Here’s some more behind the scenes for the making of the Aunt Enid booktrailer…
“There was a knock on the door. Enid’s silver walking stick glinted in the umbrella stand. She quietly placed the rolling pin on the hall table and snatched up her trusty stick. No one gets past Enid Turner!”
And the new quote card for social media: Feel free to share!
and another one for FB banners.
Daemons, fairies, magic: it’s all real!
The Otherworld is bleeding through cracks into our world. And Adelaide is ground zero.
Aunt Enid is just your average seventy-something year old. She loves to cook, is a regular at bingo and spends hours in her garden, talking to her army of garden gnomes and fussing over the colour of her hydrangeas…
and a Protector Extraordinaire.
Adelaide Supanova Floorplan.
I’m just inside the doors, next to the Comic Book Supastars.
And both my talks are at the Imagineers and Gamers Stage… just a little further on. Just follow the arrows.
Adelaide Supanova is early this year – weekend of 3rd-4th November. And Aunt Enid wants to meet you.
Over the next two weeks I’ll be launching new social media teasers and the first booktrailer teaser for my latest book, ‘Aunt Enid: Protector Extraordinaire’.
Come find me in Artist Alley. I’ll have Aunt Enid paperbacks, hot off the presses, as well as ‘You and whose army?’ mugs, badges and t-shirts. (As well as all three Viola Stewart books, MIG and Viola mugs)
I’ll also be posting some of the maker videos (making props for the booktrailer)…
Here’s the first one: Gathering a Gnome Army.
or
Check out where to buy if you
live outside Australia
The Adventures of Viola Stewart series has it all:
murder
mummies
mystery
madness
magic and illusion
and Jack the Ripper…
Dear Reader, I’ve got some news. I’ve been accepted by Supanova – two talks!
This year I’m doing TWO talks at this year’s Adelaide Supanova. If you’re in Adelaide for Supanova come and hear about steampunk and writing methods (I’m a pantser-plotter).
Here’s the details:
Sat 3rd Nov @ 2.30pm – Imagineer’s and Gaming Stage
Creating Your Own Steampunk World or Persona
(on writing/ costuming steampunk)
Use existing history and places to create your own unique steampunk world, or you can design your own from scratch. I’ll discuss steampunk tropes and the use of gadgets, as well as various steampunk sub-genres, how to include magic and the supernatural and how to incorporate ‘punk’ in your world and stories.
I’ll also explore character types, their interaction in their new steampunk world and how the process can be used to create steampunk costume personas.
This panel will be of interest to those who are steampunk-curious, interested in writing steampunk stories or creating steampunk comics, and to costumers/cosplayers interested in creating their own unique steampunk persona.
Sun 4th Nov @ 4.00pm – Imagineer’s and Gaming Stage
Indie Author talk
with fellow Adelaide spec fic authors, Katie Fraser, Kylie Leane and Matt Pike (on plotting and pantsing).
A group of Independent Authors will present a panel on the different ways they write their novels. There are generally two approaches to writing a novel, ‘plotting’ where you outline the plot and scenes before starting to write or ‘pantsing’ (from flying by the seat of your pants) where authors start writing and see where it goes from there…
I’ll also be in Artist Alley all weekend.
If you follow me on instagram or twitter (or FB) you would have seen my (almost) daily Liptember posts.
What is Liptember, you ask? Liptember is a campaign raising funds and awareness for women’s mental health during the month of September. To support the fundraising campaign you could either buy lipsticks from various chemists around Australia, or donate to people who had joined up for the cause. My ‘donation page’ is/was: https://www.liptember.com.au/karen-carlisle (I think you can still donate, if you wish).
Funds raised during Liptember are donated to the Centre of Women’s Mental Health, Lifeline, Batyr, RUOK?, The Jean Hailes Foundation and The Pretty Foundation.
Thanks to my supporters, I raised $80 for Liptember this year.
During September, I wore a different Liptember lipstick each day, and shared a little about my constant struggles with anxiety and PTSD.
On a bad day, it can be hard to face the outside world. As an author, I attend events (like Supanova in just a few weeks). I love chatting to people, but large crowds, shopping centres – even parties – are sources of anxiety. I am immensely uncomfortable in public. Before I do talks, my hands sweat, I shake, my heart races. But this is the life I have chosen. (and there are no life and death consequences)…
So, this project wasn’t just for Liptember. It was for me too.
Each photo took me out of my comfort zone. Selfies are personal, revealing. You know those dreams where you are standing naked in front of the class? That is how I felt each day. But I kept going. Because I’m tired of feeling anxious all the time, of the fear, the pain and the dread. It was a self-inflicted desensitisation therapy.
This week has been particularly hard. It’s been hard to get out of bed over the past month. Then I struggle to write. I’ve tried to concentrate on visuals and physio visits to help reduce pain (anxiety seems to focus as muscle, back pain and migraine). October-November always looms as the month I feel forced to do annual paperwork for my old job. There’s this constant feeling of doom and gloom and the world’s going to end type stuff.
For over six years (more like ten, really), I’ve tried to show a strong, to hide most of my struggles from the world. Who needs to read about that crap, right? And now look where it’s got me. Ongoing insurance battles are just making it all worse. Sucking any enthusiasm I struggle to muster. Just when I glimpse a possible light at the end of the tunnel, they drag me back into the darkness.
Liptember wriggled me out of the shell. Mental health needs to be talked about. It can be uncomfortable. It can be scary. But we can’t hide it any more. Too many of us are suffering in silence.
All I can say is thank God for my hubby, my writing, my art, my family and friends….
and chocolate.
Lots of chocolate.
Welcome to my guest blogger this week, Bryce Raffle, editor of the dreadpunk anthology, Deadsteam, which contains my penny dreadful inspired short story, The Case of the Murderous Migraine.
Bryce is also a fellow steampunk and long-time member of Scribblers Den (an international steampunk writers forum). Take it away, Bryce.
Initially, when I came up with the concept for the DeadSteam anthology, I had it in mind that I wanted to showcase the dark, supernatural side of steampunk.
Steampunk is a reimagining of the Victorian era from a modern day perspective, with a lens squarely pointed at the technology: the brass and copper, the engines running on coal and steam. But while the technology of Queen Victoria’s era fascinated me, I began to see other inspiration in that time period beyond the technology. Victorian literature was one source of inspiration. In particular, I began looking at the Victorian penny dreadful.
The cheap, sensational literature of the era, known as penny dreadfuls, were sold for a penny per issue. The stories were released in weekly parts, and often portrayed supernatural entities, such as ghosts, ghouls, and, of course, vampires.
A Feast of Blood, or Varney the Vampire, by James Malcolm Rymer (and/or Thomas Preskett Prest—penny dreadfuls were often written anonymously, and Varney was variously attributed to both Prest and Rymer), was a perennial favourite, running at a whopping total length of nearly 667,000 words. Varney introduced many of the common vampire tropes still common today, most notably the sharpened fangs now associated with the undead creatures.
“The figure turns half round, and the light falls upon its face. It is perfectly white—perfectly bloodless. The eyes look like polished tin; the lips are drawn back, and the principal feature next to those dreadful eyes is the teeth—the fearful looking teeth—projecting like those of some wild animal, hideously, glaringly white, and fang-like. It approaches the bed with a strange, gliding movement. It clashes together the long nails that literally appear to hang from the finger ends. No sound comes from its lips.”
– James Malcolm Rymer, Thomas Preskett Prest Varney the Vampire
Penny Dreadfuls, otherwise known as penny bloods, also portrayed the deeds of criminals, such as the Resurrection Man portrayed in The Mysteries of London.
The stories often drew from gothic literature for their inspiration, and were often reprints of popular gothic novels, such as The Castle of Otranto. The dark and stormy nights, therefore, were not far where penny dreadfuls were concerned.
I began to see in penny dreadfuls an inspiration for a steampunk anthology with more of those dark, supernatural elements that you’d expect in a penny dreadful but not necessarily in your average steampunk story. I wanted to show a bit less of the science and gadgets and machinery and a lot more of the Victorian Gothic.
This was before I stumbled across dreadpunk.
Dreadpunk is an emerging genre founded by Derek “The Dreadpope” Tatum, who on his website dreadpunk.com, describes the genre as the “‘costume drama’ of the macabre.”
“I coined the term ‘dreadpunk’ in early 2015. At the time, there appeared to be a resurgence of interest in the Gothic; most notably, Penny Dreadful was on Showtime and Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak was scheduled for release later that year.” – Derek Tatum, (dreadpunk.com)
I reached out to Tatum for further info on the dreadpunk movement, and he was kind enough to get back to me, describing the movement as “gothic horror with modern storytelling techniques.” Hammer Horror, he said, makes a good comparison, “since that was an attempt to bring ‘period’ horror up to the era it was made.”
Besides Hammer, he also referenced Corman’s Poe flicks, Burton’s Sleepy Hollow, Ravenloft, Coppola’s Dracula, Castlevania, and of course (Showtime’s) Penny Dreadful.
Exactly the sort of thing I had in mind for the DeadSteam anthology.
I began to envision DeadSteam as a dreadpunk anthology, although I did encourage steampunk authors to submit their stories, with the caveat that they should be more in the vein of Edgar Allan Poe and Mary Shelley and less in the realm of Jules Verne and HG Wells. In other words, less science fiction and more of the trappings of gothic horror and penny dreadfuls.
Thus emerged DeadSteam.
Each of the stories owes some credit to the writers of penny dreadfuls, who introduced us to fang-bearing vampires like Sir Francis Varney, resurrection men who dredge the dead up from their rest to sell to anatomists, and ghosts haunting the halls of gothic manors on dark, foggy nights.
Pre-orders are available now in hardcover, paperback, and ebook.
Thank you, Bryce, for introducing us to dreadpunk.
Photos supplied by Bryce Raffle.
