Kapiti News, 15 Mar, 2018

By Rosalie Willis
 

Teachers by day, writers by night.

That is the reality two Paraparaumu College teachers find themselves living.

Husband and wife, Matt and Debbie Cowens, both part of the English department at Paraparaumu College have had their latest work published in Te Korero Ahi Ka: To Speak of the Home Fires Burning, a New Zealand speculative fiction anthology.

The book is the work of Speculative Fiction New Zealand (SpecFicNZ), an organisation formed in 2009 and is the brain child of editors Grace Bridges and Lee Murray with the help of Aaron Compton. | Read More...

Wish Upon a Southern Star, edited by Shelley Chappell

Reviewed by Lee Murray

“Stories change, but fairy tales never go out of fashion. Like a basic item of clothing, they may be reshaped, trimmed, decorated with frills or remodelled altogether,” writes editor Shelley Chappell in the introduction to Wish Upon a Southern Star, a stunning new collection of fairy tales, freshly re-imagined by new and established writers from Australian and New Zealand. Chappell says, “the authors in this collection have run the traditional tales through the mill and come out with new cloth.” Indeed, some are barely recognisable, like Philippa Werry’s evocative and beautifully-crafted Snow from the South, a contemporary version of the Snow Queen, appropriately set in Antarctica at a time when ‘melt pools were forming in the sea ice”. New Zealand might have guardianship of only a small part of the frozen land, yet Kiwi readers will find a familiarity in this haunting retelling of the classic tale. | Read More...

SpecFicNewZ for November 2017

Members, if you have news you’d like to share, please let us know a specficnz@gmail.com

Debut Release!

Congratulations to member Jenn Rackham, whose debut book A Dash of Belladonna was released on 31 October. Mike Johnson says, “Here is a book full of magic and awe, humour and excitement, brought to us through Lottie’s exuberant prose. A zany book, full of narrative zest and high adventure.” A Dash of Belladonna is available in ebook and print versions here. | Read More...

At the recent AGM, a number of our Core committee retired, including long-standing Treasurer Immi Paterson-Harkness and our hardworking Secretary, Jean Gilbert. Paul Mannering stood down from the role of President. The organisation would like to thank these colleagues for all the work they have done on our behalf. The incoming Core for 2017-2018 is as follows:

President: Grace Bridges

Treasurer: Paul Mannering

Secretary: Lee Murray

Webmaster: Dan Rabarts

Core: Piper Mejia, Grant Stone, Darian Smith, Woelf Dietrich, Mark English. | Read More...

In recognition of the support of our fan community in encouraging and promoting New Zealand creatives ‒ writers, screenwriters and artists ‒ SpecFicNZ is pleased to announce that it will provide a grant of NZ$300 to the DUFF fund to support delegate Paul Weimer’s attendance at LexiCon New Zealand’s 38^th science fiction and fantasy conference which will be held in Taupo from 2-4 June, 2017.

A further NZ$300 grant will go to the FFANZ fund to support New Zealand delegate Lynelle Howell’s attendance at Australia’s speculative fiction convention, Continuum 13, to be held in Melbourne in June 9-12, 2017. | Read More...

Black Amber: A New Fate & Red Bullets

By Nathan Simpson

(Reviewed by Emma Hart)

For those of us who live in New Zealand, there’s both comfort and surprised delight in spec-fic set in our own country. Nathan Simpson’s Black Amber books start in a world of Vegemite and duvets that will be familiar to many.

Very quickly, however, we’re taken from that world to another, one of magic and medieval weaponry. The books’ central characters, brothers Ricky and Tylor, have come into possession of a mysterious magical artefact, which it appears will compel them to travel from world to world, seeking their own home, leaving every set of attachments they might make along the way. I was reminded of Diana Wynne Jones’s YA novel, The Homeward Bounders. | Read More...