I had to tear myself away from revision work on the latest novel (I’m really in the flow!) to go to the Aurealis Awards last night – but so glad I did! The turnout was amazing – people from every state, a who’s who of spec fic in Australia. I’ve never seen an Awards night better attended by authors and publishers. It was so great to catch up with friends!
Our own Margo on the left there, Kate Forsyth in the middle and Kaaron Warren on the right.
The venue is the old Independent Theatre in North Sydney, with its spectacular ceiling. Not sure if it’ll come out in this photo-
That’s when people were filing in, and Rob Hood’s first bit of video was showing on the screen. (The first time video clips were used was in the Brisbane Aurealis Award nights, if I remember.)
ROR was fairly quiet in the awards list this year – hey, we gotta be fair, we did so amazingly well last year. Trent received an Honourable Mention for best Horror Novel, which in this particular year meant one of the 2 best Aus horror novels published. (Especially honourable when he wasn’t even supposed to appear in that category!) Tansy went up along with Alisa Krasnostein and Alex Pierce to collect the Peter Macnamara award for major contribution to the growth of Aus spec fic in any form … in this case, the form of their feminist spec fiction podcast, Galactic Suburbia (check it out if you haven’t already!) Here’s the presentation –
Alisa on the left, Tansy in centre, Alex sort of hidden behind Tehani Wessely. Tehani not only presented that award but was official judge-wrangler for the awards in general.
Archive for the ‘Awards’ Category
Congratulations to the ROR Aurealis Award Finalists 2011
Posted by Rowena Cory Daniells on March 23, 2012
First of all a big congratulations to everyone who made the final lists for the 2011 Aurealis Awards. Having worked on the awards for 5 years I know what goes on behind the scenes and I want to thank the team who organise the awards and the panels who read the entries, and agonise over the final lists, all of them volunteers!
Celebrating our ROR 2011 Aurealis Awards – Finalists
The Shattered City by Tansy Rayner Roberts (HarperVoyager)
FANTASY SHORT STORY
“The Proving of Smollett Standforth” by Margo Lanagan (Ghosts by Gaslight, HarperVoyager)
“Into the Clouds on High” by Margo Lanagan (Yellowcake, Allen & Unwin)
HORROR NOVEL
NO SHORTLIST OR WINNING NOVEL – TWO HONORABLE MENTION:
The Business of Death by Trent Jamieson (Hachette)
HORROR SHORT STORY
“Mulberry Boys” by Margo Lanagan (Blood and Other Cravings, Tor)
“The Patrician” by Tansy Rayner Roberts (Love and Romanpunk, Twelfth Planet Press)
COLLECTION
Love and Romanpunk by Tansy Rayner Roberts (Twelfth Planet Press)
Best of luck to everyone on the awards night. For more infor see here.
Posted in Australian Spec Fic Scene, Awards, Fantasy Genre | Tagged: Aurealis Awards, Business of Death. Yellow Cake, Creature Court, love and romanpunk, Margo Lanagan, Power and Majesty, Publishing Industry, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Trent Jamieson | Leave a Comment »
Raring to ROR…
Posted by Rowena Cory Daniells on January 18, 2012
As some of you might know our ROR writing group gets together every 12 – 18 months to critique our books in progress.
Back in 2001 at the first ROR we read Margo Lanagan’s Black Juice anthology and wept over Singing my Sister Down, which went on to win a World Fantasy Award. That was also the year we read Maxine Mc Arthur’s Less than Human, which went on to win the Aurealis Award for SF in 2004.
Since then there have been many RORs, and critiqued many books. Some of these books have been shelved or are still waiting to be completed and others have been published, some of have won awards or been shortlisted for awards. (This reminds me I must update our success page. There’s been more sales since then. My bad).
For those of you who are interested, I’ve blogged about how to set up your own ROR group and how we critique. There are eight of us, but due to life, family and deadlines we don’t get to every ROR. (I’ve done them all so far, but I’m a bit of a ROR groupie. I even maintain this site in my spare time. All very sad, really).
Our next ROR is coming up in a couple of weeks. Having a deadline to get a book written for is a great motivator. We’re all madly reading each other’s WIPs (Works-in-progress), writing reports and planning to run away and be full time writers for a week!
There will be one book launch and possibly two, stay tuned!
This time we’re going to Tassie to Steele’s Island. Looks perfect for a bunch of nerdy writers!
So I’d like to raise a glass of cyber champagne to:
My writing friends, ROR ten years* on and still going strong!
* We couldn’t squeeze in a ROR last year in 2011, which would have been exactly 10 years, so this 2012 ROR is our official 10 year birthday bash.
Posted in Australian Spec Fic Scene, Awards, Book Launches, Creativity, Editing and Revision, Genre Writing, Nourish the Writer, Plotting, Writing Craft, Writing goals, Writing Groups | Tagged: Aurealis Awards, Creativity, Dirk Flinthart, Fantasy books, Margo Lanagan, Marianne de Pierres, Maxine McArthur, Richard Harland, ROR Writing Group, Rowena Cory Daniells, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Trent Jamieson, World Fantasy Award, Writing Craft | 2 Comments »
Alisa wins World Fantasy Award!
Posted by Rowena Cory Daniells on October 31, 2011
Alisa was interviewed here recently because we were really excited about her nomination for a World Fantasy Award. Well, the big news is SHE WON!
Here’s the Link. Scroll down to Non-Professional Award (meaning they edit for love, rather than being paid by a publishing house).
Special Award—Non-professional
Winner: Alisa Krasnostein, for Twelfth Planet Press
And here’s the winners’ speeches. Alisa comes on at about the 36 minute mark.
Right now Alisa is over at the World Fantasy Awards probably knocking back the chapagne! go Alisa!
Posted in Australian Spec Fic Scene, Awards, Editors, Fantasy Genre, Indy Press, Publishing Industry, Writing Craft | Tagged: Alisa Krasnostien, Twelfth Planet Press, World Fantasy Award, World Fantasy Award Special Award Non-Professional | 1 Comment »
Congratulations Alisa Krasnostien and Twelfth Planet Press!
Posted by Rowena Cory Daniells on September 7, 2011
This post is also cross-posted to my blog.
Alisa Krasnostein is an environmental engineer by day, and runs indie publishing house Twelfth Planet Press by night. She is also Executive Editor at the review website Aussie Specfic in Focus! and part of the Galactic Suburbia Podcast Team. In her spare time she is a critic, reader, reviewer, runner, environmentalist, knitter, quilter and puppy lover.
Q: First let me say mega congratulations on being a finalist in the World Fantasy Awards (courtesy LOCUS) in the Special Award Non-Professional section for your work with Twelfth Planet Press. I imagine you’ve been popping champagne ever since you found out. Did you have any inkling this was coming?
Thank you! My nomination was totally unexpected and took me completely by surprise. I’m very excited because I was already planning on attending World Fantasy Con in San Diego.
Q: I was involved in Indy Press in the late 70s early 80s so I know how much work and money goes into this. If you’d had any idea that you’d be ‘working longer hours on the press than my day job and I still don’t have enough time in the week to get to everything that needs to be done.’ – (See full interview on Bibliophile Stalker) – would you have jumped in with as much enthusiasm?
Interesting question. I’m not afraid of hard work. I definitely lean towards the workaholic. I think also, being an engineer has trained me to get absorbed and focused on the task at hand. And the amount of time I work and the amount of work I create for myself is definitely self-inflicted. And I hear I can dial it back at any point in time if I want! I love indie press more now that when I first jumped in and I respect and appreciate the people who contribute to the scene even more so now that I know how much work and dedication and talent goes into everything that gets published. And I also believe that we are limited only by the passion, time, commitment and hard work that we put in. So. No pressure. And no regrets.
Q: And following on from that, if you could go back and give yourself advice about starting Twelfth Planet Press, what would that advice be?
The number one thing I regret is not taking my business more seriously from the start. My advice would be to set up my small press as a small business from the beginning and not rely on a box of receipts or a papertrail for forensic auditing later. I set the financial and business side up several years in and that was most definitely one of the most painful things to sort out. There’s so much more to writing and editing and publishing than the creative side and I would advise myself, and anyone jumping in (both at the publishing and the writing ends), to get a basic handle on accounting, legalese to read and understand contracts and basic business advice (like if you need an ABN and how to structure your business – will you be a sole trader or a company and what does that mean anyway?) .
Q: You did a post for Hoyden About Town on The Invisibility of Women in Science Fiction. It’s obviously a subject you feel strongly about. Is Twelfth Planet Press seeking to address this issue with affirmative action?
Not in any formal or mandated way. Overall, I don’t have a gender imbalance issue at Twelfth Planet Press – I buy what I like and the best stories that are submitted to me. And funnily enough, that gender breakdown is different to the general norm (though that’s not true of my novella series).
The Twelve Planets – twelve four-story original collections by twelve different Australian female writers – is a project that came from a place of realising, at the time of idea conception, how few female Australian writers had been collected. That’s changed during the time of project development. But the Twelve Planets remains a project that will release over two years close to 50 new short stories written by women. And that’s something that I’m really proud to be doing.
Q: Twelfth Planet Press has had some remarkable wins for a new, small Indy Press. There were six finalistings in the Aurealis Awards this year. Two finalistings on the Australian Shadows Award. And Tansy Rayner Roberts’ novella Siren Beat won the WSFA Small Press Award for 2010. This novella was part of a series of back-to-back novellas that Twelfth Planet Press released. It’s notoriously hard, from a writer’s point of view, to sell a novella to a publisher. Why did TPP start producing BtB novellas?
Thanks, I was particularly pleased with our Aurealis Awards shortlistings this year coming after seven shortlistings last year. It feels like validation for some of the choices that I’ve made particularly in terms of the direction I’ve taken. And the win from the WSFA was just unbelievably exciting. I’m so proud of the work that Tansy Rayner Roberts is producing at the moment.
I really wanted to have a product to sell at a particular price point, around the $10 to $15 mark. That was really the place that I started at for the novella doubles. I personally love the novella length, especially for science fiction and I loved the idea of paying homage to the Ace Doubles. I especially loved the idea of pairing two totally unrelated works and throwing them into a package like many of the Ace Doubles did. From a gambling sense, if you love one and not so much the other, that’s not a bad deal for $12. And from a publisher’s point of view I like the idea of perhaps enticing readers to find new or unknown to them writers or be exposed to a new genre by buying a double for one of the stories and getting the other one as a bonus. If I make the pairs right!
Q: An editor once said to me, I can’t tell you want I want, but I’ll know when I see it. This is incredibly frustrating to a writer. Can you tell us what you want?
Only that I’ll know when I see it. Sorry! But yeah, we look for what we aren’t expecting, what is outside of what everyone else is writing, that breaks new ground and feels fresh, that stands out from the pack. What I want is the project that stands out cause it’s not like all the other books on the shelf. I specifically look firstly for really solid writing – writing that is unpretentious and doesn’t get in the way of the story. And then I want to be emotionally or intellectually moved or changed by the work. I look for stories that demand my attention and then hold it. I look for stories that tell me something I didn’t know before – about myself, or about society or humanity. I look for a rewarding reading experience. So. Not much.
I’m very busy and I deliberately choose to read submissions when I’m in a bad mood and whilst doing something else. I want what I’m reading to demand attention, to demand I put everything down and just read it to the end.
Q: A finalist placing in the World Fantasy Awards has to raise the profile of Twelfth Planet Press. Where would you like to see TPP in five years time?
I’d like to see us with wider distribution in brick and mortar bookshops all over the place (long live the bookshop!) and being in a position to pay pro rates for writing, art, design and layout. I’d like to see us pushing genre boundaries and continuing to publish top quality fiction by writers at the top of our field that inspires, engages and entertains.
Q: On a personal note, where would you like to see yourself being career-wise in five years time?
I’d like to be working full time for Twelfth Planet Press.
Follow Alisa on Twitter @Krasnostein
Hear the podcasts on Galactic Suburbia
Hear the TPP Podcasts.
Catch up with Alisa on Linked in
Drop by the ASIF Website.
Posted in Australian Spec Fic Scene, Awards, Editors, Fantasy Genre, Genre Writing, Indy Press, Publishers, Publishing Industry, Writing Craft | Tagged: Alisa Kranostein, Aurealis Awards, Creativity, Dark Urban Fantasy, Fantasy books, Indy Press, Publishing Industry, Siren Beat, Twelfth Planet Press, World Fantasy Award Special Award Non-Professional, WSFA Small Press Award | 2 Comments »
Aurealis Award Wins for ROR Writers!
Posted by Rowena Cory Daniells on May 21, 2011
First of all, it must be said that being a finalist in these awards is an achievement. Congrats to all the finalists. Secondly, I’d like to congratulate everyone who won in their sections.
But, since this is the ROR blog, I’m going to do a WOOT for the team.
Winner of the Young Adult Short Story Aurealis Award:
Margo Lanagan ‘A Thousand Flowers’ published in ‘Zombies Vs Unicorns’, by Allen & Unwin.
Winner Horror Short Story Aurealis Awards:
Richard Harland ‘The Fear’, which appeared in ‘Macabre: A Journey through Australia’s Darkest Fears’, published by Brimstone Press.
Winner Fantasy Novel Aurealis Awards:
Tansy Rayner Roberts ‘Power and Majesty’, published by Voyager, (Harper Collins).
Winner Science Fiction Novel Aurealis Awards:
Marienne de Pierres ‘Transformation Space’ published by Orbit (Hachette).
Break out the cyber champers!
Posted in Australian Spec Fic Scene, Awards, Genre Writing | Tagged: Aurealis Awards, Margo Lanagan, Marianne de Pierres, Power and Majesty, Richard Harland, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Transformation Space | 7 Comments »
Countdown to the Aurealis Awards 2011!
Posted by Rowena Cory Daniells on May 20, 2011
Well, it’s that time of year again. And this year the Aurealis Awards will be held in Sydney. Harper Collins Voyager is sponsoring the awards. Kudos to the new AA management team, SpecFaction for pulling it all together. A national award like this with a different panel for each section, and a different panel for both the novels length and short stories is a major taks to organise.
This year the RORees have books and short stories in several section.
Young Adult Short Story
Dirk Flinthart has a story in this section. Goodluck with ‘One Story, No Refunds’ which appeared in ‘Shiny’ #6, from Twelfth Planet Press.
I’d wish Dirk all the luck inthe world, but this is where it gets tricky because Margo Langan has a story in the same section. ‘A Thousand Flowers’ published in ‘Zombies Vs Unicorns’, by Allen & Unwin.
Then to make matters even more complicated, Tansy Rayner Roberts has a story which she co-wrote with Kaia Landelius in this section. ‘Nine Times’ appeared in ‘Worlds Next Door’, published by Fablecroft Publishing.
Horror Short Story
Richard Harland’s story ‘The Fear’, which appeared in ‘Macabre: A Journey through Australia’s Darkest Fears’, published by Brimstone Press.
Horror Novel
Here we have Trent Jamieson with the first book of his ‘Death Works’ trilogy, ‘Death Most Definite’, published by Orbit (Hachette).
Fantasy Novel
Here Trent’s book ‘Death Most Definite’ appears again, along with book one of Tansy’s Creature Court trilogy, ‘Power and Majesty’, published by Voyager, (Harper Collins).
Science Fiction Short Story
Tansy does it again, with her short story ‘Relentless Adaptions’, which appeared in ‘Sprawl’, published by Twelfth Planet Press.
Science Fiction Novel
Marienne de Pierres’ books from her ‘Sentients of Orion’ series, ‘Mirror Space’ and ‘Transformation Space’ publsihed by Orbit (Hachette).
So, here’s wishing the RORees best of luck on Saturday night. TAnd while we’re at it the ROR team would like to wish all the finalists* the best of luck and congratulate them all for making it into the final 5 or less.
We’ll keep you posted. Tansy is going to be a presenter, so I’m sure she’ll be tweeting from the audience.
*For those of you who would like to view the complet list of finalist see here.
Posted in Australian Spec Fic Scene, Awards, Fantasy Genre | Tagged: Aurealis Awards, Finalists, Margo Lanagan, Marianne de Pierres, Richard Harland, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Trent Jamieson | 4 Comments »
RORees appear on the Aurealis Awards Final Lists
Posted by Rowena Cory Daniells on March 26, 2011
Well, it’s that time of year again and the finalists for the Aurealis Awards have been announced. (See here for the Press Release with the full list).
But for now I’m going to do the Happy Dance for my fellow RORees.
In the Young Adult Short Story Section, we have Dirk Flinthart with his story One Story, No Refunds (Shiny#6, Twelfth Planet Press) . And this is where it gets interesting, because Margo’s story A Thousand Flowers (Zombies Vs Unicorns, Allen and Unwin) is also nominated in the same section. And that’s not all, Tansy Rayner Roberts’ story Nine Times (Co-written with Kaia Landelius, published in Worlds Next Door, Fablecroft Publishing) is also a finalist in the same section. All I can say is what a line up!
In the Horror Short Story Section, Richard Harland’s, The Fear (Macabre: A Journey Through Australia’s Darkest Fears, Brimstone Press) is a finalist.
The we come to the Horror Novel Section where Trent’s Death Most Definite (Orbit, Hachette) is a finalist. And just to prove how versatile Trent is, his book is also a finalist in the Fantasy Novel Section! Along with Tansy Rayner Roberts’ Power and Majesty (Harper Voyager, Harper Collins).
Then we come to the Science Fiction Short Story Section where Tansy’s Relentless Adaptions (Sprawl, Twelfth Planet Press) is a finalist.
And finally we come to Science Fiction Novel Section. Here Marianne de Pierres has two books, Mirror Space and Transformation Space (Orbit, Hachette). These are the last two books of the Sentients of Orion series.
So I’m doing the Happy Dance for Richard, Dirk, Margo, Trent, Tansy and Marianne. It’s an honour for my fellow RORees to be finalists and fingers crossed on the big night in May!
Posted in Australian Spec Fic Scene, Awards | Tagged: Aurealis Awards, Dirk Flinthart, Happy Dance, Margo Lanagan, Marianne de Pierres, Richard Harland, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Trent Jamieson | 8 Comments »