Resonance & Revolt shortlisted for BFS award!

Some brilliant news – Resonance & Revolt has been shortlisted for Best Collection in the British Fantasy Awards. For a full listing of the nominees and jurors in all categories, check out the BFS link.

I’m in fabulous (and female) company on this shortlist, which also includes All the Fabulous Beasts by Priya Sharma, The Future is Blue by Catherynne M Valente, How Long ‘til Black Future Month? by NK Jemisin, Lost Objects by Marian Womack and Octoberland by Thana Niveau. I found it very interesting that this shortlist has turned out to be all women.

This is the first time that I’ve appeared on a BFS shortlist so I’m thrilled to be included alongside these brilliant writers. And I’m especially excited to see that women writers have made a strong showing in all categories as well as the collections shortlist.

I’m also very pleased to see that Eibonvale Press has done well – David Rix has been nominated for Best Artist and Humangerie (edited by Allen Ashley and Sarah Doyle) shortlisted for Best Anthology.

Meanwhile, to mark World Con in Dublin I’m looking back on my visit to the city last year for the Dublin Ghost Story Festival at the Milford SF blog with an update of my 2018 post: Return to Dublin. These are two very different cons: one will be massive while the other was designed to be small and intimate. But Dublin’s rich heritage in the speculative and the supernatural provides a common thread through them both. I look forward to visiting this city again to talk about weird stuff! I’ll be back very soon with more details about my panels in my next post.

In other news, I’ve contributed a two-part piece to zine extraordinaire Dykes Ink. This is produced by Dead Unicorn Ventures, an LGBT+ events company based in West Cornwall.  My old friend Julie Travis, who is one of the moving spirits behind this project, suggested I write something about dykes and squatting in the past. Seeking a connection to Cornwall, I hit upon my tender memories of the notorious Treworgey Tree Fayre, which has become legendary in the chronicles of festive excess and headbanging. Then I remembered that the festival was the second event of a paradoxical and exciting summer in 1989; the first event on our calendar was the International Revolutionary Women’s Gathering just outside Ruigord in Holland.

So I ended up writing about both: “From the vantage point of 30 years, these two events may stand in contrast to each other. Yet they were both very much part of our stream of partying and politics.”

Finally, the Pareidolia anthology came out last month. You can read about my story “Geode” and what inspired it here in my last blog post. Now I look forward to reading all the stories in my contributor’s copy. And here is an overexposed shot of my copy seated on a purple velvet cushion that seems suitably pareidolic.

 

Seeing Things

I’m pleased to announce that my story “Geode” will be appearing in a new anthology called Pareidolia, edited by James Everington and Dan Howarth. Here’s the lineup… needless to say I’m proud to be appearing alongside this group of talented writers.

Into the Wood  Sarah Read
Joss Papers for Porcelain Ghosts  Eliza Chan
What Can You Do About a Man Like That?  Tim Major
The Lonely  Rich Hawkins
A Shadow Flits  Carly Holmes
The Butchery Tree  GV Anderson
The Lens of Dying  Charlotte Bond
How to Stay Afloat When Drowning  Daniel Braum
Geode  Rosanne Rabinowitz
House of Faces  Andrew David Barker

When I was asked to contribute to a book about “pareidolia” I had to google the word and I confess that I still need to check the spelling every time I write it. So some of you might be wondering: WTF is pareidolia? This blurb from the publisher, Black Shuck Books, explains the concept:

“Pareidolia is the phenomenon where the mind perceives shapes, or hears voices, where none apparently exist. But what if what you were seeing was really there? What if the voice you heard really was speaking to you, calling you?”

My story, “Geode”, was inspired by a few lines of poetry and a YouTube video. The poetry comes from Sleep of Prisoners, a play by Christopher Fry. I first read this as a teenager, and it somehow left an impression. I always liked these five lines:

“Dark and cold we may be, but this
Is no winter now. The frozen misery
Of centuries breaks, cracks, begins to move;
The thunder is the thunder of the floes,
The thaw, the flood, the upstart Spring.”

And now for the YouTube video. When I first saw this video of  an ‘ice tsunami’ or ice shove I was stunned with the power of it and its sheer noise – those thin fingers of ice tinkling as they break, the chugging sound as it moved. Very creepy. I imagined a Lovecraftian story but it turned into something else.

Pareidolia is now up for preorder and an ebook edition is also available. Release is set for 13 July, along with a launch event at Edge Lit in Derby.

No doubt I’ll have more to say about my story closer to the time…