Anna Tambour  and Others


 
14 May
"Spring 2008" *
Heliotrope Magazine
Table of Contents
Letter from the editor: Jay Tomio
Full PDF Version
Fiction
G-O-O-D-B-Y-E
by Nick Mamatas
 
Poetry
Succession At Quandong Creek
by Anna Tambour
 
Articles
The Shadow Cabinet:
Spotlight on Dedalus
by Jeff Vandermeer
 
A Virtual Anthology:
Weinachtabend
by Ian R. MacLeod
 
The Devil and Mr. V
by Catherynne M. Valente
 
Exclusive
What Burns Within (excerpt)
by Sandra Rut
tan

May is Autumn Here
in the southern hemisphere 

Lacewings set out on their Post-egg life

Have you tried my blog?
 
 
Like oysters to some,
and like oysters to others.

 
"I hate
 quotations. "
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

 
"The very nature of a cucumber sandwich makes it poor throwing."
- P.G. Wodehouse, "Open House", Mulliner Nights
 
Sensationalism is a grossly undervalued and misrepresented effect of fiction.
Alistair Rennie, On the spot at Fantasybookspot
 
Under the rules, refusing to remove a T-shirt saying "World Youth Day is a waste of public money" could be deemed a criminal offence."
- Anna Katzman
 
12 New Body Shapes  
- Cosmopolitan cover story
 
Smythe drained his glass and placed it meaningfully on the table. I did the same, a trifle more meaningfully.
- David Langford, "The Case of Jack the Clipper" in The Mammoth Book of Comic Fantasy II edited by Mike Ashley
 
McDonalds on Mars - Constructed with crystals of Cibachrome bleach, protein, and the microscope field diaphragm.
- Michael W. Davidson and The Florida State University, Microscapes
 
He looked much more like a parrot than most parrots do.
- P.G. Wodehouse, Three Men and a Maid
 
We often convince ourselves while we argue.
- Maybanke Anderson, "Should we tell the children?" The Woman's Voice, Australia,1895
 
 
More in The Cellar ØØØ
 

 
 
Bogged by blogs?
Try
Bowl of Critters
an occasional snack

Now serving:
 
The Watchmaker
 
Science Fiction vs Fantasy?
 
Feeling Like a Man Again
 
Out-of-the-box Serving Suggestion
 
The Mary Quant Jelly Thing & other surprises from the sea

CURRENTLY ONLINE on other sites:

Stories
 
Temptation of the Seven Scientists
 
Strange Incidents in Foreign Parts
from
 
The Emperor's Backscratcher
 
Travels with Robert Louis Stevenson in the Cévennes
 
The Wages of Food-Play
 
Klokwerk's Heart
 
Me-Too

Essays

How to Play the Cows

Before something is camp, what do you do?

Ownership? in Fiction?

AUSTRALIAN ILLUSTRATORS (AND CARTOONISTS): An extraordinary richness

Ghost Window

Glimpses of 'that empty, dry landscape'

NATIVE FOREST: Southeast Coast Australia

But no pud comes close to The Magic Pudding

Literary Titan, Asher E. (huh?) Treat

In memoriam
Asher E. Treat
(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

 
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

 
M
onterra'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
 
 

 
Previous Features...

 
More Irresistibles
 
More in The Cellar ØØØ
 
July 2008
 
Annoyed? Inconvenienced? Nah, just incandescent with rage
Kama SEAtra : Secrets of Sex in the Sea
by Sheree Marris
 
"Shock value"
 
Lawyers curdle at "the other white milk"
 
No rains despite frog marriages
 
Hal Duncan interviews  translator Hannes Riffel
 
Polona Tratnik microcosmos
 
Letter from Afghanistan
 
Elater or Pseudoelater?
World of Monsters
by Edgar Wishbone (Marc McBride)

Daily Cheese, Bread
& Medlars
 
Making Light
SciTech Daily
Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
Talking Squid
Street Anatomy
The Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form
Reporters without Borders
Too Many Chefs
Budak
Bookslut
The Reading Experience
The Panda's Thumb
Corante
14th The Ditch
Tree of Life
Apothecary's Drawer
The Phrontistery
A Vivisection of Virge
Pharyngula
PhaWRONGula
Gode Cookery
Infinity Plus
Strange Horizons
The Mumpsimus
Banned Books Online
Notes from the Geek Show
Urban Legends & Folklore
The Urban Sprawl Project
Nursery Rhymes' Secret History
SovLit
Folklore & Mythology
Sacred Texts
Quackwatch
VanderWorld
Giornale Nuovo
Scientist, Interrupted
Book Crossing
We love: Book Design
Ratifiers for Democracy
Public Library of Science
eGullet
Persephone Books
Okinawan Slug of the Week
 

 
Previous Guest Features
 
 
MARILYN PRIDE
a glimpse into her worlds, and an interview
(This is the first in a series on My Favourite Artists who are still breathing)
 
'Tin Toys that Never Were'
an introduction to and interview of
LEWIS P. MORLEY
(This is the second in the series)

 
Why I like nudibranchs, marine slugs with Verve
by Hans Bertsch
 
Horses and Others on Paper
by Ophelia Jasmin Keys
 
Nobody Did Debris Like Jack Kirby
by Jamie Shanks
 
Don't turn loose
&
Heat
by Ferris Gilli
 
Why Postmodernists
Don't Climb Mountains
by Alistair Rennie
 
Garlic and Honey
a story from
Tales of Nasr-ed-din Khoja
translated from the Turkish text

by Henry D. Barnham
(a classic to enjoy rather than think you should have read)
 
Night of the Living Crickets
by Spencer Pate
 
a selection from 
And Your Point Is?
Scorn and Meaning
in Jeff Lint's fiction
edited by Steve Aylett
 
Terminós
by Dean Francis Alfar
 
Terror Australis Incognito