Fairy Tales, Cats and Queermance 2015

I'm working hard on helping put together the second year of Queermance, which it occurs to me that I should help promote before March turns into April and then the weekend is upon us.

Last year, I wrote a short post about it. This year, we'll have exciting extra items in our line up, such as swag bags and a Queer Art panel. Tickets are still available, although food inclusive tickets are ticking down as we need to get final numbers to the Mecure Hotel. Daytime panels, will all be at the Mecure, Therry Street in Melbourne. Aren't available for the full weekend? Single day tickets are available. Evenings only or single panel tickets will be available right up till the day for as little as $20.




The venue for the evening events will be Hares and Hyenas on Johnston St, Fitzroy, which is still one of my favourite queer friendly venues in the whole city. It does help that books line the walls, and they sell tea. And, if you squint reeeaaaally hard, you can see the place at the back where we had the readings last year for the launch of Queermance Vol. 1.

Queermance Vol. 2 will be launched in the same space on Friday 17th of April, starting 8pm and we'll also be having some readings from authors from the first volume who weren't able to make it last year. Copies of both books will be available on the night, thanks to Clan Destine Press. I have my submission in. Do you?



As if that's not enough, there's other stuff going on in my life right now. Such as:

• Playing with cats (that's me there in the first picture).
• Reading.
• Finishing the world's longest Slytherin scarf.
• Volunteering at my local library's amazing Free iPad Program for Seniors.
• Having my fairy tales come out again to play.

For the first time since my Honours year, I'm curled up with old friends Hans Anderson, Marina Warner, the Grimm brothers and no shortage of coloured post-it notes. They're just as good a company as I remembered.

Unlike last time, when my focus was on Beauty and the Beast and other permutations, the enchanted slipper and the deformed foot have got my attention. I've lost too many hours to flicking through pages and writing notes. It's been sublime!

'Tear Me Apart', and the closing of Egmont USA

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I love three things: retold fairy tales, young adult fiction, and raving about favourite authors.


Two years ago, I wrote a review of 'Kill Me Softly', by Sarah Cross. There was no doubt in my mind then--and still no doubt now, truth to tell--that Sarah Cross was one of the new up and coming authors combining young adult fiction and fairy tales into happy little packages.

Kill Me Softly, published in 2012, is a Sleeping Beauty story set in the fictional town of Beau Rivage. The wonderful thing about this story, though, is that it's not just a Sleeping Beauty story. The whole town of Beau Rivage is filled with fairy tales coming to life. Other main characters include Snow White, Beauty and her Beast and, of course, Bluebeard.

It was like reading something in the world of Disney, only with a deliciously dark undertow after the Grimms' own hearts.

“Birthdays were wretched, delicious things when you lived in Beau Rivage. The clock stuck midnight, and presents gave way to magic.

Curses bloomed.

Girls bit into sharp apples instead of birthday cake, chocked on the ruby-and-white slivers, and collapsed into enchanted sleep. Unconscious beneath cobweb canopies, frozen in coffins of glass, they waited for their princes to come. Or they tricked ogres, traded their voices for love, danced until their glass slippers cracked.

A prince would awaken, roused by the promise of true love, and find he had a witch to destroy. A heart to steal. To tear from the rib cage, where it was cushioned by bloody velvet, and deliver it to the queen who demanded the princess's death. 

Girls became victims and heroines.

Boys became lovers and murderers.

And sometimes... they became both.” 

(Kill Me Softly, page 1) 

Now imagine my delight when, three years later, I hear about the release of Book 2 in this series: Tear You Apart, a Snow White story starring Viv from Kill Me Softly.

Viv knows there’s no escaping her fairy-tale curse. One day her beautiful stepmother will feed her a poison apple or convince her on-again-off-again boyfriend, Henley, to hunt her down and cut out her heart before she breaks his. In the city of Beau Rivage, some princesses are destined to be prey.

But then Viv receives an invitation to the exclusive club where the Twelve Dancing Princesses twirl away their nights. There she meets Jasper, an underworld prince who seems to have everything—but what he really wants is her. He vows to save her from her dark fate if she’ll join him and be his queen.

All Viv has to do is tear herself away from the huntsman boy who still holds her heart.




The whole thing would have been much more exciting had it not been paired with the information that Egmont--the publisher of both Kill Me Softly and Tear You Apart was closing its doors, less than a month since the latter title was released. 

Attempts to sell Egmont USA since October 2014 have not resulted in any final agreements. As a consequence, Egmont has decided to close the office, effective from January 31st 2015.  

The spring 2015 list will be published and books will continue to be available via Random House. (Source: egmont.com)

In conjunction with Cuddlebuggery Book Blog, I and 54 other book blogs are launching the Last List Blog Hop for the authors and books that have been hit hardest by this closure. As per the above press release, authors like Sarah Cross will still have their titles available via Random House, but without the publicity backing of their publishing house.

So spread the word! I can personally attest that these books are 100% amazing and cannot wait to add Tear You Apart to my personal--OMG and constantly growing--library. Please feel free to reblog, repost, retweet, re-anything this post to anyone you think will be interested.

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.