News

I am thrilled to announce that Baby Teeth won the 2013 Australian Shadows Award for Best Edited Work, and Debbie Cowens’ story from the collection “Caterpillars” won for Best Short Story (and let’s not forget JC Hart’s “The Dead Way”, which was a finalist).

Well done Baby Teeth team! Again!

I’m pleased to announce that I have a story in the upcoming anthology Use Only As Directed. The book will be launched in June at Continuum X, in Melbourne, June 6-9.

Here’s the announcement from publisher Peggy Bright Books:

Use Only As Directed, an anthology of original speculative fiction edited by Simon Petrie and Edwina Harvey, and published by Peggy Bright Books, will launch at Continuum X, in Melbourne, June 6-9. Here’s the lineup:

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‘Large Friendly Letters’ — Stephen Dedman
‘The Eighth Day’ — Dirk Flinthart
‘Never More’ — Dave Freer
‘The Climbing Tree’ — Michelle Goldsmith
‘The Kind Neighbours of Hell’ — Alex Isle
‘Fetch Me Down My Gun’ — Lyn McConchie
‘Yard’ — Claire McKenna
‘Dellinger’ — Charlotte Nash
‘Mister Lucky’ — Ian Nichols
‘The Blue Djinn’s Wish’ — Leife Shallcross
‘Always Falling Up’ — Grant Stone
‘Uncle Darwin’s Bazooka’ — Douglas A Van Belle
‘Future Perfect’ — Janeen Webb
‘Home Sick’ — M Darusha Wehm

The anthology will be available in print and e-formats.

I’m delighted to share the news that last night Baby Teeth (the for-charity anthology of tiny scary stories about kids, in which I have two teeny tales) won the Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best Collected Work.

Mad props to editors Lee Murray and Dan Rabarts for wrangling this anthology, and to Marie Hodgkinson of Paper Road Press for publishing it.

I submitted my nominations for the Hugo Awards the other day, and in case anyone is interested, here’s what I sent.

I should note that my ballot suffers from the limitations of what I actually read, especially in the novels category. I just haven’t been reading that much in terms of novels this year, and as always I’m not terribly current. But I did my best. I was much more widely read in short fiction, as is evidenced by the fullness of my ballot in that category.

Novel

The Factory World by Joseph Edward Ryan

Novella

“This Other World” by Anna Caro
“Trial of the Century” by Lawrence M. Schoen

Novelette

“Pearl Rehabilitative Colony for Ungrateful Daughters” (pdf) by Henry Lien
“In Joy, Knowing the Abyss Behind” by Sarah Pinsker
“The Waiting Stars” by Aliette de Bodard

Short Story

“Biographical Fragments of the Life of Julian Prince” by Jake Kerr
“Selected Program Notes from the Retrospective Exhibition of Theresa Rosenberg Latimer” by Kenneth Schneyer
“Automatic Diamanté” by Philip Suggars (Interzone)
“Yuca and Dominoes” by José Iriarte
“This is a Ghost Story” by Keffy R. M. Kehrli

Best Graphic Story

The Private Eye by Brian K. Vaughan and Marcos Martin

Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form)

Gravity

I also nominated myself along with four others for the John W. Campbell Award. I know, nominating myself is crass, but I did it anyway.

Anyone else nominating for the Hugos? Or if you were, what would be your picks?

Well, no, it’s not. But you’ll see where I’m going with that. Promise.

English is an evolving language, as arguably is French, but the rightness or wrongness of word usage in English is all about usage. The venerable OED, my pinnacle for all things English language related is all about usage. Words mean what they do because that’s how people use them. End of story.

But, people use words wrong all the time. See, I just did it their. And they’re. Okay, I’ll stop, but you get my point. There’s usage and usage and that’s where Facebook comes into it.

Many of us have long lamented that English lacks a singular gender-neutral pronoun. Many have tried to address this (my personal favourites are zie/zir) but traction hasn’t really been found. Of late, “they/their” have been gaining ground (I know of a few folks who choose those as their pronouns of choice), but I and many others have trouble with using they that way.

“It is just plain wrong,” we say.

“I can choose my own pronouns,” they counter.

“Well, yeah, but…” we mumble.

“Besides,” they say, “Shakespeare did it. Chaucer did it. Jane Austen did it. If those writers can use ‘they’ as a singular, so can we.”

“…”

We shut up and admit defeat.

But, common usage is they key here, and lots of people just aren’t used to hearing “they” as a singular. But those days are now numbered.

As many people have noted, Facebook recently made it possible to choose from 51 different options when indicating gender (here’s a list of them, with some definitions). That’s way cool on its own, but quietly at the same time, Facebook also allowed users to select the pronouns by which they want to be called. There are only three – she, he and they.

The debate over an English gender-neutral singular pronoun is now over, and zie lost. They won.

I’m okay with that.

For those who don’t know, the John W. Campbell Award is given out each year at the Hugo Award ceremonies (though it’s not a Hugo) for the best new speculative fiction writer. I happen to be in my final year of eligibility for the Campbell, but that’s only part of why I bring it up.

First, fellow eligible author Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam sent around a cool little set of interview questions to all the eligible authors she could find, and is posting their responses on her blog. The survey in which I participated is here, but I recommend reading them all. Find a new author whose work you love today!

And, to help out with that, M. David Blake and Stupefying Stories have compiled a massive free collection of stories by 111 (!!) eligible authors. This has to be one of the biggest, most amazing collections of short fiction around, and it’s free for the download. But it’s only available for a limited time, so get it while it’s hot!

I’m participating in a very cool project: Angels and Automatons, a shared-world steampunk anthology.

It’s a bunch of short stories set in the same 1864 fictional town of Angelston, New Zealand, where there is goldrush madness, dirigibles and an inventor bent on solving social problems with stem-powered robots. It’s going to be so fun.

The anthology is the brain child of Stephen Minchin of Steam Press, and is currently being funded through a Kickstarter campaign. Check out the project and authors involved, and if it seems like it might be your bag, chuck in a few bucks for what is undoubtedly going to be a fascinating and unique story.

Just in time for the New Year! You can now get paperbacks of my novels from most online booksellers, including:

• Amazon Canada (and other local Amazons)
• Barnes and Noble
• Book Depository (free shipping worldwide!)
• Powell’s
• Books a Million

I am delighted to announce that my next novel will be published by Canadian publishing house Bundoran Press.

Bundoran is an award-winning small press and I’m thrilled to be working with them on my next novel, codenamed The Wheel.

It is a stand-alone multi-generation space colony story, with advanced general intelligences, politics and goats. It is tentatively scheduled for release in November 2014.

From the press release:

Ms. Wehm’s new novel “The Wheel (working title)” is set aboard a vast space station orbiting Jupiter where political exiles from Earth and network- based Artificial Intelligences struggle to forge a new life and a new society. The book explores the limits of human freedom within a civil society and the true nature of love.

 

This little delight lured me in and took me somewhere completely unexpected. Love is weird. But this story is a gem. – Nathan Crowder, on “Modern Love”

My story, “Modern Love,” is up over at Wily Writers. For the audio fans out there, it is read beautifully by Folly Blaine, so go grab the mp3 or subscribe to the other great stories at WW. It’s also available as text if you’d rather just read it the old-fashioned way.

I was thrilled when “Modern Love” won second place at the Wily Writers/SpecFicNZ short story competition, judged by Nathan Crowder, quoted above. “Modern Love” placed after the absolutely excellent “The Mary-Jane Effect” by AJ Fitzwater, which I highly recommend.

Longstoryshort: Kobo UK have pulled most self-published and many small press titles from their store, including all of my novels and both Plan B anthologies. In a related situation, WHSmith (UK) closed their entire online bookstore for a time and they appear to have removed all ebooks upon reopening. Whitcoulls‘ (NZ) ebookstore is still closed as of writing.

The rest of the story:

In what I am confident is going to be regarded as one of the most bone-headed decisions in a while, Kobo UK has chosen the nuclear option in response to a, frankly, ridiculous move from UK bookseller WH Smith. In what really reads as bad parody, the Daily Mail published a bit of yellow journalism about erotic titles available at WH Smith via Kobo. WH Smith had a shit fit and closed their entire online store then Kobo responded by removing all books published via Draft2Digital, as well as many via Smashwords and their own WritingLife program.*

Books removed include self-published titles as well as titles published through traditional publishers who use the same distribution services. Because Kobo redirects users to their local site based on IP address, it isn’t immediately evident to authors and publishers outside the UK if their books have been removed. I did some investigating using a UK VPN and found that my books have all been taken down in the Kobo UK store.

Here’s a screenshot of the New Zealand Kobo storefront:

Here’s what UK Kobo users will see:

I guess I should count myself as lucky that the freebies that were scraped off the Internet Archive are still there.

This is, obviously, outrageous. Kobo, WHSmith and Whitcoulls should all be ashamed of themselves.

*Much of the details come from David Gaughran’s post here.