One of the FPI blog’s favourite makkars, Jeff VanderMeer, has some delightful posts up on his VanderWorld blog detailing his excursion to the Land Down Under where he signed books, engaged in learned literary debate and writer’s workshops, so called because in the olde days unscrupulous publishers used to lock young writers into rooms in their dark, Satanic wordmills and force them to work on penny dreadfuls for the masses – the 19th century literary equivalent of a sneaker factory in the far east today. Of course, Jeff would never stoop to such Dickensian methods to encourage writers, although rumours did circulate about ‘incentive’ plans which involved a pile of raspberries and hungry fruit bats near the tender regions of the body of struggling scribes, but we stress those were only rumours.
Jeff has some fab pictures and memories to share of his time in Australia and moving among the publishers, writers, fans and booksellers of the Aussie SF scene which are well worth a look. He also has an update on the progress of his eagerly anticipated new work, Shriek (new Jeff book, hurrah! We’re excited here, you should be too). Staying on the Australian theme Marianne de Pierres, author of the exciting Parrish Plessis novels (Crash Deluxe was one of my first book picks for FPI) should be telling us about the Australian SF scene for the third issue of the FPI magazine.
Sat, Oct 15, 2005
Books