Publisher Russell B. Farr wore his kilt and mix’n'match gym boots, Kaaron had a lovely grey frock, and I was pleased that I had changed my mind and wore something a bit better than the jeans and Darth Vader t-shirt I was planning on.

We had a great crowd – made more impressive by the fact that we were scheduled against a China Miéville panel – the purchasing-signing line was loooooong and in the end they had to kick us out of the room to make way for the next session. We, of course, had something Dr M didn’t – a metric buttload of Haigh’s choclit frogs . And thanks to Jack Dann who, Gods love him, popped back and forth between a panel he was on and our launch.

By end-of-con, both The Girl with No Hands and Other Stories and Dead Sea Fruit had sold out, much to Russell’s (and our) unmitigated delight. Huge thanks to everyone who bought the books, to Lisa Hannett who did my lovely cover, to Russell for being such an awesome publisher and to Kaaron for graciously sharing the launch with a newbie.

Weirdness: signing things. Trying not to make spelling mistakes whilst signing and carrying on conversations at the same time. Trying to write something meaningful – I failed. Man, dunno how Neil Gaiman does it!

Photos have been snurched from Bob Dobson (#2) and Jason Nahrung (#1 and #4) as my camera gave up the ghost at the beginning of the launch – of course it did! But #3 is mine, taken in the millisecond before camera-crash.

#1 Russell B Farr

#2 Kaaron & I

#3 Moi and Lisa & books

#4 Russ & kilt

Even though he was a god, Daisuke always removed his shoes before he went inside. It was the polite thing to do.

He knocked on the sliding screen door.

“Come in,” a woman’s voice called.

Daisuke slid open the door and stepped into the front chamber. He stared in surprise at the woman sitting on the tatami mat floor. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been able to see Yoshiko so clearly. She wore a yellow kimono decorated with white flowers. Her bright eyes and sunrise smile shared her face with an abundance of wrinkles.

“Please sit down,” she said.

He knelt in front of the low, wooden table in the center of the room. He couldn’t take his gaze from Yoshiko. She looked almost solid. His own skin was translucent.

Yoshiko poured two cups of tea and handed one to Daisuke. “The cherry blossoms will be here soon,” she said. “I don’t think the flowers would be as beautiful if they lasted all year. A week or two and they are gone.”

He couldn’t detect any sadness in her voice, but he knew the significance of her flesh becoming solid had not escaped her.

Ze rest lives here.

Angela Slatter writes fairy-tales for adults, but not just any fairy-tales. They are not just ribald retellings, or tales which have been subverted merely for the sake of it. No, Ms Slatter delves much deeper than that, pile-driving her way to the core of the traditional fairy-tale, the type that we know so well courtesy of Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm. As Jack Dann notes in his introduction (Caressing with Razors), many of these ‘traditional’ tales were themselves subverted to fit a patriarchal agenda, to shape the gender roles so beloved of the society prevailing at the time. Times have changed, but more often than not those traditional tales haven’t, and they are retold countless times preserving the original intent of the ‘retellers’.

Ze rest lives here.

All Russell’s con stock of The Girl with No Hands & Other Tales has sold out, as has his stock of Tartarus Press’ Sourdough & Other Stories. And so has TP’s Kaaron Warren’s luscious Dead Sea Fruit.

More to come when I am back in Brisneyland and have had a sleep and a hot lemon drink.

Slatter out.

In the end not quite, but rather drunken confusion from others that ‘nominated’ meant ‘won’. (Not Pete’s fault – he did indeed win a well-deserved Ditmar for Horn). So much laughter and derision this morn – and Cat Sparks took home the Ditmar in question. I believe she has one last space in her Wollongong pyramid made of her many Aurealis and Ditmar awards. As so she should have such a pyramid, for she is awesome.

What I do have is the below – Cory Doctorow makes origami cranes whilst on panels (Lezli Robyn and I were on a panel with him and snarkled paper cranes afterwards), and Cat Valente did a reading and gave away copies of the Deathless manuscript to anyone who could answer a Russian history question. Huzzah for my teenage obsession with Russian history, which meant that buried deep in my brain was the knowledge that the Russian Revolution started in 1917. And Cat was kind enough to sign it for me.

AussieCon is awesome, but I am exhausted, and back in the room hiding, soon to take a nanna-nap. The books are selling well and I’m signing heaps and trying not to spell things incorrectly.

The short story isn’t dead, it’s just _________?

Angela Slatter: Fighting a vigorous rearguard action against big publishers who don’t see any money in selling short story collections unless they’re attached to big name authors. I do think it’s a form that’s on its way back up — I think people are time-poor and a particular section of the book-buying public will be looking for something complex, satisfying and relatively fast.

You can listen here if you so choose.

1. You recently edited the Baggage anthology for Eneit Press – how did that come about?
I thought it came about because I was involved in a discussion with my editor (of Life Through Cellophane) about my dream book, but it recently transpired that she set the whole thing up. In other words, Eneit Press wanted an anthology from me, because Sharyn rather thought I could do something she would want to publish.  From my end, though, it went something like:

Sharyn Lilley:  “What’s your dream anthology?” 

Gillian Polack: “Cultural baggage, of course, Australian and very spec fic.  Pushing boundaries.  Giving writers nightmares.” 

Sharyn Lilley: “Who are your dream writers?” 

Gillian Polack:  “In the real world, I’d have to think about it.  In a perfect world, I’d start with Jack Dann and Janeen Webb and Lucy Sussex and KJ Bishop and Simon Brown and Maxine McArthur and Kaaron Warren and…” 

Sharyn Lilley:  “Write to them today.  Just the first ones on the list, mind.  You can write to the others later, if there’s space.  Offer them a place in Eneit Press’s new anthology.”

Gillian Polack: “But I’m shy.”

Sharyn Lilley:  “Don’t care.  Write now.  This minute.”

Those weren’t the exact words, but that was how it happened.  I never even got to the rest of my list of dream writers, because the first list mostly said ‘yes.’  And their stories gave at least three of the writers nightmares.  I thought I was sweetness and light and a gentle soul, but it seems not.

2. You get to be your favourite fictional character for a day with no consequences: who are you, where do you go and what do you do?
I am so torn. I want to be Belle from the Disney cartoon, simply so that I can own her library.  I’d find the lost books of Livy there and spend my day reading them. Or I’d look up the books that have the unwritten Jewish history I’ve only seen hints of in stories.

I also want to be Aslan, so that I can fix up the Susan error and create my own world. 

I want to be Emma in Emma Tupper’s Diary and to be non-meek and still inherit the Earth (why does she have to be so nice and so gentle, even under provocation?).

I want … to be a bunch of characters, not just those few.  There are too many things to do and too many places to imagine.  I think I’d better give up and become a writer.

3. You are forced to choose: editing or writing?
Writing, of course. With writing I still get to edit, but with editing it’s always the dreams of others.  I hope I never have to choose, though, because the dreams of others are so very wonderful.

4. How much does your academic work feed into your fiction writing?
Who I am feeds into my fiction writing.  The academic side of my brain shows in my fiction, if you look closely enough. I edit my own work so that you can pin it down to a precise time.  No vaguely ‘contemporary’ for me, because I can see the history happening and I use it in my writing.  If I set a novel in 2004 in Canberra, then there are going to be scars from the bushfires.  Not just landscape scars, but in peoples’ minds.  This is the historian in me, reminding the writer in me that place and time count.  We’re not neutral about them.

On a more obvious note, I’m currently writing a novel mostly set in the Middle Ages, but with modern characters.  That uses my academic self extensively.  The trick is going to be not letting the historian take over and not overload the whole thing with footnotes and analysis. 

There’s a third direction where my academic self feeds into my fiction self. Very little of my fiction is free from theses.  I don’t always make them obvious, but they’re there. I’m always poking holes in someone’s ideas and prized thoughts with my fiction.

5. Donuts (or doughnuts) or danishes.
It depends on the recipe.  It depends on the date of the recipe.  If you added ‘the early 80s’ to your question, I’d say danishes for Australia and doughnuts for the US, for instance.  I like both, though.  Good ones.  The sort you can’t eat more than once a year without losing a bit of your soul.