nothing here but us invaders, feat. Alison Evans
issue 016 - January 27th, 2019
CJW: Welcome to another issue of nothing here. This time around we have a very special guest - Alison Evans, renowned Aussie YA author, and v cool person. I (CJW) had the pleasure of chatting to Alison on a panel at a convention last year (I won’t go into detail, but bants with Alison were the only good part of that particular panel), and wanted to invite them onto the newsletter to talk about their next book, Highway Bodies. Welcome, Alison, and thanks!
While the nothing here team is geographically divided, most of us are sending this newsletter from Wurundjeri land. This land was never ceded to white colonists, who used countless forms of violence to steal the land from its true owners. This always was and always will be Aboriginal land. I’m telling you this because yesterday (January 26th) was “Australia Day”, also known as Invasion Day. Whilst in the past few years a movement to change the date has been building - to move Australia Day to a date that could be celebrated by all Australians, rather than a day that represents the beginnings of the theft and colonisation of this land - the group IndigenousX are now pushing to change the nation, to make Australia a nation worth celebrating, whatever day that happens on. And I have to say, I can’t argue with them. Not only was this nation built on genocide, violence, and white supremacy, the violence and racism continues to this very day. It is an integral part of the very systems that have been put in place all across this land. If we ever hope to make Australia a true land of the “fair go”, a real “lucky country” for everyone, we need to face our past, dismantle our racist institutions, and make a concerted effort to do better, to be better. We need to listen to Aboriginal voices and follow Aboriginal leadership (in general, and specifically when it comes to issues like the Uluru Statement), we need to address Aboriginal incarceration rates and deaths in custody, and we need to address our refugee torture camps. Those are just the first three issues that come to mind, but there’s plenty more.
Alison Evans (AE) - Writer of queer YA spec fic books Highway Bodies and Ida, co-editor of Concrete Queers. From Naarm. @_budgie
Corey J. White (CJW) - The VoidWitch Saga. Newsletter facilitator. Naarm/Melbourne. Tweets @cjwhite.
Marlee Jane Ward (MJW) - Writer, reader, weirdo. Author of ‘Welcome To Orphancorp’ and ‘Psynode’. Host of Catastropod. ADHD, spec fic, feminism, cats. On Wurundjeri land in Melbourne, Australia. @marleejaneward
Austin Armatys (AA) - Writer/Teacher/Wretched Creature // Oh Nothing Press // MechaDeath physical edition available now // @0hnothing
m1k3y (MKY) - Wallfacer / Apocalyptic Futurist / #salvagepunk / @m1k3y
CJW: Why I No Longer Support #changethedate
I cannot in good conscience support #changethedate anymore. If public pressure for changing the date grows to sufficient level I don’t doubt that the major parties would do a 180 to support it. But because it would be a responsive vote grab rather than reflecting any sincerely belief or aspirations for a better country, they would continue to dismiss and undermine Indigenous aspirations and to avoid the tough questions of Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination.
MJW: Apocalypses are more than the stuff of fiction — First Nations Australians survived one: By Claire G Coleman, author of Terra Nullius. I feel like I’ve quoted Coleman in every episode of Catastropod ever, but she’s so right on with this, and it’s extra pertinent now that we’ve just “celebrated” another Invasion (Australia) Day.
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MKY: A tale of three dogs
‘Dingoes will do a better job of it than we’ll ever do,’ said Letnic of their biodiversity-protecting ways. Yet they’re not allowed to do that job.
In the Australia see, dingoes roam our suburbs just like coyotes (and coywolves!) do in the US, killing feral cats, helping the native species barely holding on in ‘novel habitats’ like storm drains thrive again. Now, about that pesky dingo fence and the colonial attitudes keeping it there..
As Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka argue in Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights (2011), the logic guiding our treatment of wild animals is broadly that of colonialism – or perhaps even slavery. We do with them as we please, regarding them as subject entirely to the human realm. Rather than thinking of wolves as belonging to us, we might think of them as citizens of their own wild nation.
We can do better. We don’t really have a choice. And there are other ways of thinking about this we can draw on:
“One third of our flock is for god (losses through disease), one third is for us, and one-third is for wolves,” says Durganna.
CJW: These articles really highlight something I often think about with talk of possible future (read: entirely fictional) Carbon Capture Technologies, and various geoengineering “fixes” that are suggested as ways to counter climate change without actually slowing down consumption. And that is: we barely understand our planet’s ecological systems, and when we try and intervene we usually fuck things up even worse. The times we’re most successful in our interventions is in cases like this when we step back and let nature do its thing.
AE: One Indigenous ranger group in Australia (Mimal Land Management) has had success in “fixing” a waterhole in Arnhem Land. After putting up a fence to keep the feral water buffalo out, they’ve noticed a significant regrowth in only six months. Indigenous people know what they’re doing!
MKY: Really dug that story! Also, had no idea there was a vested interest feral buffalo export program to deal with. But, of course there is.
One of my pet ideas is to introduce/translocate the Komodo Dragon here as another apex predator, which will definitely hunt buffalo, as a replacement for its cousin: the lost, great Megalania. And I’m far from alone in pitching this. (Lions in the Outback? Oh my!)
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MKY : Rising Tides Will Sink Global Order
How will the political systems of post-colonial states react when it becomes evident that they have been doomed to extinction by decisions taken by more powerful and far larger actors in the rest of the world? One might speculate darkly that the existential crisis of the island nations might produce a radical response. It’s possible to imagine they would resort to some type of threat to force more urgent policy change in the rest of the world.
With so much of the world’s loot stashed in offshore accounts… wait, where exactly?
It would be a real shame if some of those monies started getting moved around to fund the great planetary rescue mission by any means. Whether that’s dropping a few tens of thousands here and there to support radical environmental action groups, or just dropping a fat hundred billion dollar cheque on some contractors to start targeted geoengineering projects - like propping up the Antarctic ice sheets and buying us all some time to fix the earth system. BUILD THE ICE WALL! BUILD THE ICE WALL!
The question then becomes: why aren’t they doing this already?
CJW: Well now I want you to write a book where ecoterrorists team up with representatives from these tax-haven at-risk island nations to steal all the money and use it to wage battle against the entrenched powers of capital and the status quo.
MKY: Probably better I write that than actually do it huh! Lol.
MJW: I need to read this book.
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CJW: We Need to Accept We're Likely Underestimating the Climate Crisis
Quite simply, the time has come to completely reframe the way we talk about the climate crisis. It is no longer acceptable to equivocate or muddy the waters on the question of whether climate change is real and man-made. Everyone who studies it, and whose work is vetted by the wider scientific community and come out the other side as accepted, says that it is. Anyone who continues to question whether it is happening should be ostracized from the public debate. They should not be invited on cable news or the Sunday Shows to spread misinformation and outright lies. These voices have been granted legitimacy for far too long.
Tldr: Scientists are generally conservative and thus have been reticent to explore worst case scenarios regarding climate change, while the media has let right-wing extremists (yes, the author actually calls them that) frame this as a debate over whether or not climate change is real. It’s real, and there is recent evidence to suggest that it’s worse than previously thought. And if you don’t want to listen to scientists, listen to Sir David Attenborough.
MKY: On Attenborough - I’ll just leave this here. And this too, why not?
It’s not a revolution if there isn’t massive in-fighting between the cadres.
MJW: It’s interesting and brave that the author has called a spade a spade, ya know? (re: right-wing extremists) The fact that the debate still exists when we are living in a climate dystopia already (I’ve just spent 2 days in a row in 45 degree heat -that’s 113 fahrenheit- in Melbourne, and Adelaide won the title of hottest place on the planet today) just baffles me.
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Last issue we talked about the possible need to apply our collective imagination to more robust, more equitable and overall more optimistic visions of the future - this excellent missive by Warren Ellis points out that, at their core, Dystopian fictions already contain a seed of Utopianism, often focusing on the “utopian reach that’s suppressed by the situation”.
As Ellis says:
Dystopia is one of those parts of speculative fiction that function as early-warning systems for bad sociocultural weather, a function I’ve talked about at length elsewhere. Dystopia is also about the fight for a better world.
Personally I wonder how effective this early-warning system has proven itself - we can certainly gauge its insight and accuracy, but what about its efficacy? Is our cultural preoccupation with dystopian imagery and associated ideas assisting us to devise remedies and alternatives to these grim futures, or are we just able to identify (and possibly celebrate) the dystopia around us more in a more high-fidelity and entertaining fashion? We can see the symptoms, but who’s working towards the cure?
Because while we are surrounded by cultural products that engage with dystopian currents with bravura creative force, where is the accompanying surge in the practical progressive imagination? Where are the political alternatives to reactionary thinking, fear and populism? It must be happening out there, I guess I just need to push myself harder to find it. This Guardian article about Australia as a socialist utopia in 2050 is a good start, as is news of this Japanese pop-up cafe staffed by people with disabilities operating robots,
CJW: Can someone sit by my bedside at night and read that Guardian article to me?
And that Japanese pop-up cafe is great, but I can already see the seed of dystopia in it - the Australian government already does what it can to make life unnecessarily difficult for people with disabilities, so I can imagine them taking this sort of tech and forcing people to work for (or instead of) their pension. Someone who’s disabled having a chance to work when and if they want to is great, but this could too easily slot into the current work = worth thinking that dominates so much of our society, and which is behind so much ableism. (And this is not me attacking you, Austin, it’s me pre-emptively attacking the soulless bureaucrats/technocrats who would abuse people with this tech.)
I haven’t read enough (any?) utopian fiction to know how it’s dealt with, but I did find Warren’s point that Utopias are static, and thus dystopian, to be quite an interesting one. It ties into the centre-left “we were already great” bullshit, and general “end of history” rhetoric - the idea that where we are is exactly where we’re meant to be and we can do no better. Even if you’re privileged (and self-involved) enough to believe that, you’re ignoring the most fundamental rule of history, and science, and culture - things will always change. And by claiming that we’ve reached the peak, then really you’re condemning us all to degradation and decay because there is literally nowhere else to go but down. We have to recognise that our society has flaws, and we need to be actively working to improve things, because trying to keep things static is an impossible task.
And I think this also all ties into post-apocalyptic fiction in particular, because if you believe that we are at the peak, then it makes sense that the future you envision is going to be some sort of collapse scenario.
AE: I do wonder a lot about this in terms of writing. With Western-style writing, it is much easier to write a fictional dystopia. How would someone write a utopia? Would readers be invested at all? I don’t know there are any answers at all, and I don’t see how anyone could write a story that is utopic. Romance books might be the closest thing. I DUNNO!
CJW: Of course, Romance books seem like the obvious genre/area for utopias (at least of the personal variety). I came across a tweet about SFR (science fiction romance), which also seems like a ripe area for dystopian and utopian writing, but the tweet in question was about how SFR is looked down upon, just like romance in general.
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CJW: Isotopium: Chernobyl Lets You Remote Control Robots in Ukraine + Inside Venezuela’s YouTube prank economy = a real-life version of Neveldine & Taylor’s Gamer (2009)
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CJW: Exoskeletons are the new weapon of choice for ambitious criminals (via and by Geoff Manaugh)
Our lives are more futuristic than we think when exoskeleton-enhanced burglary crews are a real, emerging security concern. Home invasion, art theft, even the industrial-scale plundering of precious-metal refineries will all be made exponentially easier with the arrival of mechanised outerwear. Imagine the Hatton Garden heist pulled off not with concrete drills but with gyroscopically stabilised exoskeletons helping to rip the doors off safe-deposit boxes, and you have seen the future of breaking and entering.
Begin countdown to a Hollywood film about an exo-heist. Ocean’s 2050.
MKY: CYBERPUNK 2019. I’m more wondering if these will turn up in the SHAW & HOBBS spin-off from Fast’n’Furious. They’ve already got them dressed in ACRONYM, Gibson’s favourite high-end technical streetwear. Go full octane cyberpunk’d spy-fi or gtfo.
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MKY : The Mars Anthropocene
Why bother re-stabilising the Earth when you can just move next door and keep on fucking w/ planetary systems w/out ever learning anything..
you can go outside and play as soon you tidy your room, ok?
I never thought I’d relate to Jake Busey’s character in Contact, the religious zealot blowing up himself and the spaceship, but start reading about all the fun ways humanity can fuck up Mars, and… <transmission ends>
CJW: Counterpoint: Mars is going to fuck us up. We will underestimate it, and countless Marstronauts will die.
AA: And everyone on Earth will be compulsively watching it happen in real time. Mark my words, when our brave Marstronauts perish, There Will Be Memes.
CJW: I'm a Martian, Get Me Out of Here!
MJW: Godspeed, our brave Marstronauts.
But really, do humans ever learn? We have gone from making the same mistakes over and over again to actively pursuing those mistakes and fucking up the Earth in the chase for the $. As if we wouldn’t just chew up a new planet like we’ve chewed up this one. If humans ever learn, I’ll eat this here hat. (Okay, I have no hat.)
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CJW: A Wind Blown from Paradise (via Ospare at Restricted.Academy)
What if we are at the end of an age of monotheisms and monocultures; an age which could only ever be supported by expansion and colonization? What if our challenge now is to build a series of smaller visions, focused less on the future and more on the present; less on the sky and more on the ground?
This essay by Paul Kingsnorth, creator of the Dark Mountain Project, encourages a cyclical view of history in opposition to the straight line of “progress”.
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CJW: Amazon double-feature:
Where Amazon Returns Go to Be Resold by Hustlers
I Tried to Block Amazon From My Life. It Was Impossible.
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AE: China tests opening up social credit scores to social media platform WeChat with debt map
Nicknamed the Deadbeat Map, the applet is an add-on to Chinese social media platform WeChat and it allows users to pinpoint the location of those who have failed to pay their debts within a 500-metre radius.
Tapping on a person marked on the map reveals their personal information, including their full name, court case number and the reason they have been labelled untrustworthy. Identity card numbers and home addresses are also partially shown.
CJW: The rate at which China has gone full technosurveillance dystopia is kinda scary. It’s scary in general, and then there’s also my personal fear that by the time my next book comes out, the aspects of technosurveillance that I touch upon will be completely tame by comparison to the reality on the ground in China.
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CJW: Subtext Adventure | TW3 | Episode 1 The Trail
These days I don’t really play singleplayer RPGs. I want to, I want to be able to, but in practice I play for about 5-10 hours, get distracted, and if I ever try and return I have to start from the start because I can’t remember what I’m meant to be doing, or why. Rinse and repeat.
BUT, The Witcher is one of those series of games that I’ve heard nothing but praise of, and this video from Sam Greer (the first in an ongoing series) is a fantastic primer on The Witcher 3, and how the opening prepares the player for what to expect throughout the rest of the game. About half-way through this video I felt the itch to play Witcher 3, but when Sam mentioned “hundreds of hours” of gameplay, I quickly changed my mind. Still, I’ll happily follow along with Sam’s series of videos as they drop to see what it is I’m missing.
MKY: https://tinyletter.com/sciops/letters/sciops-03-02-world-wizard-war
We're looking at a world where all the nuclear states are ruled by narcissistic death cultists and all the companies are owned by a dozen nerdy Batman villains.
If you’re only reading one other newsletter in 2019, make it SCIOPS.
AE: Say my name by Meleika Gesa-Fatafehi
My name has survived the destruction of worlds
and the genocidal rebirthing of so-called ones
MKY: VICE (2018)
Behind every evil conservative fuckhead is an even eviler conservative woman. Pegging him.
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MKY: Anna and the Apocalypse (2017)
Why don’t they make more movies like Shaun of the Dead, you ask? Well, they finally did. Kinda. Wish I’d caught this on the big screen at Paracinema Fest now.
MJW: I’m so keen to watch this!
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MKY: The Good Place [s3]
This :clap: fucking :clap: show :clap:
What @hannahsaund_ sed:
Pretty sure they’re also demonstrating Donna Haraway’s idea of ‘staying with the trouble’, at least as I understand it: “tentacular webs of troubling relations that matter now” (per).
AA: That last article link (“What Matters: Staying with the Trouble by Donna Haraway” by Ben Denham for the Sydney Review of Books) has some really fascinating ideas. I love the idea of “thinking with” as explained within:
It is Haraway’s awareness of the possibilities for thinking in different forms and an ethical commitment to thinking with — as opposed to the myth of the thinker, doubting everything in order to really think for himself — that makes her thought so fertile and vital, in the sense of both embodying an overflowing exuberance and of being crucial to the moment that we are currently living.
As a teacher and writer, it’s kinda why I find being a participant in this newsletter so exciting and informative - although I don’t necessarily have the same depth of knowledge of my peers, I find my engagement often leads to what Denham describes as “wider vistas” - more ideas and greater opportunities to expand my worldview and practice.
Also, the concept of “staying with the trouble” Haraway & Denawat articulate offers some possible approaches to “solving” the problem of how to think our way to a better future:
We need to consider ‘who we are bound up with and in what ways’. We need to make new knots in those webs, new ways to be bound into relationships that matter. This is where art plays a role. It is one of the means that we have for making significant bonds between ourselves and the prospects of other critters, it is — in the forms that Haraway describes — a mode of response-able thinking and acting.
CJW: This quote from the same essay highlights the problem with so much of modern politics:
When we expand our present to include those stories of repression and resistance that stretch back hundreds of years, when the present includes at least the next five generations of humans living on this planet, we have to rethink what it means to act ethically. It is in this sense that the thick present is an ethical timescale.
These politicians are getting paid a better salary than most of us could ever hope to earn, yet they struggle to think five years into the future, let alone five generations. I think perhaps this “generational” thinking is unnatural for us, or at least difficult - it suggests/reinforces how inconsequential we are in the grand scheme of things - but it also seems like an obvious way to counter so much of what’s wrong with society. And the first part is also extremely important - how can we hope to grapple with systemic racism and white supremacy in our society and governmental and judicial systems today if we aren’t prepared to consider the actions that built these Western nations? Those actions (genocide, theft of land, slavery, and more) directly impact our politics and society today, just like our actions now will directly impact politics, society, and the environment in five generations from now. It’s all related, it’s all tied up together in a complex ball of interconnection, and until we at least try and consider that entirety, we won’t be able to embrace any meaningful growth. I mean, just look at how quickly we forgot about the fucking Nazis, because we want to leave the ugliness of the past in the past. We want to pretend it never happened. We want to pretend there’s no lesson to be learned.
Also, this long essay on race, racism, and the biological vs cultural core thereof (also from Emergence Magazine, see above), mentions “staying with the trouble” in the final paragraph. It’s well worth a read beyond that minor link.
Oh, and yes, this latest turn in The Good Place is fantastic.
AA: I was just listening to the Xenofeminism episode of the General Intellect Unit podcast and they mentioned that Haraway is a member of the Laboria Cuboniks collective that authored the Xenofeminism Manifesto (another member is Anna Tsing, author of The Mushroom at The End of the World). Links! LINKS! Everything is connected!
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CJW: byNWR
Somehow I didn’t know that Nicolas Winding Refn (one of my absolute favourite directors [yes, I even love Only God Forgives]) had a website where he hosts old movies and indie comics, and personal commentary, curated by a slowly growing community. I’ve (almost, kinda) given up on TV because there’s too much of it, but maybe I can find time to explore these selections.
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AA: Merger - Keiichi Matsuda
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqW2dEkiD-Y
CJW: Heavy Metal Archives
I’m not sure if Heavy Metal ever for distributed here in Australia, but either way I never read it, and looking at these horny covers, I probably wouldn’t have been able to read it in my xtian home. Still, if you like sci-fi, fantasy, and gratuitous nudity, then this link is for you.
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AE: Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
I know these are old but can I recommend reading about an environmental apocalypse while you’re living through the start of one? I’ve seen the movie many times but have only just read the comics now. The movie is roughly the first 1.5 volumes of the comic, but events are scattered through the whole thing.
MKY: Okay, this was already on my radar - sounds like the perfect accompaniment to avoiding that Sebacean heat delirium rn.
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AE: pregnancy comics by Kate Beaton
Babies are parasites, cute parasites, but still parasites! I love body horror in fiction but pregnancy is perhaps the Ultimate body horror for me: so many things change! And you can’t stop them! How is this real life!
CJW: Kate Beaton is a treasure. I think Octavia Butler’s Lilith's Brood series is meant to be a very feminist sort of bodyhorror, but I’ve not gotten to it yet.
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AA: Cartoonist Kayfabe - Wizard #11 (July 1992)
Ed Piskor (Hip Hop Family Tree, X-Men: Grand Designs) and Jim Rugg (Street Angel) are doing ultra-in-depth deconstructions of early 90’s Wizard magazines on their Youtube channel, Cartoonist Kayfabe. The hosts’ combined knowledge of comic book history is impressive, and they spill plenty of well-researched dirt on comic books luminaries, diving into their back issue bins to illustrate a wide range of opinions and anecdotes. In this installment they spend a lot of time talking about Todd McFarlane/Spawn, the rise of Image comics, an overview of publisher EC and much more. If, like me, you grew up collecting comics and reading Wizard during this strange era of rampant speculation and over-rendered pencilling, you’ll definitely get a kick out of this, but it should prove entertaining for anyone that loves comics. Going through the archives is going to keep me busy for quite a while!
Medical surveillance, the pregnancy panopticon… SilVal’s ever more creative invasive systems of controls make the Stasi look like they were using clay tablets and communicating w/ whisper galleries.
Smashing your smartphone and deleting your Facebook are baby steps. If you’re not wiping every down every place you visit like it was a crime scene, you’re opting into the Minority Report nightmare. DON’T GO OUTSIDE. Eat Arby’s
CJW: I enjoy Ashes Ashes, but it can be kinda depressing. It’s not one to binge. An alternate tagline for the show would be: Detailing all the ways the world, and the USA in particular, is (and is increasingly becoming) a technocapitalist, neoliberal dystopia! I mean, it’s not very catchy, but it’s accurate.
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AE: Dreamboy
Creepy girl scouts, dreams, strange deaths, lights, something doesn’t feel right.
I keep falling asleep while listening to it and getting weird dreams so: you’re welcome.
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CJW: White Fragility
I’m almost certain that I linked to a detailed review of Robin DiAngelo’s book when it came out last year. Recently DiAngelo was in Melbourne to do some workshops, and luckily for us, she also gave a talk at the Wheeler Centre, which they have released via their podcast. I think it’s basically required listening for any white person, particularly any who think they’re somehow free of racism.
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MJW: Headlong - Surviving Y2K: I listened to this for research for my work-in-progress, there’s some amazing interviews and stories in this, including goth coders, a San Diego couple who buried stores in Mexico, a New Years bank robbery and an illicit blowjob that started a slow, personal apocalypse.
AE: Highway Bodies was a weird thing to write because I didn’t really think I would ever write an apocalypse story. I keep thinking about the article above and the importance of hope in dystopia. One of the characters finds a bunch of seeds in an abandoned nursery and carries them in their pocket through around half the book. Those seeds really helped set the mood. I didn’t want to write something that felt hopeless (especially when the target audience is queer teens). Plus I think it’s a nice shout out to the only movie ever, Fury Road.
MJW: Fury Road is the only movie ever made.
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MJW: My current process can be summed up in two tweets:
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CJW: I’m in the process of Repo Virtual edits. I’ve gone over the process before on my blog, but basically there are three stages to editing in the traditional publishing model - the first is structural, based on an Editorial Letter from your editor, the second is line edits, and the third is copyedits. I’m on the first stage currently. All the issues my editor picked up on were in the back half of the book - which wasn’t surprising, considering that the last third was entirely rewritten in the previous revision. So while it’s 100% better than my previous attempt, it still needs work. But, I didn’t just go straight to the back half of the book for my edits, because I also got Sensitivity Reader feedback covering the Korean cultural aspects that permeate the book (it being set in Korea, after all), and my own notes that required changes from the very first chapter. So, I’ve got a month in total to go through this entire 100,000 word novel and do my best to deal with the three sets of notes.
Generally I like to break it up - x number of words per day for y number of days - but in this case it’s a bit tougher. Though I needed to start at the start, I also know that the back half is going to require a lot more work. So instead of 1 chapter a day (roughly) I’ve been aiming for 1-2 until I get to the back end and need that extra time. So far, so good - roughly 8 days in, and I’ve nearly covered the first half of the book.
I’m actually really proud of this book… about half the time. I’m oscillating wildly between loving it and hating it - anxiety exacerbating what I’m sure is most writers' natural response. But, even in the moments that I’m hating it, I’m hating it because of my own expectations and high hopes for the book. If I’m comparing it to my past work, I think it’s easily a full step above the VoidWitch series. In some ways it’s a bigger story (it’s a novel, after all), but in other ways it’s much smaller, because the whole thing takes place in 1 week, in 1 city, so I've got more room to really drill down into the situation, and explore it as fully as I want, from as many angles as is required. The VoidWitch Saga is Mars’ story. It’s her POV, and she’s selfish and self-involved, so certain things don’t warrant a mention. But here, it’s a broader story. And where in the VoidWitch Saga I think the action is possibly its strongest element, I’m really proud of the dialogue in Repo Virtual. As soon as these characters start talking to one another, I’m in love with every one of them.
So, in a lot of ways I’m worried about how this book is going to be received, because frankly too much of my self worth is tied up in the work. But at the same time, the book is the best thing I could have written at this point in time and I can’t wait for people to read it.
AE: my book Highway Bodies is launching on Feb 6 in Naarm (Melbourne). HB is about three groups of teens who find themselves in the zombie apocalypse. The launch is at 6:30pm at Readings Carlton, there will be wine and cupcakes! And MJW had some nice words to say about it, which you can find on the back cover:
A story of friendship, found-family, and zombies. Tender, relentless and genderqueer, Highway Bodies is a very Australian apocalypse.
MJW: Highway Bodies is so uniquely Australian. I could feel the landscape in my bones. The writing is pacey and compelling and queer and soft even through the violence. Read it!
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CJW: And another event in February for Melbournites - Marlee and I will be doing a reading (and I think a Q&A) along with Angela Meyer at Brunswick Bound on February 1st. We would love to see you there.
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CJW: And that's it for another issue. Busy day today, so I'll keep it short. Thanks again to Alison for making the time to join us for this issue - it's the longest one yet, and I think it's been a good one! I hope you enjoyed reading as much as we enjoyed putting the newsletter together.