Static Ruin – corey jae white

Four More Years!

Alternative title: May the 9th Be With You

Killing Gravity was published on the 9th of May, 2017, which means it’s been 4 years since I started this (hopefully long) journey of building a writing career for myself.

[Killing Gravity cover art by Tommy Arnold]

It’s easy for me to look at Repo Virtual‘s plague year launch and feel dejected, but 4 years later people are still discovering the VoidWitch Saga books for the first time, and they’re tweeting and gramming about how much they love the books, and reminding me that books can have long tails. As long as the books are “in print” (scare quotes because I’m sure a lot of people are discovering the ebooks and audiobooks), then they’ll continue to find their audience… Largely thanks to reviews and support from my fantastic, beautiful readers. To everyone who’s talked up my books online and off, who’s taken the time to write a review, and who’s reached out with kind words for my work, thank you. You make this all worthwhile.

They say the best promotion an author can do for their book is to release the next one, and I’m hard at work editing it now, ready to go on sub to agents (hopefully) next month. Wish me luck.

In the meantime, I’m keeping busy. There’s the nothing here newsletter, the Buddies Without Organs podcast, and a new collaborative fiction project in the works, not to mention a line of t-shirt designs I plan to launch soon via Oh Nothing Press. Oh, and an anthology that commissioned a story from me, and another video-related project, another collab story that just needs final edits before we get it out into the world, and on and on. Berserker mode, as usual.

Thanks for joining me on this ride.

And just in case you need a prompt, buy my books 😉

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.

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.

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…

Pre-order Static Ruin

She killed the man who trained her. She killed the fleet that came for her. She killed the planet that caged her. Now she must confront her father.

Mars Xi is on the run, a bounty on her head and a kill count on her conscience. All she has left are her mutant cat Ocho and her fellow human weapon Pale, a young boy wracked by seizures who can kill with a thought. She needs him treated, and she needs to escape, and the only thread left to pull is her frayed connection to her father, Marius Teo. That thread will take her to the outskirts of the galaxy, to grapple with witch-cults and privately-owned planets, and into the hands of the man who engineered her birth.

Cover reveal at the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog.

Static Ruin will be released November 6th, 2018 (maybe a little later in Australia) in both ebook and paperback formats. It represents the end of the journey that began with Killing Gravity, so at times it has me sort of melancholy. This is the series that got me published, and put me on the road to making a career out of writing – which is all I’ve wanted for 15+ years. In some ways I’m sad to be at the end here, in other ways I’m happy that I had this shot, and proud of the work I’ve done in these three novellas. I’ll forever be grateful to Carl Engle-Laird for picking KG up out of slush and giving me a shot, and to Warren Ellis for kindly spreading the word in his newsletter, and to every reader who loved one of my books so much that they just had to tell someone about it.

eBook:
B&N Nook | iBooks | eBooks.com | Google Play | Kobo

Paperback:
Amazon US | Amazon UK | Book Depository | Wordery

Brisbane/SEQ – Hit up Pulp Fiction in the CBD. They’ve supported both Killing Gravity and Void Black Shadow, so I have no doubt that they’ll be supporting Static Ruin as well. Also, they’re one of the few genre-specialist bookshops in the country, so if you’re local support them.

Sydney – Galaxy Bookshop should be your best bet at finding my books, as they’re the sci-fi and fantasy specialists in town.

Melbourne – Readings is a brilliant chain of indie bookshops. Not sure if they’ll actively be carrying my books, but they’ll be able to order them in for you.

Australia-wide – QBD did a fantastic job supporting me and the other authors at Supanova on my tours.

Otherwise, you can simply ask for your local bookstore to order it in for you. Just quote the title, and the ISBN (Static Ruin, ISBN: 9781250195548) and the staff will do the rest. Well, they probably won’t read it to you, but apart from that, they’ll take care of you.