Lice-ridden, I stand
before class. The teacher says:
You will play with him.
***
Hungover, I stand
before class. I say:
You’re lousy students.
New Paths & Old
In June, I married Tara Horner. A white wedding sounded as appealing as shock therapy, so instead we opted for exchanging rings in a quiet civil ceremony with a grand total of two guests. Life is good. We designed the wooden rings ourselves, and cannot speak highly enough of the craft and service of Touch Wood Rings, who produced them.
Since then, we’ve both been reading the large pile of submissions for The Tangled Bank anthology, the first release for Tangled Bank Press. I was initially concerned I wouldn’t get enough submissions, but we’re closing in on 250 submissions, and there’s still another few weeks left before submissions close. If you write fiction or poetry, or create visual art, and are interested in evolution, then I’d love to see a submission from you. The number of submissions has meant I’ve already had to make a few tough decisions about stories and poetry that I liked but for whatever reason felt weren’t suitable for the anthology, and I’ve got plenty more ahead of me. I’m looking forward to sharing my discoveries at the end of the year.
With all the reading and editing, my writing has been on the backburner the last couple of months, but I’ve mapped out my Japan book and have made a solid start on several chapters. (Thanks to the dogged persistence of a friend keen to see them, I’ve also finally got round to uploading my photos from Japan to the computer and begun the daunting task of sorting through them.) I’m also studying poetry at the moment, and coincidentally have just had my first poem published, in a rather curious place: the world’s first anthology of zombie poems. The anthology is Vicious Rhymes and Reanimated Verses and the poem is ‘Natural Succession’, an ecological take on the ever-popular undead. I’ve never really thought of myself as a zombie connoisseur, but I’m looking forward to seeing what the other 90-odd poets have done. Should get my copy in the mail soon.
I’ll post more photos on the walk site soon, but in the meantime here’s one of my favourite spots on the entire walk, on a country road in northern Honshu at the foot of Gas-san.
Wet fern forest and a gravel road
plunging on.
The Road
Sorting through my haiku from the walk, I’m reminded of the strange, whimsical moods I was in as I wandered alone across Japan. Some days — usually when the featureless road stretched out before me for hours on end — my idle brain would compose dozens of haiku in a single day. They sometimes shared a theme, and were often rather silly.
I discarded most of them, but occasionally I wrote them down, like the sequence below, an imaginary attack on the road by the forest. A more mundane version was a fairly common sight on my walk, thanks to the Japanese habit of building new highways and abandoning old ones.
I vividly remember crossing one bridge, deep in mossy forest, that was covered in thick soil and young trees. I was glad it hadn’t yet collapsed, as the mountain was steeply sloped, and the creek was quite a drop. I stood on the bridge among the trees, looking down at the creek, for a long time.
THE ROAD
(cue Imperial March)
Mushroom lifts the leaves
peers across the bitumen
forest’s forward scout
moss on black desert
water cached in its bosom
for frontier soldiers
grass seeds lob and land
in volcanic cracks, explode
in green profusion
black feathered squadrons
dump their fruity load of shit
on solo traveller
“Saplings, forward march:
Root beneath the road, find drains,
start water torture!”
a dead squirrel lies
bloody on white centre line
next to her revenge
grappling tendrils
cross the pitch-black Rubicon
growing thick and taut
acorn cries freedom
punching through rotting highway
and spreading her legs
forest floor fungus
surveys silent battleground
and puffs a victory.
The Tangled Bank
At some point in the last month, I stopped scanning city parks and alleyways for good sleeping spots. I guess that’s as good a sign as any that I’ve readjusted to normal life, whatever that is.
Not only that, but rest and the regular rhythms of work and study have brought with them a burst of productivity. As well as making a start on my Japan book and drafting a bunch of short stories and poems, I’ve started a small press: Tangled Bank Press. The name is taken from one of my favourite quotes, the final paragraph of The Origin of Species:
It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life and from use and disuse: a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. — Charles Darwin
Tangled Bank Press’s first publication is the e-anthology The Tangled Bank, details of which can be found below, or on the website. I’d love to be proven wrong, but as far as I know it’s the only fiction anthology celebrating the Charles Darwin anniversaries of 2009. If all goes according to plan, The Tangled Bank will be followed by another couple of TBP projects in 2010 and 2011.
Among other people, Kate Eltham’s been a great source of ideas about electronic publishing, and I’m keen to make the most of digital technology to reach as many people as possible. More about that later. Kate’s one of the convenors of the fantastic bastion of learning that is Clarion South, and it’s worth mentioning that they’re in need of donations. A series of events outside their control, including cancellation by three tutors, meant they exhausted their treasure running this year’s workshop. You can find out how to help here — and how to apply to the 2011 workshop. With tutors of this calibre, you’d be crazy not to.
Anyhow, I’m looking forward to shaping the The Tangled Bank, so get creating. You’ve got 111 days to build your beast.
***
This year marks 200 years since the birth of Charles Darwin, and 150 years since the publication of The Origin of Species. To mark the anniversaries, submissions are invited for The Tangled Bank, an e-anthology of speculative fiction, artwork, and poetry exploring the legacy of Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution. Illuminate — or obscure — the line between the real and the fantastic. The fiction may be of any speculative genre or cross-genre; demand to be included by the quality of your submission. Artwork and poetry need not be strictly speculative in nature, but must engage with Charles Darwin or evolution.
The Tangled Bank will be edited by Chris Lynch and 
published by Tangled Bank Press in late 2009. For submission guidelines and more information, visit http://thetangledbank.com. Submissions close June 30th.
Clarion South, Two Years On
After two years, I’m finally wrapping my head around what Clarion South was all about. At his invitation, I’ve just described my experience of one week at Clarion South 2007 on tutor Lee Battersby’s blog. But seeing as I’ve been invited along to speak to this year’s group about life after Clarion, I thought I’d add a few more general comments.
At least since I joined the army at the age of 17, I’ve had a tendency to uproot myself and throw myself in the deep end at the smallest sign of complacency, and emerge from the self-imposed trial a different person. Growing up in three different countries probably had something to do with it, but I think I’ve always had the vaguely uneasy feeling that modern rites of passage were inadequate, that I needed something more to gain a sense of achievement and personal growth. Clarion and walking Japan gave me both of those things, and it’s hard to separate the lessons of Clarion and the lessons of my walk; the two bleed into each other.
The first lesson was about priorities. I went into Clarion as a teacher who wrote; I returned from my walk as a writer who teaches. Both experiences made me realise that writing was important enough to me to organise my life around, and within the next couple of months I should have largely done so.
The second lesson was persistence. I’ve thought of myself as a writer since my early teens; the only trouble was I didn’t write very much. Talent amounts to little without hard work, clocking up the fabled 10,000 hours to mastery. Since the beginning of the year, I’ve been writing fiction almost every day, aiming for a minimum of 100 words — not much, but enough to complete a short novel in a year. Once I’ve got a routine, I’ll start raising the wordcount, but for now the most important thing is developing the habit. Writing daily haiku on my walk was important training; habits can only be formed by a series of small steps, not a few giant leaps.The amount you write, and the quality of what you write, are far less important than the daily act of putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard).
The third lesson was about people. Writing is a solitary occupation, but it’s also an act of communication, and communication means being part of a community. Seeking out and engaging that community — through reading, critting, collaborating, supporting, networking — pays for itself several times over. I learnt more in six weeks of Clarion than I would’ve six years on my own, and maintaining the connections I made then keeps on generating opportunities I just wouldn’t get otherwise.
Below you can find a list of everything the Clarion gang’s done since the workshop ended two years ago. I’m still reading my way through the complete list, but three of my favourites can be found online: JJ Irwin’s Still Living, Peter M. Ball’s On the Finding of Photographs of My Former Loves, and Michael Greenhut’s Watermark. Each, in their own evocative way, explore the end of a relationship.
—————————————————————
Clarion South 2007: Post-Clarion Bibliography
PETER M BALL
Short Stories
The Dragonkeeper’s Wife, Black Dragon, White Dragon, Ricasso Press, 2009
On the Destruction of Copenhagen by the Warmachines of the Merfolk, Strange Horizons (forthcoming)
The Clockwork Goat and the Smokestack Magi, Shimmer “Clockwork Junglebook” Issue (forthcoming)
Family Tree, Black Box, Brimstone Press, 2008
The Warhol-Sleeping Quartet, Dog Versus Sandwich, 2008
The Last Great House of Isla Tortuga, Dreaming Again, 2008
A Scene From Café Retro, Dog Versus Sandwich, 2008
On the Finding of Photographs of My Former Loves, Fantasy Magazine, 2008
Avenue D: Prayer, Antipodean SF #117, 2008
Midnight on Avenue D, Dark Recesses #8, 2007
Avenue D: The Tankboy’s Ride, Antipodean SF #107, 2007
The Year the Zombies Came for Christmas, Antipodean SF #105, 2007
Novellas
Horn, Twelfth Planet Press, 2009
Working on a novella
Other achievements
On the Finding of Photographs of My Former Loves, Voted a Top 5 Story in Fantasy Magazine, 2008
Finalist, Writers of the Future, 3rd Quarter 2008
—————————————————————
LYN BATTERSBY
Short Stories
A Whisper in the House of Angels, Hope anthology (forthcoming)
The Mikarr Way, Electric Velocipede (forthcoming)
Lily’s Song, Dog Versus Sandwich, 2008
The Conductor’s Tale, Canterbury 2100, 2008
As We Know It, Borderlands #10, 2008
This is Not a Love Song, ASIM #34, 2008
Of Woman Born, Daikaiju 2, 2007
The Wedding Dress, Black Box, 2007
Completed the YA novel Beyond Human
—————————————————————
DAN BRAUM
Short Stories
Resolution 17, Sniplits (forthcoming)
Mile Zero, Electric Velocipede (forthcoming)
Jellyfish Moon, Cemetery Dance (forthcoming)
The Green Man, Cemetery Dance (forthcoming)
Hunting the Tasmanian Tiger, Dark Recesses #10, 2008
Tommy’s Shadow, Kaleidotrope #5, 2008
The Wish Mechanics, Full Unit Hook Up #9, 2008
Before the Flood, Byzarium, 2008
Mystic Tryst, Farrago’s Wainscott #8, 2008
Across the Darien Gap, Psuedopod, 2007
The Black Orophant, Darker Matter #4, 2007
Spark, Dark Recesses #7, 2007
Daily Cabal Stories
All archived stories
Working on a novel
—————————————————————
ALESSIO BRESCIANI
Alessio has written a few unpublished short stories since Clarion, but is on a break from writing fiction at the moment.
—————————————————————
MICHELE CASHMORE
Short Stories
The Wind Cries Mary, Fantastical Journeys to Brisbane, 2007
Finished the second book in a series and working on a YA contemporary fantasy.
Other achievements
Honourable mention in Writers of the Future for ‘Sacred Fire’.
—————————————————————
JASON FISCHER
Short Stories
The Patchwork Palace, Masques edited by CSFG (forthcoming)
for want of a jesusman, Aurealis #42 (forthcoming)
Plebiscite AV3X, Apex Online, 2008
Rick Gets a Job, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine #37, 2008
Undead Camels Ate Their Flesh, Dreaming Again, 2008
A Bride Beyond the Gate, Antipodean SF #121, 2008
Blue Hands, Dog Vs Sandwich, 2008
Toilet Town, Antipodean SF #108, 2007
Daily Cabal Stories
All archived stories | The Janus Trick (series)
Several novels in progress
Other achievements
Winner, 2008 Apex Halloween Contest
Winner, 2008 Conflux Short Story Contest
Highly Commended, KSP Speculative Fiction Awards 2008
Finalist, Writers of the Future, 1st Quarter 2008
Got married and had a baby
—————————————————————
BEN FRANCISCO
Short Stories
This is My Blood, co-written with Chris Lynch, Dreaming Again, 2008.
Working on a novel
Other achievements
Current Fantasy Magazine columnist
—————————————————————
LAURA GOODIN
Plays
Hold, broadcast nationally by ABC Local Radio, 2009
Real Shakespeare, premiered at Wollongong Workshop Theatre’s 24-hour Theatre Event, 2008
The Death of Albatross, selected for the Merrigong Theatre Script Development Program, 2008
Don’t Know Much, short-listed for the Sydney Short & Sweet Festival, 2008
The Salad of Success, selected for Wollongong Workshop Theatre’s Workshorts program, 2007
The Salad of Success, selected for BUGfest, 2007
Short Stories
Piggy In a Pit, The Lifted Brow (forthcoming)
The Futurist, Adbusters (forthcoming)
The Dancing Mice and the Giants of Flanders, Masques (forthcoming)
The Miner’s Tale, Canterbury 2100, 2008
I’m Too Loud, Antipodean SF, 2008
Other achievements
Mooncalf, commended in the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers’ Centre Speculative Fiction/Fantasy Awards, August 2008
The Salvation of the Ooze, first place, Conflux 2007 Short-Story Competition
—————————————————————
CHRISTOPHER GREEN
Short Stories
Father’s Kill, Beneath Ceaseless Skies (forthcoming)
Having Faith, Nossa Morte, 2009
Lakeside, Dreaming Again, 2008
Working on a novel and a novella
—————————————————————
MICHAEL GREENHUT
Short Stories
Watermark, The Best of Fantasy Magazine, 2009
Think Fast, Greatest Uncommon Denominator, 2008
Watermark, Fantasy Magazine, 2008
A Better Gentleman, AlienSkin, 2007
Working on a novel
Other achievements
Watermark, Voted a Top 5 Story in Fantasy Magazine, 2008
—————————————————————
JJ IRWIN
Short Stories
Still Living, Strange Horizons, 2008
Reading the Lines, ASIM#31, 2007
Working on a novel
—————————————————————
CHRIS LYNCH
Short Stories
This is My Blood, co-written with Ben Francisco, Dreaming Again, 2008
Working on a travel memoir about Japan
—————————————————————
RICHARD PITCHFORTH
Short Stories
Transplant, Fantastical Journeys to Brisbane, 2007
—————————————————————
HELEN VENN
Short Stories
Highly Commended, KSP Short Fiction Awards, 2008
First, KSP Speculative Fiction Awards, 2007
Highly Commended, KSP Speculative Fiction Awards, 2007
Other achievements
Emerging Writer in Residence, Tom Collins House, 2009
Current facilitator, KSP Speculative Fiction group
Co-convenor, KSP mini-con, 2008
Panellist, Wastelands convention, 2008
Guest speaker, Society of Women Writers WA, 2008
Workshop presenter, Society of Women Writers WA, 2008
Completed a novel and working on a second
—————————————————————
No info for:
MELAINA FARANDA
JASON STOKES
JESSICA VIVIEN
Interview With A Writer
January 2009 finds me enjoying the subtropical heat of Brisbane and slowly returning to my regularly scheduled program of writing, reading, teaching, and repotting — though with the addition of a girlfriend named Tara, and a three-legged kitten currently known as Dali (a kitten who blithely ignored Wendy, 99, Yo-yo, String Theory, Tassels, Gingersnap, Catapult, Spandex, Plummet, and a host of other names). We’re hopeful she’ll answer to Dali eventually, won’t get tangled in another tassel, and won’t tumble off the top-floor balcony when we’re not looking…
But on to the interview…
The Rules:
1. Leave me a comment saying, “Interview me!”
2. I will respond by asking you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will post the answers to the questions (and the questions themselves) on your blog or journal.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions. And thus the endless cycle of the meme goes on and on and on and on…
The interview below is thanks to Ben Francisco, my co-writer on last year’s This is My Blood, in the Dreaming Again anthology, and a wonderful writer in his own right.
1. The “So what?” factor in the stuff you write (both fiction and nonfiction) is pretty high, and you often explore big philosophical questions. Is there a particular philosopher(s) or school of philosophy that you’re drawn to, and how does that influence your life and work?
I’ve been influenced a lot by philosophical Taoism, and to a much lesser extent Buddhism. Zhuangzi, one of the two foundational Taoists, expressed his philosophy through (knowingly) fantastical vignettes. I’m pretty sure he’d be writing spec-fic if he were alive today — he was the one who wondered whether he was a man dreaming he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was a man. Zhuangzi is the playful side of Taoism, and the mysterious Laozi (credited with writing the Tao Te Ching) is the monastic side. Both are present in my writing; polarities like yin/yang and east/west are central to my understanding of my life and my writing. My introduction to Taoism was through Raymond Smullyan’s The Tao is Silent, and it’s still one of my favourite books, both whimsical and wise.
When it comes to Western philosophy, I enjoy the menagerie that is the ancient Greek philosophers. Much of my writing explores questions of knowledge and reality and truth, so Descartes is a useful springboard, even if he has a lot to answer for. For similar reasons, gnosticism also fascinates me, as a playground rather than something I subscribe to personally. But if I had to choose one western philosopher, I’d choose Spinoza. I once listed myself as a ‘Spinozan’ on the religion question of a census form, though I may have been drunk at the time. Spinoza has been described as an atheist and a mystic, and so have I.
2. You write not only in many genres, but in many forms: short stories, longer fictions, dramatic plays, haikus, blog posts, and nonfiction. Some of these modes (e.g., the haiku and the drama) have tight structural constraints. Do you feel you learn something from writing in these modes that you can then carry over to the more free-for-all forms?
Definitely. Dialogue has always been one of my weaknesses, and I was originally drawn to plays as a way of forcing myself to tell a story completely through dialogue. My characters have a tendency to monologue (an actor once told me I was the only playwright he knew who wrote in paragraphs), but I have learnt a lot about dialogue in the process. I also find the tight constraints of plays and haiku and even genre useful because they limit my natural inclination to make things insanely complicated, and help subsume my grand themes and ideas into a conversation or an image, where they belong. I’m fascinated by form and style, but I’m not a post-modernist, so I’m slowly learning to give priority to substance, which I often (incorrectly) assumed was out of my head and on the page.
3. You’re working on a book about your experience walking across the entire length of Japan. Are you looking for a narrative arc in your journey, or a philosophical framework, or some other way to bring your experiences together in a cohesive way?
I’ll be tying it together in a narrative arc with a central theme, for the very practical reason of getting published. Life is a series of random events which we tie together into a story with ourselves as the hero, and I’m interested in exploring the fiction of non-fiction and the non-fiction of fiction. My friend Ian, who began walking Japan in the opposite direction but had to pull out due to injury, is also writing about his journey, and we hope to combine our narratives into a single work of alternating chapters. We had very different experiences, and very different interpretations of the experiences we shared, so that should keep things interesting.
4. Among the many kernels of wisdom you shared during your hike across Japan, you said, “I should be spending most of my time doing the things that are most important to me.” Being back in Australia, going through the process of reacculturation, do you feel you’re able to integrate that advice to yourself, and other learnings, into your day-to-day life?
It’s challenging. I’m still in the process of renegotiating and integrating many things, and I don’t feel like I’m there yet. But being on the path is enough — as Laozi wrote, and I painfully learnt several times over, the journey of a thousand miles really does start with a single step. As a good friend pointed out to me recently, if returning was easy then you’d have to wonder if the experience changed me at all. Reacculturation is definitely going to be something I explore in my fiction; in what form I don’t yet know.
5. Please share a haiku that incorporates at least one spec fic trope and at least one line of dialogue.
“As you wish, my friend.”
And with that the wanderer
passed out of the tale.
