Yesterday & Tomorrow…
Yesterday we had the first SpecFicNZ meetup we’ve managed in Christchurch for quite some time in the post-earthquake ethos of generally disrupted lives, and certainly significantly fewer places where it’s possible to hang out and have fun.
So it was good just to get together and talk about what we all love—speculative fiction (SF/Fantasy/Horror) in all its forms, including writing it which we all do. We also took the opportunity to celebrate some Christchurch speculative successes over the past few months including:
- KD Berry winning the Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best New Talent, primarily for Dragons Away (Bluewood Publishing)
- Jane Higgins winning the NZ Post Children’s Book Awards’ Honour Citation (YA) for The Bridge (Text Publishing)
- and The Heir of Night winning the Gemmell Morningstar Award
And I think we all enjoyed seeing some of that bling on the Christchurch speculative fiction table. 😉
More importantly though, it was nice to re-establish a sense of being a community and decide to ‘do it again more often’ — we’ll be aiming for a regular first Saturday of every month get-together gig at Under the Red Verandah cafe, but watch the SpecFicNZ site for more details: or better still, join up and go on the email.
—
So that was yesterday.
Coming up tomorrow I have a guest post by Rowena Cory Daniells on “Fantasy, The Poor Cousin of Science Fiction”
I have now had a sneak preview and can tell you that Rowena has put together a great post — so be sure to check it out.
—
And then later in the week…
Yes, there should be another guest post on Thursday, this one from Ripley Patton who—as some of you may already know—is currently embarked on a kickstarter for her YA novel Ghost Hand.
I’ve invited Ripley to come on “…Anything, Really” and post on what she was trying to achieve, as an author, with the Ghost Hand story—aka the “big idea” behind the book.
There will also be more information about the kickstarter but in the meantime, you can check out the project—and the fabulous, ‘just revealed’ cover by Kiwi artist Kura Carpenter—right HERE.