Announcing a brand new Angela Slatter boutique gift book!

To celebrate her invitation as Guest of Honour at Conflux 13 (Grimm Tales), FableCroft is delighted to announce an exclusive project with multi-award winning writer Angela Slatter. Produced as a limited edition chapbook, The Tallow-Wife is a gorgeous hardcover boutique gift book, lavishly illustrated by the incredible Kathleen Jennings, and only available for purchase for a very short time.

This beautiful book contains Angela’s darkly mannered novella “The Tallow-Wife”, along with “Fragments from the Citadel”, and an exclusive essay on the art of the world by Kathleen Jennings.

Pre-order your copy now, for the special pre-order discount price of AUD$35.00 (plus postage if not collecting at Conflux)! A very limited quantity will be available to purchase at full price at Conflux, but for the next month only, until September 21, 2017, we will take pre-orders for pick up or post anywhere in the world.

(Books pre-ordered now for collection at Conflux will be signed by the author.)

 

Win a copy of Striking Fire by Dirk Flinthart (and other news!)

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Striking Fire by Dirk Flinthart

Striking Fire

by Dirk Flinthart

Giveaway ends October 01, 2015.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/widget/154887

Pre-orders of the Striking Fire ebook are now available at your preferred e-tailer (Kindle / Kobo / Smashwords) and print pre-orders through the FableCroft shop!

Join us for the launch at Conflux in Canberra on Saturday October 3, 2015.

Conflux, Phantazein, Cranky Ladies…

We had a lovelyIMG_6854 weekend at Conflux a couple of weeks ago, and celebrated the launch of Phantazein with a fantastic roll up of con attendees. Cake and champagne were consumed, and wonderful congoers purchased books. I made a short and hopefully coherent launch speech that thanked the contributors, the cover artist Kathleen Jennings, and our designer Amanda Rainey, and also the authors of the forthcoming Insert Title Here anthology, which got slightly bumped because of Phantazein leapfrogging it (it will now launch in April 2015). The convention itself was quite intimate, but had some big-hitting panellists and a really lovely friendly feel to it. Was great to catch up with so many interstate friends, and I must give a huge shout out to intern extraordinaire Katharine and (sub intern?!) Elanor, who spent a great deal of time in the dealer room taking care of the table – it made such a big difference to my con experience, and is so much appreciated!

I’m delighted to see the first reviews of Phantazein starting to come in now – people seem to be enjoying it! Over at Butterfly Elephant, Bethwyn says “There is something dark to this collection, something that weaves everything together and leaves you coming back for more each time.” Katharine gave it five stars on Goodreads and said “From the very first piece in this anthology (one of my favourites!) I was swept away. This is a collection of wonderous fantasy, the kind that don’t always have a happy ending…” and Matt Morrison says of the stories “…all have a fresh voice and a unique spin…”.

My co-editor Tansy Rayner Roberts and I had a chat about the line up for Cranky Ladies of History today, and we’re very VERY close to being able to announce the table of contents. It’s SO exciting and we’re so delighted with the stories our amazing authors have shared with us – just you wait and see!

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Tehani’s Conflux schedule

Barring unforeseen changes, I’ll participating in the following program items at Conflux:

SECRET TIME LORDS: Most Time Lords apparently perished in the Great Time War. Ah, but did they? Our panellists speculate on Time Lords hidden amongst us.  6pm Friday, Forest Room 2.

EDITING ANTHOLOGIES – TIPS FOR THE UNINITIATED:  11am Saturday, Forest Room 3.  

PITCH SESSION (by advance booking only) – midday, location unknown!

BOOK LAUNCH – PHANTAZEIN EDITED BY TEHANI WESSELY:  5pm Saturday, Conflux Registration area.

THE DOCTOR’S JOURNEY – REVIEWING THE 11TH DOCTOR’S TRAVELS: Yes, we know there’s some debate about the numbering with John Hurt’s War Doctor, but we’re sticking with the published designations. 4.30am Sunday, Board Room 3.

CROWD FUNDED PUBLISHING – ROUND TABLE DISCUSSION: 10am Monday, Forest Room 3.

THE SPOKEN JOURNEY: Podcasts, talking books, radio, audio journals: in a multi-media environment the writing market includes audio presentations. This panel explores audio as a medium and issues in accessibility, technology and performance. 1pm Monday, Forest Room 3.

I hope to also attend both guest of honour speeches, but the rest of the time, I’ll be hanging out in the dealer room! See you there?

News, reviews and NEW BOOKS!

Guardian coverTsana at Tsana Reads and Reviews has lovely things to say about Guardian by Jo Anderton, including: I highly recommend it to fans of technological fantasy or just fantasy which differs from the mainstream. The worldbuilding is very original and one of the real strengths of the series. The magic is very structured; leading some to call the series science fiction. In that light, fans of slipstream and genre-bending fiction should find much to like here.

We’re delighted to see people talking about Tansy Rayner Roberts’ essay collections 50 Roman Mistresses and Pratchett’s Women, saying things like: “Thoughtful and entertaining“, “wonderfully useful and interestingly corrective“, and “makes learning history a fascinating experience“.

We’re counting down to the release of Phantazein, a new anthology of fantastical short stories (and poems), out in early October. We are launching the book in style at Conflux, the annual Canberra speculative fiction convention, 5.00pm Saturday 4 October. Come along if you can! What is Phantazein? Well, if you were one of those readers who enjoyed To Spin a Darker Stair but bemoaned the fact it was too short, Phantazein is TOTALLY the book for you!

Speaking of Conflux, FableCroft is hosting a pitching session for novels (also on Saturday, midday!) – we aren’t open to submissions, so it’s you’re only chance to hit us with your best book!

We really appreciate ratings and reviews on Goodreads and Amazon – a big thanks to our wonderful readers who share the love!

Speaking of book launches…

It occurred to me recently, that given we have Jo Anderton’s launch next weekend, I probably should (finally) post about the OTHER book celebrations we’ve had recently. Well, in the past year. Hmmm, yes, it HAS been a busy 12 months! (more photos of events over at the FableCroft Facebook page)

First off the rank (gosh, was it really in APRIL last year?!) was the dual launch for The Bone Chime Song and Other Stories by Joanne Anderton and One Small Step, an anthology of discoveries at Conflux, the 2013 Natcon in Canberra in October. We had a great spot in the thoroughfare, and a good time slot too, and it was lovely to see so many con-goers in attendance. Kaaron Warren acted as launcher (for both our books AND Thoraiya Dyer’s Twelfth Planet Press Twelve Planets Collection Asymmetry!), and Joanne, Thoraiya and I said a few words too. Lots of fun!

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Photo courtesy of Cat Sparks
Screen Shot 2014-05-31 at 3.24.39 PM
Photo courtesy of Cat Sparks

So we had an intimate but fun launch for Dirk Flinthart’s debut novel, Path of Night, way back in November 2013. It’s the first book of ours that has been launched by the local mayor, which was exciting, and the author and cover designer both attended in fine style. Was lovely to meet some of the good people of Scottsdale, and we had a great evening.

Author reading book shoppers

Earlier this year, we had a FableCroft Book Party, hosted by the great folks at The Hobart Bookshop. The wonderful Lian Tanner said lovely things about Ink Black Magic and Path of Night, and Tansy and Dirk both got to read some of their novels too. Was a good turnout, particularly for the Sunday afternoon of the long weekend, and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves!

Photo by Helen Merrick
Photo by Helen Merrick

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Just a few weeks ago (okay, okay, it was nearly two months – goodness me, the year is flying!) we celebrated two wins at the Aurealis Awards, with The Bone Chime Song taking out Best Collection and One Small Step sharing the glory with The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror 2012 in the Best Anthology category. With several other FableCroft works on the shortlists, including Path of Night and Ink Black Magic, we had a brilliant night, and enjoyed being able to spend the evening with the best and brightest of Australian spec fic.

Photo by Cat Sparks
Photo courtesy of Cat Sparks

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Now we’re gearing up for next weekend’s celebration of Jo’s new book Guardian, and I’m still a bit boggled that it’s been over a year since the launch of The Bone Chime Song and Other Stories! Hopefully it won’t take me so long to blog about the fun we have there… All attendees of Continuum X are welcome to join us for the launch, 4pm on Saturday 7 June. Hope to see you there!

Conflux Writers’ Day – Saturday April 5 2014

9837-Conflux-writers_blkThe very clever Conflux team, headed most ably by Nicole Murphy, have decided to run the inaugural Conflux Writers’ Day on Saturday April 5 – that’s the day of the Aurealis Awards, which are of course now hosted by the Canberrans!

Details!

The inaugural Conflux Writers Day will take place at University House, Australian National University, Canberra. For one day, Australia’s speculative fiction writers will gather for hours of professional development.

The theme of the day is ‘The Writers Journey’, which will be covered by four sub-themes – ‘Writing Skills’, ‘Writing Processes’, ‘Submission and Publication’ and ‘Building a Career’.

Four plenary speakers will be addressing these themes. These speakers are:

Joanne Anderton
Kaaron Warren
Ian McHugh
Keri Arthur

There will also be concurrent presentations bringing great thoughts and ideas to writers at all stages of their career.

For more information, including the full program, head to the website!

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to attend the day as I have to be at the CBCA Judging Conference, but I’ll look forward to hearing all about it after the Aurealis Awards that night!