(unpublished sketch)

It’s high time I mentioned this: ‘Steam Girl’ is my first published prose story (i.e. without pictures), which came out late last year in Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories, edited by the wonderful Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant, and published by Candlewick Press in the US and Walker Books in the UK. I’ve written prose fiction all my life (in between the comics), but never felt brave enough to publish any until now.

Steampunk! also includes prose stories by M. T. Anderson, Holly Black, Libba Bray, Cassandra Clare, Cory Doctorow, Elizabeth Knox, Garth Nix, Christopher Rowe, Delia Sherman, Ysabeau S. Wilce and Kelly Link herself and comics by Shawn Cheng and Kathleen Jennings. It’s a fantastic anthology and I’m thrilled to be included.

The cherry on the cake is that ‘Steam Girl’ has just been reprinted in The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, volume 6, edited by Jonathan Strahan (published by Night Shade Books), which is very humbling. Guess I’d better finish that damn novel now, eh?

Ways to buy it and a couple of reviews after the jump:
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Tomorrow evening in Auckland, I’ll be presenting a new comic with co-conspirator Emily Perkins at The Orcon Great Blend 2010. The Great Blend is an occasional event put together by Public Address and Orcon, and this time the theme is collaboration. Organiser Russell Brown put various artists, writers and other creative miscreants into pairs, urging us to create some kind of collaborative work for the occasion.

My team-mate was novelist, short storyist, creative writing teacher and all-round literary star Emily Perkins, who enthusiastically embraced my suggestion that we do a jam comic together – a conversation in words and pictures on the topic of why we write. Every day for a month, one of us drew a panel and emailed it to the other, who then replied the following day with their own panel. Although she claimed she hadn’t drawn anything since school, Emily launched into the task with gusto. And it turns out she can really draw! Our conversation took place as much through the images as the text, and by the end I was simultaneously exhausted and energised!

So anyway, the final result is a 32-page mini-comic (with one large panel per page), which we will read live at the Civic Wintergarden tomorrow evening. We’ll also have copies of the mini to sell on the night. If you’re in Auckland and want to come along, the event is free but you have to RSVP to get a seat (Update: IT’S FULL! SORRY). Hopefully, there’ll be some copies of the mini left afterwards, and maybe we’ll put the conversation online some time too…?