Siren Beat - an introduction
cassiphone is blogging about "Siren Beat" this week. Here's an excerpt:
didn't read Robert Shearman's Roadkill until our shared book had already gone to the printers. My first thought was - oh, I wish I'd read this before I gave Alisa an answer to the question - 'Robert wrote an intro to his story, do you want to do one for yours?' I didn't, because I thought it was best to let the novelette stand alone, leaving any peripheral material for blogging or whatever.
But I read Robert's this week, and it's such a gorgeously personal piece of writing about how he wrote his story, and its relationship to his Australia Swancon trip.
This is my attempt.
...
[T]houghts of Hobart as a paranormal setting started clicking into gear, and it was the harbour that kept springing to mind. When I think 'Hobart' my brain immediately goes to that stretch of land around the harbour - the old IXL factory where my mother went to art school, the docks, the bars, the old stone buildings around Salamanca Place, the quarry at the back of the new Salamanca Square, the big orange Antarctic ship that dominates the view and the silo buildings at the end. A horseshoe shape of familiar sights, sounds and smells.
It occurred to me that if I was to reinvent Hobart as a paranormal setting, like Laurell K Hamilton reinvented St Louis for hers, then I could take inspiration from the Derwent River and the sea beyond. Instead of vampires and werecreatures, the dark magical threats could come from sirens, kraken, mermaids, kelpies, and any other aspect of water mythology. And suddenly, after half a year of struggling, I couldn't stop writing.
Siren Beat was a guilty pleasure...
Purchase your copy of Roadkill/Siren Beat for $12/$15, depending on postage.
didn't read Robert Shearman's Roadkill until our shared book had already gone to the printers. My first thought was - oh, I wish I'd read this before I gave Alisa an answer to the question - 'Robert wrote an intro to his story, do you want to do one for yours?' I didn't, because I thought it was best to let the novelette stand alone, leaving any peripheral material for blogging or whatever.
But I read Robert's this week, and it's such a gorgeously personal piece of writing about how he wrote his story, and its relationship to his Australia Swancon trip.
This is my attempt.
...
[T]houghts of Hobart as a paranormal setting started clicking into gear, and it was the harbour that kept springing to mind. When I think 'Hobart' my brain immediately goes to that stretch of land around the harbour - the old IXL factory where my mother went to art school, the docks, the bars, the old stone buildings around Salamanca Place, the quarry at the back of the new Salamanca Square, the big orange Antarctic ship that dominates the view and the silo buildings at the end. A horseshoe shape of familiar sights, sounds and smells.
It occurred to me that if I was to reinvent Hobart as a paranormal setting, like Laurell K Hamilton reinvented St Louis for hers, then I could take inspiration from the Derwent River and the sea beyond. Instead of vampires and werecreatures, the dark magical threats could come from sirens, kraken, mermaids, kelpies, and any other aspect of water mythology. And suddenly, after half a year of struggling, I couldn't stop writing.
Siren Beat was a guilty pleasure...
Purchase your copy of Roadkill/Siren Beat for $12/$15, depending on postage.