Friday, March 21, 2014

March: Queermance #1 Book Launch

The month so far:

So, aside from a whole bunch of personal stuff that has been keeping me particularly quiet on here this month (which I may or may not post eventually in detail) I've had a really good couple of days.

-On Monday, I was advised that a short story I put in for a Queermance short story anthology had been accepted.
-On Tuesday, I realised Kerry Greenwood was one of the other authors to be featured in the same anthology!!!
-On Wednesday, I was asked to do a reading for the launch. Which was going to be on Friday @ Hares and Hyenas in Fitzroy, Melbourne. IE: The first time I've been in the same country where my writing is being published (eeeeee!)
-On Thursday, I worked myself into a panic attack, which was not fun.
-On Friday (yesterday) I managed to pick myself out, drag myself out of the house and successfully did a reading of a portion of my story that appears in an anthology that was just 6 weeks from conception to publication.

That happened to look a lot like this:



Yes, I am really that tiny, but also it was nice that the audience wasn't right in our faces there, although the lighting was very bright.

The most exciting thing for me, apart from being able to meet and greet with everyone who had had a hand in putting the publication together, was actually one of the names that went into Q: Queermance Volume 1. 

When I was a strapping young aspiring author of about nineteen, I happened to stalk go to a library run campaign called Meet the Authors. One of the authors to appear was none other than Melbourne based Kerry Greenwood. I remember sitting very patiently while she spoke and at the end I went up to her, asking what advice she would give to someone wanting to get published.

Last night, ten years later, I was featured in an anthology with her. I don't even know how to start to describe what that experience felt like.

Q: Queermance Volume 1 is a short story anthology which includes eleven retold fairytales with gay and lesbian protagonists. It was put together in six weeks with the amazing work of Lindy Cameron from Clan Destine Press in Melbourne and Jacob Coates from Jaffa Books in Brisbane



It turns out that said anthology is a little hard to Google search, though, so here's a little help. Q: Queermance Volume 1 can be found --

Here at Clan Destine Press
Here on Amazon  
Here on Smashwords

On reading in the last month, my new glasses have led new life into the pasttime and I'm able to get through so much more than I ever could! (Actually, that probably made the reading last night far more manageable too.)


By far and away my favourite book so far this month has to be Wideacre by Philippa Gregory. I'd been meaning to read this book for ages, so long in fact that I had managed to collect all three books in the series very cheaply. Had I known how completely immersed I was going to be in the story, I don't think I would have been able to wait.

The best description I've come upon for Wideacre is that it's a strange mis-match of 1999's Cruel Intentions  and basically anything written by Jane Austen. The main character is Beatrice, a young woman who loves her family home very much but is unable to inherit. Unlike in Cruel Intentions, there are very clear reasons underlying each and every one of Beatrice's actions. Also, I find her a very capable character to be behind the wheel with, which just keeps me page turning even when the events in the story are alarmingly high stakes or off-putting.

I read and loved her Tutor series, was kind of turned off by her contemporary writing, so this series could have been very hit or miss.