Champagne and Socks

Today I managed to leave my building swipe card at home for the first time since I’ve worked in my new job. And I managed to miss the early train whilst fumbling to look for it and trying to call C to come back get me (he didn’t). When I got to work I went to reception and got J, who starts at 7am, to come down and get me. And she did – I felt somewhat like a Kindy kid getting fetched to go home and she was so nice about it, I nearly cried.

It’s fair to say I was a bit down today. Sometimes the stuff, it gets to you. If you let it, it can really shake your foundations. But today what I learned is, you are truly blessed and your world is rich if you have people to make you laugh when things look down and when you have friends and colleagues to remind you why it is that you do what you do. And what it’s all for. And my day was filled to overflowing with kind words and actions and a lotta laughing. A new friend at work gave me a new saying which is so inappropriate I could never type it here.

I am so lucky to have a new job find me that is filled with people who make me laugh, who share my passion and philosophy and who get me. I know how rare this is. I am so lucky for the family who support me and to have ever met C who loves me and cares for me and makes me laugh through my tears. And I am so lucky for the friends I’ve made along this publishing journey and the writers I have had the great privilege to watch at close range do what it is that they do. These people make my heart brim and overflow with joy and happiness. And if you have that, what else can you hope for?

And the most important thing – all the chocolate in the house is mine.

You know when you’re just a little off? When things just refuse to go right? That’s me at the moment.

Thursday I went home from work sick. I had a meeting first thing and then an overdue deadline. I sat and worked on the one page briefing for a couple of hours and tinkered and worked on it and thought I’d just get it done then I’d go home. But I could see I had another hour maybe to whip it into shape and I was reallllly not feeling well. The – if I leave this longer, the train may no longer be an option – kind of unwell so I emailed it onto my boss and headed home. C of course was out for lunch with the car so I had to catch the train and then a bus to him to get the car and house keys to get home. And then I slept for 3 hours. As you know, I don’t nap, so that’s never a good sign.

And then I spent a good 24 hours just not on – staring into space, watching terrible (but oh so good) television, answering emails and reading Deadline by Mira Grant. Saturday was more of the same. I was just … not quite right. And doing things like slamming doors on my hand coming out of the bathroom, woke up with a pinched muscle in my back and limited neck movement etc. That ever happen to you? When you just don’t seem to be firing on all cylinders? I dunno if it was flu that never really came on (auto immune diseases are good for one or two things) or being really run down or what.

Sunday I managed to make it to the quilt and craft fair. My usual buddy couldn’t come this year as she broke a bone in her foot last weekend (!) and since the duty was looking like falling to C, his mother stepped in and said she’d be happy to join me. So I met her there and we spent a couple of hours looking at the exhibition and buying fat quarters and having coffee (and I’m really getting married, aren’t I?!) and then I stayed behind to get a few more bits and pieces before heading home. [I bought 3 fat quarters, 6 buttons, a tea cosy book because I am obsessed with hilarious tea cosies, a pattern for a kimono shirt, and bits and pieces – pencils, pins etc]

Then I headed to Helen’s to have a nice catch up with her and Amelia and I’d not been there half an hour when I took a rather dramatic tumble down Helen’s back stairs. I don’t know what happened, I’d hardly moved when I fell forward and then fell down the stairs and kept going. I seem to have managed to have fallen on my whole body – slammed one hand and have taken a chunk out of the palm of my hand so I can’t type well or knit, and scraped the other whilst I landed on my other arm, one knee and both shins copped it, one much worse than the other with a massive scrape and then my ankle and toes which have blood blisters. But I reckon that’s the only thing that stopped me breaking a bone. And we weren’t sure there for a while. I nearly took out Helen’s daughter and as I lay there sprawled on the stairs the look on her face was of such terror I spent all my effort on not crying. And then not fainting. There was blood and a lot of pain and a lot of bruising and I go into shock quite easily.

But after a while, and some ice and bandaids, all was good and I had a cup of tea and cheered right up!And then went home to enjoy Eurovision. OMG I loved Turkey and Ireland so so much.

Today I hobbled into work to find much of my team had either been off sick, were off sick or went home sick. And I found a physio in the CBD to look at my neck/back. The city is pretty convenient for having access to things (better than either of the other jobs I had this year). And I got a new pillow, which might have been some of the problem. And I need to address stress, and ignoring headaches. and peering at the laptop like I’m doing right now. And probably it’s time for bed.

I hope you’re fairing better than me right now.

We’ve sent all our forthcoming books to the printers, we’re in the process of making our lists and checking them twice –> Twelfth Planet Press is off to Natcon 2012/Continuum 8 in Melbourne. We shall be in the dealers room all weekend! You can also find us at:

Twelfth Planet Press Hour on Friday Night – its a gold coin donation day at Continuum so open to all and sundry!

Ever wondered how your favorite Twelve Planet collection would taste like in cupcake form? Then come along to the Twelfth Planet Cocktail hour, to celebrate the launch of the newest Twelve Planets, Through Splintered Walls, by Kaaron Warren, and Cracklescape by Margo Lanagan, plus the new TPP novella Salvage by Jason Nahrung. All your other favourite Twelve Planets will be there and we’ll also be making a surprise announcement!

Each book will be lovingly interpreted as a cupcake by master baker, Terri Sellen. Your cocktail choice is entirely your own…

Galactic Suburbia will record an episode live over the weekend,

Embiggen Books Event, 5pm Saturday

A book launch with a difference! Come join host Ian Mond, TPP publisher Alisa Krasnostein and TPP authors as they launch the Twelve Planets into space, via a live podcast from Embiggen Books. Find out what goes in to putting together this acclaimed series of boutique collections. Hijinks will undoubtedly ensue.

A Stitch In Time Travel Preview
Come and help beta test a pattern from the upcoming new craft ebook from Twelfth Planet Press.
Crochet hooks optional.

I’ve been a bit quiet again about these parts but last weekend C and I made a whirlwind trip to Sydney for the Aurealis Awards. I’m so glad C came with me. I’m just not enjoying flying as much these days as I used to and it made such a big difference to have C along. And I’ve found the perfect way to get myself to sleep on the plane – bring enough entertainment (knitting, podcasts, reading) to fill the entire trip. I fell asleep before takeoff from Perth on Friday night at midnight (hadn’t been sleeping during the week) – I even complained to C that they didn’t do the safety demo and he just looked at me like I was odd. On the way back I slept for about half, still not bad for me. But still what use is three hours sleep for me?

After the red eye, we arrived at the hotel at 7am and were unimpressed not to be able to check in. We headed off for breakfast with C’s sister and a couple of friends down to Ripples at Luna Park. So we’d been there an hour and were taking in the gorgeous Sydney Harbour Bridge up close and personal. Breakfast was lovely and it was nice to just hang out and talk weddings and things. And then we headed back to the hotel, via a little chocolate shop to run an errand for Terri. Sadly the shop did not have what she was after but all the chocolates looked so delectable I grabbed a few things for the little party I knew we’d have later that night when Tansy and Alex arrived.

We got back to the hotel at midday and our room was still not ready. By this stage, I was pretty ragged and just wanted my room so I could nap before the awards. We waited in the lobby, I fell asleep a couple of times, watched the staff behind the desk not be there pretty much most of the time. Eventually we got to check in at 1.45pm and I’d just showered and laid down when Tansy rang me to tell me she’d arrived.

We’d booked a suite for the weekend – two rooms and lounge and stuff for Galactic Suburbia to hang out. We knew we’d chat long into the night! I’d organised strawberries dipped in chocolate to be there on arrival as a surprise but the hotel stuffed that up too. Bit of a shame. Tansy and I caught up a bit before Alex arrived and then it was all on! We grabbed dinner, with Emma who we found at some point, before we glammed up for the awards. (I took no photos)

It was fantastic to see everyone start to filter down into the lobby to head off to the Independent Theatre. Lots of hugs and squeals and quick catch ups.

The awards were nerve wracking! I had three speeches I was in charge of … should the occasion arrive! Some of the categories were excruciating when I had several horses in the race – I love all my babies equally! I did get to accept Sue Isle’s Aurealis Award for “Nation of the Nights” from Nightsiders for best Young Adult Short Story.

And then, Galactic Suburbia was awarded the Peter McNamara Convenors’ Award for Excellence. I can’t really capture the feeling of sharing such an honour with Tansy and Alex. We were so blown away for the podcast to be recognised. As we stood there sort of processing it all, Tehani read the most amazing few words about the project:

The Peter McNamara Convenors’ Award for Excellence is awarded at the discretion of the convenors for a particular achievement in speculative fiction or related areas. This award may take into account a body of work or achievements over a number of years; it can also be for a work of non-fiction, artwork, electronic or multimedia work, film or TV, or that which brings credit or attention to the speculative fiction genres. The award was originally known as The Convenors’ Award for Excellence and was renamed in 2002 after Peter McNamara (d. 2004), publisher, editor and the original Aurealis Awards convenor, shortly after he was diagnosed with a terminal illness.

Galactic Suburbia (GS) is an Australian feminist speculative fiction podcast, hosted by Alisa Krasnostein, Alex Pierce and Tansy Rayner Roberts (produced by Andrew Finch). Since March 2010, GS has been providing fortnightly podcasts covering SF news, culture and opinion, and in particular discussing these topics from a feminist point of view. Of particular note is the “Spoilerific Book Club”, which has produce in-depth and critical analysis of books ranging from Joanna Russ’ How to Suppress Women’s Writing, to the hugely popular YA dystopia ‘Hunger Games’ trilogy. The GS team produce serious critical analysis, whilst still keeping the topics entertaining and accessible.

Galactic Suburbia was one of the first Australian podcasts of SF literature and culture, and has inspired many new Australian podcasts, including The Coode Street Podcast, The Writer and the Critic, and Bad Film Diaries, Live and Sassy and The Book Nut. Thus GS has founded a new arena for SF criticism and review in Australia, as well as bringing a new international audience to Australian writing, not only promoting works by Australian authors but also highlighting feminist issues within the global speculative fiction scene and thereby encouraging vital debate and discussion among community members.

It’s still not really sunk in for me, I guess. To be recognised for excellence for our little podcast is just amazing. It just makes us so happy that people tune in every fortnight, and shout at the podcast, and laugh with us and cry with us and eat cake with us and send us feedback. Being part of Galactic Suburbia – not just getting to mull over and dissect ideas and issues with two intelligent, thoughtful women – but seeing a community grow around it has just been one of the most positive and uplifting projects I’ve ever been involved with. Hearing from other people that things we’ve discussed have made them think about how they are in the world, how they read and how they interact with text and film and audio and the world, and in some cases *changed* that  – I mean, that’s the best outcome you can ever hope from the work you do. And it’s shown to me that you *can change* things, you *can make a difference*, even “just” three women talking into their laptops in their bedrooms on a Thursday night. And, that change is possible? I mean, that means *anything* is possible.

If you listen to the podcast, I want to say thank you. Thank you for listening and for hearing. Thank you for reminding me that fighting the good fight is the point. And that one person *can* make a difference – what’s the quote? – that’s the only way it’s ever been done.

After the awards, we went to the after party. I have to admit I didn’t overly mingle. I spent a lot of time catching up with TPP peeps. It’s so rare to see them in person and we have things we’re bubbling on the back burner! And then at midnight, we whisked away for more chatting in the room – intersectionality, awards and all sorts of thing!  Luckily for me, C was watching a rugby game which started at 1am so I was actually in bed before he was done!

And then up at 8 or something stupid with 4 hours sleep. I think I had 10 hours over the weekend. But I was not going to miss the awards breakfast – it’s the point of going, don’t you know! And it was awesome! We had the most amazing chats with Kirstyn and Cat and Kaaron. I forgot to go back up to the room and a grumpy C eventually came down to tell me I had to check out

And then we headed off to do more family stuff. The weekend was a great opportunity for me to meet C’s other side of his family and we spent Mother’s Day lunch with his aunts and grandmother. I had a really lovely time and it was a really nice way to end the weekend. After lunch we caught the bus to the airport and headed home.

I’m not sure I’m a big fan of the whirlwind one day on the other side of the country and back thing, especially when I’ve got a high sleep debt but it was worth it. Great to see everyone in a non con setting, a bit more laid back and a lot of fun.

Tags: aurealis awards, Galactic Suburbia

One of the things I really enjoyed about reading Sweater Quest was the various discussions around knitting and knitting philosophy. I think you can find universal truths everywhere and I am always looking for them. Something that the Knit Harlot said in it was that she loved how nothing really terrible can happen when you knit. She says the worst thing is you set out with a ball of yarn to knit a sweater, and you end up with a ball of yarn (no sweater). You still have your ball of yarn. I like that. And it’s helped me move beyond perfectionism about the first jumper I’m currently knitting. It’s not perfect. It looks handmade. That’s because it is. And it’s not the last thing I will ever knit, I will get better and more than that, the jumper will eventually get worn and then worn out and I’ll part with it. It’s the circle of (knitted) life.

But I liked the idea that … you know … if you never do anything because you’re so scared of it not being perfectly executed, then you will never do anything. And how is that better? And this turns out to be a really good way to break through paralysis or roadblocks. Or in other words, sometimes a decision is better than the right decision, especially when you no longer fear failure. What’s the worst thing that can happen when you execute an idea (especially when it’s not a life or death one) and it doesn’t work out?

I’m starting to feel like I’m making headway on things that have been hard to conquer in the past. And it turns out, that with progress on any of these, the most effective thing has been consistency. So I’ve been very slowly, every day, working on culling and decluttering. And some days it might only be one or two things but will power is a muscle – it gets stronger the more you use it. It gets easier to cull and part with things the more often and regularly you do it. And I used to know this, I just got out of practice. I have now almost completely cleared out the “to donate or sell” corner of stuff I had piled when unpacking. I have slowly been taking it in small shopping bags, now and again, to charity bins (there aren’t many near our place so I have to do it when I go up to Perth). Today, I made the decision that selling my culled books on eBay was not worth it and, after the discussion with the secondhand bookstore owner yesterday, I decided to donate them. Today, I took all those not currently up on eBay, and also some craft kits that I was planning on selling, and donated them. And it felt AWESOME!  I parted with stash and I parted with book collection and the world didn’t end and I feel more free! I am loving the cleared space – the space that I know used to be filled with things that made me feel bad and guilty.

And I went a step further. Whilst I was procrastinating on making a decision about something else (I did, in the end, just make one and moved on), I decided to sort my To Be Read bookcase in my bedroom. I decided to shelve the books by genre since I feel like I am more of a reader who feels like genre (so I might feel in the mood for YA, a short story or nonfiction). I took them all out to sort and as I did so, I did the kind of “airing of the stash” thing that knitters do. I looked at each book. And I decided that some of them I didn’t actually want to read, that if I was in the middle of one and hadn’t gone back to it in over a year, then it was ok to not force myself to finish it just to say I had but rather to just … NOT! OMG I feel AWESOME having given myself the permission to not finish books I’m not enjoying. I kind of want to (and am) start looking at reading like Simon from The Readers Podcast – he’s reading like it’s the Apocalypse. And seriously, if you think, hey I might only have this year left to read, do I want this book to be one of those?, it’s amazing how much easier deciding not to finish or read something becomes. Guilt free!

And I decided to cull my TBR bookcase to only contain books I honestly see myself reading in the next year or two. And the rest  I took out. That makes this bookcase much less guilt making with the books I feel I *should* be reading and more with the enticing here’s the books I *want* to read, which shall I read next? excitement. Aka how reading should be. And I’m going to be totally ok now with shelving unread books back into my general collection – that is, books that I want to read *at some point*. If I genuinely want to read something, and I feel in the mood for it, then I am perfectly capable of going and finding that book to read. So now I feel happier about sorting and culling the general collection and then having everything shelved by genre etc. Read and unread mingled. Because what is definitely worse than read and unread books co-mingling, is not being able to find any of the books you own exactly at the minute you want to find them. It especially applies to books like short story collections or nonfiction, which I really see as “own with intent” – books I want to own and intend one day to read, or to refer to.

And all of this has had me thinking about craft stash. And other perishable things (like gift soaps etc). I think I have gotten to a place where I don’t know what happens if you use the stash. I was rummaging in the stash on Saturday night (where, OMG I think I found evidence of moths OMG) and happened upon a very delicious hank of yarn I had forgotten I’d bought – Socks that Rock in Stormy Weather (it’s a gorgeous spectrum of greys). And I thought, hey that might be great for a new scarf – I need some lacy, lovely scarves now that I work back in the city, total scarf wearing for decoration type attire requirements. And my next thought was, but I bought that for socks and I also really want a pair of socks in that colourway. And I think that’s where an obstacle comes up for me. I could knit the skein and buy a new one. Or I could knit the skein and knit myself a pair of socks in a different colourway. Or whatever. But I literally couldn’t think past the idea of actually using up my stash. That I like the stash and don’t know what I would do if I actually worked through it – this concept is not one I am comfortable with. When in reality, working through the stash would make me happy by a) knitting, which I love b) turning lovely skeins into lovely wearable possessions for me or for gifts and c) free me from guilt about buying new yarn. Yet this is still not something I feel comfortable with.

And I wonder if this is a similar thing at play with my TBR. Working through it would mean I would have to go out there and find new books to read (note, I have no problem impulse buying books). There is something comfortable at being familiar with what you have yet still to do. That and, I always feel like I need brain energy to switch into reading a new book – new writing, new concepts, new worlds to get used to. I suspect though, that this is just a reading muscle that needs to get flexed to build strength again. Hence the encouragement of reading what I feel like reading and maybe reviewing them here to a) mark the read books b) validate book choices beyond the peer pressure and c) getting back comfortable at review

I mentioned on last episode’s Galactic Suburbia that I’m reading a lot of nonfiction at the moment. It’s quite weird for me as I haven’t really read nonfiction for fun in a few years. It’s going through a bit of a reassessment of aspects of my life and my reading is one of them. Basically, I’ve discovered you don’t have to force yourself to do or like things and that (revelation ahead) if you choose not to, you are much happier. Sounds obvious, and yet, not actually how I was running my life for the last decade or more. And so I realised that the reason I’m not finishing books is I am not reading the books that I need to be reading right now – are you a mood reader like me? I have to be in the right frame of mind for certain books and it’s why I tend to travel with more books than I can read in case I’m not in the mood for some. And right now, nonfiction, and nonfiction about craft, seems to be really appealing to me.

In Sweater Quest, Adrienne Martini spends a year trying to knit an Alice Starmore jumper. If you’re a knitter, you already know about the complexity of the fair isle and the holy grail that is the Alice Starmore projects. And if you’re not, you probably don’t really care. So suffice to day, in some ways this challenge is akin to the Julie Julia cooking project. And I kinda like me a craft related quest. Maybe if epic fantasy involved some kind of quest across country for maiden silk yarn, I’d like relate more?

This book is written in a very friendly tone – similar to the way online knitting blogs are written. Again, if you’re a knitter, you know what I mean, and if you’re not, well, knitters are pretty tech savvy and have many an online community. Because of course, knitting is deeply fascinating but noone said knitters didn’t love to bond over more than just the gorgeous yarn and pattern you’re working on right now. In Sweater Quest, we get to know Adrienne and a bit about who she is as a knitter and a person.

I enjoyed the quest to knit the Starmore but what I enjoyed even more were the truly crunchy questions Adrienne’s journey threw out. The thing about the Starmore is, according to Alice Starmore, you can only knit a Starmore if you use her specified yarn and colour combinations. If you deviate, she (and her lawyers) might just ask you to not call it a Starmore. And the problem is, they don’t actually make the yarn for many of her older patterns anymore. If you aren’t aware of the Starmore controversies and you like yourself a bit of internet drama, then this book is a great introduction to some of the goings on from the early 2000s and will point you in directions to chase up a bit more of that story.

Adrienne goes on a journey, both in writing her book and physically as she visits lots of the big name online knitters, asking the question, if she isn’t using Starmore yarn (she had to substitute one or two as she couldn’t chase down all of them), is she knitting a Starmore at all? I don’t know that I every really felt like I got an answer to that question. But I loved the thinking beyond that – a designer dreams up a knitted item and writes the pattern, knitters tend to pick that up, change the colour and/or the yarn brand, maybe change the cable here or there, add length, reduce length, change the collar or the sleeve… at what point does the end product no longer resemble the intent? When is it no longer the pattern? And more than that, what does a designer own?

I loved thinking these ideas over in terms of how they translated to writing and publishing and plagiarism. But I also loved the ideas as they applied to knitting. For years, I have been laughing at new knitters online who would never even have thought that you could look at a pattern and knit it in red instead of yellow – that they would hunt around for red jumpers if that’s what they were intending to knit, rather than find a pattern they liked and then just change the colour of the wool. Here in Australia, it’s only been really recently (and even more recent here in WA), that the yarn brand specified in the patterns was available to buy, let alone the colour. We are used to substituting not just the colour but the yarn and thus swatching before knitting is obviously a must (nonknitters – first you must work out how the yarn knits out – in terms of tension and so on – by knitting a square of a set number of stitches and then comparing the resulting dimensions to those of the pattern to figure out if you have to add or subtract stitches to be able to knit the resulting size garment). Basically, we are used to *not* using the same colours or yarn brand for knitting. So for me, the idea of Starmore’s, that to knit her jumpers you had to use her wool, was mindboggling. And before the internet and ebay, basically meant you would never be able to knit her work at all.

I dunno that I’ve finished thinking through a lot of the ideas from this book. I really enjoyed the food for thought. Recommended to my knitting geek friends.

Wow, this last week has been full on. I’m back in that whole finding a new routine, getting overwhelmed with a whole new normal and doing all that background reading to get up to speed. That’s right, I started my new job this week. And I also might have written my car off on Monday in the most understated, not dangerous accident one could ever have.

After the car bingle, I discovered that I can cross the street right outside my house and get on a bus that is 10 minutes from the train station, get on the train, get off the train, go up the stairs, walk round the side of that building, get in the lift, walk to my desk all in under an hour. I have absolutely no complaints about the public transport to my new job and back. It’s actually MUCH easier than driving (finding a spot to park at the train station is a pain). AND I get to sit on the train and read. A Book! Fabulous!

And I’m pretty much loving the new job. My new team is great, I feel like I fit in pretty well. The office space is pretty good and it’s inside a building designed to avoid sick building syndrome – it’s new and it doesn’t have that new building smell! It’s pretty awesome. No headaches. No feeling lightheaded by the afternoon. No fatigue when I get home. Not bad! It’s designed to make you walk around a fair bit so going to the bathroom or kitchen means you get some good movement in. I get two computer screens, to encourage paperless working. The job itself is going to be full on as the project is already behind schedule. And it’s going to be challenging. Which I’m kinda really looking forward to. It’s also kind of weird to come into a new job and be all over a lot of the issues and history. It’s a bit of a brain adjustment for me as I am taking a step back from the approach I’ve been requiring in my day job for the last 7 years and am now being more of a straight water engineer, if that makes sense? I don’t much like to talk about day job stuff here so I’ll just say that this is taking me more back to the nuts and bolts of my training as I learn to apply that in a new philosophical approach/role. It’s cool in that it feels like a breath of fresh air through my brain.

Then I’ve been coming home and pulling late nights for Twelfth Planet Press. Leaving little time for much else. Hopefully that won’t last too long, once I have the last few things done for Natcon, things should ease off a bit. But I’m kinda having fun and that is the point, I think!

Today I found myself floating around a bit and ended up tagging along with my mum to her secondhand bookshop where she wanted to exchange some books. As we were browsing whilst the books were being valued I noticed a sign which said that due to the current climate in bookselling, she was no longer offering held credit. This piqued my interest and so I wandered over to talk to her about what she and her business were experiencing in the wake of ebooks.

She told me that times were hard, that she thought they’d be able to ride it through but that she’d had 4000 books in and no books out – I didn’t ask her specifically what timeframe that was but she clarified that she’d really been feeling it in the last 12 months. On probing, she felt that it was the ereader that was the main factor. She said that people were coming in and telling her they were getting rid of all their books and would never buy a paperback book again. I thought that was interesting and wondered aloud to her as to whether that would be a long term, permanent thing, noting that I had heard that (particularly in Australia) a lot of people were getting a Kindle and then downloading the free ebooks online and not much else. I have read elsewhere that classics are being downloaded the most because they are free and the Kindle offers a nice way to get that “should have read” reading done but that other parts of the book industry were not feeling it as much. She also told me that some people were coming back and citing that they missed reading physical books. She told me that the worst problem was that she felt people were cleaning out all their books at home, racking up like a $200 credit with no intent to ever by a book from her in exchange at all. That she felt like she was being used as a dumping ground.

It was a really sad conversation. Her secondhand bookshop is small but has always been a good one. It’s the one my mother frequents  – she’s a voracious reader and was bringing in some really good condition, recently released books to swap. And the owner of the shop was well read and wandering around recommending books and answering questions – I threw a few at her as well. And there were some great customers who came in and shared a few recs and talked to me a bit about a few writers too. It’s a great little bookstore.

It’s easy to talk about the predicted future of the book industry and how brick and mortar stores and secondhand bookshops will die but it’s another thing to look at an experience that you genuinely love and realise that that too will go. Secondhand bookstores are a great meeting place, a great place to find recommendations and to chat over books and writers. And I know online you can get forums, and reviews and recommendations, and it’s not like I don’t buy books online or find my way to new titles via online means (or run a reviews website for that matter). But I don’t want one to be at the total expense of the other. I love bookstores too.

I bought some books – she has a pretty good Australian science fiction/fantasy section. And I made sure to push our expenditure over the required credit usage. Because I don’t want bookstores to die.

Tags: bookstores, publishing industry

So a while ago, a long long long while ago, I used to discuss issues on my blog relating to feminism and the gender disparity in SF. Lots of those conversations would get derailed and pulled back into what we coined “Feminism 101″ – that’s like when we all are mid conversation and then have to stop and convince someone that sexism exists. And those of us who were mid conversation and kept getting stopped just at the interesting bits, got frustrated. Stopping to explain Feminism 101, prevents the rest of us from moving beyond that conversation and into the crunchier bits, the more interesting parts of the conversation. That’s kind of where the idea of Galactic Suburbia came out of. A place where we could have a one or two hour conversation and not get derailed and prevented from delving.

In and amongst the blog posts at the time, we would note the gender disparity in anthologies, in which authors were being collected and in awards shortlists and winners. And at the time, people would say “oh it’s just this one” or “it’s not as often as you think” or … bleurgh go find the feminist bingo (women aren’t there cause they aren’t any good, I read for quality, I read for reasons other than gender but happen to only read/like male authors, not as many women get published/write/submit etc etc etc etc *yawn*). We had all those conversations. For years. It got boring. And so for the record, I don’t engage anymore not because those view points are right and I lost but because I’m over there –> *elsewhere* <– doing more interesting things. But the one thing I was determined to do then, and remain doing on Galactic Suburbia, is to continue to point out gender disparity on ToCs and on awards lists so that it doesn’t go unsaid and it doesn’t get pushed away and under  a carpet somewhere. When an award or a ToC bucks that trend, we point that out too because 1) yay and 2) isn’t that interesting! and 3) doesn’t happen all that often.

Mondy has crunched some recent numbers for gender breakdown for the Ditmars this week and shows an interesting change of more women, overall, in fiction being nominated for Ditmars. Interesting to note is that this number wraps up novels, novellas and short stories into 1 number. Whilst I’d be interested to see what the breakdown across these three categories is, it’s still an interesting graph. It shows in the last three years, more women than men (in total, for these 3 categories) have been nominated for Ditmars.

The question of course is, what does that mean? Did we go too far? Are we now looking at further disparity? Are men being persecuted and experiencing sexism by the voters? Are more women suddenly being published than men?

I think that these questions are hard for me to answer given that I have more than 1 horse in the races here (both in terms of the works nominated and the commentary being made on the awards). I have not made it any secret that an objective of mine is to showcase Australia women short story writers.

I don’t, though, think there is need for us to panic that the menz are in trouble just because an odd year or two show shortlists dominated by female writers. Noone panicked for decades when they were male heavy, afterall. And I don’t think the quest is for every category to have equal numbers of men and women, every year. I think parity in fact could be seen in years of all female, or even all male, shortlists. *As long as* those years are the outliers and not the norm. And that’s really the point isn’t it? The sky isn’t falling down just because more women were shortlisted this year. It’s the greatest number on the ballot in these categories, probably, for the lifetime of the award (no numbers crunched to support this statement). Doesn’t really say anything. It doesn’t correct for the long term trend.  And unless we have 50 years of only women making the shortlists, I don’t think we need to panic, just yet, about the reverse injustice.