Here are the show notes:

On this episode of The Writer and the Critic, Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond announce a New Idea for a future episode of the podcast. They would like to spend an episode reviewing a handful originally self-published eBooks as recommended by their listeners. Whether this ends up being a Good Idea or a Bad Idea will largely depend on listener participation, so get listening and get participating. There may even be prizes involved … more info on this next month once they work out what potential prizes they actually have to offer! After a discussion about their current (e)reading habits and changes in book buying practices, the duo then move onto talk about the two books chosen for the podcast this month.

A lengthy discussion of and around — and around and around — Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord begins at 18:30 with the conversation about  Zoo City by Lauren Beukes starting at 01:07:30. Yes, it’s a long podcast this time. That’s what happens with books that are interesting, intelligent and inspiring.

Tune back in around the 01:57:20 point for final remarks.

Next month, Ian has recommended The Silver Wind by Nina Allan while Kirstyn has picked The Courier’s New Bicycle by Kim Westwood. Read ahead and join in the fun!

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Here are the show notes:

In their very last Writer and the Critic podcast for 2011, your hosts Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond ramble only briefly before leaping boldly forth into their discussion of the selected novels, both winners of the Orange Prize for Fiction in their respective years. As usual, there are significant plot spoilers for both books, so take heed of the timestamps if you wish to avoid them.

Discussion of The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht begins at 05:15 and includes references to a review by Philip Hensher at The Telegraph as well as this one by Ruth Fowler at the Huffington Post. At the 35:15 mark, the two then move on to We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver. Kirstyn quotes from this Guardian article by Lionel Shriver and recommends the newly released film starring Tilda Swinton — but only if you read the book first!

If you’ve skipped ahead, please come back at for final remarks at 01:21:40.

Next month — next year! — Ian has picked Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord while Kirstyn has chosen Zoo City by Lauren Beukes. Due to their hectic end of year schedules, neither of them have actually had a chance to read their own recommendations yet so they’re each looking forward to finding out what they themselves think . . .

Happy New Year!

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Here are the show notes:

This month on The Writer and the Critic, your hosts, Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond, find themselves in the native habitat of fellow podcaster John Richards — one of the mighty Boxcutters team and co-writer of the soon to be screened ABC comedy series Outland.  The three chat about why television kills your dreams and whether Ian is a better co-podcaster than Josh Kinal.

Ian and Kirstyn would also like to congratulate all the recent World Fantasy Award winners announced in San Diego last month. In particular, their warmest wishes go to Nnedi Okorafor, who won Best Novel for Who Fears Death (featured on The Writer and Critic in Episode 11), and friend of the podcast and Galactic Suburbian, Alisa Krasnostein, who received the Special Award Non-Professional in recognition for her fabulous work with Twelve Planet Press. Yay Alisa and Nnedi!

The two official books for this month are Room by Emma Donoghue — Ian’s pick — and The Secret History by Donna Tartt — chosen by Kirstyn. As usual, there are plenty of spoilers — including revealed endings! — so for those of you who wish to skip over a particular book, discussion of Room begins at 22:15 while The Secret History starts at 41:10.

John Richards has chosen Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture by Douglas Coupland for this episode and discussion of the book commences at the 1:09:40 mark. The three self-confessed GenXers also talk generally about the 1990′s, generation x and the alleged end of history. Appropriately, they seem a little jaded. And old.

Wander back at 1:28:35 for some brief but witty final remarks.

The books for next month will be We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver (chosen by Kirstyn) and The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht (Ian’s pick), both recipients of The Orange Prize.  Don’t worry, there will be a return to a greater speculative fiction emphasis in 2012 — that’s a promise!

P.S. Kirstyn apologises for the sketchy sound quality on Ian’s mic this episode. Even if he does deserve it.

P.P.S. Kirstyn also apologies for the tardiness of this podcast. She was away for more days than she was home in the past couple of months. She definitely deserved that!

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Here are the show notes:

On this episode of The Writer and the Critic, your hosts, Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond, decide to eschew their normal thirty-odd minutes of waffle and plunge straight into a discussion of the two titles at hand, Bluegrass Symphony by Lisa L. Hannett and Everyone’s Just So So Special by Robert Shearman. As both books are short story collections and also very new releases, there are no spoilers as such. But here are the time stamps anyway: 03:00 for Bluegrass Symphony (yes, that’s three minutes — they really meant it with the eschewing) and 33:00 for Everyone’s Just So So Special. Final remarks kick in around 01:21:00.

Kirstyn would like to disclaim that she is a judge for both the Australian Shadows and the Aurealis Awards this year, for which Lisa Hannett’s stories are eligible, and therefore needs to stress that her opinions of the collection as expressed on this podcast are solely her own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the judging panels for either award. Ian would like to disclaim that he loves Rob Shearman just so so much, and is therefore incapable of holding any objective opinion of his work. So there’s that.

The Karen Joy Fowler story that is tangentially mentioned can be read online over at Subterranean Press, while Rob Shearman’s insane One Hundred Stories project lives here.

Next month, Ian and Kirstyn invite John Richards from Boxcutters to be their special podcast guest. John has chosen Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture by Douglas Coupland as for everyone to read, while Ian has selected Room by Emma Donoghue and Kirstyn has recommended The Secret History by Donna Tartt. They will most likely be back to their usual spoilerific form, so read ahead and join in the fun!

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Here are the show notes:

This month on The Writer and the Critic your hosts, Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond, briefly discuss the results of the 2011 Hugo Awards — Ian was right! — as well as the heartening increase in diversity of the nominated works in response to some listener feedback. Buoyed by his success in predicting that Connie Willis would take home the Hugo for best novel, Ian makes another silly startling prediction about the future of books and awards. Mention is also made of Jo Walton’s excellent retrospective series in which she revisits the results of past Hugo Awards over at Tor.com.

They then turn their attention to this episode’s featured books, We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson and Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor. Kirstyn mentions this thoughtful essay about Jackson and her work by Joyce Carol Oates. This lengthy review of the Okorafor novel by Paul Di Filippo is taken to task for being just a little bit patronising and somewhat missing of the point. The rather harrowing Washington Post article that inspired Okorafor can be found here. For those wishing to avoid spoilers and skip ahead, discussion of We Have Always Lived in the Castle begins at 14:30, while Who Fears Death starts around 52:50.

Ian and Kirstyn would like to warn listeners that Who Fears Death deals explicitly with rape, female genital mutilation and sexual violence. Their review of the novel in this episode naturally involves frank discussion of those same subjects.

Some very brief final remarks can be found at 01:29:30.

Oh, and look, the episode of the Outer Alliance podcast is now live! OA host Julia Rios invited Ian and Kirstyn along to have a Writer and the Critic style discussion, with the recommended texts being Horn and Bleed by Peter M. Ball (chosen by Ian), “Nightship” by Kim Westwood (chosen by Kirstyn) and “The Behold of the Eye” by Hal Duncan (chosen by Julia). They talked for over three billion hours. Thankfully, Julia managed to edit the conversation down into a very succinct podcast of around two hours. She is a genius!

Next episode will focus on two short story collections: Bluegrass Symphony by Lisa L. Hannett (chosen by Kirstyn) and Everyone’s Just So So Special by Robert Shearman (Ian’s recommendation). As both of these collections are fairly new releases, Ian and Kirstyn intend to go light on the spoilerage, but still encourage you to grab yourself copies of these fine volumes and read ahead.

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Interestingly, Piper, my German publisher, has changed the title to You Are Mine, but decided to leave it in English as shown. The interior text will, of course, be fully translated into German. The book will hit the shelves over there later this year in March 2012.  But enough from me.

Here, look at the pretty pretty:

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“For Want of a Nail” by Mary Robinette Kowal which just won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story.

“The Wolves of Brooklyn” by Catherynne M. Valente over at Fantasy magazine. While you’re at it, check out the rest of the free fiction that Fantasy showcases on their site. A new short story goes up each week, along with some tasty nonfiction. (And if you like the work they’re publishing, you can buy each complete issue in ePub format for a very reasonable US$2.99.)

“26 Monkeys, Also The Abyss” by Kij Johnson, who is currently a beloved literary crush of mine. Also, because you can never have too much Kij — no, seriously, you simply can not — here is her Hugo-nominated “Ponies”. It’s a horrible, beautiful, crawl-under-your-skin kind of story. You might feel the need to shower afterwards.

“The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers beneath the Queen’s Window” by Rachel Swirsky, which was on the Hugo ballot this year for Best Novella, and The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang, which took out the gong in that category. Need I say more?

Those last two links came from Subterranean Press Magazine, which has been publishing free online fiction, reviews and articles since 2007 — with all the back issues archived on their site for your reading pleasure. Nom nom nom. Allow me to point you towards their recent Special YA Issue as a starting point. All the stories are seriously good, but I particularly loved  “Younger Women” by Karen Joy Fowler and “Valley of the Girls” by Kelly Link.

And finally, Robert Shearman has just published a new short story collection called Everyone’s Just So So Special. No, it’s not available for free. But — and this is a massive, insane, mind-boggling BUT — Rob has undertaken to write a personal, fictional history for every single one of the hundred people who purchased a copy of the leatherbound limited edition of the collection. Yes, that’s right. One hundred new stories, penned at a rate of one every few days or so. And we’re not talking 200-word throwaway vignettes here; some of these babies are thousands upon thousands of words of fully fledged fiction. Madness. Sweet, wonderful, absurdly talented madness. Sadly, the limited editions of Everyone’s Just So So Special have sold out already, so your opportunity to star in your own Shearman history — would that be a “Shearstory”? — has passed. But they are all going to be posted here for all of us to read and marvel at. Now that’s accountability. And madness. Did I mention the madness?

So, once you’ve done reading and marvelling, perhaps you might like to wander over to wherever you satisfy your bibliographic tendencies and consider purchasing a (non-limited-bound-in-leather-written-in-blood-and-the-tears-of-mad-writers) copy of Everyone’s Just So So Special. Or another of Rob Shearman’s amazing, poignant and so so brilliant collections, Tiny Deaths or Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical. Because he’s a truly astonishing writer. And because this latest project might just render him a gibbering mess, fingers worn down to stumps, incapable of producing another word beyond redrum redrum redrum. Actually, in Rob’s case, that would more likely be aetfopuc aetfopuc aetfopuc.

Robert Shearman: genteel to the bitter, bloody-fingered end.

Shoo now. Sally forth and read!

But the story doesn’t end there — or rather it doesn’t begin there. These two paper sculptures are only the most recent gifts left anonymously to Edinburgh-based arts groups throughout the year. The Scottish Poetry Library, the National Library of Scotland, the independent Filmhouse cinema, and the Scottish Storytelling Centre have all found themselves surprised and delighted recipients of these beautiful artworks. Wander over here for full details and photos.

My favourite is possibly the gramophone and a coffin ensemble (from the National Library) which was sculpted from a copy of Exit Music by Ian Rankin. The attached handwritten note  reads, “For @natlibscot – A gift in support of libraries, books, words, ideas….. (& against their exit)”.

It’s a small but delicious mystery. Of course, part of me is dying to know the full story — who the artist is, why they are making and leaving these sculptures, what they plan to do in the future — but most of me will be quite content to have those questions remained unanswered, and somewhat saddened should all be revealed. For all the wonders of our click-to-know-more, information-saturated age, there is a dearth of mystery, a scarcity of cracks and unexplored crevices in which the seeds of imagination may take root and flourish and give off seeds of their own. We need the what ifs and the why on earths and the who can it bes. We need them like we need oxygen.

So thank you, unknown sculptor of books. Thank you for sending my mind down a series of whimsical paths this morning when I read about your exploits. Thank you for the thousand and one stories my imagination spun after witnessing the fruits of yours. May your penknife never dull; may your creativity bloom ever bright.

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Here are the show notes:

The winners of the 2011 Hugo Awards will be announced on 20 August, so this month on The Writer and the Critic your hosts, Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond, are looking at the books which have been nominated for Best Novel. Two of the nominees have already been featured books on this podcast: Feed by Mira Grant was discussed in Episode 2 and Blackout/All Clear by Connie Willis in Episode 7. While you will need to go back and listen to those episodes for detailed reviews, Kirstyn and Ian do take the opportunity to finally read and respond to listener feedback from Cat Sparks in regards to Blackout/All Clear. The difference between a primary and a retrospective reading experience is examined and the duo muse on why Connie Willis is too often the subject of unfair personal attacks. The name of the beautifully horrific Willis short story that Kirstyn couldn’t remember is “All My Darling Daughters”.

Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold is also a Hugo nominee, but Ian and Kirstyn have decided not to read this book themselves, as it’s part of the Vorkosigan saga with which they have not been keeping up. Tut. Tut. Tut. However,  Tehani Wessely of Fablecroft Publishing, one of their wonderful listeners, has provided a passionate and spoiler-free summary of why she believes Cryoburn should take home the gong. Thanks, Tehani!

Ian and Kirstyn then move onto an in depth discussion of the remaining two nominated titles: The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin and The Dervish House by Ian McDonald. Further information about the fascinating legend of Mellified Men, as featured in McDonald’s novel, can be found here. If you wish to skip ahead avoid the many, many spoilers — including the endings of both books! — discussion of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms begins at 26:30 while The Dervish House starts around 53:30.

But listen in again at the 1:21:10 mark for some final remarks about the Hugo Awards and which book(s) should win — and also for a shock! horror! confession from Ian! Seriously, you will be aghast.

Finally, the Department of Cross-Podcastination is pleased to announce that Kirstyn and Ian were recently interviewed at length by Julia Rios from the Outer Alliance podcast. Julia adopted the format of The Writer and the Critic, with the recommended texts being Horn and Bleed by Peter M. Ball (chosen by Ian), “Nightship” by Kim Westwood (chosen by Kirstyn) and “The Behold of the Eye” by Hal Duncan (chosen by Julia). The Outer Alliance episode should be up on the site by the end of August, so catch up on your reading and add the podcast to your feed.

Next episode, The Writer and the Critic returns to its roots, with a discussion of just two recommended books. Ian has picked the recently published Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor while Kirstyn has chosen a beloved classic, We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson.

Read ahead and join in the spoilerific fun!

The wonderful and always eloquent Stephanie Gunn has embarked upon an ambitious personal project she calls Her Words and Worlds, wherein she chooses a female author and endeavours not only to read her entire published bibliography — in chronological order — but to write a lengthy and considered review of the body of work at the end of it all.  It’s a brilliant idea which I’m sure which lead to some fascinating overviews and I’m looking forward following her along on her journey.

And, of course, I was delighted and honoured when Stephanie chose me to be first cab off the rank.  She provides very insightful commentary about my work over the years, and I have to admit that the some of the questions she asked me in her follow-up interview really kicked my brain into a higher gear. It was a strange — but very rewarding — experience to be asked reflect upon my own work in such a way and make explicit a lot of ideas and intentions which have always enjoyed a fairly nebulous existence inside my head. Hmm, thoughtful writer is thoughtful.

To top it all off, Stephanie is giving away a copy of my debut novel, Madigan Mine, which I’ll be more than happy to personally sign for the lucky winner. For a chance to win, all you need to do is visit the Her Words and Worlds page and leave a comment. Entries close this Sunday, 7th August.

Here’s a quick taste of what Stephanie can do with a scalpel:

McDermott’s work tends towards the dark and the feminine.  Several themes wind their way through her body of work, including that of the seductress, of romantic obsession, of blood and sex and death.  Many pieces also deal with the nature of art and the artist; these pieces are arguably amongst the strongest of McDermott’s body of work and culminate (thus far) in her debut novel, Madigan Mine.

The next author up for dissection is the frightfully talented Angela Slatter. As a massive admirer of Angela’s short fiction, I await the new installment of Her Words and Worlds with a heightened sense of antici . . . pation.