S. K. Dunstall – Page 29 – Author of Linesman and Stars Uncharted

Confluence is now available

Post author By Karen
Post date 30 November 2016
8 Comments on Confluence is now available

2 Dec. Updated to include later links.

Today has been crazy with non-book related issues. So much so that I nearly didn’t write this blog.

Confluence, book three in the Linesman series was released yesterday for us, today for some of you in later time zones.

So far, people have said nice things about it. Which is a relief, because no matter how much you, the author(s), might like a book, the real test is in what other people think of it.

We’ve tweeted a lot. (Authors tend to do that around publication day. Surprise.)

We’ve also been featured on some blogs.

To date:

SFF World, asking how you know if your side is the right side in a war. Which, let’s face it, most of us don’t. In the Linesman books, we naturally side with the New Alliance, because Ean does. But how do we know it’s the side that should win
Plus we’re over on Unbound Worlds talking about why we like space opera
Over at the Book Nympho where Anne reviews the book, and hosts our article about music in the Linesman series
And we did an author interview over at MyLifeMyBooksMyEscape. where we talk about writing the series, and give a little hint of what’s to come next.

A number of people have asked when the audio version will be available. Recorded Books plans to record it some time this week. We don’t know when it will become available on Audible. (Funnily enough, we do know when the CDs come out, but they always come months later.)

Meantime, if you’re reading Conflunce, we hope you enjoy it.

Writing process

The Sounds of Confluence

David, from Recorded Books, rang the other day.

He had a list of words he wanted to run through, to hear how we wanted them pronounced.

Recorded Books have done this for every book so far. It’s mostly names. People’s names and place names.

Believe you me, some of these words, when spoken with an Australian accent, come out very flat.

Some of the words we were asked to pronounce.

Tse
Henri
Merchett
Ghyslain
Aeolus
Hebe
Hella

How would you pronounce them?

Tse. Tss – ee, but short, not long. Emphasis on first syllable

Henri. On-ray. Emphasis on second syllable

Merchett. Mer-chett. Emphasis on second syllable

Ghyslain. Giz-lane. Emphasis almost even here, but a little heavier on the second syllable.

Aeolus. A (as in hay)-ole-uss. Emphasis on the second syllable. (Most people, we think, do it on the third).

Hebe. Hee-bee. Emphasis on the first syllable.

Hella. Hell-ah. Emphasis on the first syllable. The ‘ah’ is very short.

Engen. Enn-gen. The g here is a hard g, not a soft g. (That is, not the g in engine, more like the g in gas.) Emphasis on the first syllable.

How’d you go?

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Book news

Confluence books arrive

We received our author copies of Confluence today, which was lovely to come home to.

Most of them are already accounted for, so we’re close to having to order some more.

That’s probably a good thing. We’re also running out of copies of Linesman.

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On writing

What we’re reading this week

Post author By Karen
Post date 20 November 2016
4 Comments on What we’re reading this week

This week went so fast I forgot to write a blog.

So this blog is a teeny bit late, but it’s not even a full day. Let’s call it fashionably late.

Work has been busy. Writing has been busy. And right in the middle of it one of our readers posted a reply to an earlier blog and mentioned the Elantra series by Michelle Sagara. (Thank you, Paula. Appreciate the recommendation.)

There are twelve books in the series. I binge read the first three.

There’s a saying, often seen on t-shirts at science fiction conventions, that reads, “Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.”
(Marlene, from the Bookpushers, in E and Marlene’s review of Cast in Flight, book 12 of Michelle Sagara’s Chronicles of Elantra)

There’s something about binge reading. Me, I can only do it so long before I get tired of the story. I read the first three books and started on the fourth. And for some reason the protagonist, Kaylin, was really annoying me. I have no idea why. I think it was just the long read, because I certainly liked the books enough to buy them.

I only bought book four because I adore Severn and I wanted to know what happens to him.

I took a few days’ break, and only went back to the books because the tram I was waiting for took forever to come. I’m reading them much more slowly now, but I’m enjoying them again. I’ve just purchased book six.

Binge reading indeed.

Incidentally, Severn—one of the secondary characters—is a book maker for me. I have no idea why characters appeal to readers like that, but he’s one of mine. It doesn’t matter what Sagara does to Kaylin; it’s what she does with Severn that will determine whether I continue to read the series.

It’s magic when you get characters like that.

Sherylyn is currently reading Becky Chambers’ The Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet (now there’s a title to love).

I read this months ago. We discuss it occasionally. It’s funny, but the things I remember about the book aren’t the things I liked best about it when reading it.

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Fun stuff

Movie time

Our local shopping centre is in a permanent state of expansion. They finish one extension, and then start on the next. Or that’s what it feels like, anyway.

They recently opened a new section and hooray, our movie theatre is back.

Naturally, we tried it out.

Nice theatre. Reclining seats and all. Everything’s classy and new and beautiful right now.

Expensive too. They charge more for the nice seats.

Going to the movies used to be something you could afford. Not any more. Or not often. Luckily for us, our phone company gives us discount tickets, so it could be worse.

What did we see?

Inferno

The movie complex had just opened. There were five of us in the theatre.

Sherylyn has read the Dan Brown books, I haven’t, but I have seen the movies. And enjoyed every single one of them.

I enjoyed Inferno, too. It had some interesting plot twists, some I didn’t see coming.

Adrenaline packed fun.

Jack Reacher: Never Go Back

Tom Cruise has been in a lot of interesting movies over the last few years. I loved both Oblivion and Edge of Tomorrow.

Tom Cruise often plays ‘out of character’. I don’t know how many of you remember the fuss when he signed on to play Vampire Lestat, because Lestat is blonde.

Jack Reacher is blonde too. And he’s 6’ 5” (looks a lot like Lee Child, in fact). He’s nothing like Tom Cruise (a foot shorter, brown hair). But I think Cruise does a good job of Reacher, even without matching physically.

This was another movie I enjoyed. Again, lots of action, although the story was pretty straightforward.

Writing process

High fantasy I’d like to read

Post author By Karen
Post date 6 November 2016
2 Comments on High fantasy I’d like to read

A huge proportion of high fantasy stories written by western writers are set in worlds based on a medieval European setting. Or not so much real medieval Europe, but the fantasy world the medievalist Tolkien designed.

Tolkien’s world was a made up one.

Many writers base their worlds on his. They don’t change much. Except for the magic, and ‘their’ story, most of them remain true to Tolkien’s setting. Including his now almost-a-hundred-year-old views of a woman’s place in society, and how sex, politics and gender should be treated.

We don’t need that to make a good high fantasy.

What do we need?

A world which has little or no technology, and the subsequent lifestyle requirements from that, like transport, and how people fight
Clothing from another era
The magic, or McGuffin, demons or dragons or whatever makes your story special.

What else do you need to make high fantasy work? Other than a good story and characters to love?

Politics?

Democracies, republics, monarchies, aristocracies, theocracies, dictatorships have been around for millennia. I can’t say I’ve come across many governments in fantasy that you can’t break back to one of the known types of governing bodies.

Gender inequality, skewed toward a patriarchal system, where the girl never inherits, and her husband or her father protects her?

Of course not, but that’s often part of a high-fantasy novel.

Sexual ‘standards’ where there are two genders and men get together with women and and anything else is a deviation?

Again, you don’t need this for a fantasy, but likewise it’s also often standard.

What about treatment of other races, where people of other cultures or color were treated as sub-human, or property? Do you need this for your fantasy to be successful? Most likely not.

Writers might put a bit of a modern-day slant on these things, in the same way Regency romance writers put a modern-day slant on how their women behave. Because for most of us, the way other races, genders, and women, were treated in older times is not okay. But they still write basically the same world Tolkien did.

I, for one, love books that take the gender/sex/race components and mix them around a bit.

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Talking about things

First Tuesday in November

Post author By Karen
Post date 30 October 2016
No Comments on First Tuesday in November

Tuesday is Melbourne Cup day.

A horse race.

It’s a public holiday here in Melbourne.* In all of the state, now, I think, although it used to be only the metropolitan area. I remember as a child having an extra-long afternoon recess at school, so the teachers could listen to the cup. They even broadcast the race over the loudspeakers. As a child I never really ‘got’ it, but now that I’ve lived in Melbourne (more years than I lived in the country), it’s an institution.

In fact, Melbourne spring used to start with the AFL grand final and Melbourne fashion week, and segue into the Spring Racing Carnival. After that it was Christmas.

Nowadays, Christmas preparations start way earlier. There’s also Halloween, which we’d heard of when we were younger, but it wasn’t a thing Australians did. In the last few years has suddenly become huge. (If someone knocks on my door trick or treating, I have no idea what to do.)

You have to experience cup week at least once in your life. It’s a crazy time of parties, girls with hats and beautiful dresses, and impossible shoes (and flat heels in their bag if they’re truly wise), and guys in classy suits.

The weather is usually crazy. Mostly it either pours rain or it’s so hot everyone gets sunburned. There’s hardly ever just a nice day. One year you watch the racegoers coming home sodden, the next year they’re bright red from sunburn.

Confession, I have never been to the actual race. Or to Oaks (Ladies) day, which is on the Thursday. It’s too crowded for me. The closest I have been is at the station as the train disgorges hundreds and hundreds of post-race goers. So many that even when they get off the train they’re jammed so tightly onto the platform some of them can’t move.

But I do watch the race of course. And partake in a cup sweep or two.

So come Tuesday at three pm, I’ll be like most of the rest of Australia. Watching a horse race on television somewhere.

* We also had a public holiday this year for the football grand final. We Victorians have our priorities down well. 🙂

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Writing process

Living in my own science fiction future

Post author By Karen
Post date 23 October 2016
2 Comments on Living in my own science fiction future

Sometimes I feel I’m living in my own science fiction story, but I don’t realise it.

Computers, credit cards, mobile phones, microwave ovens, genetically modified wheat and other plants, 3-D printers, military drones (military anything, really), tablet PCs. The list goes on.

While it’s true some of these were invented before I was born, they only became common in my lifetime.

We haven’t got self-driving cars yet, but here’s hoping we get to them before I get too old to drive. Believe me, I’ll be first in line.

But for someone born in the year 2000 however, their science fiction will be different.

They grew up with computers, so that’s not science fiction to them. Mobile phones, the internet. They’re part of life, in the same way electricity and washing machines are to me.

For them it will be self-driving cars (I hope), commercial trips to the moon (maybe), genetic modification of people (maybe) and a whole slew of other things that I haven’t even thought of yet but some science fiction writer probably has.

Friday’s internet denial of service attack feels like something out of science fiction. Maybe an apocalyptic novel, or a near future thriller that threatens an apocalypse.

I work in IT. I also run a blog. Which means I know about denial of service attacks. In fact, most Australians do now, for our last census (#CensusFail) was spectacularly disrupted by a denial of service issue.

While we weren’t hit anywhere near as severely as the US last night, it does make you think about how much we rely on the ability to be online all the time. And when we do get an outage, how much it impacts us.

It’s a different world to pre-1980, back before the internet as we know it didn’t exist. Back then Friday’s events would definitely have been science fiction.

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Writing process

What alien am I answers

Last week we gave you a quiz: What alien am I? This week we give you answers.

Alien One

My people (a whole ship of them) are stranded on a distant planet (Earth) and we want to go home. We have membranous bodies that can’t survive long in the new planet’s atmosphere. We survive by finding hosts to inhabit. Over the millions of years we have been on this world our people have split into two factions. Now we’re at war, and using our human hosts to fight the war for us.

Unfortunately, my last host was betrayed by one of my people who went over to the enemy. I had to find a new host in a hurry.

Tao, from the Lives of Tao, by Wesley Chu. Tao is a Quasing, an alien race that can’t live outside of another body (on Earth, anyway). One might call them parasites, although the Quasing themselves might refer to themselves as symbionts.

Alien Two

We begin life as female, become male once our egg-laying years are over and change to something else again at the end of our life. I am currently male. I look like an otter crossed with a gecko, but I walk like a six-legged caterpillar.

Dr Chef, a Grum, from The Long Way to a Small and Angry Planet by Becky Chambers.

Chambers’ book has been described as Firefly crossed with Guardians of the Galaxy. This is probably not the time to confess that I only saw Firefly about six months ago, when Netflix came to Australia.

Alien Three

I like meat—human, my own race—I’ll eat anything. Although, of course, marines do not eat other marines.

My race has prehensile toes so I don’t like boots.

I can hack into any military system. I am loyal to my staff/gunnery sergeant.

The alien in question, Ressk, one of the Krai from Tanya Huff’s Confederation of Valor series. I love Staff (later Gunny) Sergeant Torin Kerr. If I ever have to suggest military science fiction to someone who has never read it before, this is the series I recommend. It’s lighter than some, which makes it a good introduction to the sub-genre.

Alien Four

I am the captain of an alien fleet. I am being shot at by humans. I surrender.

The one, the only, the late, great, Terry Pratchett. Specifically, the ScreeWee captain from Only You Can Save Mankind.

It’s a little dated now–anything with computers dates fast, and back in the nineties, when this book was written, computers were in their infancy. But the Johnny Maxwell books are some of my favourite Terry Pratchett books.

Alien Five

I look like a big pink erector set. My favorite pastime is fining the humans on my planet. I use the money from the fines to buy umbrellas, field glasses and slot machines.

I got the description for this one out of the book, but if you look at the cover, our alien isn’t pink, and he doesn’t look like a crane (which is what I imagine an erector set is, because it’s not a word we use here in Australia).

Bult, the alien from Connie Willis’s Uncharted Territory. This is one of Willis’s lighter books. Think Crosstalk, or some of her novellas and short stories like All Seated on the Ground, or Inside Job.

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So there’s the list. How many did you get?

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Fun stuff

Quiz: What alien am I?

We haven’t had a quiz for a while, so here are five aliens from books for you to identify.

Some of them are a little obscure, but they’re all from books we have in our library.

And no, it doesn’t include any aliens from Alien. Or ET.

Alien One

Unfortunately, my last host was betrayed by one of my people who went over to the enemy. I had to find a new host in a hurry.

Alien Two

Alien Three

I like meat—human, my own race—I’ll eat anything. Although, of course, marines do not eat other marines.

My race has prehensile toes so I don’t like boots.

I can hack into any military system. I am loyal to my staff/gunnery sergeant.

Alien Four

I am the captain of an alien fleet. I am being shot at by humans. I surrender.

Alien Five

I look like a big pink erector set. My favorite pastime is fining the humans on my planet. I use the money from the fines to buy umbrellas, field glasses and slot machines.

Answers next week.

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