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Juror for British Fantasy Awards 2014

Have belatedly noticed that the juries for this year’s British Fantasy Awards have been officially announced, so now I can tell you –  I’m a juror again, yay!

I was chuffed to be asked back again this year, but had to remember not to mention it before the official post went up. Which I then totally missed. Oops. In my defense, I forgot most things during May while I was finishing that last draft. No kitchen fires, but my head was so elsewhere that I wouldn’t have been surprised.

I’m on the jury for Best Small Press  – which means a hell of a lot of reading, as we’re considering overall output from several small presses, as opposed to those namby-pamby Best Novel jurors who only have to decide between  a handful of books 😉

I think the plan is to announce details of the nominees for all categories this Friday, at the British Fantasy Society open night in London.

More details of the other juries here, and I’ll try to remember to  link to the nominee announcement once that’s out. Congrats in advance, everyone, and good luck!

Update: details of all shortlisted nominees are now up on the British Fantasy Society site.

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Which Hunger Games character are you? Part I – The boys (Slacker Heroes post)

Hunger Games Poster

First published at Slacker Heroes.

In the lead up to The Hunger Games movie release, here’s a fun quiz in place of a book review. Because everyone’s already read the book, right? Right? If not, you’d better hurry up because the film’s out next month and you’re going to want know what all the fuss is about.

I definitely recommend reading the series before you watch the film; no matter how good the adaptation is, it can’t be better than the novel. The story is high tension, dystopian YA that grabs you from the start and drags you through to the end so fast your hands are bleeding from turning the pages. That’s right, dystopian paper cuts. For reals.

Here’s the main premise –

The rules of the Hunger Games are simple. In punishment for the uprising, each of the twelve districts must provide one girl and one boy, called tributes, to participate. The twenty-four tributes will be imprisoned in a vast outdoor arena that could hold anything from a burning desert to a frozen wasteland. Over a period of several weeks, the competitors must fight to the death. The last tribute standing wins.

This week, it’s time to find out which of the male characters is most like you. Next time, you’ll get to identify with one of the girls. Ready? Let’s get started. And may the odds be ever in your favour.

1. There is a squirrel in the trees. It may be your only source of food for months. Do you:

A) Drive it out of the trees using a tactic you perfected years ago, catch it in a homemade trap, then share it between two starving families.

B) Entice the animal down with a beautiful trail of sugar icing, leading from the base of the tree right into your perma-hot baker’s oven.

C) Not notice it because you’re still drunk from this morning. Who needs meat, when whiskey has all the carbs you need?

2. What do you look like?

A) Dark, lean and grey eyed. Admired by the ladies, but too busy hunting and brooding to hook up. Coal smudged, with twigs in your hair, which is strange since those woods are forbidden…

B) Floppy blond hair and kind blue eyes. Broad and stocky from your flour-hauling, dough-kneading days. Face red and puffy from crying. Occasionally on fire.

C) Woody Harrelson.

3. What would be your dream holiday?

A) An adventure holiday, orienteering-type thing, where you have to live for weeks on grubs and tubers and people are impressed when you drink your own pee. You would save the biggest grubs and send them to your family back home.

B) A trip to the English sea-side, with lots of tea shops and crumpets, lashings of double cream and long, romantic walks on the beach.

C) An all-inclusive trip with a 24 hour bar, where it’s totally acceptable to have vomit in your chest hair and fall over a lot.

Mostly As

You are Gale, loyal best friend with super sharp huntsman-smarts. Your devotion and rebel sensibilities add a sexy dash of derring-do to your woodsy get-up, even though you probably always smell of blood and coal.

Mostly Bs

You are Peeta, the baker’s son that the TV cameras love, selected to battle one of the girls you went to school with. Form no attachments because a maximum of one of you is getting out alive. No, stop smiling at her, don’t you, oh. Fine. Befriend the pretty girl you’re going to have to kill. Just don’t come crying to me when it turns out messy…

Mostly Cs

You are Haymitch, the drunked-up mentor, the only living Hunger Games victor from District 12. What did you do, breathe poisonous booze fumes at the other competitors? It’s up to you to bring this year’s tribute home. Remember, only one can survive, and it won’t be easy to choose if you’re already seeing double.

.

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Recommended resources for writing SF/F? (Mslexia Guest Blog)

Since my last post, some of you have asked for links to useful blogs about writing fantasy/science fiction. Unfortunately, this has made me realise that most of what I read when I started writing is out of date now – no longer updated, or my bookmarks lost from when I changed laptops. Darn.

Recently I’ve been keeping my head down and writing, trying to limit my online reading til this novel is done, so I don’t have as much fresh content to recommend as I’d like. I’ve listed here a few links to some classics and content I still think is relevant, but I’m really writing this to ask what you read.

Which sites or books do you find useful when you’re stuck for what to write, or how to write it? Was there a genre-specific resource that helped when you were starting out?

Or, do you just use the same writing advice non-genre writers would? Is anything extra needed?

Read the full article (including ace Ray Bradbury video and a picture of a Cat Wizard) here.

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Genre is a community, not a ghetto (Mslexia guest blog)

My latest blog about genre-writing is up at Mslexia. Here’s an excerpt – click here for the full read. And I do hope you like the zebra photo. I aim to serve.

No one wants to be pigeonholed. I just want to write books so wonderful that everyone loves them, all over the world. Even people who don’t normally read will adore what I write and praise me. Loudly. You want the same thing, right?

With that in mind, identifying yourself as a genre writer and distinguishing yourself from the mainstream – isn’t that cutting yourself off, selling yourself short?

I don’t think so. Far from being limiting, I have found more support, useful advice and a stronger sense of my writing identity since I defined myself as a fantasy writer. Here’s how it worked for me, and while my references and resources are particularly about Sci-Fi/Fantasy, I hope that some of this will be useful to those writing in other genres, too.

I hope you’ll read the full post here.

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