Posts Tagged “Speculative Fiction”
“If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.” ~ Milton Berle
This is a quote that resonates with me, not as a carpenter (I don’t know my slidey-cut-wood-tool from my bang-in-nails-thing) but as a writer.
We are cursed (in the Chinese sense) to live in Interesting Times. Now, more than any period in history, writers are able to communicate with a global audience. We can create stories and share them with anyone, the best part is; they give us money for them!
Wait, what? Money?
What sorcery is this??
Clawsome Dragon Limericks Winners
Phantom Feather Press received a hoard of dragon limericks from all around the world. The verses made them roar and laugh, and on occasion, breathe fire. So many of the limericks were clawsome! Contestants made a fangtastic effort! Some of the finalists are SpecFicNZ authors.
The winners ( 1st, 2nd & 3rd places) will soon receive a voucher for the e-book Clawsome Dragon Limericks. All winners, honorable mentions and finalists have their limericks in the e-book and their names in the table of contents.
July in Aotearoa might be more about freezing southerlies than ice-zombies from the North, but honestly, at least the latter has novelty value. Winter has well and truly arrived; time to snuggle up with some reading.
At the Edge, edited by Dan Rabarts and Lee Murray, is now available in bookstores around New Zealand – or, for those of you who would prefer not to get out of bed (or onto a plane) to get your hands on a copy, you can find the ebook at all the usual haunts, and the paperback from Amazon. Want to get your hands on the latest and greatest in Australasian SFF? Click here for links.
Sir Julius Vogel Awards
At the recent National Science Fiction Convention (Au Contraire 3) held in Wellington over Queen’s Birthday Weekend, the winners of the Sir Julius Vogel Awards were announced. The Sir Julius Vogel Awards recognise achievements by New Zealanders, both amateur and professional, in the science fiction, fantasy and horror genres.
SFFANZ (Science Fiction and Fantasy Association of New Zealand) President, Norman Cates, prior to announcing the awards, commented that SFFANZ was “delighted with the level of participation and interest in the awards from an impressively wide variety of people.”
As you probably know, my name is Woelf Dietrich and I’m the author of the dark fantasy novella, The Seals of Abgal and the inspirational short story, Bullies and Soggy Soup Bones. I also have stories in the flash fiction anthology, These Broken Worlds, from Kōsa Press. The collection seems to have been well received and even received a mention on Tor’s Aurora Australis. Kōsa Press is an indie label I co-founded last year and our flagship release “Interspecies” is due in a month’s time.
Use Only As Directed, edited by Simon Petrie and Edwina Harvey
A varied mix of 14 speculative fiction stories by some of the best Australian and New Zealand authors in the genre in settings that range from the back yard to the depths of space.
Authors: Stephen Dedman, Dirk Flinthart, Dave Freer, Michelle Goldsmith, Alex Isle, Lyn McConchie, Claire McKenna, Charlotte Nash, Ian Nichols, Leife Shallcross, Grant Stone, Douglas A Van Belle, Janeen Webb, M Darusha Wehm.
216 pages.
Also available on Amazon
A Foreign Country, Anna Caro & Juliet Buchanan (editors)
A Foreign Country brings together the work of established authors and fresh voices to showcase the range of stories produced by New Zealand’s growing community of speculative fiction writers. Humorous, disturbing, intriguing, cautionary, and ultimately hopeful, these tales tell of worlds where the boundaries between human and animal are blurred, babies are not what they seem, desperate measures are in place to ward off disaster, and flying standby can be a big mistake.
Millie by Anna Caro in Outlaw Bodies
When my father died, I inherited my coffin. My parents would be horrified to hear me refer to it as such; more so to know I had been doing so jokingly since my mid-twenties. It doesn’t even look like a coffin; it’s a cedar chest that had been my maternal grandmother’s, with carved feet and an inlay of what looks like mahogany. But I’ve always known what it was.