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Posts tagged ‘Novels’

Apr 28

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Ghost Species publication day!

My new novel, Ghost Species, is published today in Australia. New books are always exciting, but this one is especially so, because it’s a book I’m really proud of. Set in Tasmania in the very near future, it centres on a secret project to resurrect Neanderthals, and it’s about extinction and de-extinction, loss and love, climate catastrophe and collapse. I think – I hope – some of the ideas in it will resonate, especially at present.

If you’d like to know more, you can check out I’ve written a piece for The Guardian about some of the questions and ideas that inspired the book, and if you’d like to hear a little bit of it, you can see me reading the first few pages as part of Read Tasmania’s Lockdown Reading Group below.

If you’re in Australia you can get copies from any good bricks and mortar bookshop, or check prices online. You can also get it from all major ebook vendors. If you’re outside Australia Book Depository should have copies available. I also highly recommend the audiobook, read by Rupert Degas, which is absolutely fantastic.

My thanks to everybody who helped this book become a reality. I hope you all enjoy it.

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.

Dec 12

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That was the year that was

Polar Bear

So, it’s December, and although I’m still scrambling to get some things locked away the year is pretty much done. I’m going to post something about the books I’ve enjoyed most over the past twelve months next week (I’m leaving it so late because I don’t want to preempt the picks I’ve made for The Weekend Australian and The Thought Fox, although if you want a preview you can check out my picks for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, which were published last week) and if I get really excited I might do a musical round-up as well (although I’m not going to make any big promises on that score).

Looking back over the past twelve months I’m sort of amazed by how much I’ve gotten done. I haven’t managed to write much long non-fiction, but I’ve written a lot of reviews, written and submitted my doctoral dissertation and somehow managed to stay on top of all my normal commitments (or at least mostly on top).

More importantly though I’ve written a lot of fiction, some of which is even good. I’ve knocked over most of the first draft of a new novel (or novelly thing – in fact it’s a discontinuous narrative made up of ten interconnected stories), and with luck I’ll have something deliverable by April next year. Although it still doesn’t have a title the opening section was published as a standalone story in The Big Issue earlier this year and I’m hoping two more sections will be published as stories in the new year. What I’ve got is rough but I’m really pleased with it.

As well as the novel I’ve written and published a number of stories. Some – like my Rapunzel novelette, ‘Beauty’s Sister’, which was published as part of Penguin’s excellent Penguin Specials series (and is available for Kindle, iBooks, Kobo and Google Play), and my alien invasion story, ‘Visitors’, which was published by The Review of Australian Fiction – have been published as in electronic formats only, others, like my zombies in suburbia story, ‘The Inconvenient Dead’ are available online and in print (you can pick up ‘The Inconvenient Dead’ in Best Australian Stories 2012 as well as Overland 206). In addition to the stories above I’ve got another two which will be published in the new year and several more about to go out, all of which I’ll link to as they appear.

I’m also pleased to say my essay about growing up in Adelaide, ‘The Element of Need’, was also republished as a Penguin Special a few months back. If you haven’t read it you might want to check it out: I think it’s one of the best things I’ve written in recent years. There’s a post with more details about it here, or you can buy it for Kindle, iBooks, Kobo, and Google Play. And staying with the creepy theme, you might also want to check out my essay about ghosts and ghost stories, ‘Encounters with the Uncanny’, which appeared in Meanjin earlier this year. I’ve also just finished a longish piece on 2001: A Space Odyssey that I’m really pleased with and will link to once it’s published in the new year.

At this point I’m hoping next year will be equally productive – I’ve got a pile of stories that need writing and at least two novels I want to get written once this one is done – but for now I’m just happy to have gotten so much done over the past twelve months. I hope you’ve all had equally productive years.

And, finally, because it’s summer in Australia I thought I might direct you to this piece I wrote about summer and the myths of Australianness a couple of years ago: it’s not new but I like it. Or you could check out my review of John Smolens’ Quarantine, which appeared in The Washington Post a few weeks back, or my review of Ronald Frame’s Havisham, which appeared in The Weekend Australian last Saturday.