British Fantasy Awards 2013: the nominees

From the British Fantasy Society:

These are the nominees for the British Fantasy Awards 2013. Four nominees in each category were decided by a vote of the members of the British Fantasy Society and the attendees of FantasyCon 2012, with up to two further nominees in each category being added by the juries as “egregious omissions”. The exception is the Best Newcomer category, in which all authors under consideration were put forward by voters.

Best Fantasy Novel (the Robert Holdstock Award)
Blood and Feathers, Lou Morgan (Solaris)
The Brides of Rollrock Island, Margo Lanagan (David Fickling Books)
Railsea, China Miéville (Macmillan)
Red Country, Joe Abercrombie (Gollancz)
Some Kind of Fairy Tale, Graham Joyce (Gollancz)

Best Horror Novel (the August Derleth Award)
The Drowning Girl, Caitlin R. Kiernan (Roc)
The Kind Folk, Ramsey Campbell (PS Publishing)
Last Days, Adam Nevill (Macmillan)
Silent Voices, Gary McMahon (Solaris)
Some Kind of Fairy Tale, Graham Joyce (Gollancz)

Best Novella
Curaré, Michael Moorcock (Zenith Lives!) (Obverse Books)
Eyepennies, Mike O’Driscoll (TTA Press)
The Nine Deaths of Dr Valentine, John Llewellyn Probert (Spectral Press)
The Respectable Face of Tyranny, Gary Fry (Spectral Press)

Best Short Story
Our Island, Ralph Robert Moore (Where Are We Going?) (Eibonvale Press)
Shark! Shark! Ray Cluley (Black Static #29) (TTA Press)
Sunshine, Nina Allan (Black Static #29) (TTA Press)
Wish for a Gun, Sam Sykes (A Town Called Pandemonium) (Jurassic London)

Best Collection
From Hell to Eternity, Thana Niveau (Gray Friar Press)
Remember Why You Fear Me, Robert Shearman (ChiZine Publications)
Where Furnaces Burn, Joel Lane (PS Publishing)
The Woman Who Married a Cloud, Jonathan Carroll (Subterannean Press)

Best Anthology
A Town Called Pandemonium, Anne C. Perry and Jared Shurin (eds) (Jurassic London)
Magic: an Anthology of the Esoteric and Arcane, Jonathan Oliver (ed.) (Solaris)
The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women, Marie O’Regan (ed.) (Robinson)
Terror Tales of the Cotswolds, Paul Finch (ed.) (Gray Friar Press)

Best Small Press (the PS Publishing Independent Press Award)
ChiZine Publications (Brett Alexander Savory and Sandra Kasturi)
Gray Friar Press (Gary Fry)
Spectral Press (Simon Marshall-Jones)
TTA Press (Andy Cox)

Best Non-Fiction
Ansible, David Langford
The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature, Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn (eds) (Cambridge University Press)
Coffinmaker’s Blues, Stephen Volk (Black Static) (TTA Press)
Fantasy Faction, Marc Aplin (ed.)
Pornokitsch, Anne C. Perry and Jared Shurin (eds)
Reflections: On the Magic of Writing, Diana Wynne Jones (David Fickling Books)

Best Magazine/Periodical
Black Static, Andy Cox (ed.) (TTA Press)
Interzone, Andy Cox (ed.) (TTA Press)
SFX, David Bradley (ed.) (Future Publishing)
Shadows and Tall Trees, Michael Kelly (ed.) (Undertow Publications)

Best Artist
Ben Baldwin
David Rix
Les Edwards
Sean Phillips
Vincent Chong

Best Comic/Graphic Novel
Dial H, China Miéville, Mateus Santolouco, David Lapham and Riccardo Burchielli (DC Comics)
Saga, Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples (Image Comics)
The Unwritten, Mike Carey, Peter Gross, Gary Erskine, Gabriel Hernández Walta, M.K. Perker, Vince Locke and Rufus Dayglo (DC Comics/Vertigo)
The Walking Dead, Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard (Skybound Entertainment/Image Comics)

Best Screenplay
Avengers Assemble, Joss Whedon
Sightseers, Alice Lowe, Steve Oram and Amy Jump
The Cabin in the Woods, Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro

Best Newcomer (the Sydney J. Bounds Award)
Alison Moore, for The Lighthouse (Salt Publishing)
Anne Lyle, for The Alchemist of Souls (Angry Robot)
E.C. Myers, for Fair Coin (Pyr)
Helen Marshall, for Hair Side, Flesh Side (ChiZine Publications)
Kim Curran, for Shift (Strange Chemistry)
Lou Morgan, for Blood and Feathers (Solaris)
Molly Tanzer, for A Pretty Mouth (Lazy Fascist Press)
Saladin Ahmed, for Throne of the Crescent Moon (Gollancz)
Stephen Bacon, for Peel Back the Sky (Gray Friar Press)
Stephen Blackmoore, for City of the Lost (Daw Books)

The winners of these categories will now be decided by the following juries. Main jury, deciding the categories of fantasy novel, horror novel, novella, short story, collection, anthology, magazine/periodical, comic/graphic novel and screenplay: Esther Sherman, Matthew Hughes, Neil Williamson, Pauline Morgan and Ros Jackson. Best non-fiction: Djibril al-Ayad, Jason Arnopp and Roz Kaveney. Best artist: Daniele Serra, P.M. Buchan and Rachel Kendall. Best small press: Elaine Hillson, Elloise Hopkins, Dave Brzeski, Rachel Kendall and Rhian Bowley. Best newcomer: Adele Wearing, Alison Littlewood, Jim Steel, Lizzie Barrett and Peter Tennant.

The winners of each of these awards, as well as the winner of the Karl Edward Wagner Award (a special award decided by a vote of the British Fantasy Society committee) and the World Fantasy Awards, will be announced at the Fantasy Awards banquet at the World Fantasy Convention in Brighton on Sunday, November 3, 2013.

Hint: Teaching How to Read and Write off the Page

We love short short fiction at Deimos. We especially love good flash fiction. Check out this great article from Nano Fiction:

Sean Lovelace

Let us begin with this: flash fiction is an excellent genre for the writer and reader. For the writer, flash provides unique techniques, opportunities for bursts of inspiration, varied markets, new methods of reading aloud their work, inventive varieties of form, a fresh way to think about words, lack of words, compression, space.

Flash also benefits the reader of fiction. When I begin a public reading I tell a little joke; it isn’t really a joke at all (the best jokes are serious). I say, “Look, I’m about to read some flash fiction. The great thing is if you don’t like what I’m reading, just wait a minute. I’ll read something else.” Flash gives the reader a chance to change, to look over here, over there, then waaaayyyyy over here…The genre leaps. It glitters and gleams.

But it offers the teacher of creative writing even more.

Flash is a practical tool. That text will be read, right there in class, out loud if need be. The first draft can be written in class. As for showing artistry and conventions of fiction writing, the sheer variety of flash makes it a precise instrument for teaching individual techniques. Need to focus on description? Rising action? Characterization? Setting? Scene and summary? Dialogue? Narrative and/or lyricism? Point of View? Methods of realism, minimalism, conceptualism, magical realism, surrealism, etc. There’s a flash for that.

Here’s one lesson, critical to the genre: writing off the page. All of the glorious white space that surrounds a flash—all that isn’t shown, paradoxically leading to an even further telling. The reader has to meet the writer, to shake hands and bang foreheads. To create together. How do we explore this in the classroom? Any number of ways, but here’s one: Six famous words. Followed by Hint Fiction examples. Group work. And then naturally a writing assignment.

Let’s begin with Hemingway. As a flash advocate (and I’m sure you are), you should educate your class on this author’s relationship to flash fiction. Not only did Hemingway later use flash as transitions between longer stories, but also published his first book (basically a chapbook), In our Time, as a flash (published in Paris and called vignettes) collection.

But let’s focus on Hemingway’s famous (and famously apocryphal) six word fiction.

For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.

Since we don’t really have a title here, ask your class (or writing group) to place the words in a potential context (a classified ad, most likely). Context gives meaning: a concept important to any minimalist form. Once the reader has some sense of context, he or she can now meet the writer half way. The class will talk, filling in, fleshing out, reaching several conclusions (the best off-the-page work never reductively reaches a singular idea). The reader is active. The flash is alive. Now move to Hint Fiction. Hinting to something more complex. Put your class into three groups and give each group a Hint Fiction. Have each group read and discuss the text as a team. Then each group discusses the hint with the entire class. Have them read the Hint Fiction out loud. Second, have them discuss what they believe exists off the page. Finally, and most importantly, have them show techniques that allowed for this connotative reading.

For an exploration of Hint Fiction, see Hint Fiction: An Anthology of Stories in 25 Words or Fewer, edited by Robert Swartwood.

These examples, from the anthology:

“Children” by Jake Thomas

He took her out to a picnic to discuss what they wanted to do about it. “You want Bud Light or O’Doul’s?” he asked her.

This Hint Fiction will engage a lively classroom discussion. Students will have no trouble pondering off the page; they will arrive at several different conclusions (as they should). One or two of them will even point out this text as homage to Hemingway’s “Hills like White Elephants.” As an instructor, lead the students away from “What happened?” Flash fiction isn’t some clever puzzle to solve. Lead the students to the techniques that allowed us to read off the page: title (always essential in a flash; we only have so many words), “He” as the only active character, and then the wonderfully effective use of objects, two beverages, one alcoholic, and one critically not.

Technique, technique, technique. Remember, we’re teaching the nuts and bolts. As instructors, we need to peel away “the fictional dream,” and show the wiring, the plumbing. We’re not interested in the aesthetical architecture of the story—but rather how to build the thing ourselves, from floor to ceiling. To wit: We’re not reading as readers. We are reading as writers.

Next let’s examine “Visiting Hours” by Katrina Robinson.

She placed her hand over his and pressed the pen to paper. The signature looked shaky,but it should be enough.

Again, discuss. Again, prod the discussion in the direction of technique. Here, the title works to provide necessary context (among others things—a good title should be multifunctional). Note the careful sentence construction: how her hand presses the pen, not his. Watch the word choice, its connotations. Shaky signature indeed.

And one more, “Through Tiny Windows” by Barry Napier.

When they opened the cadaver, they found a house. A couple argued inside. There was a rhythm to their words, like the beating of a heart.

Everything a poet does, the flash writer needs to observe. And steal. Metaphor, for example. Conceptualism: taking an abstract idea and giving it concrete form. Figurative language does many, many things in flash fiction, but you must emphasize to beginning writers it does one thing very significant—it lets you use fewer words! Technique, always technique. Cadaver, not dead body. Objective tone when writing about a universal. And so on…

This lesson ends with homework: write an effective Hint Fiction. I would also make them write a short reflection on their Hint Fiction. What techniques did they use to allow us—the reader—to become active?

1. This lesson is an excellent one to transition into a lesson of minimalist flash fiction, those writers who often ask the reader to meet them halfway. Anton Chekhov, Diane Williams, Kim Chinquee, and so on.

2. Once this lesson is complete, you have something to note about every flash fiction in the future. Sure, you’ll discuss language, structure, theme, all varieties of creative writing perspectives on every flash example, but now you have something new to ask: “Can we read this flash off the page?” And if so, what techniques did the writer use to create such magic? What your students will find is that most flash fiction does allow for connotative depth. That’s the beauty of using fewer words for greater impact. That’s the brilliance, the precise artistry, and one reason we know it as flash.

Sean Lovelace lives in Indiana, where he eats nachos and plays disc golf and teaches creative writing at Ball State University. He blogs at seanlovelace.com. His next book will be about Velveeta. He likes to run, far.

Bracketology for Story Plotting?

An article by Ken Hughes for Mythic Scribes:

What do sports brackets have to do with writing a story?

Almost everything.

A plot depends on conflict and contrast between its characters, and on building interest in them over time.

A tournament’s system is about matching opponents together and tracking how that changes.  It’s one of the simplest, purest methods there is for managing the intricacies of a plot, while staying focused on what makes it powerful.

As we’ll see, the bracketing concept needs only a few expansions to fit any kind of plotting into it.

Simple Brackets: Who’s after Who

Brackets in sports are used to match up opponents, and then show how the winners from those matchups go on to compete in turn.

The simplest kind of story to use this pattern would involve different characters who were each out to kill the others, ruin them, best them in a competition, or otherwise force them out of the plot.

For instance, the story of a cop breaking free of an interfering mayor and then facing off against a serial killer might show up as As the red markings show, each set of three lines is the elements of a scene, such as “the cop and mayor square off, and the cop wins.” (Of course for most stories, the brackets would only be tracking their most pivotal scenes, not the other events that build up between those. But we’ll get to that.)

Then again, this format shows how that the plot looks somewhat incomplete compared to classic tournaments, because the killer has nothing vital to do at the onset. Also, many stories would give our hero a mentor, friend, or such who makes his own move on the killer and comes to a tragic end, leaving the hero to avenge him:

By filling out the bracket with someone for the serial killer to beat (or specifically, kill), both sides now go into that final showdown with some dramatic weight–all from just two essential scenes before that. And judging by how crowded fiction is with dead mentors, partners, and the like, it’s clear that setting up a conflict with a previous conflict has real power.

Let’s consider one more aspect of a sports matchup that this plot could use.

Instead of plotting around two good guys and two bad, how about changing it to one hero against three villains?  Perhaps our cop goes against a genuinely corrupt mayor, a crime lord, and a serial killer, all enemies of each other:

Each plot has its advantages. Using three villains lets you surprise everyone with how the crime lord, whom our hero was hoping to bring in himself, gets taken out by a “simple” serial killer. Still, the version that leaves the hero’s ally in the brackets (and the crosshairs) builds sympathy for the hero’s loss, though it doesn’t have the sheer unpredictability of so many competing enemies.

You can fine-tune the story in many more ways just by altering who goes into which bracket slot, and then playing up expectations around that. Here, since the mayor gets settled first, that probably makes him (and the whole idea of city corruption) look like a lesser problem when compared to the crime lord, who’s probably pulling their strings… and a fun twist when that manipulator is beaten by a more ruthless killer.

Or a different version could have the crime lord outwit that killer, or swap positions so the seemingly cowardly mayor kills that killer, and emerges as the greater threat.

Survivors and Allies

Of course, most stories leave more than just one character standing at the end. So let’s consider how (just as many tournaments allow multiple losses before a participant must leave), a “story bracket” ought to allow enemies to run testing attacks and failed schemes before they’re finally eliminated.

For instance, suppose instead of being murdered the crime lord survives and joins forces with the cop to stop the killer:

In fact, maybe the killer has tried to attack the mayor first, and that failed attempt is what leaves him in need of the crime lord’s help, before that went bad:

By this time the killer starts to look like a wounded animal, beaten by one side and driven to try to work with another, and the blowup of that drives his ex-partner to the cop.  While in contrast, that cop has been able to bring down the mayor completely, and now makes an alliance with the crime lord work too.

Letting people interact in new ways can build up new interest… though allowing someone to go through more and more steps without anyone being eliminated does dilute some of the energy of a single-elimination “tournament.”

Also, let’s think again about which sides are in use, and what kind of balance they form between them.

Using that mayor alongside the two out-and-out criminals gives the story a wider scope, while replacing him with a third official crook would put more focus on the underworld. Or if the mayor was replaced by a simple thief, but the crime lord by a competing cop, the same pattern takes on new meaning.  It’s easier to believe the second cop, after failing to nab the killer, would join up with someone who’s now only a professional rival.

Or some slots in the brackets might go to whole other issues, subplots, or emotional challenges that are different from the practical ones that are usually the spine of the story. If the cop’s also trying to make time for his sick sister, that provides contrast with everything else–especially the times one plot interferes with (or ends up helping with) the other.

Just how different to make each point from the others is its own challenge.  Do you want tighter conflicts centered around one crime, or a wider net of things coming together? These are the types of options that open up when enemies and rivals are given enough ways to interact.

Steps on the Way

We’ve been charting the main incidents during which major characters cross paths. Yet there will also be smaller incidents that move the story forward.

Our cop will work through a series of clues and dead ends, while his enemies send throwaway thugs to attack him before the real move is made.

Since this is a finer detail, it might be better to chart this like so:

These steps might involve lesser characters who only occasionally affect the story. Our cop’s allies, or the crime lord’s minions, can stay in the background for a number of scenes, and then come to the foreground to make a difference.

Some of those characters may have a few scenes, or only one.

Keeping Track of the Momentum

More than anything else, a story draws its energy from its characters and their interactions.

Using brackets is a helpful way to track which characters cross one another, who ends up removed from the story (or otherwise changed or helped), and what interactions follow in turn. It’s all about keeping track of the momentum.

So, why not plan out a book like a bookie?

Also, do you find planning out the details of your plot to be helpful or harmful to your personal writing style?

About the Author:

Ken Hughes is a novelist, technical writer, and author of the Unified Writing Field Theory blog. For more of his musings and info on his latest book, SHADOWED, see kenhughesauthor.com.

Deimos eZine 2.2, June 2013 Now Live!

The new issue of Deimos has just been released online! Check it out at http://deimosezine.com/issues-2/issue-2-2-june-2013/ and see our new, annotated table of contents!