A Foreign Country - New Zealand Speculative Fiction Collection
I was hugely pleased to get an email this morning telling me that my story "Miramar is Possum Free" has been accepted for "A Foreign Country - New Zealand Speculative Fiction" collection that is being published by Random Static as part of the Au Contraire New Zealand sci-fi and fantasy convention being held later in the year. I'm especially pleased because I really did work on this one - actually wrote 7000 words of story that I realised was just too po-faced and had to write a new one from scratch. In writing the first story I came up with the themes for the new one, so secind time round was able to let it all flow a bit better. And then of course the re-write, and re-write etc. I'm having a lucky year (so far) - two stories have been accepted. And Neil Gaiman signed my first issue of the Sandman a couple of weeks ago - for the 2nd time - he signed it 22 years ago during the very first Sandman signing - the picture is on my blog (link below) So I'm feeling pretty chuffed. Anybody else get accepted for A Foreign Country? Anybody else attend Neil Gaiman's excellent talk at Wellington Town Hall? Cheers Richard http://ricobarnez.blogspot.com
Yay Richard! that's fantastic news :-) Sounds like you are having a very good year indeed with every reason to be feeling chuffed. Well done!
I didn't get to attend Neil Gaiman's talk, but I did get my story 'Birth Rights' accepted into A Foreign Country. I can't wait for it's release later this year! Very exciting.
Congrats, rico!! I'm so jealous of all the cool writers that are now visiting NZ. I'll just have to track some of them down over here in the UK. Great stuff getting your story accepted after working so hard at it. :)
lol Rico! Next on my list is a twisted fairy tales anthology... got any fairy tale re-tellings in the works?
I'll PM you the details!
I'm a co-editor of A Foreign Country. It's shaping up to be a great collection - we should be able to release more details pretty soon (I suspect there'll be a story by me in there as well).
Missed Neil Gaiman unfortunately (I'm missing a lot at the moment) - do have to finally read Sandman, it's a set text for a course I'm doing.
Yay Anna! Looking forward to hearing more details about it - can't wait to read it later this year!
That Neil Gaiman Town Hall talk was awesome. A friend of mine blogged a reasonably detailed summary here:
http://jennitalula.wordpress.com/2010/03/22/readers-writers-week-neil-ga...
There's also a great interview with Neil Gaiman from that week on the Radio NZ website:
http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/events/nziaf_all_audio/neil_gaiman_gods_a...
It's about 38 minutes long, covers his background and major works. Well worth a listen :-)
Thanks for posting those links Matt! Always nice when there are things like this for those who didn't make it to do a little living vicariously 
Well done Cassie - we seem to get accepted in sync. What are you submitting to next? It seems to work if I'm sneaking in behind you.....
And did you see - The MoH Anthology is now up for sale in ebook form via Smashbooks?
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/10948