General – Page 3 – corey j. white

REPO VIRTUAL Cover Reveal

Repo Virtual cover - art/design by Christine Foltzer — Repo Virtual cover – art/design by Christine Foltzer

The cover for Repo Virtual was recently revealed over at the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy blog. I say a little at the link, and there’s also a blurb for the book (I don’t think it’ll be the back cover blurb, but it’s how I pitched the book to my editor at Tor.com Publishing), so have a look at the link if you want more information.

The book isn’t out until April 2020, but already someone on twitter told me they preordered it, which is fantastic. Soon enough I’m hoping I can talk about a preorder incentive package I’m trying to put together. More details here as soon as I have them.

And a big thank you to Warren Ellis for the fantastic blurb. Not only did he find time to read it in his #1000mphclub schedule, but he got back to me in no time at all – which makes me think that even for a 100k word novel, I’ve written something quick and compelling.

I’m really proud of this book, and can’t wait for it to be out in the world… riding that zeitgeist wave alongside the folk at CDPR.

Supanova, April 2019

Left to right:Me, Alan Baxter, Jodi McAlister, Paige Belfield, Lynette Noni, Victoria/V.E. Schwab, Rachael Craw, Marlee Jane Ward.

This is the main gang that I had the pleasure of touring with for Supanova in Melbourne and on the Gold Coast.

On the GC, Alan, Lynette, and I also got to share a stage with these two:

James and Marc Lindsay, who I toured with at a previous Supanova, and who are always good value. It was a great panel, talking all about writing action scenes, and I had a great chat to the brothers after the panel too.

I had planned to write more, but some bastard infected me with con crud, and 2.5 weeks later I’m still not feeling 100%. I will however say that Alan Baxter joined us on the Nothing Here newsletter, where he and m1k3y went into some detail about writing martial arts action scenes (Alan being a kung fu instructor as well as a writer of dark tales).

Thanks to Ineke for having me on board! It’s always a great (if tiring) weekend, and I really love nothing more than talking with readers and my fellow writers.

Liminal

I am at something of a loss. I’m in a weird liminal space at the moment – I’m waiting on line edits from Carl on REPO VIRTUAL, and trying to decide what my next big project will be once that’s locked away. I know exactly what that project should be – my CrispSF novel – but I’m hesitating. Honestly, I might just be scared.

The VoidWitch books were really personal, but otherwise “light” in a lot of ways. As in, if you didn’t recognise that I was using the books to explore my depression, self-loathing, lack of self-worth, anger, disappointment and disconnection with family, and feelings of listlessness, then maybe the books would seem fun but shallow. So with Repo Virtual, I wanted to do something different. I wanted to do something that asked bigger and broader questions beyond my own experiences, I wanted to write about a future that could be just around the corner and/or already here. I wanted to do something more “serious” and more intelligent. I wanted to write something that was in conversation with the cyberpunk canon, and maybe pointing the way forward along a slightly different path. And I think I pulled it off, for the most part. Or at the very least I pulled it off as well as I could have at that moment in time.

So now I’m looking to the next step. I want to up my game again, write a novel that will be even more difficult than Repo Virtual, and in doing so also create a new sci-fi subgenre (because, why not aim high?). But something has given me pause.

In her review of Static Ruin, Tasha Leigh compared the VoidWitch books to Ursula Le Guin or Kij Johnson, and while I don’t think I’ve earned those comparisons yet I can see what she means. There’s a sort of free-wheeling inventiveness in the Saga that might be similar to what Le Guin and Johnson do – weird ideas dropped into place to hint at different sub/cultures in the galaxy, backstories only ever hinted at, and an entire universe of worldbuilding that casts a shadow over the books without ever actually being seen clearly. And so reading that review when I was right near the end of Repo Virtual, I got worried: Was that the best thing about my writing, and had I completely left it out of RV? When I look at RV, all I see are the books, articles, shows, films, and philosophers I’m referencing. I know that isn’t the whole book, it might not even be a big part of it, but I’ve been too deep in it for too long to have any sort of context. In using a near-future setting, did I shoot myself in the foot? Did I lose too much of what makes my writing work? Or will RV work for different reasons? Is it better, worse, or just different?

With the CrispSF novel, I would perhaps be splitting the difference – I can already see all the ways that ‘free-wheeling inventiveness’ will be able to manifest itself in the book, while it will also look at real-world issues, future fears, and a different sort of philosophy than what I explored in RV. But at the same time, it has to be a dark book. It has to be horrifying. And I don’t know if I can pull it off yet.

Hence the twitter poll:

And I have a good idea of what Parallel Universe Spies will look like, and I think it could be big – in terms of worldbuilding, series size, and in terms of reader response. So I’m struggling. Do I dive into Crispr Heart of Darkness and see if I can pull it off, pushing and challenging myself to do something utterly different and completely new? (Or new to me at least – I’m almost certain there are books out there doing similar things, if only because there are so many books out there.) Do I tackle climate change directly, and the tools we might use to face it and adapt to it? Or do I tackle it tangentially in a series of novellas with PUS (because I don’t think I can not write about it)?

Is my fear about writing Crispr HoD something to be overcome, or is it something instinctual I should listen to? Might the book be important, or is my desire to ‘create a new subgenre’ pure egocentric bullshit?

I think what I’m actually going to do is develop both. Come up with the characters and outlines for each, and see which one I need to write. See which one sets that fire under my arse. It could be that in developing my Crispr book, the fear fades as I see how it could form, or maybe I’ll realise it’s beyond me. Or maybe I need to write a novella, a palate cleanser between big novels.

If I had an agent, maybe this would be an easier decision to make. Instead, I’m writing it all out here, in an effort to make sense of it… More than anything, I just want another project. I want to stop feeling quite so lost.

Static Ruin Shortlisted for an Aurealis Award

Yesterday the Aurealis Award shortlists were announced, with Static Ruin making the shortlist under Best Science Fiction Novella. As both Void Black Shadow and Static Ruin were released in 2018, both were eligible, and I actually thought VBS had a better chance of earning the nomination because it’s darker and more political. But Static Ruin is deeply personal, so I couldn’t be happier to see if shortlisted.

All of the shortlists are below, taken from the Aurealis announcement here. Seeing these lists in the one place is a great reminder of how exciting and thriving a SFFH scene we have here in Australia. Congratulations to all the other shortlisted folk – I’m honoured to be featured alongside you.

2018 Aurealis Awards finalists announced

The Continuum Foundation (ConFound), organisers of the 2018 Aurealis Awards, is delighted to announce the finalists for the Awards.

Winners of the 2018 Aurealis Awards, Sara Douglass Book Series Award, and the Convenors’ Award for Excellence will be announced at the Aurealis Awards ceremony taking place in Melbourne on Saturday May 4, 2019.

2018 Aurealis Awards – Finalists

BEST CHILDREN’S FICTION
– The Relic of the Blue Dragon, Rebecca Lim (Allen & Unwin)
– The Slightly Alarming Tales of the Whispering Wars, Jaclyn Moriarty (Allen & Unwin)
– The Endsister, Penni Russon (Allen & Unwin)
– Secret Guardians, Lian Tanner (Allen & Unwin)
– Ting Ting the Ghosthunter, Gabrielle Wang (Penguin Random House Australia)
– Ottilie Colter and the Narroway Hunt, Rhiannon Williams (Hardie Grant Egmont)

BEST GRAPHIC NOVEL / ILLUSTRATED WORK
– Deathship Jenny, Rob O’Connor (self-published)
– Cicada, Shaun Tan (Hachette Australia)
– Tales from The Inner City, Shaun Tan (Allen & Unwin)

BEST YOUNG ADULT SHORT STORY
– “A Robot Like Me”, Lee Cope (Mother of Invention, Twelfth Planet Press)
– “The Moon Collector”, D K Mok (Under the Full Moon’s Light, Owl Hollow Press)
– “The Sea-Maker of Darmid Bay”, Shauna O’Meara (Interzone #277, TTA Press)
– “Eight-Step Koan”, Anya Ow (Sword and Sonnet, Ate Bit Bear)
– “For Weirdless Days and Weary Nights”, Deborah Sheldon (Breach #08)

BEST HORROR SHORT STORY
– “The Offering”, Michael Gardner (Aurealis #112)
– “Slither”, Jason Nahrung (Cthulhu Deep Down Under Volume 2, IFWG Publishing Australia)
– “By Kindle Light”, Jessica Nelson-Tyers (Antipodean SF #235)
– “Hit and Rot”, Jessica Nelson-Tyers (Breach #08)
– “Sub-Urban”, Alfie Simpson (Breach #07)
– “The Further Shore”, J Ashley Smith (Bourbon Penn #15)

BEST HORROR NOVELLA
– “Andromeda Ascends”, Matthew R Davis (Beneath the Waves – Tales from the Deep, Things In The Well)
– “Kopura Rising”, David Kuraria (Cthulhu: Land of the Long White Cloud, IFWG Publishing Australia)
– “The Black Sea”, Chris Mason (Beneath the Waves – Tales from the Deep, Things In The Well)
– Triquetra, Kirstyn McDermott (Tor.com)
– “With This Needle I Thee Thread”, Angela Rega (Aurum, Ticonderoga Publications)
– Crisis Apparition, Kaaron Warren (Dark Moon Books)

BEST FANTASY SHORT STORY
– “Crying Demon”, Alan Baxter (Suspended in Dusk 2, Grey Matter Press)
– “Army Men”, Juliet Marillier (Of Gods and Globes, Lancelot Schaubert)
– “The Further Shore”, J Ashley Smith (Bourbon Penn #15)
– “Child of the Emptyness”, Amanda J Spedding (Grimdark Magazine #17)
– “A Moment’s Peace”, Dave Versace (A Hand of Knaves, CSFG Publishing)
– “Heartwood, Sapwood, Spring”, Suzanne J Willis (Sword and Sonnet, Ate Bit Bear)

BEST FANTASY NOVELLA
– “This Side of the Wall”, Michael Gardner (Metaphorosis Magazine, January 2018)
– “Beautiful”, Juliet Marillier (Aurum, Ticonderoga Publications)
– “The Staff in the Stone”, Garth Nix (The Book of Magic, Penguin Random House)
– Merry Happy Valkyrie, Tansy Rayner Roberts (Twelfth Planet Press)
– “The Dressmaker and the Colonel’s Coat”, David Versace (Mnemo’s Memory and Other Fantastic Tales, self-published)
– The Dragon’s Child, Janeen Webb (PS Publishing)

BEST SCIENCE FICTION SHORT STORY
– “The Sixes, The Wisdom and the Wasp”, E J Delaney (Escape Pod)
– “The Fallen”, Pamela Jeffs (Red Hour, Four Ink Press)
– “On the Consequences of Clinically-Inhibited Maturation in the Common Sydney Octopus”, Simon Petrie & Edwina Harvey (A Hand of Knaves, CSFG)
– “A Fair Wind off Baracoa”, Robert Porteous (Hand of Knaves, CSFG)
– “The Astronaut”, Jen White (Aurealis)

BEST SCIENCE FICTION NOVELLA
– “I Almost Went To The Library Last Night”, Joanne Anderton (Aurum, Ticonderoga Publications)
– The Starling Requiem, Jodi Cleghorn (eMergent Publishing)
– Icefall, Stephanie Gunn (Twelfth Planet Press)
– “Pinion”, Stephanie Gunn (Aurum, Ticonderoga Publications)
– “Singles’ Day”, Samantha Murray (Interzone #277, TTA Press)
– Static Ruin, Corey J White (Tor.com)

BEST COLLECTION
– Not Quite the End of the World Just Yet, Peter M Ball (Brain Jar Press)
– Phantom Limbs, Margo Lanagan (PS Publishing)
– Tales from The Inner City, Shaun Tan (Allen & Unwin)
– Exploring Dark Short Fiction #2: A Primer to Kaaron Warren, Kaaron Warren (Dark Moon Books)

BEST ANTHOLOGY
– Sword and Sonnet, Aidan Doyle, Rachael K Jones & E Catherine Tobler (Ate Bit Bear)
– Aurum, Russell B Farr (Ticonderoga Publications)
– Mother of Invention, Rivqa Rafael & Tansy Rayner Roberts (Twelfth Planet Press)
– Infinity’s End, Jonathan Strahan (Solaris)
– The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year, Jonathan Strahan (Solaris)

BEST YOUNG ADULT NOVEL
– Small Spaces, Sarah Epstein (Walker Books Australia)
– Lifel1k3, Jay Kristoff (Allen & Unwin)
– Catching Teller Crow, Ambelin Kwaymullina & Ezekiel Kwaymullina (Allen & Unwin)
– His Name was Walter, Emily Rodda (HarperCollins Publishers)
– A Curse of Ash and Embers, Jo Spurrier (HarperCollins Publishers)
– Impostors, Scott Westerfeld (Allen & Unwin)

BEST HORROR NOVEL
– The Bus on Thursday, Shirley Barrett (Allen & Unwin)
– Years of the Wolf, Craig Cormick (IFWG Publishing Australia)
– Tide of Stone, Kaaron Warren (Omnium Gatherum)

BEST FANTASY NOVEL
– Devouring Dark, Alan Baxter (Grey Matter Press)
– Lady Helen and the Dark Days Deceit, Alison Goodman (HarperCollins Publishers)
– City of Lies, Sam Hawke (Penguin Random House)
– Lightning Tracks, Alethea Kinsela (Plainspeak Publishing)
– The Witch Who Courted Death, Maria Lewis (Hachette Australia)
– We Ride the Storm, Devin Madson (self-published)

BEST SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL
– Scales of Empire, Kylie Chan (HarperCollins Publishers)
– Obsidio, Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff (Allen & Unwin)
– Lifel1k3, Jay Kristoff (Allen & Unwin)
– Dyschronia, Jennifer Mills (Picador Australia)
– A Superior Spectre, Angela Meyer (Ventura Press)
– The Second Cure, Margaret Morgan (Penguin Random House)

The Sara Douglass Book Series Award shortlist will be announced at a later date due to the volume of entries under consideration.

2018 Retrospective

It’s the start of a new year, which is as good a time as any to look back at the last one. I know I got a lot of work done, but it doesn’t feel like I did. I edited Static Ruin at the start of the year, and outlined and wrote the first draft of Repo Virtual, then edited and rewrote that draft to get it to a point where I was satisfied with submitting it to my editor. On top of that I wrote one or two short stories, a few essays/articles, and three comics pitches. All while working a part-time job, and doing all the other stuff that we have to do just to live.

But still, I only wrote one novel. That’s what my brain keeps telling me. Only one novel, as though some writers don’t spend years on a novel, as though I didn’t pour my everything into writing that book.

I had it in my mind that I would like to write a novel and a novella per year, so anything less than that feels like failure. I’m trying to cut myself some slack though, but we’ll see how that pans out.

Anyway, I’ve got some really exciting projects lined up for 2019. One is a comic series that Austin and I are currently planning (along with a one-shot that we’ll probably put together as a sort of proof-of-concept RE: the whole comics collaborating thing), one is a novella or short novel that I’m currently planning with another collaborator, and the third is my Crisp novel, which has been slowly growing and evolving in my mind for literally 1 week shy of 2 years. All three of those projects might not come together this year, or at all, particularly as collaborations set up a whole bunch of additional hurdles, but I’m excited about them. If nothing else, I just want to get the first draft of that Crisp novel written, anything more will be gravy.

2018 is also the year that I really focused on reading more non-fiction. I still hugely value fiction because there is plenty more for me to learn in prose writing, and because writing is a conversation, but since Killing Gravity was published I’ve also seen the value in reading things I normally wouldn’t, in reading non-fiction that could feed into my projects, and in actively trying to learn more about the world.

Even though I read plenty of great books, the two that stand out in my mind are Nick Harkaway’s Gnomon, and Brooke Bolander’s The Only Harmless Great Thing. These two books not only grabbed me, like many of the others did (Jane Rawson’s From the Wreck and Omar Robert Hamilton’s The City Always Wins come to mind), but they also taunted me by saying “You’ll never write something this multi-faceted/multi-layered/complex/precise/good/etc.” With three intertwined timelines/stories, The Only Harmless Great Thing is precisely wrought and utterly phenomenal, cramming an awful lot in to such a slim volume. And with it’s nested stories, deep, deep narrative layers, and utterly unique voices, Gnomon is so good that if you’re a writer it will make you kind of hate Nick Harkaway. I still don’t love the ending, but at the same time I see why it was the only way he could have written it. The size of it might put some people off, but it is simply stunning. I really don’t know how Harkaway did it.

So, 2019. In the short-term, it’s going to involve a lot of work editing Repo Virtual, but after that, I’m excited and hopeful about these next three projects. Wish me luck.

2019 Appearances

2019 hasn’t even begun yet, but already I’ve got some appearances lined up.
First off, on Friday February 1st, Marlee Jane Ward, Angela Meyer, and myself will be doing readings at Brunswick Bound as part of their First Chapters series of events. Ours is the first event of the year, with a definite sci-fi bent – if you’re in or around Melbourne and want to see us in the flesh and hear what we sound like, come along – 361 Sydney Road, Brunswick, Friday 1st of Feb, starts at 7pm.

And I’ll be doing Supanova again! I’ll be at Melbourne Supanova on April 5-7, and Gold Coast Supanova on April 12-14. These are the only Supanova shows I’m planning to do in 2019 (that could change, but I doubt it), so apologies to folks in other cities. This time around, I’ll be joined at the author table by Australia’s prince of horror, Alan Baxter, the prolific YA fantasy scribe, Lynette Noni, and fantasy author Jodi McAlister, with more names to be announced.

Anyway, I hope that whatever holiday you celebrate around this time of year, you had a fantastic time. 2018 has been a rough one inside this skull of mine. But I survived, and so did you. I’m not going to lie to you – things are going to get tougher and weirder for a while yet. Stay strong. Remember your friends and loved ones are there for you, and remember to be there for them. We only have each other.

The Sound of Static Ruin

I’ve posted a ‘Sound of’ post for both Killing Gravity and Void Black Shadow, detailing the music (or, for Void Black Shadow, audio performance) that inspired each book, but this time around, I wanted to do something a little different.

If you want to know what the inside of my head sounded like while I was writing Static Ruin, you only need to listen to Young Widow’s full discography, starting with Old Wounds, then onto In and Out of Youth and Lightness, and then finally to Easy Pain, listening to the full album from start to finish. Also add a heavy dose of MY DISCO’s album Severe, though I did have to put this one aside any time I was writing an action scene.

But, as I neared the end of the book, I knew I needed to do something a little different.

I always listen to complete albums, from start to finish, without skipping any tracks. This is why I can’t listen to an album for an extended period of time if there’s even one track on it that I actively dislike. I could remove that track from the playlist, but I don’t see that as a viable choice. The way I see it, an album is like a book, and you would never tear a chapter out of a book.

Anyway, when we’re talking about individual songs, I find that I tend to really latch on to final tracks – usually melancholic, sometimes outright depressing, sometimes uplifting – endings so strong they make you want to start the album again right from the beginning. So, I thought, why not put together a playlist of these final tracks, to set the tone as I was writing the final chapters of the final book in the VoidWitch Saga? And that is what I have here for you now – a playlist entitled Endings. That is the spotify link, but the full list is below. Each one of these songs is from an absolute favourite album of mine, and I recommend listening to the full album if any song takes your fancy. Bandcamp links are included where available.

These Arms Are Snakes – Briggs (from Tail Swallower & Dove)
CHELSEA WOLFE – The Abyss (from The Abyss)
Isis – Threshold of Transformation (from Wavering Radiant)
Clann Zú – You’re Listening to a Dead Man Speak (from Rua)
Fiona Apple – Waltz (Better Than Fine) (from Extraordinary Machine)
Chelsea Wolfe – Lone (from Pain is Beauty)
Clark – The Autumnal Crush (from Body Riddle)
Autolux – Becker (from Pussy’s Dead)
Isis – Garden Of Light (from In the Absence of Truth)
Fiona Apple – Hot Knife (from The Idler Wheel […])
Purity Ring – Shuck (from Shrines)
These Arms Are Snakes – Crazy Woman Dirty Train (from Easter)
The Mars Volta – Zed And Two Naughts (from Noctourniquet)
Genghis Tron – Ergot (Relief) (from Board up the House)
MY DISCO – Careless (from Severe)
Young Widows – In My Living Room (from Easy Pain)
Mark Lanegan Band – Tiny Grain Of Truth (from Blues Funeral)
Future Of The Left – Why Aren’t I Going To Hell (from How To Stop Your Brain in an Accident)
Isis – Grinning Mouths (from Panopticon)
Russian Circles – Memorial feat. Chelsea Wolfe (from Memorial)
Tom Waits – Blue Valentines (from Blue Valentine)
Fiona Apple – I Know (from When the Pawn […])
Autolux – Capital Kind Of Strain (from Future Perfect)
Liars – The Other Side Of Mt. Heart Attack (from Drum’s Not Dead)

The playlist always had to open with Briggs – the final song off the final album of one of my all-time favourite bands, and (for those playing at home) the place where I took the name for the villain from Killing Gravity. And it was always going to end with The Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack. I can’t listen to this song without crying, and I’m not even sure why anymore, but I know I want it played at my funeral. For the purposes of Static Ruin, think of it as Mars & Squid’s song.

VoidWitch at Morning Computer

Just a quick note to say, Warren Ellis has collected his three reviews of the VoidWitch Saga books over at his Morning.Computer blog.

Static Ruin Released

Today sees the release of Static Ruin, the third and final book of the VoidWitch Saga. You can order it from your favourite bookseller now, or wait a couple of months for the audio release. I recently did an interview with Paul Semel about Static Ruin, Repo Virtual, and other odds and ends, so check that out.

It’s been a long journey getting to this point. On this date three years ago I was working away at the first draft of Killing Gravity, confident that I had something great on my hands, but never really thinking that it would be the thing to kick-start my writing career. I’ll always be grateful to my editor Carl Engle-Laird for taking a chance on KG and on me, and I’m so thankful to Carl and the rest of the Tor.com Publishing team for supporting me across three novellas. And a big thank you to Martha Millard for helping to guide me along the early career path (I hope you enjoy your retirement!).

The seed for Static Ruin was planted within the pages of Killing Gravity, and now with the third book, Mars comes full circle, finally facing her past and the spectre of her father. Killing Gravity was quite a personal book in some ways, whereas Void Black Shadow was more political. Static Ruin returns to the personal, dealing with questions of family, expectation, disappointment, pain, and all the rest. It’s about parents, yes, but there’s a reason why I dedicated the book to my two sisters. Our parents can damage us in ways that they never intend, in ways that we can’t truly grasp until decades later. This doesn’t make them bad parents, it just makes them fallible, human. But for those of us who have siblings that we grew up with, they’re right there beside us – they’re hurt with us and sometimes by us, and they can hurt us too. But there’s a connection there that’s different to the ones we share with our parents. They’re our allies and enemies, our co-conspirators and occasional snitches, they’re distant, but never far from our hearts. They’re part of the memories that form the very foundation of our selves, and we have the privilege of growing up alongside them, watching them mature into adulthood with all the joys and pains that can bring.

All of this is just to say: Carlie, Jessica, I love you both, and you’re stronger and braver than I will ever be.

VoidWitch Audio Books

This is something I’ve been keeping quiet for a little while, but now that it’s up on the Recorded Books website, I think I can announce it… the full VoidWitch Saga is getting the audio book treatment – released by Recorded Books with narration from Saskia Maarleveld.

Each book will be available in CD Audio and eAudio format, and will be on Audible, because Audible is like a tree falling in a forest – if it’s not available on Audible will anyone hear it fall?

Killing Gravity is (apparently) out now in eAudio format, and the CD version is slated for release on December 1st, 2018. Void Black Shadow is slated for release on December 1st, 2018, and Static Ruin will follow in March, 2019.

(And no, I don’t know why they didn’t licence Tommy Arnold’s art again, but I kinda wish they had… No offense to the artist who did the Recorded Books art [I actually really like the colours they used for the VBS art], but Tommy’s work is phenomenal.)

Anyone who’s been paying attention to publishing over the past few years will realise that audio books are huge – because whilst it can be hard to find time to sit down with a book, a lot of people want to listen to books while driving, commuting, exercising, etc. So I’m really excited that a whole bunch of people that have never even heard of me and my books will have a chance to discover them fresh! And with far less waiting time between entries…