As usual, the brave little quokkas and quolls of the CSFG semi-autonomous collective have been busy racking up wins, plaudits and sparkling achievements! Here’s just some of their outstanding accomplishments for the month of July!

Awards

In possibly the biggest news of the month and a distinctive career highlight, Kaaron Warren’s story “Death’s Door Cafe” has been shortlisted for the 2015 World Fantasy Awards. Good luck Kaaron!

Tehani Wessely has announced that nominations for the 2015 Aurealis Awards are now open. Says Tehani, “We invite entries for the Sara Douglass Book Series Award (closing August 31), the Convenors’ Award for Excellence, and all regular Aurealis Awards, and encourage immediate entry of all work already published in 2015.” If you have eligible works you wish to enter, please get them in as early as possible to give the judges time for careful consideration of your work.

Workshops

This is your last chance to sign up for Chris Andrews’ “Creating Compelling Characters” workshop at the ACT Writers Centre on Saturday 25 July.

Following on from that, Gillian Polack’s “Fiction Writing and History” workshop is on Saturday 1 August.

Ian McHugh’s “The Basics of Fiction Writing” workshop is on Saturday 11 October.

Kaaron Warren has an evening “Horror Writing” workshop on Friday 13 November (spooky!)

Short courses

Ian McHugh will be presenting “Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy” on Wednesday evenings from 5 August to 9 September at CIT Bruce.

Ian McHugh will be presenting Writing Better Stories on Wednesday evenings from 21 October to 25 November at CIT Reid.

Chris Andrews will be presenting “Novel Writing” on Monday evenings from 10 August to 21 September at CIT Reid.

And finally, Gillian Polack’s short courses “From Gildas to the Grail – Discovering Medieval Arthur” and “Using the past to build your world – History for writers”  have been pushed back to October and November. Firm dates will be on the Workshops page when available!

Short story publications

No new short story sales to report this month (unusual!) but Chris Large’s story “Girl Finds Key” from CCSFG’s 2013 anthology Next received an Honourable Mention in the Twelfth Planet Press 2013 Year’s Best Young Adult Speculative Fiction list from a few months ago! Chris shares the distinction with little-known scribblers toiling away in obscurity like Neil Gaiman, Nancy Kress and Ken Liu.

Novels

Alis Franklin has published her new novel Stormbringer (Book 2 of The Wyrd), the sequel to Liesmith, featuring Ragnarok, gaming nerds and bitter Norse gods. (Great combo).

Patty Jansen has just published Shifting Infinity, the sequel to her Indonesians-in-space hard SF book Shifting Reality.

Patty also wishes to direct our attention to the frankly-gorgeous new cover of her fast-paced SF space-diplomat thriller Seeing Red (Ambassador Book 1). 

Non-fiction

Chris Large’s two-part interview with John Scalzi is now appearing in Aurealis Magazine: the first part is in Aurealis 81, while the more fun segment is in Aurealis 82.

Competitions

First of all, if you’re reading this blog post more than three hours after it goes up, you *might* have missed the deadline for the Conflux 11 short story competition, which closes on 20 July! If you are still ahead of the clock – stop reading and get typing!

Zena Shapter has been announced as one of the judges of the  ‘Ghostly Stringybark’ Short Story Award. They’re after short, Australian themed ghost and horror stories.

Appearances and Conventions

Ross Hamilton is the new Blogger-in-Residence at the ACT Writers’ Centre.

Kaaron Warren is going to be one of the special guests at Genrecon in Brisbane this year (30 October to 1 November). If you still have convention-going energy left after Conflux, Genrecon is a great new convention well worth checking out.

The NSW Writers Centre held a special Speculative Fiction Festival in Sydney on 18 July. Sadly this post goes up too late for you to participate, but convenor Cat Sparx was as always out and about with her camera, so you can at least check out the studious luminaries in residence.

Writers Retreat

Finally, our coastal cousins at the The Writers of the Far South Coast are having a writer’s retreat during the last weekend in August (28th / 29th / 30th) at Kianinny Cabins. As organiser Amanda notes, “Writing is often very anti-social, it kinda has to be; and so the weekend will be about gathering writers together to socialise, discuss our craft and of course… focus on writing. There are lots of idyllic spots scattered around Kianinny to inspire or to get stuck into it.”

Sounds pretty idyllic to me!