the honour between us. He has been such a force for good in this awesome community, and a profound influence on me since we first met in 1994. It shocks me that he has yet to receive a single Aurealis Award. How can that be possible? Here's hoping it will be corrected soon.

It remains only for me to remark on my record-breaking string of unconsummated nominations in the Best SF Novel category (seven and counting, iirc) and a jump in non-wins overall to twenty-four. What a wonderful thing it is to be shortlisted so many times! I am extraordinarily lucky. Thank you all.

To all I owe emails: thanks for being so patient. I will be in touch soon. Apart from starting a new book and bringing this journal up to date, I have a completely free February. Double huzzah!

ETA ( Judges' reports below the cut. )

It's that time of year again: the Aurealis Award judges honour some and overlooks others, sometimes seemingly on a whim, but always (he says from experience) after long and careful consideration. I feel very fortunate to be nominated again this year, since the field is so unbelievably strong, and I'm glad to be in such excellent company (on and off the lists). I'm looking forward to January 24, when we celebrate this wonderful, vibrant community of ours, and I hope you'll come along to join in.

For the record (because this is where I tend to keep track of these things) my nominations are:

Earth Ascendant - Best SF Novel
The Changeling - Best YA Novel and Best Children's Long Fiction
The Dust Devils - Best Children's Long Fiction
Magic Dirt: The Best of Sean Williams - Best Collection

(Sorry about the subject line, btw. I knew

millisynth would like it. :-)

Andrew Thompson writes an engaging and refreshingly inclusive piece on The Future in the Age, covering everyone from Ray Kurzweil to Cormac McCarthy, with nods to Damien Broderick and little old me:

"If it was just a matter of charting technology, it would be easy. But (unpredictable) people come into the mix. There can be strange and wonderful and terrible results."

Keith Stevenson has posted his review of Magic Dirt to the interweb (I've quoted this before but it'd be nice if Aurealis gets the clicks):

"This is a book no self-respecting lover of Australian speculative fiction can afford to be without."

ETA Keith has also posted reviews of Cenotaxis and Earth Ascendant here!

The novelette I wrote in 1991 that went on to become The Crooked Letter, first published in my collection Light Bodies Falling, is selected for reprint in Angela Challis's Australian Dark Fantasy & Horror Vol 3. In great company:

"Contributors include ~~Garth Nix (New York Times bestseller),~~ Sean Williams (New York Times bestseller), Margo Lanagan (Word Fantasy Award winner), and award winners Terry Dowling (Basic Black: Tales of Appropriate Fear), Richard Harland (The Black Crusade), Jason Nahrung (The Darkness Within), Martin Livings (Carnies)."

Lastly, the title story from Light Bodies Falling featured a giant spider crouching on a city building. Earlier this year, a group of puppeteers enacted that scene in Liverpool, little knowing that they were bringing one of my worst nightmares to life. Yaagh!

----------------
Listening to: Hammock - This Kind of Life Keeps Breaking Your Heart

Here's a very good thing, for those who don't already know about it:

Ticonderoga Publications is joining in the effort to raise funds for Paul Haines. 

Ticonderoga will donate $10 from the sale of each of its titles sold in August through its online store.

Paul Haines, a much-loved member of the Aussie sf community is going through a tough time. After being diagnosed with bowel cancer, having sections of his bowel removed and enduring six months worth of chemotherapy, he has recently discovered he has spots on his liver. Paul has met this news by reloading his guns and is going to fight it with two other forms of chemotherapy for cancers like his, combined with a monoclonal antibody called Avastin. Avastin, however is not part of Medicare or the private health system's funding at this stage. It costs $20,000 to do it. Money that he doesn't have.

Ticonderoga Publications has not set a limit on its donation, and hopes to raise in excess of $1000. 

More info on Paul's fund can be found here.

And here's a wonderful review of Magic Dirt from Aurealis, for anyone teetering on the brink:

( This is a book no self-respecting lover of Australian speculative fiction can afford to be without. )

Current Music: Gary Numan - "The Plan"

This flurry of posts (three in four days--whew!) isn't an indication of business as usual. Alas, I'm on a tight deadline to finish The Scarecrow and can't write more than a sentence at a time on anything else.

I did, however, find time to talk to the wonderful

satimaflavell for the latest issue of the specusphere. You'll find the interview here. Satima asked great questions. Take a look.

PS. I'm also launching Malcolm Walker's debut novel, The Stone Crown at the SA Writers' Centre tonight. If you have a fondness for Susan Cooper, Alan Garner and Robert Holdstock's Arthurian/contemporary fantasies, you'll like this book as much as I did.

PPS. I'm late in pointing out that Earth Ascendant had its world premiere as a spoken word release through the great guys at Audible. You can buy it at their website (or through iTunes) and get a walk-through of the next million or so years of history, easy.

PPPS. Oh, and The Force Unleashed ( has a new cover. )

Onward and upward!

Current Music: Thom Brennan - "Mist"

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.

Current Music: Steve Roach - "Arc of Passion"

Below, in all its glory, is the cover of Magic Dirt: the best of Sean Williams. Classy, huh? The photos are taken by Mike Mission, whose extraordinary "asphalt archaeology" snapshots from Manhattan Island were recently featured on Boing Boing. There's a much larger version of the cover here, if you want to see the pictures we've chosen in more detail.

I'm also very pleased to reveal that intro to the book is written by John Harwood, author of the brilliant The Ghost Writer (winner of the International Horror Guild Award for Best First Novel and the Dracula Society's Children of the Night Award, also listed in the very credible Miles Franklin Award and Commonwealth Writers Prize) and the forthcoming The Séance. Because I love the intro so much (and am immensely flattered by the things he says) I've pasted a paragraph below the cover.

The book itself is available in limited and numbered editions through Ticonderoga Publications and will be launched at Swancon. Comes with free haiku!

"Reading these stories is like lucid dreaming, in which you dream that you’re lying awake in your own bed; the room is exactly as it would be in waking life, until the impossible intrudes. Sean Williams doesn’t simply stay one step ahead of his reader; he knows how to make you believe you know exactly where he’s going, while steering you down a far more sinister path. The immediacy of the action is never compromised, but there’s an unnerving resonance, a shadow cast (shadows often carry a particular charge in his work) which doesn’t quite match up with the object supposedly casting it."

Current Music: Steve Roach - "Arc of Passion"

I am very pleased to announce that Ticonderoga Publications will be releasing a hefty tome in March that contains the very best short stories I've ever written. This is it. The definitive collection, covering everything of note from 1992's WOTF prize-winning "Ghosts of the Fall" all the way to 2007's "The Seventh Letter." If it's won or been nominated for the Ditmar, Aurealis or Seiun Awards, it's in here.* If it's been recommended by Locus or any of the various Year's Bests, ditto.** Some of the stories have been reprinted before, but many of them haven't. One has never been on paper at all. Covering science fiction, space opera, fantasy, horror and mainstream (and maybe even a little haiku, if I can twist Russell's arm), with story notes and an introduction, this is huge. I am very excited.

There's more detail here and Ticonderoga's online store is here. There will be two versions, including an uber-special signed and numbered edition. The cover is still on its way, but I assure you it'll be beautiful.

Not only is this the definitive collection of my short stories, but it will most likely be my last. At the rate I'm writing them, it'll take me another fifteen years to fill another.

* Well, most of them. The good ones, anyway.
** Well, ditto again.