At the risk of kicking things off with blatant self promotion, there's a little event coming up in Perth in a few weeks which it might be worth flagging:
Tuesday the 27th July, at the Fremantle Children's Literature Centre, in (of course) Fremantle. (The FCLC is the same place where both Nightpeople and Skyfall were officially shoved onto an unsuspecting public, (and also, oddly enough, where Imogen and I got married) so I'm thrilled, as you can imagine, to have the chance to finish the trilogy off in the manner to which it's become accustomed.) If you're in Perth (or, you know, want to fly to Perth from wherever you are,) please let me know if you'd like to come along. The more the merrier.
The book will be launched by the Federal Member for Fremantle, Melissa Parke I met Melissa a couple of years ago at a function, soon after her election to parliament, and since then she's proven to be a great supporter of the FCLC, and of literacy generally. She's also an avid spec-fic reader, so I'm really pleased to have her as the launcher.
And, as long as I'm on matters Darkland-y, while doing a trawl for some reviews of my books for the new-look anthonyeaton.com website (which is almost done, and looking really nice) I found this:
Which is, I think, pretty cool in its own way. Just the fact that someone took the time to really think about the book and then talk about it so intelligently is pretty nice, from my point of view. Even if she didn't like the characters or story (and, I'll be honest, she's not the first to make that observation...) I tried to send her a response but to do so I need to sign up for a youtube account and don't really want to. Either way, if you ever read this, Anna, then thanks.
It's probably also worth mentioning that, following on from her comments, setting 'Nightpeople' in an Australian context was a very deliberate response to the fact that a lot (though not all) of spec fic by Australian Writers tends to be set in worlds that are either completely 'other' or based on a European and often medieval framework. There are very good commercial and artistic reasons for this, but with the Darklands books I really wanted to challenge this trope a little, so it's really nice to know that this aspect of the books worked out for some readers. (I'm also not the first to do this, by a long shot. Sean Williams, among others, has written some *awesome* antipodean spec fic. (Actually, his 'Books of the Change' were among the big inspirations for the Darklands Trilogy - they're awesome!)
Anyway, day one of my month of blogging and I've already resorted to banging on about myself. I'll try for something a little more interesting tomorrow. Promise.
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