The familarrr
Edit: For those of you who keep telling me you wish you could make it to one of my Interactive Fiction workshops (I generally run one at Conflux every October long weekend), here’s a video course I made on udemy: Introduction to Interactive Fiction. It’s $20.
This was, of course, taken at the Pirate Ball & Book Launch last night.
Here’s some more:
Time for a rest!
My next public event is a talk/workshop on Interactive Fiction at the University of Canberra on Friday 2 March 5:30-7:30pm. It’s a rare opportunity to talk IF with me for free, and it’s open to the public.
If you read the dedication to Silver and Stone you’ll know that this group took me in when I was scrambling to write the second Antipodean Queen book. They’re a smart & friendly crowd and I recommend checking them out.
Their facebook page is here.
Monstrous Interviews
If you thought you heard me on One Way FM Canberra this morning, you’re quite right. Priscilla and I got on so well I’ll be returning on Thursday 22nd to talk about how the pirate ball went. And… I might just give a book away on air.
Here are some fun bits of online-only content linked to The Monster Apprentice!
Here is info on the Pirate Ball this Saturday. (Or here, if you prefer facebook.)
And here’s ANOTHER interview, this time by Megan Higginson, as a blog entry (rather than a podcast or radio interview).
I haven’t decided on my full outfit, but I’ll definitely be sporting a white puffy shirt and an ever-so-buckled overshirt.
The Monster Apprentice is available for pre-order through Odyssey Books, and I’ve also seen it for pre-order on Amazon Australia, which means it is or soon will be at all the usual online places, and will gradually trickle into some bookshops. You can order it into any bookshop or library.
ISBN: 978-1-925652-13-0 (pbk) | 978-1-925652-14-7 (ebook)
Murderous Kickstarter!
The Kickstarter for the first Murder in the Mail story is now live. It’s packed with unique rewards. Most are available anywhere in the world.
Murder in the Mail tells stories through letters, objects, and artworks mailed to the reader over several weeks.
The first story is A Bloody Birthday.
Naomi, your cousin, is killed at her own birthday party. One of the guests is the killer, and you have asked them all to write to you and send artworks to help you figure out who could have done such a thing.
Every letter, object, and piece of (quality-printed A4 size) art holds at least one clue.
There is a forum for readers to talk to each other at murderinthemail.boards.net.
I am the curator as well as writing one of the characters. There are twelve writers/artists altogether.
Monster Apprentice Easter Eggs
I was eighteen years old, sitting on a folding chair on a polished concrete floor in an Indonesian classroom. It was hot, and I was daydreaming, and I had an idea.
What if I invented a world complicated enough and rich enough that I could write all kinds of books in it? What if that world was different to all the straight-white-male-authored fantasy that I’d read growing up?
So I invented Rahana, a world based on Indonesia, where every island is physically and culturally different to the rest, where the weather is always tropical, and where magic is so common that physical strength is irrelevant.
Over the years since then I’ve written many stories set in Rahana, and expanded my horizons by travelling on the Young Endeavour sail training vessel. Now, almost twenty years later, my first Rahana book is about to be released.
I am absolutely thrilled that Tash Turgoose (author of “Makeshift Galaxy”, and now one of my “Murder in the Mail” writer/artists too) is doing internal illustrations for this series. These are some of the pictures that had to be left out for reasons of space:
And here is a real-world recipe for Toffee Fish:
Ingredients:
-Four salmon fillets
-Four tablespoons maple syrup
-One tablespoon sesame oil
-One tablespoon butter
-Four cups cooked rice
-One cup peas
-One cup corn kernels
-Two teaspoons sesame seeds
Method:
- Marinate the salmon in the sesame oil and maple syrup for up to twenty-four hours.
- Melt butter in a frying pan and add the rice, peas, and corn. Stir occasionally.
- Line a tray with aluminium foil and lay out the salmon fillets (skin side up if you are using fillets with skin), drizzling a teaspoonful of the remaining marinade mixture on top of each fillet. Cook at 180 degrees for 10-15 minutes.
- While that is cooking, add the rest of the marinade mixture to the rice mixture and continue cooking it until the salmon is ready.
- When preparing the plates, put the salmon on top of the rice (skinless side up if you are using fillets with skin) and sprinkle it with sesame seeds.
Serves four
Bloody Kickstarter
The “Murder in the Mail: A Bloody Birthday” Kickstarter campaign starts this Saturday (very much aligned with THE MONSTER APPRENTICE Book Launch & Pirate Ball, because I’m not one to waste an audience), and there are some EPIC rewards on offer.
One of the rewards will be the chance to have a custom cake made for the launch on August 25. A cake based on this picture (“Bloody Cake” by Shauna O’Meara):
It’s a tribute to Shauna that I want so, so badly to eat that cake, even with the blood dripping all over it (I’d eat around the blood, okay??) and the fact that it’s black and white.
My new belly button
It’s been about ten weeks since my stomach operation, and although I’m not fully healed I was just given the go-ahead to swim (my favourite and most effective exercise) yesterday so I’m pretty much in the clear.
Some thoughts:
It really really hurt a lot. There were times when I wasn’t sure it was worth it. (But it clearly was.)
Post-operative infections suck. Especially when you’ve allowed a month off and then suddenly it isn’t close to enough (it was more like taking two months out of my life, although I did get some work done in that time).
Yes, I have a new belly button.
I can fit clothes! This is still extremely exciting.*
My blood glucose has been within target ranges EVERY SINGLE TIME ever since the operation. Under the advice of my doctor, I’m slowly cutting out the diabetes medications that I take—continuing to monitor my blood sugar all the time. It’s too early to be certain, but it looks suspiciously like my stomach operation instantly fixed my diabetes. THAT IS AWESOME. It is also another reason this operation should absolutely be covered under Medicare. How many other mothers have severe health problems because their internal organs just haven’t “bounced back” after a massive physical event?
I’m not so hungry. I snack much less often, and don’t feel as weak, shaky and fatigued as I did before the operation. Stomachs are designed to be enclosed by abdominal muscles, and that goes a LONG way towards explaining why I’ve doubled in weight since having kids… my stomach just wasn’t working, and both my hunger and my fatigue were telling me I wasn’t getting enough food.
I’ve lost a bunch of weight since the operation without trying (or being hangry, which is a big problem for me as it connects to my existing mental conditions in dramatic ways). Hopefully this is a trend that will continue! Honestly I know that things will get harder and harder as I have less weight to lose, but this is certainly helping a LOT.
And sure, I’m still massively overweight, and I still have at least two other conditions that make standing/walking a big problem. But my health has improved hugely, and my optimism for the future—maybe even, one day, a healthy future—is greatly improved.
*I actually bought a full-on ball gown the other day, on a whim, because (a) It fit, which is an amazing thing. (b) It’s very pretty, (c) It was at Vinnies, so it cost $50 instead of $500. (d) It was near my birthday.
Full disclosure: I can’t actually do up the zip at the back. Yet.
But I promise to post a pic someday. I’m thinking I might wear it as part of the Kickstarter video for “Murder in the Mail”, which I need to film and put together this week.
Felicity Banks 