Sean Williams

Every month, one of the board-members of the SA Writers' Centre writes a piece for publication in our monthly newsletter. It was recently my turn, and the text (for those of a non-South Australian bent) is below the cut.

Reading over it again brings home to me the not unrelated facts that (1) Christmas cheer is just not my thing, and (2) I'm getting grouchy (or at least more political) in my dotage.

( Board's Eye View, December 2007 )

(With thanks to Tim Powers for allowing me the quote from his Writers of the Future/Clarion notes.)

Polemics aside, all the very best of the season to you and yours. I hope 2008 brings an improvement on whatever lifted you up or got you down this year. This my first Christmas ever with a family in a home we call our own, and the first in a very long while with a Prime Minister I can respect, so I'm feeling pretty optimistic. Here's to good times for us all!

When not making LOLzillas for the infamous Rob Hood, I do try to get some work done. Below is the text of a speech I gave last week, immediately before handing a bunch of Premier's Reading Challenge awards to over a hundred primary students at my old school.

The idea was to encourage the kids to remain excited about reading--a very worthy goal indeed. I don't know if I achieved it, or if there's much in this speech for regular readers of this journal, but here 'tis anyway...with apologies for the lack of formatting and the occasional typo that might have slipped through...

( I reckon I have the best job in the world. )

Below the cut is the speech I wrote and delivered for Adelaide PEN on its Denied a Voice event today, commemorating the 27th International Day of the Imprisoned Writer.

It was a terrific dray, with a ton of school kids sitting in the shade of a beautiful tree outside the SA Library. There was African music and a cavalcade of great speakers, including Nobel laureate J M Cootzee and others. I was honoured to be among them, but a bit nervous to be coming up last. Luckily most people stuck the distance, and there was still a good crowd to hear me rant.

This is the full version of the speech. The one I gave was cut by a minute or two in order to fit. Where I've paraphrased or quoted a particular writer without crediting them, as shown by the italics, I've put a footnote which will show you the necessary details. All the quotes are taken from essays, letters and poems collected in Another Sky, edited by Lucy Popescu and Carole Seymour-Jones in association with English PEN and published this year by Profile Books.

( The Invisible Dead )

A podcast of me reading an excerpt from Saturn Returns is available from AdelaideNow, about halfway down the article by the legendary Tim Lloyd.

My history in his hands sounds very angst-ridden--much more interesting than I could have written it:

"Williams has emerged from a troubled, solitary life to become one of Adelaide's most admired writers, producing a dozen novels in the fantasy and science-fiction genres."

The media barrage continues elsewhere. This week's Eastern Courier (my local weekly) ran a profile of several Adelaide spec fic writers, including a double-page excerpt of Saturn Returns. Jason Nahrung of the Brisbane Courier-Mail described the book as "A huge story told on a deeply personal level...a stellar effort", while Not Free SF Reader proclaimed that, "Williams has delivered the goods again...plenty of surprises, different forms of humans, both normal and post, spaceships, Warhammeresque religions, huge distances and shooting at people."

Ah, that's the stuff.

Meanwhile, I am madly editing The Force Unleashed, and having a ball doing it. I'm also working on releasing the speech I should have delivered at Sydney Observatory a couple of months ago as a podcast. I'm reading the final Harry Potter novel in tiny grabs, which is probably the worst way to do it. And this afternoon, we are going to visit the Haighs's Chocolate Factory, because I haven't put on nearly enough weight this winter... :-)

On Friday (the 13th), I gave the keynote address at the opening of the Salisbury Writers' Festival. The text of my speech is accessible via the opinions section of my web site. The topic was "White Hot Passion: Living & Writing on the Edge", taking the festival's themes (murder and romance) and location (a satellite city of Adelaide) as inspiration. I chose the topic but then found it surprisingly difficult to write to. Seemed to go down well, though. Whew.

The joke at the end is an oldie but a goodie, and I'm certain it wasn't originally written for Jeff Kennett. Jokes are passed down from generation to generation like re-enactments in crappy current affairs shows: only the names have been changed. I wonder who the original megalomaniac was? We may never know.

August is going to be a busy kind of fun. Or a fun kind of busy. I can't decide which, or if there's even a difference.

First up is the 22nd Annual Writers of the Future Awards, which will be held with all due ceremony this year at the San Diego Air and Space Museum. I'm very excited to be involved in the WOTF, having won it way back in 1992 and returning lately as the only Australian judge in a truly stellar line-up. (Our very own Cat Sparks was another recent winner.) The night is spectacular, and the days leading up to it confirm everything I've learned since my early days of a writer: that you never stop learning. I return wiser from every year's celebration.

This year, though, I won't be returning straight away. Worldcon is just around the corner, practically, so it's off to Anaheim straight afterwards and my first World SF Convention outside Australia. I'm pleased to be on the program, so it won't be all pink drinks and schmoozing. See my schedule below. I'll also be catching Gary Numan live in concert (as noted earlier) and trying to keep The Dust Devils on schedule.

Afterwards, it's off to New York for a few days, then home to promote The Devoured Earth, since it'll be on the bookshelves around then. But that's a whole other month, and I've yet to get my head entirely around this one yet...

Worldcon schedule:
Wed 3:00 - Kaffeklatsch
Wed 4:00 - Fantasy Doesn't Have To Be About Kings And Wizards
Thu 4:00 - Changing Human Nature
Fri 2.30 - Pyr: A Look Forward
Fri 5:00 - Autographing
Sat 1:00 - Reading (expect something saucy)

PS. New security restrictions are making me a tad grumpy about the flight across the Pacific but I see no likelihood of changing my plans at the moment. I'll update here as required.

I've spent the morning fixing links and adding material to the Excerpts section of my web site. The new material includes opening chapters up to and including the first book of The Broken Land, my kids' fantasy series, which is due in 2007. I'll add something from sexy space opera Saturn Returns when it's a little more polished.

And in other news, the April/May 2006 edition Internet Review of SF contains a brilliant plug for Daikiaju! Giant Monster Tales, Robert Hood and Robin Pen's superb anthology. My contribution to the book is small, but Ross Hamilton, IROSF's reviewer, noted it thus:

"Poetry is not what I would automatically link to daikaiju stories, and poetry from a best-selling fantasy author such as Sean Williams for some reason seemed even less likely. Yet Williams has provided some delightful haiku poems that even caught the attention of a non-appreciator of poetry such as myself. The combination of this Japanese art form with the Japanese-inspired monsters complemented the collection nicely."

I suppose it's not such a stretch to think that best-selling fantasy (the giant monster of the genre) and haiku would be mutually exclusive. :-) The sublime meets the ridiculous again, and I am well pleased.