Casey Interviews Eileen Kernaghan (in Bruce Gillespie's SF Commentary 101)

It's pretty much all in the title, folks. Follow this link to read the pdf of Australian SF fan Bruce Gillespie's latest fanzine, including an interview with the wonderful Eileen Kernaghan, long-time Canadian writer of scrumptious fantasy.

Enjoy!

Goodbye to a Friend

Dear friend and writer Valerie B-Taylor died while we were having fun at VCon, unaware that, far from getting better during her stay at hospital, she was letting go of her life. It is a very sad parting, and I so wish I had had the chance to say goodbye.

Valerie was filled with humour and compassion. She was audacious and bold in her writing and her life; we called her seat in our writers group The Naughty Seat because of what she brought to it so many times. Yet she also brought encouragement, joy, deep sorrow, fierce protectiveness, and a wild intelligence that I will miss for years to come.

Goodbye, dear one. Thank you for your love and wisdom. Many blessings on your journey.

Photo from New West Writers

Valerie was, among other supportive roles in the writing community, the president of New West Writers. This is something she posted on their site:

V.B.-Taylor (formerly Valerie P. Aelbers)

January 20, 2010 at 10:38 pm

I write on those days that story is so strong, my higher self escapes and hovers above me like a puppeteer moving my body with invisible strings, rods, and wires. Seat in chair, elbows on desk, fingers on keyboard, a puppet operated by unseen powers.

It is in that moment, that very moment, when my mind, spirit, and body converge that I know I am a writer. When story moves through me; when story translates through text onto paper another voice unheard.

V. B.- Taylor

The video above shows Valerie as she receives a Distinguished Poet/Writer Award (WIN Literary Festival) presented by Ashok Bhargava and Mabel Elmore, MLA, in Richmond, 2013.

There will be a Tribute Gathering for Valerie with various performers at City Centre Library in Surrey, room 418, behind the Surrey Central SkyTrain station, on Friday, 24 October from 5:30-8:30 PM.

Thanks to Eileen Kernagahn, our leader at the Kyle Center Writers Workshop, for making space for us to grieve and celebrate Valerie today, and to Eileen Mackenzie for bringing in her written memoir of Val, which opened the gates for all of us to speak who needed to.

Listen To This! @ VCon 36

Finally figured out how to upload a podcast to this blog -- turn it into a video. So, fresh from the FintanSparky YouTube channel, my VCon 36 podcast, Listen To This!

Check out the last posting for more info on Listen To This!

VCon 36: Play, Workshops, Readings...FUN!

Art by Artist VCon 36 Guest of Honour
Jean-Pierre Normand

I had a great time this weekend at VCon 36.

I used to come as a fan and very much enjoyed the panels and schmoozing, going to readings, attending the masquerade and dance.

Then I started coming as a guest. This was both cool and nerve-wracking. I am, believe it or not, shy. I'm nervous speaking to an audience without a chance for rethinks and edits. And I don't manage well trying to get a word in edgewise on a panel where great talkers have hold of the mike.

On the other hand, I love doing readings. Serious or silly. (Obviously, if you have looked at my YouTube channel.) I love doing critiquing. I love encouraging other people to be really silly.

So I have slowly figured it out. Stay off pontificate-y panels. Get reading panels put on the program. Write a silly play. Get people to act it out. Critique people's stories. Goof around. Get to know people. Have fun. Be fun. And forget about My Work.

That is what I did this weekend. I worked my butt off, but I worked at things that give me energy and great pleasure. The workshop participants got pages of carefully thought out notes. The Pallahaxi Players performed the stage version of "This is for Mrs Zaberewsky" brilliantly to an appreciative, and appropriately guffawing, "crowd". Steph St Laurent was over the top as Wikta, the frustrated actress who is taken to an alien planet to be a star. Virginia O'Dine made a wonderful Narrator, as I knew she would from her performances at Turkey Readings of earlier years. Theo Campbell was hilarious as Droodla, the alien director, and Mrs Zaberewsky herself. And Rhea Rose truly rose to the occasion (and lowered to it) as Mrs Jabłoński, Unglubump the aspiring actroid, and well, a ramp. (I had not dreamed anyone could bring such subtlety to the role of spaceship ramp.)

On Sunday Ian Alexander Martin and I presented Listen To This ! Listen To This! He opined and I read favourite passages from works by Avram Davidson, Eileen Kernaghan, Don Marquis, and Mike Coney.

At noon I worked with Fran Skene (whose baby it is), Eileen Kernaghan, Virginia O'Dine, and a crowd of willing victims to produce the Turkey Readings. A quarter at a time, we raised $150.55 for the Canadian Unity Fan Fund (CUFF). (Nothing next to the $650ish raised for Aunt Leah's Place at the Closing Ceremonies by auctioning off Normand's drawings and a personalized copy of Author GoH Larry Niven's new book. But not bad for goofing around for an hour.)

And finally I joined Ian Alexander Martin, Sandra Wickham, and Jaymie Matthews in reading pages 189 from a variety of different books. The books were concealed from the audience members, who had to decide whether they would be interested in reading the whole thing before being told what books they were listening to. (I read from House on the Strand by Daphne DuMaurier, Five Children and It by E. Nesbit, Path into the Unknown: The Best of Soviet Science Fiction, edited by Judith Merril, and The Ghost Pirates by William Hope Hodgson.) Of course, we readers didn't know what the others were reading from, either, so we got to enjoy the gosh wow of the surprise, ourselves.

By the end of it all I was most happily read out.

I got to attend only a little of the programming (what I habitually refer to as paneling, which I think is actually something you put on the walls of your rec room). I heard Dave Duncan read, I got to the Opening and Closing Ceremonies, saw a stitch of the Costume Masquerade, and so on. My main priority beyond meeting my commitments to the concom was to hang out with my nephew Theo and have conversations with other folk, whether in the Dealers Room or over tea or flying down the hall.

A fun, fun time. I look forward to next years VCon.

Winter on the Plain of Ghosts

I'm early posting my YouTube Reading video this week. I'll be busy at VCon 36 on Saturday but I didn't want to miss getting one to you, so here she is. The book is Winter on the Plain of Ghosts by Eileen Kernaghan. One of my all-time favourites. I remember being busy out and about, at the gym or wherever, and thinking about getting home to my book. Not something that happens to me every day.

So here is your tiny sampling. Cheers!

Canadian Tales of the Fantastic available now

Canadian Tales of the Fantastic available now from Red Tuque Books and Amazon.ca.

This is the anthology that Eileen Kernaghan and I were finalist judges for back in February.

Red Tuque Books
Trade paperback 188 pp
$15.95

The Latest Lonely Crier!

I have rather belatedly joined the BC SF authors collective, the Lonely Cry, "an informal west coast association of Canadian science fiction and fantasy writers" with which I have long been acquainted.

Belated, because the Age of the Internet has made much of the Lonely Cry's role redundant. There is no longer a need for newsletters to let the world know what the authors are doing: they blog it. Tweet it. Facebook it. And in every other way blast their trumpets to the world.

When Lonely Cry originator Mike Coney was alive the Lonely Cry also banded together to do Readers Theatre at the local SF convention, VCon. Although not an LC member, I was invited to join their performance a couple of times, but mostly I sat in the audience and laughed at their brave idiocy.

Despite the demise of the newsletter, the Lonely Cry remains a respectable group of authors that I am happy and pleased to throw my lot in with. Eileen Kernaghan has put my bio and my first blog announcements onto the site. The site will link back to this blog. And so the life cycle continues.

Have a look. You will find news of Mary E. Choo, Janine Cross, Dave Duncan, Matthew Hughes, Eileen Kernaghan, Linda DeMeulemeester, Clélie Rich and Rhea Rose, all fine local (usually -- that Matt has been gadding around an awful lot) writers of speculative fiction. There is much good reading to be had in their midst.

But first, a little background, gleaned from the memory of Eileen Kernaghan:

It was Mike's idea over twenty, perhaps as much as twenty-five years ago. He had returned jetlagged from a trip and came up with the idea for the Lonely Cry--West Coast speculative fiction writers putting out a periodical newsheet to mail out to libraries, individuals, reviewers, and bookstores, usually promoting one book in particular. Mike did the putting together and publishing at first.

Two or three years later he had the brain wave of putting together a readers theatre piece entitled "Sex and Perversion in Gnomedome". This was a great hit, so he did two or three more at VCons and took it to Context in Alberta as well. Beginning as a small readers theatre, with the readers seated at a table, it developed into an elaborate array of props and costumes, but remained true to the barely rehearsed, read-from-scripts, whacky sensibility of the original. Though the majority of scripts were written by Mike, others were written by Mary Choo, Eileen Kernaghan, and Rhea Rose.

Stories, Poems, Reviews!

Another of my rare postings.

Hello! Summer is crawling coolly by us. A wet one and by many accounts that is a terrible thing but I don't mind a bit. As long as there is weather at all that's good enough for me.

Energy is still not fountaining up in me but what I have I use. I'm spending many hours with my local nephews and niece (Clelie Rich and I simultaneously came up with the word "niblings" to describe such folk), doing lots of meditation and a fair bit of yoga, and...

writing!!!

In the past two and a half months I have written 60 or 70 poems* -- unheard of -- none of the speculative genre. I'm still plunking away at the 25 related reviews I opened my gob about over a year ago. And with the encouragement of a colleague I've dusted off and revised three short stories and sent them out this week. I also wrote a new one, which has a few finishing touches to be put to it before launching at some unsuspecting publisher. (The stories are: "Invicta", "Eating Our Young", "This is for Mrs. Zaberewsky", and "In Days and Nights the World is Spent".)

(*These are not Polished Poems, but earnest first drafts. When I have come to the end of this spurt I'll go back with a straight edge and candle and see what I can do to bring them to maturity.)

I am extremely grateful to this colleague, one Ursula Pflug, who reviewed Finding Creatures & Other Stories for the Internet Review of Science Fiction a while back. I hadn't realized how much it would help to have someone show an interest in the stories that are lying dusty in the drawer, and nudge me to do something with them.

Thank you, thank you, Ursula!

I fell out of action with Dad's death, and the worry about how long the reviews are taking translates in my furry mind to "shouldn't take time for my stories while the reviews are still unfinished." This new situation is helping to remind me that in fact my stories are the juice that gives me the zip to do these other things.

The reviews are interesting to do though. They are all of books about Brigit, goddess or saint, and there is a huge variety of stuff about her now, where a few decades ago there was (count them) one book available about her. The reading is prompting me to write poems related to her, as well, so really it all works like one nice composting cycle. (I am writing them, interestingly, on paper. With a pen.)

In February Eileen Kernaghan and I chose the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place stories from among the tales chosen by another judge for the Red Tuque speculative fiction anthology, Canadian Tales of the Fantastic. It was an interesting process, working with another person to weigh the pros and cons of a given story, and Eileen is always a pleasure to work with. They've come up with a wonderful cover, which I am itching to post here but as I can't find it on the RTB site, I guess I'd better hold back. Check out Red Tuque Books in September for the release.

I've pulled back a lot from the internet, as foreshadowed in earlier postings, and this is part of the reason I am finding the space of mind to write again. The router is off till I actually need it on. The computer is safe territory (safe from endless distractions, that is -- since I don't play computer games) once again.

I'm looking forward to VCon at the end of September/beginning of October. (Both. They occur on the same weekend.) Hope to get up and do more improvfoolery and have fun with the masses. Greg Benford is GoH this year so I have reserved Timescape from the library and will dutifully do some background reading. He is both a scientist and a respected author so I'm thinking this Will Be Good.

I am also going to see a favourite author at a 5 day retreat in August. This thought simply makes me smile. Thich Nhat Hanh, author of Peace is Every Step (my all-time favourite book) and wonderful teacher, is coming to Vancouver. I've been volunteering for several months and will be stepping out of my own hermitage into a sangha of many hundred people for those few days. Lovely.

Anyway, just wanted to say hello from this quiet outpost of the hinternet. Or the outernet, perhaps.

Award Winner!!!

Okay, not really fair. It isn't my writing that's won an award, but my blog, and it's a "fun" award, not a big prestigious award but HEY! Who cares? It IS fun.

Martina Carter of the blog Creative Chronicles picked Den Page of C. June Wolf as one of her choices for the Over the Top Award. What she says:

The rules of the award are to answer the questions with one word answers, then to pass it on.

Your Hair? - Whacky.
Your Favourite Food? - Healthy
Your Hobby? - Yakking
Your Fear? - Atrophy
Your pets? - Felines
Something You Aren't? - Pregnant
Where Did You Grow Up? - Canada
Your Life? - Quiet
Your Mood? - Content
Your Favorite Colour? - All!

And I'm passing the award to these little known bloggers:

Under the Oak
Writer's Travels
Eileen Kernaghan's Blog
The Beacon Blog for Writers
Wisdom Play

Please go check out their blogs and if you like what you see become a follower.

Wattle and Daubers Featured Readers @ Spoken INK!

Eileen Kernaghan & Casey Wolf

I'll be one of three featured readers at the Burnaby Writers' Society Spoken INK reading series next Tuesday. Each of us has been published by the new micro-publisher Wattle and Daub Books.

Here is the scoop:

The Burnaby Writers' Society’s Spoken INK presents BC writers Casey Wolf, Addena Sumter-Freitag, and Eileen Kernaghan reading from their recent Wattle and Daub Books releases.

Casey will read from her short speculative fiction collection Finding Creatures & Other Stories, Addena from her poetry collection Back in the Days, and Eileen from her speculative poetry release, Tales from the Holograph Woods.

Date: Tuesday, October 20, 7:30 pm.

Location: James Street Café, 3819 Canada Way (one block east of Boundary Rd. in Burnaby)

Contact: bwscafe@gmail.com

Open mic to follow featured readers.

Addena Sumter-Freitag

Wattle and Daub Books

Finding Creatures & Other Stories by C. June Wolf:

“Wolf uses different genres, different voices, different cultures—in short whatever she needs to make the story work. What ties it all together is her sure-handed prose and a depth she brings to her writing, that indefinable element that rises up from between the lines and gives a good story its resonance…”

—from the introduction by Charles De Lint, author of The Onion Girl and Dingo.

SAINT FRANCIS AND THE GREEN MAN

While praying at the edge of the woods one day, with the larks singing all about him and the grey-brown hare of Greccio outstretched like a dog at his side, Francis lifted his eyes. There was a stirring of the underbrush just ahead of where he was standing and he saw something—someone standing at ease beneath an aged, twisted oak. It could not be identified as any creature he had ever known, and indeed was neither creature nor plant nor man, but a strange combination of the three. The leafy, pelted being stared out thoughtfully at Francis, a light smile at the corners of its wide, lipless mouth and even more vividly in its flickering ochre eyes.

Francis' prayer did not falter. (It was many years since he had perfected the ability to pray in any circumstances, and it was like breath to him.) But he gave a little start. And his eyes widened in surprise.

For Francis was a man of his land. He had seen the ancient, lichened images carved on mottled stone. He knew the creature that stood before him, half-obscured by leaves, both its own and those of the brush that grew all around it. He had not believed that such a thing had ever truly lived, but there it was, and suddenly Francis’ world began to teeter…

Back in the Days by Addena Sumter-Freitag:

…bold-faced, broad-based and takes up space in a Canada that needs to be re-raced. *Back in the Days* is a book that will change your sense of here, and will eclectify your sense of self, wherever and whoever you are. You’ll love going back with Sumter-Freitag, whether or not you were there the first time around, because you’re here and now in her glorious storytelling.

—Wayde Compton author of Performance Bond

BACK IN THE DAYS

Friday nite meant all of us met up

And we’d be ‘stylin’

Fixin’ to dance the Madison

And Jive ‘like there was no tomorrow’.

Back in the days when a Bitch was a dog

And Nigger was a fightin’ word.

And all the Canadian guys would stand around

and posture

And ‘toss a dance challenge’ to the American G.I.s

who came to town to take all their girls

(Not that they wanted us Black girls

Before the American guys came ‘on the scene’).

Back in the days when a Bitch was a dog

And Nigger was a fightin’ word…

Tales from the Holograph Woods by Eileen Kernaghan:

"Kernaghan has touched something deep and visceral with these verses. You will read them once, then, in the middle of the night, wake suddenly, shivering, and need to read them again. Eileen Kernaghan neither lights a single candle nor curses the darkness—she swallows it whole and then sets it on fire."
—Sandra Kasturi author of The Animal Bridegroom

CHIAROSCURO

the shadow is always there
dark subtext, dissonance: the mocking laughter
in the fairy wood, the scowling presence
at the birthday feast, the faint suggestion
of warts beneath the velvet coat

this is the page in the book you dare not turn to
the face you see in the mirror
when the light falls at the wrong angle

this is the sly poison under the apple’s
smooth red skin, the dark that is not
light’s absence, but its twin.

Eileen Kernaghan's Wild Talent: A Novel of the Supernatural has been short-listed for the 2009 Sunburst Award for Canadian Speculative Fiction.

Finding Creatures & Other Stories

by C. June Wolf

$15.95

ISBN 978-0-9810658-0-9

Back in the Days

by Addena Sumter-Freitag

$15.95

ISBN: 978-0-9810658-1-6

Tales from the Holograph Woods: Speculative Poems
by Eileen Kernaghan
$9.95
ISBN 978-0-9810658-2-3

Date: Tuesday, October 20, 7:30 pm.

Location: James Street Café, 3819 Canada Way (one block east of Boundary Rd. in Burnaby)

Contact: bwscafe@gmail.com

Open mic to follow featured readers.

Wattle and Daub Books
Grandview RPO PO Box 78038
Vancouver BC V5N 5W1
Canada
http://wattleanddaubbooks.ca/

Eileen Kernaghan's Made the Sunburst Shortlist! Congratulations, Eileen!

Wild Talent: A Novel of the Supernatural

by Eileen Kernaghan

Thistledown Press

ISBN: 9781897235409

From the book jacket: "Wild Talent: a Novel of the Supernatural is the strange tale of Jeannie Guthrie, a sixteen-year-old Scottish farm worker, who possesses a frightening talent. Believing that she has unintentionally killed her ne'er-do-well cousin, her fear of being sentenced as a witch propels her to flee her home to London. There, Guthrie is befriended by the free-spirited and adventurous Alexandra David, and introduced to Madame Helena Blavatsky's famous salon where she begins to understand the source of her strange powers."

The Sunburst jury says: "An absorbing, carefully crafted coming-of-age story and a vividly successful evocation of Victorian occult worlds, with real people and events skillfully interwoven with the author's fictional supernatural elements (and the false supernatural of charlatans), this book reads like a superb historical novel as well as a superior fantasy."

The novels of award-winning author and poet Eileen Kernaghan include The Aprilioth Sequence (Journey to Aprilioth, 1981; Songs from the Drowned Lands, 1983, and The Sarsen Witch, 1989, reissued 2007), Dance of the Snow Dragon (1995), The Snow Queen (2000), The Alchemist's Daughter (2004), and Winter on the Plain of Ghosts: A Novel of Mohenjo-daro (2004). She lives in British Columbia.

Congratulations, Sonya!

Sonya loves books and that is wonderful because she has just won three of them in the IWOFA Summer Breeze Contest - mine, Finding Creatures & Other Stories, Eileen Kernaghan's Wild Talent: a Novel of the Supernatural, and Holly Phillips In the Palace of Repose.

Happy reading, Sonya!

Summer Breeze Scavenger Hunt

IWOFA is Infinite Worlds of Fantasy Authors. The group got started last year, and already the website has lots of things on it for both writers and readers. I've signed up for IWOFA's Summer Breeze Contest. It's a fun way to get a few books and other prizes, and costs nothing. You go to the site, choose the writers whose prizes you are interested in (they're all listed), and then answer the question associated with each of them. The answers, if you don't already know them, can be found on that person's blog or website.

Each of the writers is offering a prize, so you don't have to go to EVERY site in order to be eligible for some lovely gifty. I'm offering three books, all together. One is mine, Finding Creatures & Other Stories. One is the latest by Eileen Kernaghan, Wild Talent: a Novel of the Supernatural. The third is Holly Phillips' collection, In the Palace of Repose. So it is a good summer's worth of speculative fiction, indeed.

Unfortunately, because I entered my book in the No Sex category, it has been slotted in Young Adult. Whereas many young adults would find the stories interesting and accessible, they were written for an adult audience. Just one that wasn't particularly randy at the time. Eileen's book is a YA, and Holly's is non-randy adult, like mine. The question you must answer to get my prize is:

What is the name of the protagonist in my first published speculative fiction story, "The Coin"?


Click on the button above, or right here, to get to the entry page. But why don't I give you the contest rules, first?

A. Click on the icon for the category you wish to enter.
B. Read the list of questions posed by the authors.
C. Download the answer sheet provided on the category page for the contest.
D. Follow the link to each author's website or blog.
E. Explore the website or blog until you find the answer. This may require reading excerpts or watching book videos, and fill in the answer sheet.
F. Save the answer sheet as directed OR copy it and paste it into the body of an email.
G. Use the "Click here to enter button" and email your answer sheet to the contest coordinator as outlined below.
6. How to Enter: Entries will be accepted by email to iwofa.contest@live.com, (can be obtained by clicking on the “Click here to enter” button on the contest page) from 12:00 midnight on June 21, 2009 to 11:59 p.m. on June 30, 2009, Eastern (US) Standard Time.
7. All entry emails MUST contain the following:
A. Subject line should contain the category being entered: All Ages, Mainstream, or Explicit (Contestants may enter one, two, or all three categories, but each must be in a separate email.)
B. Contestant's legal name.
C. Contestant's email.
D. Mailing address.
E. The answer sheet containing the answers to the author questions for that category. ALL questions must be answered for the entry to be considered eligible.
8. Author Prizes: Each participating author is contributing an individual prize, as listed on the contest page. A winner for each individual prize will be drawn from among those contestants answering that author's question correctly.
9. Notification: Winners will be notified, by email, no later than June 30, 2009.
10. Privacy Notice:
A. Names and addresses are provided for the distribution of prizes only. The name and address of the winner of each author prize will be provided to that author, and then deleted after the prize has been sent. All other names and addresses will be viewed only by the contest coordinator and will be immediately deleted after winners have been notified. No solicitation or harvesting of names or addresses will be permitted.
B. Many authors do have email loops or newsletters for distributing information to readers. If contestants wish to be added to these mailing lists, a separate page with links to each author's email has been provided at:
11. Questions: For questions or rules clarifications, please contact the contest coordinator at iwofa.contest@live.com. Please put QUESTION in the subject line. If you are having difficulty accessing an author's site, please also let the coordinator know.
12. Content Warning: Books in the Mainstream and Explicit categories contain material not suited for younger readers.
13. Reading E-Book Prizes: On each category page, there is a table with download buttons for Adobe, Mobi, and Microsoft Reader. These are free programs to allow readers to open and read electronic books. There is also an explanation of how to transfer your free downloads to the Kindle electronic reader.
14. VOID WHERE PROHIBITED.

Back to the contest page!
Click the button(s) beside the author's name to enter his/her contest.
Book ratings indicate the heat level of the author's prize.