Rebuilding Tomorrow and Worldcon

Things have been a little quiet around here, as you might have noticed. Chances are they are going to continue being quiet for a little while longer because I'm working on an exciting new project.

In 2016, I edited an anthology with Holly Kench called Defying Doomsday. The theme of that anthology was post/apocalyptic stories featuring disabled and chronically ill protagonists. Defying Doomsday did well, picking up several award short-listings and even winning a Ditmar for best collection. Now I am working on a follow-up anthology.

Rebuilding Tomorrow will also focus on disabled and/or chronically ill protagonists and it will still have a somewhat post-apocalyptic theme. But! Rather than focussing on survival in the immediate aftermath of an apocalypse like Defying Doomsday did, the stories in Rebuilding Tomorrow will be set a significant time after whatever apocalyptic disaster. These will be stories that show society getting back on its feet and people moving past subsistence-level existence into a new, sustainable world, even though it’s one that has been irrevocably changed by an apocalypse.

The team at Twelfth Planet Press will be running a Kickstarter for Rebuilding Tomorrow in October and the anthology itself will be out mid-2020, definitely in time to have a book party at CoNZealand, next year's World Science Fiction Convention.

And if you're planning to attend this year's Worldcon in Dublin, I will be there, spending a large portion of my time at the Twelfth Planet Press Dealer's table (booth 98). Come stop by if you're going to be in Dublin! We will of course be selling Defying Doomsday and other Twelfth Planet Press books and you can grab a nifty bookmark (as pictured on the right) or a swish Rebuilding Tomorrow ribbon for your con badge.

Will I see you there?

Ditmar Awards

The Ditmar Awards were announced on Sunday night in Melbourne at Continuum 13. The full shortlist/ballot can be found at this link and I will copy the final results into the end of this post. First I want to share some specific excitement from the results.

Defying Doomsday won in the Best Collected Work category!!!, along with Dreaming the Dark by Jack Dann.

🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

Furthermore, "Did We Break the End of the World?" by Tansy Rayner Roberts won in the Best Novella or Novelette category.

🍾🥂🎉

ALSO, the 2016 Australian SF Snapshot — the interviewing project that I (and many others) were a part of — won in the Best Fan Publication in Any Medium category.

🎉🎉🎉

Thank you to everyone who voted for us, and voted in the awards in general!

And now, with that squeeing out of the way, for the full results:

Best Novel: The Grief Hole, Kaaron Warren, IFWG Publishing Australia.

Best Novella or Novelette:  “Did We Break the End of the World?”, Tansy Rayner Roberts, in Defying Doomsday, Twelfth Planet Press.

Best Short Story: “No Fat Chicks”, Cat Sparks, in In Your Face, FableCroft Publishing.

Best Collected Work: (tie) Defying Doomsday, Tsana Dolichva and Holly Kench, Twelfth Planet Press & Dreaming in the Dark, Jack Dann, PS Publishing.

Best Artwork: illustration, Shauna O’Meara, for Lackington’s 12.

Best Fan Publication in Any Medium: 2016 Australian SF Snapshot, Greg Chapman, Tehani Croft, Tsana Dolichva, Marisol Dunham, Elizabeth Fitzgerald, Stephanie Gunn, Ju Landéesse, David McDonald, Belle McQuattie, Matthew Morrison, Alex Pierce, Rivqa Rafael, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Helen Stubbs, Katharine Stubbs and Matthew Summers.

Best Fan Writer: Foz Meadows, for body of work.

Best New Talent:Marlee Jane Ward

William Atheling Jr Award for Criticism or Review: Kate Forsyth, for The Rebirth of Rapunzel: a mythic biography of the maiden in the tower, FableCroft Publishing.

(No award was given out for Best Fan Artist as the only nominee, Kathleen Jennings, withdrew.)

Announcing the D Franklin Defying Doomsday Award!

We are very excited to announce the opening of nominations for The Defying Doomsday Award recognising work in disability advocacy in SFF literature.

As well as publishing SFF fiction that supports positive storytelling for disabled characters, we want to encourage and support advocacy for greater diversity in SFF fiction. As such, the Defying Doomsday Award is a special award for disability advocacy in SFF literature.

This award is possible thanks to D Franklin, our wonderful Patron of Diversity who pledged the top pledge in our Pozible campaign!

The Defying Doomsday Award is an annual shortlist and prize. The award jury comprises Twelfth Planet Press publisher, Alisa Krasnostein, and Defying Doomsday editors, Tsana Dolichva (me) and Holly Kench. The award will grant one winner per year a cash prize of $200 in recognition of their work in disability advocacy in SFF literature. Eligible works include non-fiction or related media exploring the subject of disability in SFF literature. Works must have been published in 2016.

We are now seeking nominations for the 2016 Defying Doomsday Award. Please submit your nominations to me and Holly by filling in this form.

Submissions will be open until 31st July 2017, and the winner/s will be announced in September 2017.

Thank you all for your nominations, and a big thanks to D Franklin for making this award possible!

Defying Doomsday cover reveal!

In case you missed it on social media and the Defying Doomsday blog, we have now revealed the cover art for Defying Doomsday. Also, pre-orders are now live!

Without further ado, our cover, designed and illustrated by Tania Walker!

Defying Doomsday will be released on 30 May 2016. You can now pre-order a copy from the Twelfth Planet Press website and add it to Goodreads.

Teens form an all-girl band in the face of an impending comet.

A woman faces giant spiders to collect silk and protect her family.

New friends take their radio show on the road in search of plague survivors.

A man seeks love in a fading world.

How would you survive the apocalypse?



Defying Doomsday is an anthology of apocalypse fiction featuring disabled and chronically ill protagonists, proving it’s not always the “fittest” who survive – it’s the most tenacious, stubborn, enduring and innovative characters who have the best chance of adapting when everything is lost.

In stories of fear, hope and survival, this anthology gives new perspectives on the end of the world, from authors Corinne Duyvis, Janet Edwards, Seanan McGuire, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Stephanie Gunn, Elinor Caiman Sands, Rivqa Rafael, Bogi Takács, John Chu, Maree Kimberley, Octavia Cade, Lauren E Mitchell, Thoraiya Dyer, Samantha Rich, and K. L. Evangelista.

Defying Doomsday Round-up

April is drawing to a close and so is our Pozible campaign. It's your last chance to pre-order Defying Doomsday — especially if you want a limited edition hard cover — and after 7 pm Australian Eastern Standard Time it will officially be too late. We have made our goal but we are still collecting funds towards our audiobook stretch goal. Fingers crossed there.

Meanwhile, Holly and I wrote a lot of blog posts that went live during the campaign. In case you missed a few, here is a list:

• I talked about The Inspiration Behind “Defying Doomsday” at Diversity in YA
• Holly talked about Realism and Disability in the Apocalypse at Adventures of a Bookonaut
• Holly and I were interviewed by SC Flynn
• I asked What Kind of Apocalypse Would You Survive? at Speculating on SpecFic
• I talked about Disabled and Chronically Ill Characters in Speculative Fiction at SF Signal
• Holly wrote some Tips for Writing Disabled Characters at Ebon Shores
• Holly talked about Apocalypse Fiction at DiversifYA
• I talked about different apocalypse possibilities at Dark Wolf Fantasy
• Holly and I were interviewed by Marisa Wikramanayake
• I was interviewed on the podcast Galactic Chat (my first live(ish) podcast appearance!)
• Holly talked about The Myths of Disability in Life and Fiction at Stephanie Gunn’s blog
• I talked about why we chose the apocalypse theme at A Fantastical Librarian
• I shared her superpower at Skiffy and Fanty
• Holly talked about Defying Doomsday at the Australian Women Writers Challenge blog

On the actual Defying Doomsday blog, we also teased and announced some of the authors we already have lined up. Here is a little bit about each of them:

• John Chu
• Corinne Duyvis
• Janet Edwards
• Seanan McGuire

If you want to be one of our authors, we are going to be open to submissions in May and June and you can see our submission guidelines here.

We were also very excited to announce that Robert Hoge will be writing our introduction!

Finally, a couple of other people wrote nice things about Defying Doomsday:

• Tansy Rayner Roberts wrote about why she’s excited for Defying Doomsday
• John Chu wrote about stories that feature characters who don’t normally get the spotlight 

And if you want an ongoing supply of disability and/or chronic illness etc related content, you might consider following (or intermittently checking) our Tumblr.

The campaign link again, if you want to get a last minute pledge in, is: http://www.pozible.com/project/188146

Thank-you to everyone who's already backed and everyone that helped us spread the word! You are all awesome!

Defying Doomsday Pozible: four days to go!

Like it says in the title, there are only four days left to get the Defying Doomsday Pozible funded. The campaign finishes on Friday at 7 pm Australian East Coast time. If you haven't backed yet now is your last chance.

DO IT NOW

A bit more about Defying Doomsday, in case you've forgotten or missed my earlier posts.

Defying Doomsday is an anthology of apocalypse-survival fiction with a focus on disabled characters, which will be edited by Tsana Dolichva and Holly Kench, and published by Twelfth Planet Press in mid 2016.

Apocalypse fiction rarely includes characters with disability, chronic illness and other impairments. When these characters do appear, they usually die early on, or are secondary characters undeveloped into anything more than a burden to the protagonist. Defying Doomsday will be an anthology showing that disabled characters have far more interesting stories to tell in post-apocalyptic/dystopian fiction.

The anthology will be varied, with characters experiencing all kinds of disability from physical impairments, chronic illnesses, mental illnesses and/or neurodiverse characters. There will also be a variety of stories, including those that are fun, sad, adventurous and horrific.

The stories in Defying Doomsday will look at periods of upheaval from new and interesting perspectives. The anthology will share narratives about characters with disability, characters with chronic illnesses and other impairments, surviving the apocalypse and contending with the collapse of life as they know it.

Defying Doomsday is currently crowdfunding via Pozible. To support the project visit: http://pozi.be/defyingdoomsday

Twitter: https://twitter.com/DefyingDoomsday
Website: http://defyingdoomsday.twelfthplanetpress.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DefyingDoomsday
Tumblr: http://DefyingDoomsday.tumblr.com

Defying Doomsday is on Pozible!

Regular readers of my blog will hopefully remember me announcing Defying Doomsday, the anthology I’m editing. Here’s a quick reminder:

Apocalypse fiction rarely includes characters with disability, chronic illness and other impairments. When these characters do appear, they usually die early on, or are secondary characters undeveloped into anything more than a burden to the protagonist. Defying Doomsday will be an anthology showing that disabled characters have far more interesting stories to tell in post-apocalyptic/dystopian fiction.

The anthology will be varied, with characters experiencing all kinds of disability from physical impairments, chronic illnesses, mental illnesses and/or neurodiverse characters. There will also be a variety of stories, including those that are fun, sad, adventurous and horrific.

The stories in Defying Doomsday will look at periods of upheaval from new and interesting perspectives. The anthology will share narratives about characters with disability, characters with chronic illnesses and other impairments, surviving the apocalypse and contending with the collapse of life as they know it.

If that sounds exciting, you will hopefully want to check out our Pozible campaign where you can pre-order the book (due out in 2016) or choose some other goodies. To check it out visit: http://pozi.be/defyingdoomsday.


And if you missed our other social media links, here they are:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/DefyingDoomsday
Website: http://defyingdoomsday.twelfthplanetpress.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DefyingDoomsday
Tumblr: http://DefyingDoomsday.tumblr.com

Announcing Defying Doomsday

I have some exciting news today! For the past year*, I've been working on a project I haven't talked publicly, but now I can share some of the details with you. I am going to be editing an anthology, with Holly Kench (of Stuffed Olive), which will be published by Twelfth Planet Press in 2016. Titled Defying Doomsday, it will contain apocalypse-survival fiction featuring disabled/chronically ill/neurodiverse/mentally ill characters.

*Wow, I didn't realise it had been that long until I checked.

Apocalypse fiction rarely includes characters with disability, chronic illness and other impairments. When these characters do appear, they usually die early on, or are secondary characters undeveloped into anything more than a burden to the protagonist. Defying Doomsday will be an anthology showing that disabled characters have far more interesting stories to tell in post-apocalyptic/dystopian fiction.

The anthology will be varied, with characters experiencing all kinds of disability from physical impairments, chronic illnesses, mental illnesses and/or neurodiverse characters. There will also be a variety of stories, including those that are fun, sad, adventurous and horrific.

The stories in Defying Doomsday will look at periods of upheaval from new and interesting perspectives. The anthology will share narratives about characters with disability, characters with chronic illnesses and other impairments, surviving the apocalypse and contending with the collapse of life as they know it.

 

About the Campaign:

Following the success of Kaleidoscope, Twelfth Planet Press's multi-award-nominated 2014 anthology, Defying Doomsday will be funded via a Pozible campaign, with the assistance of a Crowbar grant from Arts Tasmania. The campaign will run from April 1 2015 to May 1 2015, with a funding goal of $13,000 to cover production costs, reward items, and the funds to pay authors a professional market rate.

About the Editors:

Tsana Dolichva is a Ditmar Award-nominated book blogger and Holly Kench is the managing editor of Visibility Fiction. As editors and readers of science fiction who also live with disability and chronic illness, Tsana and Holly have often noticed the particular lack of disabled or chronically ill characters in apocalypse fiction. They are excited to share Defying Doomsday, an anthology showing that people with disability and chronic illness also have stories to tell, even when the world is ending.

Twelfth Planet Press:

Twelfth Planet Press is an award winning Australian publisher, championing underrepresented voices in speculative fiction. In 2011, Alisa Krasnostein won the World Fantasy Award for her work with the press, and Twelfth Planet books and stories have won Shirley Jackson, WSFA Small Press, Aurealis, Ditmar, Chronos and Tin Duck awards.

Social Media links:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/DefyingDoomsday
Website: http://defyingdoomsday.twelfthplanetpress.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DefyingDoomsday
Tumblr: http://DefyingDoomsday.tumblr.com