New Marla Mason Novel

Marla from Bone Shop (C) Daniel Dos Santos and T. A. Pratt

Marla Mason, sorceress of considerable reputation, queen of snark and all-round badass is back.

I first met Marla around 2007 when Blood Engines was available as a free e-book from Random House in scribd. Since then I've been totally hooked, and when the series by T. A Pratt was dropped by the publisher in 2009. Due to the response from readers wanting to find out more about the character, and read the resolution to the cliffhanger at the end of Spell Games Pratt set up a readers funded sequel, whoch I'm proud to say I backed.

Farewell CatMan

A Tribute to a Beloved Moggy 

When I think of J, I have the impression of her always having had cats around. Thinking a little deeper about this, I realise that this impression is false. J had cats when she was growing up, before I knew her (I'm tempted to say before I was born, but she'll kill me). I remember fondly the stories of her cat that followed her to school that she used to shoo away with manic limb waving, which almost never worked. The fact that her neighbours couldn't see the cat she was waving at behind the short garden walls of the houses in her area only added to her general aura of weirdness for them. It's about as perfect and all encompassing characterisation of her as I can imagine. 

When I first met her and even when we first started being friends, she didn't have any cats. It wasn't until life moved on a little, as its wont to do, and she lived in a different flat that she got cats. That was many years and several moves ago now and the last of her furry feline companions had to say goodbye recently. That over there is Cat, or Mr. Cat, CatMan or  CatManDoo. That last name was given to him by Husband, whom all animals adore, but CatMan especially loved.

THRESHOLDS 2013 Feature Writing Competition

I received this by email from the Folklore mailing list I'm registered on. It coincided with me reading Kate Bernheimer's wonderful introduction to My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me, an anthology of fairy tales from both established and new writers. You can read an extract from it here. In it she mentions the controversy that her suggestion of engaging with fairy tales caused at a writers conference and how, despite the obvious popularity and quality of such writing, 'collections and/or retellings of folk-tales, myths, and fairy-tales are not eligible' for the National Book Awards. If fact, she started a petition to change this, which you can read about here and here. And you can find out if it worked here. 

Anyway, my point is that there is a new writing competition open, and all the details are below. So, what are you waiting for? Go write some fairy tales...