Conflux – LOUISE PIEPER

The Apocalypse? It’s not all bad

2020 was not the year for writing grim apocalyptic fiction.

Well, not according to me anyway. If that’s the jam in your jelly roll… okay, I’m not judging. You do you, Boo.

Nevertheless, ‘Apocalypse’ was the theme for the 2020 CSFG / Conflux short story competition that I wanted to enter. No. That I wanted to win – because I was so very pleased when my creepy little tale of an archivist and a skin-bound book won last year’s competition.

So, it was just a matter of writing my way into an apocalyptic story which wasn’t unbearably grim. Simple, right?

Step 1 was the opening lines of Lord Byron’s poem Darkness:

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.

The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars

Did wander darkling in the eternal space…

Alright, still a little grim, but cut the guy some slack – it was the Year Without Summer so pretty gloomy all round. Anyway, I liked the idea of a dream which was not all a dream.

Step 2… I thought about making a character who had been born on the 10th of August 1997. Why? Because according to Aggai, the Bishop of Edessa in the 1st Century, that was when we could expect the Antichrist to be born and the end of the world to begin. Errr… still a bit grim, I suppose.

But… step 3, there were lots of apocalyptic theories for 2012, which would make someone born in 1997 just 15 years old and that could be fun…

Inspired by a dash of Alice Hoffman’s Practical Magic and a pinch of Maggie Stiefvater’s Blue Lily, Lily Blue (Book III of the Raven Cycle), I came up with the Delangeur women who foretell the future by various means – cartomancy, ailuromancy, augury and scrying – and Molly Delangeur, a teenager who dreams of the end of the world.

I just needed to set it in a small hinterland town, surrounded by dairy farms, so I could lighten the tone with an apocalypse cow, a cash cow and the sort of cheerfully cheesy, regional festival that rural Australia does so well and I had my story – Herding Cats.

And the really great thing?

It won the CSFG / Conflux 2020 short story competition, and you can read it here, on the Conflux site, along with the apocalypse stories The Cusp by Kathryn Gossow and Yestermonth by Tim Borella.

Let me know what you think – still too grim or did it make you smile?

(The apocalypse cow banner image was cropped from a photograph by Cally Lawson on Pixabay.)

Wrap it up, I’ll take it!

banner_book launches I’ve had two weeks to recover and I’m ready for my close-up… so here’s what I got up to at Conflux 14 (theme: the unconventional hero) over the October long weekend.

Panels!

Hero cliches and how to make or break them: I had fun talking clichés with Leife Shallcross and Sam Hawke, ably chaired by Ion ‘Nuke’ Newcombe of Antipodean SF. I may have pulled on my ranty-pants, mentioning the gendered nature of the etymology of ‘hero’. Which segues nicely to…

Conflux panel Abusive alpha males and sassy Mary-Sues: when heroes go bad: I chaired the feisty panel of Keri Arthur, Annabelle McInnes and K J Taylor who discussed self-indulgent author inserts, alpha jerks, and why male Mary-Sues aren’t seen as entirely unbelievable. (Hint: it’s because of the patriarchy).

The Unconventional Romance: I enjoyed this genre-bending, boundary-pushing session with Freya Marske chairing Leife Shallcross, Keri Arthur and Jane Virgo.

Session on Pitching: There were plenty of dos, don’ts and for-the-love-of-God-nos in this session with Abigail Nathan of Bothersome Words, editor Lyss Wickramasinghe and Paula Boer.

Unconventional Hero’s Journey: The panel of Gillian Polack, Dave Versace, Simon Petrie and Abigail Nathan, chaired by Rob Porteous, took us over Campbell’s Hero Journey and discussed other ways of looking at a hero.

Workshops!

I ran a sparsely populated workshop on the hallmarks of heroism on the Monday morning after the conference dinner. Alas, many of the registrants decided another hour of sleep recuperation trumped the appeal of discovering the secrets of how to write protagonists a reader would love.

I went to a fabulous workshop on writing fight scenes with Aiki Flinthart. Not only was it full of fantastic information on the differences between men and women fighting, both psychologically and physiologically, and the differences between trained and untrained combatants – all of which was super useful – I also got stabbed. Well, I volunteered to pretend to be someone who had no combat training and no experience of body contact sports. I was very convincing in the role. My reaction was entirely typical of a clueless victim – shriek and flail uselessly!

I also enjoyed a workshop on worldbuilding with Russell Kirkpatrick looking at maps and how the inclusion of a map in a book influences the way readers see the world.

Book launches!

The Book of Lore by Rob Porteous: Rob did a great job of being the convention’s unconventional MC and also launched his book on writing speculative fiction. This is the distilled wisdom from several years of running the CSFG Novel Writing Group which can be used as a ‘how-to’ guide to writing your own novel.

80,000 Totally Secure Passwords that no hacker would ever guess by Simon Petrie: Simon is a master of puns, cool book titles and thought-provoking science fiction. He launched this best-of collection at Conflux.

Iron by Aiki Flinthart: I can’t wait to get the chance to read this first in a trilogy tale of a world without iron and fossil fuel… and what happens when someone discovers an iron ore deposit. Plus (squeee) everyone who bought a book at the launch got a lovely little sword bookmark.

A Hand of Knaves: In a fittingly dangerous crowd of ne’er-do-wells and ruffians the latest CSFG anthology was introduced by Rob Porteous, launched by editors Leife Shallcross and Chris Large, illustrated by Shauna O’Meara, read from by Dave Versace, Eugen Bacon and myself and sold to the heaving masses by Angus Yeates and Simon Petrie. As well as that hand of villains, other contributors wielding pens for the signing included Helen Stubbs, Maureen Flynn, C H Pearce and Claire McKenna. It was a lot of fun.

But perhaps the best part of any convention (and Conflux 14 was not so unconventional as to be an exception) was meeting the most fabulous writerly peeps: I spent time with my tribe and made new friends. Thanks to the Conflux team for pulling everything together. Glorious stuff!

Weyrd and wonderful: Corpselight by Angela Slatter

Sirens and Kitsune and Norns, oh my!

I swear, the capital of the Sunshine State has never looked better than it does in this fabulous urban fantasy crime thriller.

Back in the day, when I was working for the Gold Coast Libraries and reviewing books on their blog, I waxed a little bit fangirl about Trent Jamieson’s Business of Death trilogy, in part because that wonderful series is set in my home town of Brisbane.

So imagine my delight, last year, to read Angela Slatter’s Vigil, which has harpies on the Kargaroo Point cliffs, Norns in the West End, and so much more. It’s a glorious, dark tale full of myth, monsters and a very nasty vintage. You should definitely read it.

Needless to say I was looking forward to the sequel.

Corpselight delivered all it promised, and then some. It walks the fascinating line that the best urban fantasy always teeters on, showing a hidden underworld of magic sliding along with the mundane and recognisable real world. An insurance investigation sounds ordinary enough, but when the claim comes under “Unusual Happenstance” and involves supernatural mud inundation its rather more intriguing – and dangerous.

I’ve been reading a lot of Lois McMaster Bujold lately, and like some of her books, Corpselight considers motherhood from a number of different, and often dark, angles. It’s not always sunshine and butterflies in Brisneyland, of course, and it makes for gripping reading.

I’m looking forward to Conflux 13, at the end of the month, because Angela Slatter will be there – and I might just have to wax a little bit fangirl to her.

BTW – I wrote a post about brephophagists, the word for people who eats babies. It doesn’t come up much in conversation. The Creative Commons image, by Andrew Bossi, is of the baby-eating statue in Bern, Switzerland. As far as fabulous backstories for characters go, Verity Fassbinder (the heroine of Corpselight) has a cracker: her thankfully departed dad was a Kinderflesser – a child butcher – catering to Brisbane’s Weyrd communities more disgusting dining tastes. Nasty and, for dark urban fantasy, absolutely pitch perfect.

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