Tesseracts 17 Open for Submissions

And this year's editors are Steven Vernon and Colleen Anderson.

Colleen Anderson and Steve Veron

The theme is: Canadian SF Coast to Coast, i.e., regional representation of SF from across Canada--which translates out to a pretty open-ended theme.

http://www.edgewebsite.com/books/tess17/t17-catalog.html

I have to say that Edge has done a good job of continually appointing excellent editorial teams. Vernon and Anderson are both respectable names in the field; we have gender balance; reasonable regional balance; poetry and short fiction both well represented; and yet very different tastes, so presumably anything that they can agree on will have to be good enough to transcend particular subgenres. So I'm pretty pleased with the choice, once again.

The rotating editorship does seem, well, a pecularly Canadian approach. I can't think of any other on-going anthology series that switches editors every edition. I think that is one of the things that keeps the series so fresh, and gives it such staying power. You didn't like this year's theme or felt that it was not sufficiently representative of 'X'? No problem! Next time it will have a different theme, different editors, and whatever that perceived gap was, sooner or later, the series will get there. (E.g., not enough stories from Quebec? See TesseractsQ. Nowhere to publish your novella because its too long for an anthology series? No problem, they had one for novellas. I'm telling you, the Tesseracts approach is just brilliant!

Son of a Dwarf by Jeremy Mason

Attended a production of Jeremy Mason's Son of a Dwarf this evening.

The play is part satire of the fantasy genre, part decent fantasy adventure. Although there are a number of pure pythonesque moments, and some brilliant shots at basic fantasy tropes that scored well with the audience, the central story is allowed to retain sufficient sense that the story hangs together for its own sake. Indeed, this is one of the plays' strengths, since a common error of satirists--deftly avoided here--is to get so wrapped up in jokes and one-liners that the whole thing collapses under the weight of its own silliness. This got pretty silly, but allowed the characters to retain a central dignity that saw them deliver their dialog as if they meant it.

I have been following the work of Jeremy Mason for some time and am pleased to see him branching out from children's plays to, well, sophomore plays. The same principles of frantic action and comedic commentary that served Jeremy well when writing for 5 year olds kept the 1st and 2nd year university audience I was sitting with howling with laughter. My 14 year old laughed throughout even though she has only just started Lord of the Rings, has never engaged in fantasy gaming, and probably missed a third of the references. And even at my advanced years, I pretty much enjoyed the whole thing.

It's hard to know where Jeremy's writing left off and the inventive direction of the Accidental Humour Company took over. The creative use of multimedia screens required split second timing, but allow the production to include astounding special effects: an arrow shot at the evil wizard turns into a dove; magic mirrors talk back; tiny gnomes climb in and out of hero's backpack; forcefields shimmer to prevent the heroine entering the magic cave; explosions shoot from the wizard's staff; and so on. Great stuff for a live play! The battle scenes were fantastic: actual armies of--well, I might have missed what they were exactly, but they were very creepy in a hilarious sort of way -- evil minions threaten our heroes, as great choreography has the actors Harry Wooing across the stage in slow motion. Fabulous stuff!

I will absolutely seek out any future productions by Accidental Humour Company. Pure comic genius!

I give the play four out of five stars.

View the trailer here: http://vimeo.com/46451916

Creative Writing Grants (Canada)

Award-winning poet/author Helen Marshall, has posted an excellent "Practical Guide to Creative Writing Grants in Canada" on her blog, Movable Type. The article not only provides a great summary of available grants (particularly for Ontario; other provinces have their own equivalents worth seeking out, but this at least gives a sense of what might be available) and sensible guidelines for how to complete an application, but has the added benefit of providing a grant-winning sample. So useful! Highly recommended!

When Words Collide 2012

Attended the When Words Collide festival in Calgary again this year. Last year was WWC's first convention, and I have been writing rave reviews ever since. Indeed, the organizers won a well deserved Aurora Award for their efforts. but I was nevertheless a bit worried that it might have been some kind of fluke. Could they repeat their initial success?

I am here to say that yes, this was once again the best writer's convention since Context'89 (which saw the creation of SF Canada) or, well, WWC last year. Fabulous guests, including Adrienne Kerr, the editor for commercial fiction from Penguin Canada; an amazing number of panels on topics of actual interest to writers; increase in attendees from a cross section of genres; and the convention was the host of this year's Aurora Awards. I was very pleased to see participation from the Writer's Guild of Alberta, and such literary presses as Frontenac House, and Eastern-based presses like CZP and Five Rivers Chapmanry, in addition to the usual suspects from Western Canada.

Five Rivers did very good business at WWC: we officially launched the six titles above at a session on Saturday afternoon; the books sold well at both the launch and in the dealers' room, even selling out of the local authors' books; I negotiated the final details of contracts with two writers signing on with Five Rivers; Mike Plested handed out contracts for the anthology he is co-editing, coming out from Five Rivers; I asked for initial 30 page submissions from four new writers, and a full submission from a fifth; and I spoke on something like 11 panels (five of them intelligently), plus got to be one of the presenters at the Aurora Awards. I greatly enjoyed finding myself between Robert J. Sawyer and Adrienne Kerr (Penguin) on the live action slush panel, for example, and hanging with the editors from On Spec and NeoOpsis magazines, Bundoran Press; finally meeting Colleen Anderson in person; meeting Tina Moreau from Tyche Press; Justyn Perry (Breathless / Lycaon Press), and a dozen others, including my personal heroes, Sandra Kasturi and Brett Savory of ChiZine Publications. I love visiting with Canadian authors, meeting and helping new authors, and especially hanging with other fiction editors. Such an enjoyable and productive weekend! I have already signed up for next year.

WWC Live Slush Panel with Jennifer Kennedy (author); Robert J. Sawyer (former editor), Virgina O'Dine (editor), Robert Runté (editor), Barb Galler-Smith (editor), and J. Ellen Smith (editor)

There were, inevitably, a couple of minor 'areas for improvement'. One weak point was the banquet. The $40 ticket implied a better meal than I got: by the time our table got up to the buffet, there were significant gaps in the available food and the buffet was held up for half an hour (pushing the rest of the evening's events behind schedule) because the carver was late arriving. The Convention committee has already announced a change of venue (to the much larger Carriage House Inn) so that problem is resolved before I could even raise it.

The other problem was the strange lack of smoozing skills demonstrated by local Alberta writers...do these people know nothing of the larger world outside Western Canada? CZP is legendary for their parties, but when I went, there were like four people in the room. (Admittedly, four of the most interesting people I met at the convention and one of the most entertaining conversations, but still....) Perhaps things picked up later after I had to leave to deal with a family matter, but I get the feeling this was not the usual CZP party. From what I could see, most WWC attendees were crammed into the Edge party, or the steam punk party or the local writers' group party or the consuite. Okay, I get that all four of those parties were next to each other at one end of the hotel, and the CZP party was down another hall all by itself; and I get that people like to get together with their buddies. But come on, people, this was your chance to meet Sandra Kasturi and Brett Savory, the two best editors working in Canada today! You bloody well know everyone at Edge already... go socialize with some Easterners! At least for an hour before going back to your usual cronies. Made me shake my head. As I've said repeatedly, ChiZine Publications has not just fundamentally changed the face of horror as a genre, it is the best small press in the country and a model for everyone else interested in the future of publishing. Fifty years from now, scholars will be studying the flowering of the Chizine school of writing as the most important literary movement to come out of Canada this half century...and Alberta writers couldn't even make it down the hall to meet them? They didn't notice the four out of six nominations for best novel this year were from ChiZine Publications? Hello?! Stop complaining about Toronto's ignorance of events in Western Canada, if when a publisher does make the effort to come out West, nobody can be bothered to go meet them.

End of rant. I'm sure a lot of people did meet and interact with the three ChiZine editors who were there, perhaps at their table in the dealers' room if nowhere else -- it is impossible to walk past their table without stopping to stare at those covers-- but to miss the chance to go to an actual ChiZine party...!

Small World

In addition to doing freelance development/copy editing, I'm also senior acquisitions editor for Five Rivers Chapmanry. About 18 months ago, I signed H. A. Hargreaves to reprint his classic 70's SF collection, North by 2000 (the first SF collection ever marketed as "Canadian SF".) I wanted the collection because I often give lectures on Canadian SF to English teachers, etc., and often use Hargreaves (especially his, "Dead to the World" story) as the exemplar of Canadian / US differences. In one of my more recent talks, someone had pointed out that if the book had been out of print for 30 years, they could hardly use the story in their classrooms. So I either had to acquire the reprint rights and make the collection available to a new generation of readers, or--you know--update my lecture notes.

Six months later at the When Words Collide festival (Calgary), I met horror writer Bill Schnarr, and he said, "Hey, I hear you're reprinting Hargreaves' book!" This surprised me because we hadn't actually announced that yet, but Bill went on to explain, "He's a coworker of mine." Turns out that Bill Schnarr is a reporter at the Claresholm Local Press where Hargreaves--a retired English professor -- comes in once a week to proofread the paper. A few months later, Bill signed on with Five Rivers to bring out Things Falling Apart, a phonebook-thick collection of his short stories. I'm sure that part of his decision to go with Five Rivers was because Hargreaves was having a positive experience with the press, but still, kind of a coincidence that two of our writers not only come from the same small Alberta town (population 35,000) but even work in the same office.

At the same When Words Collide festival I met Schnarr last year, I held a pitch session in which eight or nine author's pitched their novels to me so that I could help them refine their pitches. Out of that number, I actually invited one woman, Susan Bohnet, to submit a manuscript. She did, and after she made some revisions we had requested, I offered her a contract. We then agreed to meet at this year's When Words Collide festival. So, she turns up Friday night at the session I'm hosting with H. A. Hargreaves. And Hargreaves points to her name tag and says, "I know that name. I proofread your column every week." And she confesses that she is indeed that columnist, and that when the editor of the Claresholm Local Press had been away that week, she had handed her column into acting editor, J. W. Schnarr. So you tell me: what are the odds that a micropress based in Neustadt, Ontario would end up with three writers from Clarseholm Alberta who all work in the same office?

Pulitzers and Editors

My favourite paragraph from interesting piece on why there was no Pulitzer prize for 2012:

It seemed, too, that a Pulitzer for “The Pale King” would be, by implication, an acknowledgement not only of Wallace but also of Michael Pietsch, the editor. As a novelist, I well know how much difference an editor can make—and there’s no major prize given to editors. The best an editor can hope for is mention on the acknowledgments page, when, sometimes, that editor has literally rescued the book.

'Course, I don't think I'd actually like "The Pale King". I would have edited out this monstrosity of an opening sentence for a start:

Past the flannel plains and the blacktop graphs and skylines of canted rust, and past the tobacco-brown river overhung with weeping trees and coins of sunlight through them on the water downriver, to the place beyond the windbreak, where untilled fields simmer shrilly in the a.m. heat: shattercane, lamb’s-quarter, cutgrass, sawbrier, nutgrass, jimsonweed, wild mint, dandelion, foxtail, muscatine, spinecabbage, goldenrod, creeping charlie, butter-print, nightshade, ragweed, wild oat, vetch, butcher grass, invaginate volunteer beans, all heads gently nodding in a morning breeze like a mother’s soft hand on your cheek.

This is what they give Pulitzer prize for these days? Oh wait, that's right, they didn't.

But it's all an excellent example of why one has to match the editor to the manuscript/author. I'd obviously have been the wrong editor for "The Pale King"; Michael Pietsch, Pulitzer nominee though he may have been, not the right editor for "Flight of the Illynov".

Curious if True: The Fantastic in Literature

I had the honour of writing the foreword to this collection of essays on science fiction, fantasy and magic realism written by a talented group of up and coming scholars. Presumably the editor was looking for someone in the old guard to hand on the torch to this new generation of critics, and as I'm looking to retire from academia and move into full time editing, I was more than happy to oblige. Burn, baby, burn! Or something like that. Indeed, the major thrust of my foreword was that these kids today have no idea how hard it was to have SF taken seriously when we were younger. So I just provided a couple of examples of how far SF scholarship has come in just one generation. It really is quite astonishing, when you think about it.

The collection is edited by Amy Bright, the reviewer at Girl to the Rescue and the up and coming author of Before We Go (from Red Deer Press). Amy's academic work can be found in the Journal of Children's Literature and Studies in Canadian Literature. Contributors to Curious if True include Luke R. J. Maynard, Gaelan Gilbert, Mary Eileen Wennekers, Elisa Bursten, Amy Bright, Max F. R. Olesen, Laura van Dyke, Erin Dunbar, Tessa Mellas, Shannon M. Minifie, and Thomas Stuart. Cover art is by comic artist Betty Liang.

The volume is being launched this month (July, 2012) by Cambridge Scholars Publishers.