Launched! Reign of Beasts and Sea Hearts

Five of ROR’s members – Rowena Cory Daniells, Richard Harland, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Margo Lanagan and Dirk Flinthart were joined by many others at the Hobart Bookshop this Thursday so that Rowena could launch Tansy’s new book Reign of Beasts [third and final book of the Creature Court trilogy] and Richard could launch Margo’s Sea Hearts, the expanded novel based on her World Fantasy Award winning novella of the same name.

They don’t get Sea Hearts in the US until September! Poor things.

You can see my expanded write up of the launch here, and a bunch of great photos of the event here, thanks to Tehani Wessely. Margo has some different pics on her own blog, including a lovely one with our hosts, Chris and Janet of the Hobart Bookshop. It was so nice to meet and chat with so many people, and come together in a celebration of books at the end of our ROR week (of which, more later).

Raring to ROR…

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!

From the Steele's Island web page. Link below.

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.

Alisa wins World Fantasy Award!

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!