Anna Tambour and Others

(1907 - 2004)
"Actually, Asher was an excellent dinner companion. Anybody who wears a loupe around his neck at dinner, and tells you how he finally trained his box turtle Mabel to listen to his commands (after 35 years), or sent small boys out to catch bats, and then explain how mites can only live in the left ear (right ear in the old world) of moths to evade the bats, or who would build a mammoth box kite and fly it half a mile high off Cobble, or who would play his French horn so that you'd hear it across the valley, Anybody like that makes an excellent dinner companion."

- Edward Perkins,

in a letter to A.T.

— A little Treat —

" The lepidopterist who seeks an easy introduction to the Astigmata had best leave his collection and visit the nearest cheese shop. "

Home of

The Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Bulwer-Lytton

a place of compassion in a cruel world

Anna Tambour currently
lives in the Australian bush with
a large family of other species,
including one man.

(Rosie, the beauty in the picture above, died on the 19th of January, 2006. Her tributes are firstly this, and then this.)

Qs and As

Interview by members of Chronicles Network April 2006
Audio interview by Evo Terra, Dragon Page October 2005
Interview by Keith Brooke April 2005
Ben Peek's 2005 Snapshot of Australian Fiction April '05
Walking Jeff VanderMeer's plank Feb '05

anna_tambour at yahoo.com

Books by A.T.

Online stories

"She writes so far left field that you need binoculars to see her."

- Girlie Jones, Not if You Were the Last Short Story on Earth

Anthologies & magazines that include A.T.'s stories

May 2008

The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy: Sixteen Original Works by Speculative Fiction's Finest Voices

edited by

Ellen Datlow

29 April release

Gladiolus Exposed

& stories by Jason Stoddard, Lucy Sussex, Christopher Rowe, Elizabeth Bear, Nathan Ballingrud, Carol Emshwiller, Maureen McHugh, Richard Bowes, Margo Lanagan, Lavie Tidhar, Barry N. Malzberg, Laird Barron, Jeffrey Ford, Pat Cadigan, and
Paul McAuley & Kim Newman

Paper Cities: An Anthology of Urban Fantasy

edited by

Ekaterina Sedia

Order Here

Published by Senses Five Press

The Age of Fish, Post-flowers

& stories by Forrest Aguirre, Barth Anderson, Steve Berman, Darin Bradley, Stephanie Campisi, Hal Duncan, Mike Jasper, Vylar Kaftan, Jay Lake, Paul Meloy, Richard Parks, Ben Peek, Cat Rambo, Jenn Reese, David Schwartz, Cat Sparks, Mark Teppo, Catherynne M. Valente, Greg van Eekhout, and Kaaron Warren

Jan - March 2008

EŞİK CİNİ 13

Two stories (The tiger and the mice & Sweat, Joy, and Thunderation) and an interview,

translated into Turkish by Nurduran Duman

Eþik Cini means 'Elf of Sills'

The Workers' Paradise

edited by

Russell B. Farr and Nick Evans

"Seahoney"

& stories by Simon Brown, Jenny Schwartz, Cat Sparks, David Walker, Rjurik Davidson, Bill Congreve, Rowena Cory Daniells, George Ivanoff, Karron Warren, Nathan Burrage, David J. Kane, Matthew Chrulew & Roland Boer, Robin Hillard, Ashley Arnold, Robert Hood, Susan Wardle, and Dirk Flinthart

2007

Subterranean #7

edited by Ellen Datlow

"The Jeweller of Second-hand Roe"

Aurealis Award, Horror Short Story

& stories by Lisa Tuttle, Rick Bowes, Jeffrey Ford, Joel Lane and John Pelan, M. Rickert, A.T., Terry Bisson, and a novella by Lucius Shepard

Logorrhea: Good Words Make Good Stories

edited by John Klima

Order here or ask for it at your bookstore

"Pococurante"

& stories by Hal Duncan, Liz Williams, David Prill, Clare Dudman, Alex Irvine, Marly Youmans, Michael Moorcock, Daniel Abraham, Michelle Richmond, A.T., Tim Pratt, Elizabeth Hand, Alan DeNiro, Matthew Cheney, Jay Caselberg, Paolo Bacigalupi, Jay Lake, Leslie What, Neil Williamson, Theodora Goss, Jeff VanderMeer

Interfictions: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing

edited by

Delia Sherman and Theodora Goss

"The Shoe in SHOES' Window"

& stories by Karen Jordan Allen, Chris Barzak, Tempest Bradford, Matthew Cheney, Michael Deluca, Adrian Ferrero, Colin Greenland, Csilla Kleinheincz, Joy Marchand, Holly Phillips, Rachel Pollack, Veronica Schanoes, Lea Sihol, Jon Singer, Vandana Singh, A.T., Mikal Trimm, Leslie What, Catherynne Valente

2006

"The Syncopation Streak"

Polyphony 6

edited by Deborah Layne and Jay Lake

"The Beginnings, Endings, and Middles Ball"

Read it in Omnidawn's free sampler

ParaSpheres:

Fabulist and New Wave Fabulist Stories

edited by

Rusty Morrison & Ken Keegan

"See Here, See There"

Agog! Ripping Reads

edited by Cat Sparks

"The Slime: A love story"

Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 19

edited by Gavin Grant and Kelly Link

"The Cat Story"

Andromeda Spaceways, #24

edited by Edwina Harvey

"There is No Rice Pudding in the Sea"

Fantasy Magazine, #3

edited by Sean Wallace

in Mythic Delirium

edited by Mike Allen

a poem: "Trapped Words"

Hear it read by Alistair Rennie

A Novel and a Collection by A.T.

A Locus Recommended Reading List Selection

His eyelashes fluttered. 'Oh dearie me. You asked, and I'm telling you how it is. I never lie.'
I shot him a look that would pierce most people of my acquaintance.
He looked blandly back. However, he seemed truthful.

Angela Pendergast, escapee from the Australian bush, grew up with the smell of hot mutton fat in her hair, the thought of her teeth crunching a cold Tim Tam chocolate biscuit -- the height of decadent frivolity.

Now, though her tastes have grown and she knows absolutely what she wants, her life is embarrassingly stuck.

So when the Devil drops into her bedroom in her sharehouse in inner-city Sydney with a contract in hand, she signs.

He's got only a Hell's week to fulfil his side, but in the meantime he must chaperone her -- or is it the other way around?

The SF Site: Featured Review by Rich Horton

"...a wicked, thoroughly unpredictable romp . . . Spotted Lily might just be a particularly inventive comic take on wish-fulfillment, but soon enough it strays far from the beaten path...a dizzying but delightful journey through old myths and modern chaos, turning Faust and Pygmalion on their ear as it cuts its own path toward something like self-knowledge."

- Faren Miller, Locus

"I hate giving away the story, but allow me to say that this novel is not going where you think it is....teaming with genuine wit and humor... excellent writing...One thing I’m sure of is that it should be required reading for all those who go into writing fiction with dreams of great remuneration and fame. If it were, Tambour would already be both wealthy and famous."

- Jeffrey Ford

"One of the things I liked most about this book was that it was so difficult to tell where it was going...the book is so well written that for a lot of the time you don’t actually notice that it has a supernatural element to it."

- Cheryl Morgan, Emerald City

"It's passionate, it's intense, it's profoundly human and humane and honest, and, when it comes down to it, a hell of a read.

I was sitting up late into the night to finish it. It's that good."

- Keith Brooke

"This shocker . . . may well strike some

like a bracing tonic and others like something

a lot less palatable."

PublishersWeekly

Anna Tambour, on the strength of Spotted Lily and her earlier story collection, Monterra's Deliciosa & Other Tales &, is one of the most delightful, original, and varied new writers on hand.

- Rich Horton

Perhaps you would like to read

Chapter One

Published by Prime Books
Cover art for Spotted Lily:
The Artist by Norman Lindsay (Australian) c.1921,

copyright © Lin Bloomfield
Stomates on scouring rush, electron microscope view, copyright © Dennis Kunkel Microscopy, Inc.
Book Design: Anna Tambour

and another

Locus Recommended Reading List Selection

Monterra's Deliciosa
& Other Tales &

Introduction by Keith Brooke

Temptation, indulgence, exploration and shortcuts. Love and compulsion. An ocean in Kansas, the Magic Lino, the real story behind the one told by Robert Louis Stevenson, a chef dying of ennui, gathering bluebirds, paying with candywrap. And the greatest story ever told -- by Asher E. Treat, of course. The glorious chaos of singing, prancing, perfumed and stinking, the dead and the busy, tragic and achingly otherwise--life itself.

"A winning, offbeat sensibility is at work in the 31 stories and poems that make up Tambour's first fiction collection, finding the lighter side of potentially sober themes and giving humanist spins to scientific ideas. Certain tales show an exotic spirit that puts them squarely in the magic realist tradition, while others reflect self-consciousness about the craft of writing. All but a handful of these stories are original to the volume, which makes a fine introduction
to a writer little known . . ."

- Publishers Weekly

"Monterra's Deliciosa & Other Tales & could never be mistaken for ordinary genre fiction ...don't imagine this as high falutin' 'lit'rature' accessible only to people with advanced degrees. Anyone with a taste for beauty, audacity, sensuality, and wit can find much to enjoy here."

- Faren Miller, Locus

chosen in two categories in the
Locus 2003 Recommended Reading List

Collection
Novelette: "Valley of the Sugars of Salt"

from
Year's Best Fantasy & Horror:

Seventeenth Annual Collection

(Year's Best Fantasy and Horror)

edited by Ellen Datlow, Kelly Link, Gavin Grant

Honourable Mentions
for

Monterra's Deliciosa
Öm
The Rest Cure
Sweat, Joy, and Thunderation
Valley of the Sugars of Salt
(all stories original to this collection)

". . . odd and surreal . . . sometimes whimsical, and often wonderfully strange."
- Kelly Link and Gavin Grant

What about Medlars?

I admit it.

These venerable individualists (and I've known many personally) have charmed me ― so much so that they star in "Valley of the Sugars of Salt" and have managed to shove themselves into cameo roles in a couple of other stories here.

Table of Contents

Published by Prime Books
Cover art for

Monterra's Deliciosa & Other Tales &:
"Red Blood Cells" electron microscope view,
© Tina (Weatherby) Carvalho / MicroAngela
"King Parrot (Alisterus scapularis) " by John Hunter, c.1788, National Library of Australia
Book design: Anna Tambour

Available from quality independents such as:

Borderlands

Clarkesworld Books

Powells

Project Pulp

In Australia, see Planet Fantastic

In Brisbane, visit Pulp Fiction

Shop 28 Anzac Square Arcade,

267 Edward St

If you buy books online, then through these links you can support infinity plus, where the best in contemporary, quality fiction

doesn't go out of print.
Monterra's Deliciosa & Other Tales &

from Amazon.com / from Amazon.co.uk.
Spotted Lily

from Amazon.com / from Amazon.co.uk.

Reviews

etc.

SPOTTED LILY

Review "food, the devil, and fame" by Jayaprakash Satyamurthy in his blog Criminal English: April 6, 2006

Nominated for the William L. Crawford Award

Locus listing as Recommended Reading: 2005

Listed by Jeffrey Ford as one of "my favorite reads of 05 in no particular order"

Listed by Vera Nazarian as one of her "Ten Most Memorable Books of 2005"

Rich Horton review SF Site, December 2005

Cheryl Morgan review Emerald City "The Devil in Sydney", #121Sept 2005

Jeffrey Ford review in his blog 14theditch Sept 12 2005

Jeff VanderMeer comments VanderWorld

Sept 12 2005

Publishers Weekly review June 20 2005

Listed in "New and Notable Books" Locus June 2005

Locus review by Faren Miller, May 2005

Vera Nazarian, review

in her blog, Norilana April 19 2005

2004 Australian Science Fiction
(Ditmar) Award Nominee:
Best New Talent

MONTERRA'S DELICIOSA & OTHER TALES &

Faren Miller, review Locus Feb 2004

Publishers Weekly review Dec 22, 2003

Rich Horton, in Lost Pages:
"A Different Drum: Anna Tambour's First Collection Reviewed" Dec 2003

Jeff Vandermeer, in Vanderworld, November 15, 2003

Michael J. Jasper in Tangent:
Review of "Klokwerk's Heart"
January 15, 2001

The
virtuous medlar circle
thoroughly bletted

Guest Features

July 2008

It's not like choosing the color of her hair

by A.C.E. Bauer

Dialysis in Paradise

by Marilyn Pride

Martha, Jane, and Babette

a true story

a classic to enjoy rather than think you should have read

by H. Rider Haggard

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