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I’m Featured Today on The Book Blather Blog

Graham Storrs — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 23:10:43 +0000

Courtesy of the very kind Marilee Brothers, I had the chance to blather about the three-ring circus we call publishing on her most excellent blog. If you’re interested in what I think about small publishers, self-publishing, and the Big Six, you should hop over there. If not, you should go there anyway as there is a wealth of fascinating posts by far more knowledgeable and interesting people, all on your favourite subject*.

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*Books and publishing, of course. What did you think I meant?

Is This Goodbye?

Graham Storrs — Fri, 20 May 2011 04:50:44 +0000

Ah well, better luck next time.

After all, it’s the Rapture tomorrow. This could be the last anyone hears from me. Which gives me such a cool idea. What if I just disappear tomorrow – take no luggage, no credit cards, leave no note, just vanish. I could then sit on a beach in Northern Queensland reading the religious nutcases speculating in the press as to why I was the only one in the world taken in the Rapture. They would probably find some good reason.

So, if I do disappear, either God’s got a really cool sense of humour, or I have.

Meanwhile, you might like to know that writer, Sonya Clark, turned her Digital Author Spotlight on me today, and hosted a guest post from me. Yes, I began life as a digital-only author, but one day… So a big thank you to Sonya and to all of you who just clicked the link and went to have a look.

See you tomorrow – or will I?

May the Fourth (3 GWC) Be With You

Graham Storrs — Wed, 04 May 2011 07:49:04 +0000

Yes, it’s that time of year again. For the many people who weren’t around on May 4th 2008 when I posted my first “hello world” from my brand new writing blog – that is, all of you – May 4th 2008 is the date from which I reckon my writing career began. So as 3 GWC (Graham’s Writing Career) draws to a close, it’s time to take stock once more and reflect on all that has happened since 2 GWC drew to a close.

Well, maybe not. Oh, alright, but just one paragraph. It was a busy and complicated year – essentially the first year of my first novel – and it ended (near enough) with me having found a wonderful literary agent (Ineke Prochazka) to call my own. There were a few story sales along the way and lots of other writerly stuff. In all, it was a year of good, solid progress. I started writing three novels in 3 GWC too – and finished one of them. I hope to finish the other two in the coming year. It was also the year that Jodi Cleghorn and eMergent Press came into my life and Big Bad Media came and went (literally – it has now wound up). I went to Worldcon. I went to Supanova. A couple of my friends did amazing (publishing-related) things (that’s you, Emma, Marianne, Joanna and Joanne) and I got two new computers!

And all the other things that I forgot to mention.

On the agenda for next year are another novel sale – or two – (which is now your department, Ineke), more shorts sales, finishing my comedy sci-fi novel “Cargo Cult” and possibly a couple of other books, maybe going to the Brisbane Writers Festival (haven’t quite decided yet), and seeing “TimeSplash” finally appear in print (and maybe audio – how’s that going, Em?) I think it will be another busy and complicated year. At least I hope so.

There are a couple of shorts of mine appearing soon in anthologies for you to look out for (please!)

In Situ – a spec fic anthology from Dagan Books, ed. Carrie Cuinn. It contains my story “Salvage”. Expected publication date is 15th May – pre-order it via Goodreads.

Hope – a spec fic anthology from Kayelle Press, ed. Sasha Beattie, with a great cast of Aussie writers. It contains my story “The God on the Mountain”. Expected publication date is “real soon now”! I am especially stoked that two of the other contributors are friends who shared the QWC/Hachette retreat with me in May 2008 – the event that I believe kicked off my professional writing career.

Nothing but Flowers: Tales of Post Apocalyptic Love from eMergent Press, ed. Jodi Cleghorn. It contains my story “Two Fools in Love” – the first time I ever sat down to write a love story and actually did it. This is already available as an ebook but should hit the streets as a paperback any second now.

You all have a good 4 now. Happy New Year.

Welcome, Curious Blog Lovers!

Graham Storrs — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 22:39:07 +0000

If you are reading this, the chances are about four to one that it is because I am a finalist in the Sydney Writers Centre, Best Australian Blogs, 2011, Competition. That’s what my site stats tell me, anyway. Believe me, I’m as amazed as you are to find my blog has made it so far. Apart from a general feeling of chuffedness and a bit of bragging to my wife and daughter, I hadn’t given much thought to what this means.

Then I noticed my site stats and the big spikes in the number of visitors on the days when announcements have been made. Now I feel vaguely guilty. I mean, all you nice people popping over to take a look at my blog! I should have done something nice for you all, put up a couple of deep and profound posts, changed the banner to a big “Welcome!” sign, tried to flog you a book, or something.

Ah well, another day, another blunder. Too late now, I suppose.

Unless…

Nyah! There’s no chance I could win. I mean, there are some truly exceptional blogs in my category (and I already follow them all, by the way) and anyone in their right mind would see that at a glance. Still, I didn’t expect to be a finalist, either. So, just in case, the following paragraph is for you, kind stranger. (Regular readers can go back to writing desperate pleas to publishers and agents.)

Hello, and welcome to the Graham Storrs blog. Don’t let this post fool you, I can be quite sensible, even interesting, sometimes. So, take a few minutes to skim through previous posts. The gold nuggets are in there somewhere. Probably. If not, well, at least you will go away inspired by the thought that, if my blog can be a Sydney Writers Centre, Best Australian Blogs, 2011, Competition finalist, then so could yours.

Thank you for dropping by.

In Situ: Coming Soon

Graham Storrs — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 22:27:57 +0000

In preparation for their forthcoming sci-fi anthology, In Situ, Dagan Books has begun posting interviews with the contributing authors. And today, it’s my turn.

The idea behind In Situ is a good one. It is an anthology of science fiction tales about alien excavations, weird archaeology, and the unearthing of mysteries. As an avid Time Team viewer, I absolutely could not resist! And I can’t wait to see what the other writers have done with this ‘future archaeology’ theme. My own contribution is called “Salvage” and breaks new ground for me – a sci-fi story set so far into the future that everything we are now has been lost and forgotten. A very long way from the near future thrillers I have been writing lately.

Publication is planned for May 15, 2011, so grab an RSS feed and I’ll let you know when it’s out.

End of Year Report

Graham Storrs — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 02:00:05 +0000

Happy New Year everybody!

First off, thanks to everyone who took advantage of my publisher’s Holiday Special and snagged a cheap copy of TimeSplash. Astute shoppers will notice that the offer has now closed. Personally, I’d like to keep the price that low all year round but it’s not up to me. Instead, I hope you’ll find it is still good value at the price the publisher sets. You’ll still find it discounted on sites like Amazon, and Fictionwise – just not quite so much.

New Year’s Resolutions

I’d like to tell you about my resolutions, but I didn’t make any. I never do. I have enough plans and goals to keep any anal retentive happy, I just don’t set them at the turn of the year. My Big Push for the year is to get an agent. Hopefully, I’ll achieve this before all the book shops (and then all the publishers) go out of business, otherwise my exciting new agent won’t have anyone left to sell my books to. In a way, it would be nice if all the book shops (and publishers) stopped yelling at the tide to go back and just quietly turned up their toes. At least then the market would be nice and simple again. We’d all be self-publishing because there would be no other way to get a book out.

It’s nice that the agents I’m approaching tell me I write very well and so on, but it would be nicer if they didn’t also say things like “but I’m getting out of the fiction market before I starve,” or “but I can only take on one new client per decade now and their books have to give me an orgasm whenever I touch the title page.” When the book shops have all gone broke, and the publishers have all gone broke, the agents will have to get jobs as freelance editors or book publicists for all the self-publishing authors who are also going broke.

Work In Progress

Meanwhile, I keep on tapping at the old keyboard. My current WIP is tentatively called Mindrider and is based on one of my short stories of the same name. It’s dark. The protagonist is an alien parasite who lives in people’s brains and it’s sometimes just a tiny bit difficult to make him a sympathetic character. But I like a challenge. It’s all written in first person from the parasite’s POV too. Another challenge. I’m enjoying it so much, I can easily see me doing a whole series based on these characters. I’m 50,000 words into it, with maybe another 40,000 to go. Then I can get back to the space opera this book interrupted – about a 10,000-year-old robot who is helping humanity fight off an alien invasion. You know what? Being a writer is like being a kid in a toy shop. There are so many wonderful things to play with, you don’t know what to pick up next. There are a couple of anthologies I’d like to do stories for too (actually, four) but I’m so much into novel-writing these days that I write very few short stories.

2010 In Review

Not shabby at all.

Concluding Remarks

By for now. I’m looking forward to chatting with you all in 2011. So don’t be shy now, and don’t be a stranger. There’s plenty of space in the comments section below for everybody. I hope you all have a good and successful year too.

Graham.

Christmas Wishes and 3 Christmas Gifts For You

Graham Storrs — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 22:46:19 +0000

This is probably my last post before Christmas, so let me wish you all a great one. I love Christmas and I love having my family here for the celebrations, so I’ll be having a good time. I’ve also lined up my Christmas reading – for all the quiet time that never quite materialises.

As a thank you for visiting my blog during the year, I have thee things I’d like to offer you for your own Christmas reading:

First off, I have persuaded my publisher to reduce the price of my novel TimeSplash for the holiday season. Click on the TimeSplash cover image on the left and you can pick up TimeSplash at the special holiday price of $2.50. It’s only on sale at the publisher’s site.

Secondly, if that doesn’t tempt you. I have put together a set of six, short sci-fi stories, all based in the same ‘world’ – some previously published in magazines or anthologies but some brand new – and published them as an ebook on Smashwords. The collection includes my prize-winning story ‘All the Way’, and the Christmas story ‘Last Christmas’, and it’s yours for free using the following code:

‘Placid Point: Tales from the History of Transhumanity’ by Graham Storrs, https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/19879 coupon code PJ92A (expires Jan 1 2011)

Finally, I’ve written a short Christmas tale for Jodi Cleghorn’s themed Christmas collection “Deck the Halls”. Twenty-four short stories on the theme will appear on the Lierary Mixtape blog on 24th December (Aussie time) and will later be available as an ebook. I’ve already seen a few of these stories and I think you’ll like them.

Have a good read and a safe Christmas and New Year,

Graham.

The Graham Storrs Daily – Read All About It!

Graham Storrs — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 10:20:30 +0000

First there were blogs. Then there were RSS feeds. Then there were feed readers. Now, there is Paper.li!

Never heard of it? Well, it hasn’t been around long, and you’d prbably have to be into Twitter to notice it. If you are, you’ve probably seen tweets saying “The Fred Bloggs Daily is out now!”, or “The #Winelover Daily is out now!”, or whatever, and wondered briefly what that was all about. You might even have clicked through to find a sort of newspapery thing full of short intros to what might be interesting articles about wine, or sci-fi, or whatever the “Daily” in question said it was about.

I started noticing these announcements and I was confused about the thing at first, too, until I saw that each Daily had a “Create a paper” button on it. So I clicked it and had a go at setting one up and it suddenly all made sense.

Basically you just register a Twitter account with paper.li and it does the rest. Each day, it looks at all the people you follow, then extracts bits from a selection of their blogs, sorts them into categories, and assembles them in a newspaper-like format. If you have a lot of people you follow, and they are all in broadly the same field (as mine all are) it seems to work pretty well. Which is a huge compliment to the people at Paper.li who programmed the thing.

I’m not sure if anyone at all is reading it – it doesn’t provide any stats – and, if they are, whether they’re enjoying it, but it is great for me as it provides a random overview of the blogs of the people I follow each day – a pretty good digest of what I’m interested in, in fact! If you’d like to see what I mean, take a look at http://paper.li/graywave. It is updated every 24 hours so whatever you look at will be current.

You can tweak your Daily to focus on other topics (for example, I subscribe to The #Atheist Daily myself) by giving it a hashtag to follow instead of it just following the people you follow. There are already #Writer dailies and #Scifi dailies and so on to subscribe to. But I think it is the personal Dailies that I find most interesting. Since their content is drawn from the people the owner is following on Twitter, each Daily really is a snapshot of that person’s interests. Of course, someone who auto-follows or is indiscriminate about who they follow will see that lack of focus reflected in their Daily. I have been careful only to follow people in particular fields who are particularly interesting and I think that gives my Daily a nice coherence.

Well, I like it anyway. But then I would, wouldn’t I?

What Are The Ingredients For Great Science Fiction?

Graham Storrs — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 10:30:14 +0000

I’ve just been reading a blog post by Mike Brotherton which presents (yet another) definition of science fiction. This is Mike’s suggestion:

“Science fiction is a kind of story in which science or technology plays a central role, both in terms of plot and theme, and the science or technology elements are beyond our current knowledge or capabilities (without violating what we already know), permitting the exploration of novel ideas and the reaction of humanity to them.”

You will probably agree that it is not bad, leans towards the ‘hard’ end of the sci-fi spectrum, and emphasises the ‘literature of ideas’ view of sci-fi (which I endorse, by the way.) It has its minor flaws (“the reaction of humanity” need not appear in a sci-fi book, although the reader’s reaction is probably being sought) but it is alright for all that.

I read it because I started mulling the issue of what sci-fi is about (yet again) while I was at Worldcon. And not just “What is science fiction?” but “What is good science fiction?” I sat through a couple of sessions, and had a couple of conversations, with publishers who were, mildly or bitterly, bemoaning the fact that great sci-fi simply does not cross their desks. They want it, they’d know it if they saw it (they say) but it just isn’t there to be had. Only one person said anything that was actually thought-provoking. He said something like, “I want to see a manuscript that shows me a future that might happen and asks, ‘Is this really what we want for ourselves?’”

What makes this so good?

I have to say, I was quite taken with this for a while. It seemed to account for what makes many famous sci-fi works so great. Consider 1984, Brave New World, The Handmaid’s Tale, Farenheit 451, Timescape, Ender’s Game, The Forever War, even the Foundation trilogy. Then it struck me that a great many of the books I love aren’t in this dystopian, social commentary mold but I still think of them as great sci-fi. In fact, some of the greatest sci-fi ever is not like this at all. Here, I’m thinking of The Left Hand of Darkness, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Dune, Eon, the Heliconia series, Cyteen, and many, many others.

There is another set of books I’ve always considered great sci-fi, where the world presented in them makes little or no attempt at plausibility. Think The Martian Chronicles, The Sirens of Titan, Vermillion Sands, Hothouse, and so on. Many of these wouldn’t even fit the constraints of Brotherton’s definition, let alone the much stricter conditions I would normally impose on my own writing.

What I make of all this, is that, for me, great science fiction deals first and foremost with the human condition – who and what we are, how and why we live together – and what that implies for our world and our future. The past, present, future and alternative realities that science fiction presents are simply the crucible in which the human dramas are forged. They have to be altered realities because we’re looking at conditions at the edge of what we know, we’re asking what we might feel and do, what we might become, if we pushed things beyond the here and now. And that means the worlds of science fiction have to be plausibe – else there is nothing to learn. It makes no sense to ask how human nature might respond in a word of unicorns and shape-shifters, because such worlds are fantasies. Finding the answer doesn’t get us anywhere. Ask instead what we become in a world of augmented brains and post-petroleum resource wars, and the answer not only sheds light on who we are, but on what we feel about the worlds we might make for ourselves.

So, for me, great science fiction involves stories about ourselves and what it means to be human, that confronts us with the question, “Is this really who we are?” It also presents plausible alternatives to the world we know, alternatives which compel the people in them to reveal their nature because of how they challenge us to adapt to them, and which compel the reader to ask that publisher’s question, “Is this really what we want for ourselves?’”

And if there is some cool science or technology involved, well that’s good too.

Home From The Front

Graham Storrs — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 00:53:41 +0000

Well, I feel I am no longer a sci-fi novice. I’m just home from the World Science Fiction Convention, WorldCon 68, and I have the post-con exhaustion to prove it. I met up with my old Orbiteer buddies (the guys who started all this for me) and got the outstanding news that yet another one of us has made it into print. Joanne Anderton has just signed a two-book deal (which I’m sure she’ll announce any moment now)! Anyone who has read Joanne’s work will not be in the least bit surprised. Anyone who hasn’t should shoot off to her blog and keep watching for the release date.

Meanwhile, while I was away, Aussie writer Gary Kemble published an interview with me on his Posterous blog (and it is also up on the Kemblog.) Gary has become a bit of a mover and shaker in the local speculative fiction scene in recent years – one of those people who contributes a lot to the genre, so I gladly recommend that (after you’ve seen the interview) you spend a while looking at the amazing things he’s doing. And, if you like dark fantasy and horror, make sure you read his stuff.

And thank heavens for ebooks! I took my Kindle away with me and even with all that travel and a week away from home – during which I read two novels and a load of short stories – it was nowhere near needing a recharge. Such a great device. I even got to sit in the sun on the rare occasions that it was shining – something you just couldn’t do with a non-e-ink device.

I’ll post more later – you’re not sick of hearing about WorldCon yet are you? – but right now I have a thousand things to catch up on. Be seeing you.