Nailbiters #36

Heist tunnels

There’s a 1955 British black comedy called The Ladykillers (dir. Alex Mackendrick, starring Alec Guiness) about a group of robbers that want to tunnel through the basement of an old lady’s house to stage a security van heist at the train station nearby – the humour is in the way the sweet old lady, Mrs Wilberforce, somehow manages to best the villains.

But honestly, I still like a good old-fashioned heist story? There’s something rogue-ish about it that I really enjoy. And this recent one about a bunch of burglars who tunnelled through a wall to steal $10M-worth of jewelry from an LA store gave me a laugh – especially the part about how the suspects “drove off in a late model Chevy truck” and also how the crime scene later showed “holes cut in a large safe, overturned jewel cases and an empty bottle of scotch whisky.” [my italics]

Please remember to take your own bottle of scotch whisky to your next burglary, if you need some Dutch courage.

Roundup

All Shall Mourn is still going strong on both GoodReads and with online sales, for which I’m very grateful!…I’m taking bookings for school/festival events, including Book Week, so if you’d like to have me visit, hit me up!…I’m on the program for this year’s Melbourne OzComicCon – tix are here at the link…that’s it so far!

Sekret Projekt is Sekret

This month’s edition of Nailbiters is open to all subscribers, so although you folks – my darling regular subscribers 😊 – know a bit about it already, I won’t spill the beans more right now. But I will say that me and my new editors are currently talking about a book title.

Once we have that nailed down, I guess we’ll start the process of making an announcement. Announcements for new books are usually done closer to the book’s actual release than you think, because the prevailing publishing wisdom is that if readers hear about a new title in (for instance) February, they won’t remember anything about it by the time the book releases in December. Publishers like to announce as close to release as they can get away with, to be honest, but I’m pushing to run the announcement a little earlier – I’m fairly confident that with additional things like cover reveals etc, I can keep your attention! Either way, keep your eyes peeled because as soon as I have news, I’ll share it.

And my edit letter has come back! That means my lovely two-week holiday over Easter break is at an end, and it’s time for me to start kicking back into gear.

New publisher!

Over my 11 years in publishing, I’ve worked with Allen & Unwin (Aus), Tundra Books (Can), HarperCollins (Aus), and Little Brown for Younger Readers (US) for my English-language books. Now I’m working with Thomas & Mercer.

Each publisher has its own “in-house management style” – and that phrase covers a lot of things, including how editors work and interact with me, how responsive they are, whether timelines are tight, whether I’ve been adequately consulted on things like covers and marketing, and whether I’ve felt like I have a friendly relationship with my editors and contact people. Some publishers squeeze schedules so you’re working like a maniac over the holiday period; some make you feel like an afterthought; some send you flowers on release day (haven’t had that yet!) or make little gestures to show that you’re appreciated; some really make you feel like you’re collaborating together on making the book the best it can be.

As far as management style goes, Allen & Unwin has probably been my favourite publisher to this point, but Thomas & Mercer seem to be giving them a run for their money.

For instance: My edit letter arrived over the weekend, and it’s given me new energy. Edit letters are funny things. Quite often they make you mad, sometimes they make you sad, and even more rarely, they make you happy. I found myself in one of those rare situations where the edit letter made me happy – and genuinely delighted to start polishing and improving the book.

I’ve written before about how to deal with your edit letter – I packed every single piece of wisdom I could gather together into that article, and I hope it’s made life a smidge easier for people who took my advice. But nowhere in that article does it say anything about being sympatico with your editors from Day One…So this edit is a new experience for me, and I have to say it’s kind of amazing!

I’ll keep you updated on how things progress with the book as we go along 😊

Make more degenerate art

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about art labelled “degenerate”.

How did I get started thinking about it? Well first, people were talking about it online, and then I read a page on Wikipedia which explained that the term “degenerate art” applies to a very specific type of art, namely modern stuff that Nazis hated during WWII.

They hated it so much, they toured an exhibition of it around Germany and Austria in 1937 to show people how garbage it was (lolololol) and claimed that it was “the work of those so corrupted and enfeebled by modern life that they have lost the self-control needed to produce coherent works”. Basically, the Nazis wanted everyone to make traditional “classical” art that aligned with Aryan values, whatever the hell that meant. Anything too weird or sexy or avant-garde or atonal or distorted (or even shit that was “too realistic”) was seen as degenerate.

While the label “degenerate art” kind of dropped off the radar after WWII, I think over the last hundred years there’s been a lean toward labelling stuff “low art/culture” instead. But there’s been a dangerous resurgence of fascist-type rhetoric around what makes art “good” or acceptable, and it’s time to talk about it again. Some art has always been tarred with the “low art” brush, indicating culture that’s too niche or erotic or weird - we need to reject that, in my opinion, especially when people say art like that shouldn’t be created.

But degenerate art isn’t just about sexy or dangerously weird stuff – it can also just be art that doesn’t seem to have a real reason to exist. By which I mean, someone just did it for lols, or did it because they were bored, or whatever. Art that really has no commercial purpose (which, imo, is some of the best art!), and art that doesn’t “say” anything, and art that is simply human self-expression in its purest form.

We actually started doing more of this during covid, if you remember:

And on that theme, I recently went to the screening of Jurassic Park: Castlemaine Redux in my town. It’s a shot-for-shot remake of Jurassic Park, made on zero budget, with local townspeople playing all the roles, and shonky special effects and models. The director, John Roebuck, is a guy who used to teach at the same local high school as me (he took over some of my classes after I went on leave, actually), and he started the project as a way to stave off boredom during lockdown.

As you can see, the project took on a life of its own.

Why did John and everyone involved do this? WHO KNOWS. My partner – who is not an arty or creative person – asked what the whole point of it was. I honestly had no answer. Sometimes you just wanna make stuff! You do it for fun (although everyone on the film set can attest that there were plenty of not-fun parts…and yet they persisted!). You do it to keep yourself busy. You do it as a distraction from Real Life. You do it because…why the hell not?

I’m reminded of the slogan of the traveling theater troupe in Emily St. John Mandel’s exquisite 2014 novel Station Eleven – “Because survival is insufficient”.

I remember lots of people saying to me, when I first started writing, words along the lines of “Well, it’s not exactly Shakespeare, is it?” Lol, thanks for the encouragement – I was very aware that my little stories weren’t Shakespeare. But just because something isn’t Shakespeare or Rembrandt or Mozart or something doesn’t mean it has no value.

No art is wasted. The shitty little thing you create today, that you toss in the trash? It has served some purpose, in the scheme of things – even if it’s just to help make you a better artist.

Art can be meaningful, extraordinary, broadly popular, commercial, timely, successful, significant, eternal.

But at least some of our art should be degenerate. It should be useless. It should be pointless. It should be meaningless, unpopular, obscure, opaque, chaotic. It should be sexy and embarrassing and cringe. It should be janky and silly and weird and ugly and NSFW and throwaway.

Now, more than ever – as voices are silenced and people are being thought-policed and actually policed into dust, as funding is withdrawn and belts are tightened, as folks are put under political and personal pressure – we need artists, and we need art. Something that reminds us who we are, that shows us what it is to be alive, that delights us for no reason at all.

Art doesn’t have to have a reason. Self-expression is supremely human, and sometimes that is all the reason you need.

Witchcraft for Wayward Girls

Grady Hendrix has written a banger with this one – I’ve read all of Hendrix’s books and this is the first one that made me cry. I loved it with my whole heart.

But I also had some thoughts related to how this book is positioned in the world, and here they are:

• First of all, a roundup of the story: The book is set in 1970, and is about a 15yo girl sent to a home for unwed mothers in Florida. She bands together with a number of the other girls over their mistreatment – and when a bookmobile librarian gives her a book called How To Be A Groovy Witch, things get intense.

• The horror of the novel wasn't in the witchcraft so much, but the body horror of pregnancy/birth, and in the abuses suffered by the girls.

• Strong CW for pregnancy/birth scenes, this book does not shy away. Also if you have any triggers around adoption, you might also want to tread carefully. Just be kind to yourself, friends 🖤

• Finally a book that isn't Disneyfied witchcraft! In WFWG, witchcraft is pagan as fuck and exacts a price. There's a strong folk horror/cosmic horror feel to the magic here that digs into the nature of power, and where women's power resides.

• There's a couple of Black characters portrayed here that will stir some issues around whether he's written a Magical Negro trope. I would say Hendrix is maybe trying to write era-appropriate representation? But the path is narrow - I don’t think a Black author would have written these characters, or not in the same way. Hendrix is heavily influenced by Malcolm McDowell, who often has a Black character providing guidance to a white protag (he did it at least twice, in The Elementals and again in Blackwater), and like McDowell, Hendrix was raised in the South. I think Hendrix is skating here, but I can also see how writing a Black character in a book set in 1970 Florida would pose certain constraints. If you’re a Black reader, I’d love to hear your thoughts on it.

• This book is being described as 'mature storytelling' and I think reviewers mean that Hendrix is relying less on horror tropes and camp humour (his stock in trade), and leaning into his strengths, which are about embodying female experience within a perfectly-rendered historical time period.

• It's a deeply moving book: The backstories of the girls, their connections, their mistreatment, their prospects, but also the nature of childbearing when you're giving up a baby for adoption.

• Hendrix has always explored women's experiences in his fiction - I don't think he's ever written a male protagonist? - and he absolutely nails it once again. There were so many times, when I was reading, that I found myself shocked this was written by a guy.

And with this last point, I get to the heart of my concern, which was:

• If this book had been written and released by a female author, I honestly believe it would've been labeled paranormal historical women's fiction and relegated to some dustbin.

• Why - always why - is a book like this about women's experiences being written by a man???? Or maybe I’m whinging here about why a book of this nature, written by a man, received such heavy promotion and support, when I don’t think a similar book by a woman would have received the same consideration. Is that it? Is that what I’m whinging about? Not the author, or the book itself, but the system that surrounds it, or the era in which it was released? Hmm.

• I don’t think Hendrix chose the wrong topic, and I don’t think he “shouldn’t be allowed” to write in women’s spaces. I kind of hate all that crap, I find it pretty reductive. It’s particularly painful now, with so much awful shit in the news about trans voices, and how much they’re silenced (terfs can fuck right off, please and thank you). I don’t want to cut the fictional landscape into smaller and smaller siloed pieces where nobody else is allowed to trespass, as that just seems to serve to limit all of us. I myself have written male POVs! It’s fine! Write as a carrot if you want to! Write as a genderless cyborg in outer space! (or maybe don’t do that, because Martha Wells seems to have a lock on it)

• And I love Hendrix’s work deeply. My opinion on this is not a reflection on Hendrix or his writing – this is a genuinely astonishing book, like all his books. He embodies women's experience here in a way I haven't seen done since his previous novel, The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires, which focused on middle-aged women. Hendrix absolutely gets it. He gets women's struggles, their thoughts, their lives. He gets it in a way that I find almost uncanny. He grew up surrounded by strong Southern women – his mother, sisters, aunts – and as mentioned, everything he writes is focused on women and their lives. It's not an impersonation: There's something deep in Hendrix that resonates with women's experiences in a way I haven't seen before in another male author.

• And because he's a guy, probably the most popular guy author in horror right now except for Stephen King, it will mean that this book gets read by people who wouldn't normally read a book about teenage girls experiencing pregnancy and birth and abuse. He's going to get so many people reading something they would - in any other circumstance - never have picked up.

• HE'S STILL A FUCKING A GUY.

• Like I said, I don’t think Hendrix did anything wrong – this is no Memoirs of a Geisha – and I love WFWG very much. But there are some systemic issues at play here that jangle like a sour note over a book I’d have preferred to have just enjoyed wholeheartedly.

• I want a world where women authors get to portray this stuff, and not have it marketed as 'women's fiction'.

• I want a world where female horror authors aren't put off writing about women's experiences like this, for fear of being pigeonholed.

• In this anti-Roe era, when women's lives are being undercut in every possible way, I would like to see horror publishing be more supportive of women authors. Online, I have coincidentally seen people celebrating “Women in Horror Month” – make of that what you will.

So yeah. Lots of a big feelings.

I still rec the hell out of Witchcraft for Wayward Girls and encourage you to read it.

I also encourage you to read the following female and non-binary horror authors (in no particular order): Catriona Ward, Angela Slatter, CJ Leede, Zoje Stage, Gemma Files, T. Kingfisher, Ania Ahlborn, Elle Nash, Tananarive Due, Angela Carter, Rachel Harrison, Madeleine Roux, Mariana Enriquez, Daphne du Maurier, Augustina Bazterrica, Gretchen Felker-Martin, Ellen Datlow, Octavia Butler, Anne Rice, V. Castro, Kiersten White, Michelle Paver, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, VC Andrews, Kendare Blake, Jac Jemc, Simone St James, Cass Khaw, Jenny Kiefer, Allison Rumfitt, Isabel Canas, Elizabeth Engstrom, Jennifer Thorne, Alma Katsu, Helen Oyeyemi, Sarah Langan, Cynthia Pelayo, Susan Hill, Kathe Koja, Tanith Lee, Mona Awad, Gwendolyn Kiste, Mira Grant (Seanan McGuire), Cathrynne Valente, Katya de Becerra, and of course, our forever-queens, Shirley Jackson and Mary Shelley.

If you haven’t heard of any of them beyond the last two, maybe think about why.

MURDERBOT

I am having an emotion.

Look, I’m not sold on Skarsgard as Murderbot, and I’m not sure this will be the screen version I want to see (my screen version would be way way way way drier and darker, because in my mind, Murderbot is like “what if Marvin the Paranoid Android and Robocop had a depressed child”). But I love Wells, and I love that the show has been made, and I’m prepared to find a lens to watch the show through that will make it enjoyable for me.

A friend suggested I think of it as in-universe fanfiction – Murderbot as a kind of Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon. My friend said that Murderbot itself would hate that a human had been cast to play them, and would find the entire thing almost soul-destroyingly cringe…but that ART would have watched every episode already more times than you can count.

I can probably live with that.

(Also excuse me, but John Cho in Sanctuary Moon clips?? That part I loved. PERFECTION).

*

Thank you so much for reading this month! (I know it’s late, and I apologise – every single day I thank Hecate that you folks are so patient) We also have some extra friends this month, as I opened this edition for both paying and non-paying readers, in the hope that some of my Black Hand readers might find this edition interesting enough to take the plunge and subscribe. If you do subscribe, I thank you!

Anyway, now I’m off to read the replies to my edit letter and hopefully get started planning out the edits I need to make. Wish me luck!

I hope you all have an excellent April – eat more Chocolate Bunnies! Make more degenerate art! Read more books!

Take care now, and catch you again really soon 😊

xxEllie