First Book Friday: Tansy Rayner Roberts

[jimhines]

It’s been six months since the last First Book Friday post, where authors talk about how they wrote and/or sold their first novel. Previous entries in the series are indexed  here, and the submission guidelines are over there.

Tansy Rayner Roberts ( Twitter, LJ) is, in her words,  a writer, a mum, a doll merchant, and in her spare time (ha!) likes to

Comments

[mtlawson]

Best of luck, and a great story!

(Thanks for doing this again, Jim. It's been worth the wait!)

[jimhines]

I don't have any others lined up in the moment, but I was happy to get a submission from Tansy. It's a good story!

[starcat_jewel]

Two things jump out at me about this:

there were rumblings in the SF community about the fact that a prize named after George Turner, an eminent Australian writer of serious science fiction, had been won by some girl's funny fantasy novel, featuring more girls, and frocks, and exploding pirates, and that sort of thing

Sadly, not much progress seems to have been made in this area in 15 years.

The prize ran for three years (with a female winner every year, my successors being hard science fiction writers Maxine McArthur and Michelle Marquardt) before quietly disappearing into the sunset with a swag on its back and a sad song in its heart.

One can't help wondering if the disappearance had any connection with the first 3 winners all being female -- whether there was a feeling of, "Well, if it's not going to recognize any real writers, it's not worth the trouble." (Imagine, for example, the fuss and hooraw there would be if some year the entire slate of nominations for the Best Fan Writer Hugo was female. This could have been similar

[jimhines]

Isn't it in the rules somewhere? Women are allowed just one spot on the Fan Writer ballot each year? Sigh.

[jennielf]

So...all I want to know is, *HOW* can I get my hands on Splashdance Silver? It sounds fantastic and I feel poorer for having never heard of it!

Dear Future,
All Out of Print Book rights should revert back to the author so they can e-publish them on demand. darn it.

tl;dr - Tansy you rock. Make more books!

[jimhines]

Try http://www.abebooks.com/9780733801846/Splashdance-Silver-Roberts-Tansy-Rayner-0733801846/plp maybe?

[jennielf]

Already ordered! :)

[gauroth]

Exploding pirates! How wonderful!

I'm sorry to say I don't know of your books, but I'll definitely be looking out for them! Best of luck with the Creature Court trilogy! xx

[gauroth]

PS ordered Splashdance Silver from Amazon!!

[jimhines]

Thank you!