Liz Argall

Aka I have a story coming out in Escape Pod soon, read this to find out just how much that means to me.

Escape Artists are an amazing speculative fiction machine. Through the powers of their THREE podcasts, Escape Pod for science fiction, PodCastle for fantasy and Pseudopod for horror they have brought joy to many listeners. I’ve only recently had the space I need to listen to a lot of podcasts and I think connecting to the Escape Artists person has made me a better, happier person… not just happier, more connected, connected to community and connected to the world of ideas.

I’ve had a story come out in Pseudopod, a story come out in PodCastle and I have signed the contract for a story in Escape Pod for my Aurealis Awards shortlisted story, “Falling Leaves,”

Escape Pod just had its 500th episode recently and invited people to call in and say what Escape Pod means to them. I wanted to call in, but never quite managed to make it happen. It’s really beautiful to listen to how much Escape Pod has meant to different people. The 500th episode starts with a beautiful story by Theodore Sturgeon, “The Man Who Lost the Sea,” followed so many beautiful words. I encourage you to listen to it, even if you’re not a normal listener to the podcast, there’s something wonderful about hearing people talk about connection, about community about these spaces and relationships we make with storytelling.

 

#sfwapro

As always I’m participating in the Clarion Write-a-thon, an entity I will always have the deepest fondness for. The Clarion Write-a-Thon began in 2011, using a structure kindly donated by our sister organization, Clarion West, who have been raising funds like BOSSES for many years.

That year we did a lot of hand coding, Justin Whitney was the tech guy (and still is, hasn’t he done a great job with the new Write-a-Thon interface?), Nancy Etchemendy as tech gal organizer mighty mighty person, and I was someone updating people’s profile pages and letting people know when their profile page was live and when they’d raised money. People love to see a fast turn around between action and reaction. I became obsessed with sharing the good news and cheering people on. Ten dollars or two hundred it was amazing to see community rise up around a shared goal.

Neil Gaiman, who has now served as an instructor for Clarion and Clarion West, kindly tweeted about us and encouraged people to sign up… on a weekend… when everyone else had gone off to have a life! It was like being hit by a fire hose! It was a busy time, a wonderfully manic time. I don’t know how many e-mails I sent and manually entered information into a spreadsheet that was then manually sent to the hard coded website. We live in different times now!

I really felt connected to all those people that gave us the gift of their time and fundraising efforts, it was humbling to see how much people would give of their time, creativity and cash. There are folks I’d only known a little before the ‘thon and became good friends as we chatted back and forth. I mentioned how we e-mailed people about their donations within at least 24 hours to one of the lovely Clarion West administrators, who, knowing the system we were using said “That’s impossible, it would drive you insane!” Which is a fair statement. It was many hours of volunteer labor every day for six weeks.

I always used the Write-a-Thon to do weird projects that challenged me and that I wouldn’t do otherwise. Three years ago I created Things Without Arms and Without Legs, a comic about creatures who are kind, because of the Write-a-Thon. The Write-a-Thon gave me permission to explore.

This year I will not be doing any (extra) crazy projects, because I’m already pushing into things that scare me a little and will make me grow as a creator and creative professional… although I do have a Shatner of the Mount inspired project in mind for 2015!

This year I will be staring twenty nine Eagles in the beady eye. To stare them in the eye I must in a day 1) do something that challenges me as a creative professional 2) and put fresh words on the page… so it’s basically write most days with an extra twist.

If you would like to sponsor me you are welcome to do so. There are many other authors available to sponsor, Clarion alumni, Clarion instructors, writers from a multitude of backgrounds that want a structure to challenge themselves with. Folks like Shauna Roberts, James Patrick Kelley, Delia Sherman, and Kim Stanley Robinson.

AND you can also go over to Clarion West‘s website and check out all the fab folks to sponsor over there too!

I hope you have a terrific summer/winter (depending on hemispheres). If you want to join in the fun it’s not too late. Six weeks of creative challenges, go!

Originally posted on LinkedIn. TLDR, I’ve interviewed a bunch of nifty people, including Ursula K. LeGuin who was gracious and delightful, go read them.

I have the ongoing pleasure of writing the interview questions for Lightspeed’s Author Spotlights. For each set of questions I read the text, then spend several hours researching the author, then I go back to the text and look at it with an eye informed by more detailed knowledge of the author.

I try to imagine what they like, what they’re tired of and create opportunities for them to express themselves in new ways. I look for unexpected cracks where the light can shine through and spaces to share joy. I think about how they might see the world and how they would like it to be different. I love it because it is an intense act of listening to create a space where the author has voice.

All my interviews are collated in a neat bundle (including Ursula K. LeGuin!) over on Lightspeed’s website if you would like to check them out.

Right now I’m writing 2,000 words a day. Part of my motivation is that for every 100 words I write I get to eat a jelly belly. Writing is hungry work though, I sometimes think better when I’m chewing and I’m also trying to put on weight (in roller derby every kilo is a kilo to kill with), so I can also eat add much porridge as I want (mmm oats!) and drink as much tea as I want!

Today was a rough writing day and you bet I grabbed every jelly belly their moment I earned it for the first thousand words. The next thousand words went easier (and I are two small bowls of porridge) and when I completed my 2K my jelly belly bowl looked like this:

They are in my pocket to eat later ^_^

#whatmotivatesusaswriters

Dear Friends,

So much has happened since I last wrote, but here is my most exciting piece of recent news. My short story, Falling Leaves, is a finalist for an Aurealis Award in the category of Best YA Short Story. I’m super pleased. You can read it for free online.

I have been someone who spends a lot of time torturously thinking and then writes her stories super fast or fail to write the story at all. When it works it is the most glorious feeling, one of those touched by the muse feelings that is one of my favorite kinds of agony where you just have to keep writing and when you read back the words there are tears in your eyes. When it doesn’t work it’s a pretty sad and empty feeling.

This short story is the story where I changed this pattern and learned how to radically rewrite in a way that worked (I’ve done radical rewrites in the past, but none of them have sold). Falling Leaves started at a creative prompt from audience members at an open mic night at Inner Chapters. From there every detail mutated and changed, although it only exists because of the original story seeds (which were Gondolier and San Jose… or perhaps a more remote part of California). At one point it was over 15,000 words long and it was looking like it was going to be a novel following Charlotte and Nessa from cradle to grave. Then I realized I’d flinched on a moment at 7K and needed to go back and push into the repercussions of the fall. The title changed every few months and my critique groups (Horrific Miscue and Sounds on Paper_ gave me valuable insights, although I could not quite figure out how to use all their notes.

I’d created a story I loved, that made me cry when I reread it and it was ready to send out into the world… and there it got very nice rejections, a lot of almost, but not quites… until Lynne Marie Thomas, who was editor of Apex Magazine at the time, gave me an invitation to rewrite and few notes. Using those notes I cut a further 500 words and changed two important nouns and it had gone from a story that was so close to a story that was turned up to 11.

… although I must confess I’m still a little sad that I had to cut the section that explains why it’s a synthetic tree not a real tree and how, for carbon sequestration purposes, gmo hemp is a better and faster water investment (although not without it’s problems, I’m sure my future Australia has some hemp megacorps).

Lynne accepted the story and when Sigrid Ellis became editor of Apex she made sure Falling Leaves had a loving home.

And now my story is up for an award, the juried speculative fiction award of Australia. It feels nice that a little bit of me is back home while the rest of me is in Seattle. The awards ceremony will even be in my home town in Canberra, I wish I could be there. The ceremony is on April 11 and tickets will be $40 until March 11 and then go up to $50. I hope everyone has a grand night out. I have never ever ever had to write a potential acceptance speech before and that feels like a prize in itself!… and thanks to Sam Miller I wish I could be there just so we could follow his tradition of everyone reading their acceptance speeches at the after party because there are alternate realities where everyone wins (since writing this post Sam has told me that he did not come up with this idea, he just sure as heck talked about it and made sure it happened. Dear person who came up with this concept, I would love to know who you are).

You can hear Jonathan Strahan, Alisa Krasnostein, Sean Wright and Tehani Wessely talk about this year’s Aurealis Awards over at Coode Street.

And this is the full list of 2014 Aurealis Award Finalists

BEST FANTASY NOVEL

Fireborn, Keri Arthur (Hachette Australia)

This Shattered World, Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner (Allen & Unwin)

The Lascar’s Dagger, Glenda Larke (Hachette Australia)

Dreamer’s Pool, Juliet Marillier (Pan Macmillan Australia)

Afterworlds, Scott Westerfeld (Penguin Books Australia)

Daughters of the Storm, Kim Wilkins (Harlequin Enterprises Australia)

BEST FANTASY SHORT STORY

“The Oud”, Thoraiya Dyer (Long Hidden, Crossed Genres Publications)

“Teratogen”, Deborah Kalin (Cemetery Dance, #71, May 2014)

“The Ghost of Hephaestus”, Charlotte Nash (Phantazein, FableCroft Publications)

“St Dymphna’s School for Poison Girls”, Angela Slatter (The Review of Australian Fiction, Volume 9, Issue 3)

“The Badger Bride”, Angela Slatter (Strange Tales IV, Tartarus Press)

BEST SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL

Aurora: Meridian, Amanda Bridgeman (Momentum)

Nil By Mouth, LynC (Satalyte)

The White List, Nina D’Aleo (Momentum)

Peacemaker, Marianne de Pierres (Angry Robot)

This Shattered World, Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner (Allen & Unwin)

Foresight, Graham Storrs (Momentum)

BEST SCIENCE FICTION SHORT STORY

“The Executioner Goes Home”, Deborah Biancotti (Review of Australian Fiction, Vol 11 Issue 6)

“Wine, Women and Stars”, Thoraiya Dyer (Analog Vol CXXXIV nos 1&2 Jan/Feb)

“The Glorious Aerybeth”, Jason Fischer (OnSpec, 11 Sep 2014)

“Dellinger”, Charlotte Nash (Use Only As Directed, Peggy Bright Books)

“Happy Go Lucky”, Garth Nix (Kaleidoscope, Twelfth Planet Press)

BEST HORROR NOVEL

Book of the Dead, Greig Beck (Momentum)

Razorhurst, Justine Larbalestier (Allen & Unwin)

Obsidian, Alan Baxter (HarperVoyager)

BEST HORROR SHORT STORY

“The Executioner Goes Home”, Deborah Biancotti (Review of Australian Fiction, Vol 11 Issue 6)

“Skinsuit”, James Bradley (Island Magazine 137)

“By the Moon’s Good Grace”, Kirstyn McDermott (Review of Australian Fiction, Vol 12, Issue 3)

“Shay Corsham Worsted”, Garth Nix (Fearful Symmetries, Chizine)

“Home and Hearth”, Angela Slatter (Spectral Press)

BEST YOUNG ADULT NOVEL

The Astrologer’s Daughter, Rebecca Lim (Text Publishing)

Afterworld, Lynnette Lounsbury (Allen & Unwin)

The Cracks in the Kingdom, Jaclyn Moriarty (Pan Macmillan Australia)

Clariel, Garth Nix (Allen & Unwin)

The Haunting of Lily Frost, Nova Weetman (UQP)

Afterworlds, Scott Westerfeld (Penguin Books Australia)

BEST YOUNG ADULT SHORT STORY

“In Hades”, Goldie Alexander (Celapene Press)

“Falling Leaves”, Liz Argall (Apex Magazine)

“The Fuller and the Bogle”, David Cornish (Tales from the Half-Continent, Omnibus Books)

“Vanilla”, Dirk Flinthart (Kaleidoscope, Twelfth Planet Press)

“Signature”, Faith Mudge (Kaleidoscope, Twelfth Planet Press)

BEST CHILDREN’S FICTION

Slaves of Socorro: Brotherband #4, John Flanagan (Random House Australia)

Ophelia and the Marvellous Boy, Karen Foxlee (Hot Key Books)

The Last Viking Returns, Norman Jorgensen and James Foley (ILL.) (Fremantle Press)

Withering-by-Sea, Judith Rossell (ABC Books)

Sunker’s Deep: The Hidden #2, Lian Tanner (Allen & Unwin)

Shadow Sister: Dragon Keeper #5, Carole Wilkinson (Black Dog Books)

BEST COLLECTION

The Female Factory, Lisa L Hannett and Angela Slatter (Twelfth Planet Press)

Secret Lives, Rosaleen Love (Twelfth Planet Press)

Angel Dust, Ian McHugh (Ticonderoga Publications)

Difficult Second Album: more stories of Xenobiology, Space Elevators, and Bats Out Of Hell, Simon Petrie (Peggy Bright Books)

The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings, Angela Slatter (Tartarus Press)

Black-Winged Angels, Angela Slatter (Ticonderoga Publications)

BEST ANTHOLOGY

Kisses by Clockwork, Liz Grzyb (Ed) (Ticonderoga Publications)

Kaleidoscope: Diverse YA Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories, Alisa Krasnostein and Julia Rios (Eds), (Twelfth Planet Press)

Amok: An Anthology of Asia-Pacific Speculative Fiction, Dominica Malcolm (Ed) (Solarwyrm Press)

Reach for Infinity, Jonathan Strahan (Ed) (Solaris Books)

Fearsome Magics, Jonathan Strahan (Ed) (Solaris Books)

Phantazein, Tehani Wessely (Ed) (FableCroft Publishing)

BEST GRAPHIC NOVEL/ILLUSTRATED WORK

Left Hand Path #1, Jason Franks & Paul Abstruse (Winter City Productions)

Awkwood, Jase Harper (Milk Shadow Books)

“A Small Wild Magic”, Kathleen Jennings (Monstrous Affections, Candlewick Press)

Mr Unpronounceable and the Sect of the Bleeding Eye, Tim Molloy (Milk Shadow Books)

The Game, Shane W Smith (Deeper Meanings Publishing)

 

Someone much smarter than I am pointed out that the work I do creating Things Without Arms and Without Legs and a few other side projects could make me eligible for Best Fan Artist categories! I had a look at the Hugo Awards and it certainly seems to fit the criteria, I don’t make a single cent from the Things, it’s all love all the time.

I had three short stories come out in 2014. I’d like to draw your attention to Falling Leaves in particular. I am very fond of all three stories, but I feel that Falling Leaves is particularly significant in terms of the complex, angry, tender and awkward friendship that it creates space for.

Short Stories

• Soft Feather Dance, Apex Magazine, September 2014
• Falling Leaves, Apex Magazine, May 2014
• Love is a Component of the Story, Daily Science Fiction, March 2014

Visual Art

• Things Without Arms and Without Legs, a comic about creatures who are kind