ARCs! ARCs! ARCs!

I have advance reader copies of Tender Morsels! I can't stop picking them up, just to feel the weight, and wave them at people. So far, the first comment (from two of the three people I've waved them at - Steven, Harry and Jack) has been, 'I thought it was going to be a hardback.'

To which there's only one reply: ARC-ARC-ARC!

Oh, but they're beautiful. And so weighty.

**lifts**

**riffles through**

**sighs with happiness**

Black Juice on Google Book Search

Now this is a funny pageful of hints and tantalising things. Best of all, I think, are the 'Key words', which, you know, anyone might be Googling for, around the place:

Booroondoon, Mullord, Mumma, accordion, croquembouche, Bonneh, yowlinin, Ikky, Jelly, Hloorobn, Viljastramaratan, mahout, Gooroloom, bouffon, Yellow Jersey, munkees, Bard Jo, bangles, Robbreh, far side

It's very like what the Word spelling checker comes up with. Makes me feel awfully colourful.

You miserable sod, Paul Kincaid

Have a look at him, reviewing Ellen's YBFH#20.

"Winkie" by Margo Lanagan is a retelling of Wee Willie Winkie as something dark and angst-ridden and seems almost totally pointless.

Of course, it wouldn't be that he's missed the point, would it. 'Course not; what am I saying.

Tender Morsels page proofs

Check out these spiffy chapter openers...


Oh, and even typeset it comes out at 435 pages. Don't throw this at the wall, people; you'll need to re-plaster.

Waah! Nearly Monday!

I've written ten pages this Draftbusters, and resolved to write 30 more before the next one on 7–8 June. This is for a 'short book' I've promised to write this year—not to be confused with the novella that's due around Christmas. I don't know that I'll be able to do much more than that, but that's not stopping me applying for money to buy time to try.

Instead of staring into the maw of the working week, I'll have another peep into the world I've been in this weekend:

Well, off I clattered down the broken road, into the rhythm of the rich man's days instead of the slow stodge of the walking soldier's. It was astounding how the country slipped by, rushed by, how shells of burnt cottages and cannon-craters and earthworks and shattered copses, instead of creeping towards a man and asking him to regard and consider how they had come into being, what they had weathered, and what had destroyed them again, leaped to my gaze, hurried by, gave onto the next dead farm, the next huddled family by their house of cloth and sticks, the next bloat-corpse of goat or donkey in the fields—I could see so far from up here! I could see, after a day or two with a night between at an inn with a good roast meal and two innkeeper's daughters, I could see how narrow a place in the world was occupied by the fighting. I rode right out of the war, I did, in the space of a day and a half, and I scarce knew what I was looking at when I saw my first ploughed field; I could scarce keep from laughing at the fool who thought he could bring up a crop in this world of poor luck and bombardment.

Red Spikes is in the Booklist Online top 10 SF/fantasy for youth

How cool is this?

Like quick, intense plunges into exhilarating waters, the stories in Lanagan’s latest, seductively eerie collection will seize readers’ imaginations with more off-kilter interpretations of folklore and startling eruptions of magic.

Purrr.

Even more exciting, page proofs of Tender Morsels have been spotted, not exactly in the wild, but here and there in captivity.

Even more exciting, it's the weekend, the Draftbusters weekend, and the day has been filled with writing and talking about writing, and I don't mean complex retail audit certificate procedures.

What it feels like to be Goosled...

Reviews have been coming in thick and fast for Ellen Datlow's Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Some of them mention 'The Goosle', some of them (shock-horror!) don't. Here is the round-up.

Publishers Weekly:

Standout selections include Margo Lanagan's deeply disturbing “The Goosle,” which eloquently corrupts the Hansel and Gretel fable with bubonic plague, sexual slavery and mass murder...

Rich Horton in Locus:

Margo Lanagan’s “The Goosle” is a very dark retelling of Hansel and Gretel, everywhere harshly new.

Nick Gevers, in Locus:

Margo Lanagan is in truly savage mood in “The Goosle”, a revision and continuation of the story of Hansel and Gretel, in which the tale’s origins in poverty and plague are foregrounded to chilling effect, cannibalism, paedophilia, and all.

Don D'Ammassa, over at Science Fiction:

Richard Bowes has an okay story followed by Margo Lanagan with a clever twist on a fairy tale.

Library Journal:

...Margo Lanagan's wicked version of Hansel and Gretel...

Rod Lott, on Bookgasm:

To lesser effect [than Maureen McHugh's 'Special Economics'], Margo Lanagan reimagines the “Hansel and Gretel” fairy tale as “The Goosle,” with a disturbing sexual bent (”Show me your boy-thing,” the mudwife would say. “Put it through the bars”).

Booklist:

Margo Lanagan’s “The Goosle” combines Australian myth with horror in a gruesome sequel to Hansel and Gretel.

Alex Telander in BookLOON Reviews:

The high point of the collection is Margo Lanagan's The Goosle, a dark and twisted Hansel and Gretel retelling, involving mass murder, the bubonic plague, and sexual slavery.

And finally, Bookpage.com:

Lanagan's retelling of Hansel and Gretel, "Goosle," reminds readers that fairy tales are definitely not all for children...

De-heh-heh-finitely not.

When am I going to get to see all these other stories?

Excellent news for working walking writers!

Here's an adventure for you (and me). You know how you've put aside that small golden egg so that you can come to Australia one day? (If you're in Australia already, you don't quite know why you've put it aside, but this is the reason, right here.)

Well, in January next year, I'll be the workshop leader on a creative walk with Into The Blue in the Tarkine rainforest, in Tasmania. Raymond tells me that they've put up more platform walks, so there'll be less actual slogging through the bush, and more leaning over the railings being inspired.

I'm not quite sure how the days will be organised, but I'm going for a practice walk with Jan Cornall in the desert at the end of June, to get an idea of how she runs hers. I heard wonderful things about her Tarkine walk over the New Year this year (watch the slideshow here for a glimpse), and she's doing another one just before mine, but mine is specifically for speculative fiction writers, so if you want to throw some wild ideas around with me in the bush this southern summer/northern winter, book now!

Resist if you can. Personally, I think there'll be more fun than you can poke a stick at.

Talking backwards

Russian deals are in the offing for Tender Morsels and Red Spikes. Ast wants to put Red Spikes stories in with Black Juice ones - so that the result will look more like a Russian novel, eh.

No haiku today, either. But at least I've been talking about writing.

Oh, and making such progress on retail audit certificates, you wouldn't believe.

I see I need to put a picture up soon. That beer bottle can't last forever. Well, they never can, can they?