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Posts from the ‘Writing’ Category

Feb 5

‘The Changeling’ Included in 2014 Locus Recommended Reading List

Issue02_499x648As usual the February issue of Locus Magazine includes its annual Recommended Reading List, covering books and stories published over the previous calendar year. Compiled by the magazine’s editors, reviewers and a panel of outside critics, it always makes for fascinating reading, and this year’s list, which includes a number of books and stories I have read and would heartily recommend (David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks, Garth Nix’s Clariel, Adam Roberts’ Bête, Katherine Addison’s The Goblin Emperor, Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Sword, William Gibson’s The Peripheral) and a number I haven’t but I’m looking forward to a lot (Rjurik Davidson’s Unwrapped Sky, Ben Peek’s The Godless, Nina Allan’s The Race) is no exception.

At a personal level though I was delighted to discover my story, ‘The Changeling’, which was published in Jonathan Strahan’s Fearsome Magics (which also gets a mention in the Recommended Anthologies list) included in the list of Recommended Novelettes.

You can read the full list of recommended books and stories over at Locus. And if you’d like to read ‘The Changeling’ you can pick up a copy of Fearsome Magics (which also features stories by Garth Nix, Karin Tidbeck, Kaaron Warren, Frances Hardinge, Isobelle Carmody and a bunch of other excellent people) from online and bricks and mortar retailers or through your favourite ebook retailer.

Jan 29

Clade Book Trailer

Jan 27

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Clade Publication Day!

CladeMy new novel, Clade, hits bookshop shelves today. I’m incredibly excited it’s finally out: Penguin have done an amazing job and it looks gorgeous, but more importantly it’s a book I’m very proud of, and which means a great deal to me.

If you’d like to know a little more about it you can check out the publisher’s description, or read the first chapter, and if you’re curious about the title I’ve written a little piece about it you might find interesting.

I’ll be posting more information on events and things as they’re announced, but if you’re in Sydney there’s a launch at Better Read Than Dead at 6:00pm on Thursday 5 February, and one of the Sydney Story Factory’s Author Talks at 6:00pm on Wednesday 18 February. I’ll also be at Adelaide Writers’ Week in March.

But in the meantime, yay! And I hope you like it.

Jan 25

Adelaide Writers’ Week

I’m very excited to say I’ll be a guest at Adelaide Writers’ Week in March. The full list of guests, which includes the brilliant John Lanchester, Michel Faber, Joan London, Jenny Offil, John Darnielle, Ceridwen Dovey, Jane Gleeson-White and Willy Vlautin is available on the Writers’ Week website, where you can also check out events day by day or download a pdf of the full program, but you can catch me in conversation with Delia Falconer at 1:15pm on Sunday 1 March and talking about love and apocalypse with Michel Faber and Canadian poet Ken Babstock at 5:00pm on Monday 2 March. I’ll also be interviewing Mountain Goats frontman and novelist John Darnielle about his terrific new novel, Wolf in White Van,  at 5:00pm on Saturday 28 February (an event I’m really excited about).

If you’re going to be in Adelaide please come along; in the meantime here’s Writers’ Week Director Laura Kroetsch talking about Clade a couple of months ago.

Jan 14

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Read the first chapter of Clade for free

CladeMy new novel, Clade, hits Australian bookstores on 28 January, but in the meantime Penguin have made the first chapter available on their website.

If you like what you read you can preorder the print version through Booktopia, Bookworld, Gleebooks, Readings, Better Read Than Dead, Pages and Pages, Abbey’s or your favourite online or bricks and mortar bookseller, or purchase the ebook from the Australian iBookstore, the Kobo store, Amazon.com and Amazon.com.au.

Oct 24

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Clade cover and preorders!

So it’s official. My new novel, Clade, will be released by Penguin in Australia on 28 January. As the blurb says, “A provocative, urgent novel about time, family and how a changing planet might change our lives, from the acclaimed author of The Resurrectionist and editor of The Penguin Book of the Ocean.”

You can feast your eyes on the very sexy cover below, and if you’d like to preorder a copy you can do so through Booktopia and Bookworld. I’ll pop up more links as it becomes more widely available, and post some more details soon. [Update: you can also preorder through Boomerang Books]

Very exciting!

Clade

Oct 8

Fearsome Magics

Fearsome MagicsJust a quick note to say I’ve got a story in editor extraordinaire Jonathan Strahan’s new anthology, Fearsome Magics, which is due out today. The follow-up to Jonathan’s World Fantasy Award-nominated Fearsome Journeys, it’s also the second in his New Solaris Book of Fantasy series.

I haven’t read all of it yet, but the bits I have are terrific. You can check out the full table of contents over at Coode Street, but there are new stories by Garth Nix, Karin Tidbeck, Kaaron Warren, Frances Hardinge, Christopher Rowe, Isobelle Carmody and a bunch of other fabulous people. I think – I hope – my story, ‘The Changeling’, is interesting: to my mind it’s less fantasy than a sort of anti-fantasy, although I’m not going to say more than that.

Australian readers who’d like to pick up a copy can check prices on Booko; otherwise you can check out your favourite independent bookseller, head to Amazon or Amazon UK, or pick up the ebook for iBooks, Google Books and Kobo. In the words of the immortal Molly Meldrum, ‘Do yourself a favour …”.

Jun 18

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A new novel, a new story and a new anthology …

It’s been a while since I posted, and given how much I’ve got to get through over the next few months it may be a while before I get back to posting more regularly, but I wanted to announce a couple of things.

The first – and most important – is that Penguin will be publishing my new novel, Clade, in Australia in February next year, with other territories to follow. I’ve posted a few bits and pieces about it here and there, but it’s a book I’ve been thinking about and working on for a while now, and I think it’s pretty special. At some point I’ll pop up a proper description, but for now it’s probably enough to say it’s about time, and family and climate change, it moves from the very near future to the end of the 21st century, and that it’s got birds, floods, bees and aliens. I rather love it and I hope other people will as well.

Although I’m currently deep in the process of editing Clade, I’ve also spent the first half of the year working on a couple of other projects. The first is another new stand-alone novel, which is slowly taking shape; the second is a trilogy of new novels. I can’t talk much about either just yet, except to say that the first novel of the trilogy is written and the next two are underway, and I’m hoping I’ll have drafts of both the standalone novel and all three books in the trilogy by the end of next year.

In the meantime I’ve got a couple of other bibs and bobs around the place. One is a new story, ‘Skinsuit’, which you’ll find in Island Magazine 137. The full text of the magazine isn’t online but you can pick up the print version at good bookstores here in Australia or order print and digital versions from Island directly (while you’re there you might want to think about supporting the magazine and its investment in Australian writing and culture by subscribing). The issue also features fiction by Tegan Bennett Daylight, Angela Meyer and Sunil Badami, as well as non-fiction by Alison Croggon and Damon Young, so you’re guaranteed value for money.

The other is a piece in if:book Australia’s The N00BZ: New Adventures in Literature. Edited by Simon Groth, the collection is the culmination of a project that saw fifteen writers including attempt to stretch or challenge their writing practice in different ways. Sometimes the challenges were personal – Sean Williams participated in a sleep deprivation study, and charted the effects on his writing – sometimes, as with Benjamin Law’s decision to learn shorthand, they were technical, and sometimes, as with Jeff Sparrow’s exploration of the experience of not writing, they involved an examination of the author’s writing practice more generally. For me the challenge revolved around trying to develop and write the script for a comic, a project that was both about exploring my lifelong fascination with comics and beginning the process of learning to work in a new form.

It was a great project, and one I enjoyed being involved in immensely, and having read the contributions of the other writers I’m confident they enjoyed being involved in the process as much as I did. If you’d like a taster you can read my contribution online, but I really do recommend you check out the entire collection, which is currently available in digital form with the print version to follow in August.

Nov 4

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Best Australian Stories 2013

Best Stories 2013Just a quick note to say how delighted I am that my story, ‘Solstice’, has been selected for Best Australian Stories 2013. Originally published as part of The Big Issue’s Fiction Issue, it’s also the first part of my new novel, Clade, which will, with a bit of luck, be published later next year.

My copy of the collection only turned up in the mail an hour or so ago, so I haven’t had a chance to read it yet. But this year’s collection, which was edited by two-time Miles Franklin-winner, Kim Scott, and includes stories by Kalinda Ashton, Tony Birch, Georgia Blain, Tegan Bennett Daylight, Ashley Hay, Andy Kissane, Wayne Macauley, Ryan O’Neill and Favel Parrett to name just a few, looks particularly impressive.

There’s a full list of contributors on the Black Inc website. Alternatively you’ll find copies at any decent bricks and mortar or online bookstore. I’m not sure if the electronic versions are available internationally, but if you’d rather go electronic it’s available for Kindle, Kobo, Google Play and iBooks.

And while I’m here, I should mention how pleased I was a little while back to see my Rapunzel novelette, Beauty’s Sister making the Recommended Reading List for The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2012, edited by Liz Grzyb and Talie Helene. The full list, which includes works by writers including Joanne Anderton, Margo Lanagan, Jason Nahrung and Kaaron Warren is available on the Ticonderoga website and is well worth a look.

Oct 18

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Paper Nautilus

JBR10001_Book_cover_finalI’m very excited to be able to say my first book of poetry, Paper Nautilus, is now available as an ebook through Amazon. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it (and given it’s (a) poetry and (b) has been out of print for more than a decade that’s presumably pretty much everybody) it was first published by Five Islands Press as part of their New Poets Series in 1994, was shortlisted for the National Book Council of Australia’s Banjo Award for Poetry in 1995, and contains a series of poems I wrote between 1991 and 1993.

It’s always strange rereading work you wrote a long time ago, but looking at the book again I’m surprised how well it stands up. Perhaps unusually I didn’t really start writing until I was in my 20s, and because I managed to get published reasonably quickly the poems in Paper Nautilus aren’t just the first things I had published, many of them are amongst the first things I ever wrote. That being the case it’s sort of gratifying to find the book contains not just a number of poems I’m genuinely proud of but a number more I’d forgotten that are surprisingly good (I have to confess I had no memory of ‘Winter Afternoon’ at all until I reread the book). Even more interesting is seeing the way so many of the interests and preoccupations of my fiction were present right from the beginning.

I’ve made a few minor corrections to the text but otherwise the book is as it was when it was first published, except for the very handsome new cover, designed by Who Creative.

There’s more information and a few reviews over on the page I’ve created for the book, but given you can have the whole book for a mere US$2.99, perhaps you’d be better off just hopping over to Amazon and buying a copy.

Aug 28

Coode Street and Me

the-coode-street-podcastA little after the fact, but if you get a chance you might want to check out Episode 154 of the Coode Street Podcast, which features me chatting with Jonathan Strahan and Gary K. Wolfe about subjects ranging from Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane and Paul McAuley’s Quiet War series to Margaret Atwood, Tolkien and the future of science fiction.

I’m a big fan of Coode Street, which I think is necessary listening for anybody interested in science fiction or fantasy, so it was great fun to be a part of it. You can download the episode from Podbean or from iTunes.

If you’re interested I’d also very much recommend taking the time to check out M. John Harrison’s recent appearance on the show (available via Podbean and iTunes), in which he demonstrates he’s exactly as brilliant in person as on the page, and the conversations with Graham Joyce (whose new book, The Year of the Ladybird, is a delight (again, Podbean, iTunes)) and Ursula Le Guin (Podbean) from a while back.

Aug 26

Brisbane Writers Festival

brisbane writers festivalJust a quick note to say I’ll be appearing at this year’s Brisbane Writers Festival, which runs from Tuesday 3 September to Monday 9 September.

I’m on three panels. The first, Fables and Folktales, also features Kate Forsyth (who just wrote a lovely review of Beauty’s Sister), Donna Hancox and Angela Slatter, and is fairly self-explanatory. The second, A Sense of Wonder, which also features Ashley Hay and Bianca Nogrady, is about science and communication, and the third, Future Imperfect, which also features Sean Williams and Antony Funnell, is about science fiction and the future. Fables and Folktales is at 2:30pm on Saturday 7 September, A Sense of Wonder is at 4:00pm on Saturday 7 September and Future Imperfect is at 2:30pm on Sunday 8 September.

I’m really excited about the panels and about the Festival in general, which seems to have gone out of its way to develop a program that isn’t ashamed to schedule literary writers like Philip Meyer and Ruth Ozeki alongside speculative and comic writers like Matt Fraction (writer of the brilliant, brilliant Hawkeye), Dylan Horrocks and Marjorie M. Liu. The latter are all appearing as part of the Well Drawn event on Sunday 8 September, and I’m very much looking forward to catching their sessions.

Information on the Festival and details of all events are available on the BWF website. More information about my sessions and ticketing is available on my profile page.

May 22

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Beauty’s Sister out in paperback today!

9780143569657

I’m delighted to say my novelette, Beauty’s Sister, which was published as a digital-only Penguin Special last year is now available as a nifty orange Penguin paperback. You can see the rather lovely cover on the right (I know it’s been said before, but the orange Penguin livery is one of the truly great pieces of design), and if you’re in Australia you should also be able to buy it at your local bricks and mortar bookshop (elsewhere you’ll have to check out online retailers or buy it in digital form for  Kindle, iBooks,Google Play, or Kobo (or for Kindle in the UK)).

As the blurb below explains, ‘Beauty’s Sister’ is a reworking of ‘Rapunzel’, but along with ‘Catspaw, or The Rakshasa’s Servant’, it’s also one of a series of “tales” I’ve been working on over the past year or two. At some point they’ll hopefully form a cycle of some kind, but for now I’m just enjoying exploring the things they let me do with magic and fables.

Anyway, the blurb is below. If you’d like to buy a copy check out your local bookshop or take a look on Booko. And as I said above, if paper is no longer your thing you can also buy it for for Kindle, iBooks,Google Play, or Kobo (and for Kindle in the UK)).

“A story of jealousy, passion and power, Beauty’s Sister is a dark and gripping reimagining of one of our oldest tales, Rapunzel, from acclaimed novelist James Bradley.”“Juniper, living deep in the forest with her parents, is stunned to discover that the beautiful girl living isolated in a nearby tower is her sister. When the two girls meet, what begins as a fascination and a friendship ultimately develops into something truly sinister.

I hope you like it. I’m thrilled it’s now in paperback.

May 8

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Catspaw, or The Rakshasa’s Servant

rakshasaJust a quick note to say I’ve got a story in the May issue of Aurealis, which hits the interwebs today. Entitled ‘Catspaw, or The Rakshasa’s Servant’, it’s basically a contemporary folk tale, and was inspired by a post on Lev Grossman’s blog which reproduced the image on the right, an image that will be immediately recognisable to anybody who played Advanced Dungeons and Dragons in the 1980s (next up, a story called ‘The Unbearable Squareness of Gelatinous Cubes’).

Anyway, you can purchase Aurealis from Smashwords for AU$2.99, which seems an absolute bargain for a story that features duelling shapeshifting tiger demons. And which is really a tribute to my many years as a devoted player of role-playing games.

Apr 2

Read my story, ‘The Flats’, for free

'West Beach Sandhills', © 2007, Barry Leadbeater

‘West Beach Sandhills’, © 2007, Barry Leadbeater

When I began this site part of my plan was to use it to publish short pieces of fiction, either drawn from works in progress or harvested from other published and unpublished sources. In the end that didn’t happen, mostly because the moment never really seemed right, but just lately I’ve been thinking I might start to post a few things here.

To that end I’ve just uploaded my story, ‘The Flats’, which was published a couple of years ago in the Get Reading! anthology, 10 Short Stories You Must Read in 2011. I’ve chosen it as the first one partly because I like it, and partly because a translation by Jorge Salavert has just been published in the Spanish-language literary magazine, Hermano Cerdo, so it seems sensible to have the English-language version available as well.

You can read ‘The Flats’ online now. If you’d like information about some of the other stories I’ve published recently you can check out my new Short Fiction page, or you can go direct to the source and grab a copy of my Aurealis Award shortlisted story, ‘Visitors’, from the Review of Australian Fiction or read ‘The Inconvenient Dead’ over at Overland or in Best Australian Stories 2012. Australian (and I think, US) readers can also grab copies of my Rapunzel novelette, ‘Beauty’s Sister’ for Kindle, iBooks, Google Play, and Kobo, while UK readers can download it for Kindle.

Meanwhile I have to get back to my novel …

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