The Stone Road — online conversation with Trent Jamieson

Trent Jamieson and I will be talking about his new book, The Stone Road, online for A Room of One’s Own, this Monday August 15, 2022 in the evening (if you are in America) and Tuesday August 16 in the morning (if you are in Australia).

UPDATE/EDIT: you can now watch the conversation here: https://www.crowdcast.io/e/the-stone-road-a/

Here is what I’ve previously said about The Stone Road:

Trent Jamieson’s The Stone Road is a heart wrapped in thorns. Its world, even as it unpicks itself at the seams, is shot through with bright mysteries. And the novel, like its heroine, holds dear a loving, quarrelling community, even as it understands that towns — like time and people — slip away like dust. The Stone Road is a cycle of mysteries, an invocation of kindness amidst decay, a promise to the living, and blessing for the dead.

To read The Stone Road is to enter a lyrical, wavering world, a landscape wearied by time but vibrant with monsters grown out of history, watched over by clever birds, whispered beneath by the dead, where a girl strives to hold one town safe even as time and the long shadow of other people’s choices erode what she knows to be true.

If you love Tiffany Aching and CSE Cooney’s Saint Death’s Daughter, you’re going to want to read Trent Jamieson’s The Stone Road. 

May 2022 short story reading post

This post is a roughly tidied version of my May 2022 tweets about short stories. It’s quite long, so I’m putting the rest of it below the cut. There’s a list of all stories at the very end of the post.

Advance copies of A G Slatter’s The Path of Thorns

Cover design by Julia Lloyd

Look what’s arrived! My copy of A. G. Slatter‘s newest novel, The Path of Thorns. It is released in June, and you can pre-order it from all good bookstores and usual online places now.

There will be a launch in Brisbane on the 17th of June — it’s free to attend but you will need to pre-register here: Eventbrite.

Cover design by Julia Lloyd

A lush and twisted dark fairy tale suffused with witchcraft, dark secrets and bitter revenge from the award-winning author. Exquisite, haunting and at times brutal, readers of Naomi Novik and Erin Morgenstern will be entranced.

Asher Todd comes to live with the mysterious Morwood family as a governess to their children. Asher knows little about being a governess but she is skilled in botany and herbcraft, and perhaps more than that. And she has secrets of her own, dark and terrible – and Morwood is a house that eats secrets. With a monstrous revenge in mind, Asher plans to make it choke. However, she becomes fond of her charges, of the people of the Tarn, and she begins to wonder if she will be able to execute her plan – and who will suffer most if she does. But as the ghosts of her past become harder to control, Asher realises she has no choice.
 
From the award-winning author of All the Murmuring Bones, dark magic, retribution and twisted family secrets combine to weave a bewitching and addictive tale.

And this time, instead of drawing for Angela, I got to do a cover quote! Here’s the full quote:

A loose collection of thoughts on other people’s appreciation of things

I’m taking delight, lately, in appreciations of things.

April short story reading post

This post is a roughly tidied version of my April 2022 tweets about short stories. It’s quite long (although the month’s reading was abbreviated by Covid), so I’m putting the rest of it below the cut. There’s a list of all stories at the very end of the post.

March short story reading post

This post is a roughly tidied version of my March 2022 tweets about short stories. It’s extremely long, so I’m putting the rest of it below the cut. There’s a list of all stories at the very end of the post.

Parts will very likely end up in other posts in the future. There are ideas coalescing, including thoughts on e.g. stories of revolution, loss, communication, witness, and the metaphorical weight of birds — and thoughts on the emphases and accents of speculative fiction, and the evolution of stories on given themes.

February short story reading thread

This post is a roughly tidied/slightly edited version of a Twitter thread I’ve been keeping, tracking my February 2022 short story reading. It is extremely long, so I’m putting the rest of it below the cut. Parts will very likely end up in other posts in the future. And at the very end of this post is a list of all the stories read.

Read on…

January 2022 Big Giant Three-Mood Story Reading Thread

This post is a roughly tidied/slightly edited version of a Twitter thread I kept, tracking my January 2022 (and late December 2021) short story reading. It is extremely long, and I plan to extract sections of it into more concise posts in the future.

However, for posterity, here it is. Story notes are in regular text, my thoughts are in bold, in case that makes it easier to skip around. Feel free to ask for more detail/clarity. And I’ll edit this with links to related posts from time to time. [Note: I’ve started to drop in some very brief story descriptions to jog my own memory, but it might take a while to complete those, due to the aforementioned memory] [Further note: there is now a full list of stories read at the very end of this post]

It’s based on previous three-moods posts. See Story Shapes — Three-Mood Stories for background. The short version:

• I like breaking short stories into progressions of three moods (rather than beginning-middle-end, etc). I find it more revelatory, intuitive and useful, both for reading stories and for writing them.
• I use “mood” very broadly.
• Each dot point is one shape — one way of reading the shape of the story.

Also now up:

• February short story post
• March Short Story Reading Post
• April Short Story Reading Post
• May Short Story Reading Post
• June Short Story Reading Post

Read on if you dare.

Beautiful Australian Gothic Books

Painting by me, after a trip to Hanging Rock, while working on Flyaway — more on those illustrations at Illustrating Flyaway

Tor.com (who published Flyaway) asked me for a post for their Five Books About… series. I promptly forgot how to count, so here are:

Six Stories for Fans of Beautiful Australian Gothic

Every Gothic subgenre has it's own distinct flavor — @tanaudel celebrates examples of Australian Gothic, from Shaun Tan, Rosalie Ham, Kim Scott, and more! https://t.co/JLNeLW5XrU

— Tor.com (@tordotcom) January 19, 2021

Flyaway among NPR’s Best Books!

Flyaway has been included in the NPR’s Best Books of 2020!

You can sort the full list by a number of categories, which I recommend doing as there are many and varied books on it. Jessica P. Wick’s review of Flyaway is here:

And you can buy Flyaway through all good bookstores and the usual online suspects.