My dad gave me many things in his life – supported me, loved me, and taught me. All the things a parent should do.
But he also gave me rock n’ roll n’ science fiction. He gave me Jimi, The Doors, Deep Purple, Jethro Tull, The Who – every seventies dinosaur who swaggered on stage and kicked out a beat and roared.
He gave me space travel and aliens and worlds that existed only in the imagination.
I can’t really say anything that will ever do him justice, but I’m glad he was my father and I miss him so much it hurts.
I’m a sucker for jelly fish and blobby things and tentacled things and things with stingers and weird colonies of stingy things (like bluebottles (you call them Portuguese Man o’ Wars, I discovered, with much incredulity. No really, I thought they were something else altogether)) and omg have I ever mentioned my bizarre love of cuttlefish? No?
I’m mentioning it now. CUTTLEFISH ARE MORE THAN JUST BEAK SHARPENERS. THEY ARE ALSO DISCO GANGSTARS.
Bluebottles were kinda a starting point for the blaas in Hob an Lam, so if you squint, this is an inspopost.
Okay, click on through the jelly jelly for more awesome.
Yes, well. My memories of Cape Town winters are of something far wetter and colder and windier. Granted, today is 15C but I swear this is a pretty amazing winter we’re having so far.
Yep, it’s obviously winter.
We also went for drinks at Cape To Cuba, something I swore I would never do again after they were so damn rude to me the last time I went, but The Brass Bell was full, and I couldn’t be arsed to go looking for somewhere else. Fwiw, they were less twuntish this time around, and the Slave and I will be going back there sans sprogs for some serious ‘tini drinking.
Here the Slave enjoys some random Cuban (apparently) beer.
It’s an inspiration post. I used to do these a long time ago, and then I just stopped. Because I am lame.
But yeah, I’m back to trying to work out a way to bring all my reams of world-building into my novel without turning it into Oreyn: A History; or the birth of magic in a penal colony.
In the Hob-verse there are three accepted magics (there are loads of others, but being the prats they are, the ruling Lammers like to stick their fingers in their ears and go LALALALALA THERE IS ONLY US.)
Within the three groups there’s a hierarchy – castes among castes. Saints -seers – who are rare, and pretty much feared, worshipped, and secretly despised; War-Singers, who are powerful manipulators of the air, and who end up doing most of the defensive work (and ironically, mucking about with glass), and the poor little Readers, who come last and are tolerated only because they can read people’s auras, which makes them pretty useful in negotiation and spying.
In Sea Rose Red, my main character comes from a family of War-singers (well, most of them are War-singers, who cares about the rest, yanno?) and she was born with the power to manipulate the air.
and glass.
Although the glass never comes into it.
Because it has nothing to do with anything.
Except random world building.
But when I do picture the kind of glass I imagine in the city of Pelimburg, it’s pretty much this:
Busily being busy, revising and rewriting Nulled & Void.
Here’s an an excerpt, because I like to pretend people read this blog.
He sat alone in his room in the top floor of the clinic. Dusky red light played across his desk top as the sun dipped lower. In the centre of the desk was a small glass ampoule, of the type normally used for injections, and in it was Sarik’s key to opening the gateway between this world and the Amnio, from where all magic flowed. He wasn’t looking at it. He didn’t need to. Sarik knew it was there; knew every curve of the glass, knew the lime-sharp smell of the chymical within.
A shadow flickered across the open window, but Sarik made no move to raise his head from his hands. The bland office was being slowly overwhelmed by the smell of night-blooming jasmine as the night shadows lengthened. A puff of air blew across his desk, and a coil of his hair caught against his neat beard.
Finally, the intruder spoke, and her voice was soft and low. “You should have stopped them.”
“Thank you, Ditmira, for pointing out the obvious after the fact.” He forced himself to lift his head; it was leaden and sticky, glued to his palms by sweat and despair, “And how would you have had me do that? Chain them up? Crawl into their dreams and pacify them like niggling children?”
The woman shrugged one elegant shoulder. “If you’d had to.”
“It’s not a pleasant thing,” Sarik said, “Trampling through another’s dreams. I do it only if I really must.”
It’s been an interesting month. Moving down to Cape Town kinda slaughtered us financially, and this month has been…well, more problematic than expected.
So it’s been tight, and I was getting heartily sick of taste of rice and lentils. And then yesterday, just when the very last of the catfood ran out and I couldn’t even bring myself to boil another pot of rice, our awesome “neighbours” (they’re people we met before we moved to Marina, and they live here about 5 min walk away) came around with cat food and bread and hamburgers and veggies and stuff (including toys and gifts for the girls). How fucking awesome is that? I mean, yeah, I was just about crying. Also, they made pizza for dinner.
And Elissa Hoole’s author interview is up at Greenhouse Lit, and she brings this up again.
Flock to other writers, but screen them for drama. Writers can be the only people who understand what you’re going through, but they can also be needy or competitive, so choose with care. I couldn’t do anything that I’ve done without the support, camaraderie, encouragement, and occasional kicks in the pants from my writing friends. They celebrate my good moments and help me brainstorm my way through the walls.
And I guess some of you are aware there’s this World Cup thing going on in my country at the moment? Well, sadly of course, my team is out (but so is France, so it’s all good). But here’s a pic of us at the “neighbours” for the opening game (SA vs Mexico, which we drew), The Slave and the Sprogs in their team shirts, and me looking hazy and drunken (wait…). And yes, that’s an Italian vuvuzela, unfortunately all the SA ones were sold out and the only ones left were for Italy.
Firstly, this one is for the poets, specifically those writing literary spec poetry. Stone Telling is currently open to subs.
While we are open to all speculative poetry, we are especially interested in seeing work that is multi-cultural and boundary-crossing, work that deals with othering and Others, work that considers race, gender, sexuality, identity, and disability issues in nontrivial and evocative ways. We’d love to see multilingual poetry, though that can sometimes be tricky. Try me!
Editor Rose Lemberg is a pretty fantastic poet and writer herself, and she’s currently got a story up in Strange Horizons; Kifli. Go check it out.
In other really cool news, my wonderful friend Elissa Janine has sold her book: DETAILS ARE HERE. AND COOL. ELISSA I AM SO HAPPY FOR YOU!
So yeah, loads of awesome. Less awesome, but still progress, I’ve also realised that I HATE my current WiP. After much soul searching and agonising (read: looking at kitten blogs and spamming my writers groups with waaaaaangst) I realised why. The characters need a complete overhaul, they’re too similar to other charas i’ve written, and they need a good hard
rethink.
ahem.
So yeah, I think I’ll go work on that, maybe do a few character exercises, until I can get a better grip on them and make this thing work for me.
But here I am, back, and with like, really awesome news.
My absolutely fantastical agent, Suzie Townsend, sold Sea Rose Red.
Yes. I am still rather stunned and it happened like a month ago. Mostly I think it happened to some other person with my name, and I have to remind myself that that’s actually me there. Here’s the little PM blurby thing, the one sentence summary.
Cat Hellisen’s debut fantasy SEA ROSE RED, about a girl who fakes her own suicide to escape from the strict confines of her aristocratic family and a likely arranged marriage only to be confronted with the harsh realities of living in the slums with the working class and the ultimate discovery that the boy she’s fallen in love with is plotting a rebellion to destroy her family.
(I’ve left out names and stuff because I’m not hundreds sure if it’s cool to post that, so…yeah).
Anyway, that’s my squee-worthy news. And can i just say how glad I am to be back?
