It has definitely been a while since I did one of these. Many of my talented writer buddies have been going great guns just lately, and I would be remiss in not pointing you towards these fine new works!
All posts by Jason Fischer
Contents for Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror Announced
Some great news that I can finally reveal to the world. My short story “The School Bus” (from Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine #46) is going to be reprinted in the Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror, from Ticonderoga Publications. This is going to be an absolute door-stop of a book, cram-packed with quality short stories from Australia’s best and brightest. I think I’m gonna shell out for the hard-cover version of this, and pop it onto the brag shelf with pride 🙂 even better, once more I get to share a print collection with many of my buddies and peeps, which is always a nice feeling.
Here’s the press release, with the full (and rather impressive) table of contents. That’s some nice work, folks!
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Ticonderoga Publications is walking on sunshine to announce the contents for its inaugural Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror anthology.
Editors Liz Grzyb and Talie Helene have produced a list of 33 excellent tales by some of Australia’s biggest names as well as some emerging writers.
The anthology collects 150,000 words of the best stories published last year from the Antipodes.
“We’re pleased with the number of fabulous stories that were published in 2010 that we had to choose from,” Liz Grzyb said.
“You could hold this anthology up against any international collection – Australians rock for diverse voices, imagination, and compelling writing,” Talie Helene added.
The stories are (alphabetically by writer):
- RJ Astruc: “Johnny and Babushka”
- Peter M Ball: “L’esprit de L’escalier”
- Alan Baxter: “The King’s Accord”
- Jenny Blackford: “Mirror”
- Gitte Christensen: “A Sweet Story”
- Matthew Chrulew: “Schubert By Candlelight”
- Bill Congreve: “Ghia Likes Food”
- Rjurik Davidson: “Lovers In Caeli-Amur”
- Felicity Dowker: “After the Jump”
- Dale Elvy: “Night Shift”
- Jason Fischer: “The School Bus”
- Dirk Flinthart: “Walker”
- Bob Franklin: “Children’s Story”
- Christopher Green: “Where We Go To Be Made Lighter”
- Paul Haines: “High Tide At Hot Water Beach”
- L.L. Hannett: “Soil From My Fingers”
- Stephen Irwin: “Hive”
- Gary Kemble: “Feast Or Famine”
- Pete Kempshall: “Brave Face”
- Tessa Kum: “Acception”
- Martin Livings: “Home”
- Maxine McArthur: “A Pearling Tale”
- Kirstyn McDermott: “She Said”
- Andrew McKiernan: “The Memory Of Water”
- Ben Peek: “White Crocodile Jazz”
- Simon Petrie: “Dark Rendezvous”
- Lezli Robyn: “Anne-droid of Green Gables”
- Angela Rega: “Slow Cookin’ “
- Angela Slatter: “The Bone Mother”
- Angela Slatter & LL Hannett: “The February Dragon”
- Grant Stone: “Wood”
- Kaaron Warren: “That Girl”
- Janeen Webb: “Manifest Destiny”
In addition to the above incredible tales, the volume will include a review of 2010 and a list of recommended stories.
The editors will shortly begin reading for the second volume of The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror.
The anthology is scheduled for publication in June 2011. The anthology will be available in hardcover, ebook and trade editions and may be pre-ordered at http://indiebooksonline.com.
Should have been up for the Archibald “The Death of Spongebob”
Death of Sponge Bob – Erik Alos
“Alluding to the BP oil spill, the painting foresees an environmental apocalypse from man’s rape and destruction of the natural world. There is only one possible savior. The ancient hymn notes, “Absorbent, yellow and porous is He.” Although immaculately conceived by asexual budding, the poriferan is paradoxically both completely divine and the most primitive animal in the ocean’s depths. As a sea creature, he succumbs to the toxic effects of the oozing petroleum. Still, the death of the only savior does not leave mankind without hope. With his dying breaths, he infuses his rainbow soul into the remaining, healthy biosphere. His one tired eye conveys both sadness, and forgiveness of mankind’s betrayal. An innocent flaxen-haired virgin cradles the dying deity in her arms, but as the mother of future generations of mankind, she represents hope. As she looks to heavens for guidance, the Holy Spirit, represented as a crowned oily pelican, looks on reassuringly.”
(from http://www.mars-z.org/post/4480991327/death-of-sponge-bob-erik-alos-alluding-to-the)
Oh, what’s this trumpet for? Why, to toot my own horn :-)
Haven’t done an updatey type post for a while, but here’s some writing-related stuff worth whacking on the ole blog:
Anywhere But Earth
First up, the complete Table of Contents for the Anywhere but Earth anthology has been released here: http://keithstevenson.com/CDLblog/2011/04/06/anywhere-but-earth-official-line-up/
It looks AWESOME. Several of my local writing idols have rated a spot in the book, and I’m totally chuffed that one of my Clarion stories “Eating Gnashdal” is also in the mix. Can’t wait to get my grotty hands on a copy (I especially love that retro-looking cover).
Shared Universe Shenanigans
A project I’ve been involved in with some of my Writers of the Future colleagues looks like it’s about to go live. It involves a single character in a shared universe, and it’s been both interesting and challenging to work for. Will say more when I can, but the editor has a great track record, the other authors seem to be top-notch writers or prolific young turks, and rather than a e-zine it seems more like an interactive community with some great possibilities. Again, more when I can say, will pop the link here when it all goes live. I maintain that writing is the single coolest job I’ve ever had 🙂
Review – An Eclectic Slice of Life
A review of Eclecticism’s first anthology An Eclectic Slice of Life has just gone live over at Horrorscope. Reviewer Matthew Tait has this to say about my contributions to the volume:
“Both Houndkin and The Ward of Hours take on mythological creatures set against eccentric backdrops – one in a hospital ward that lies at the nexus of time. The prose is mature and effortless … and it’s easy to see the argument for his success”
Full review can be read here: http://www.horrorscope.com.au/2011/04/review-eclectic-slice-of-life.html
That’s lovely, made my day that 🙂 I really get a kick when someone enjoys my Raoul stories, the same protagonist as from my WOTF-winning story House of Nameless – oh look, here’s a link where you can read it for free! http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/43525 Oh hey, here’s the Ditmar ballot where it’s up for Best Short Story, if you’re so inclined http://wiki.sf.org.au/images/d/d4/2011_Ditmar_ballot.pdf 🙂
Midnight Echo #6
Just on the tail-end of it all now, doing the usual jiggery-pokery with contracts, bios, edits, and putting together an editorial for our themed issue. Was great fun, but will definitely be a relief to hand everything over once we’re finished.
RIP Livejournal
I’ve decided I’m more or less done with the infamous Russian Spam Factory, and will migrate most of my f-list and feeds into Google Reader. I just can’t do it anymore, everytime I fire it up it’s just depressing. I’ll still export this website via an LJ x-post, but apart from that I probably won’t be on there much from now on.
And the teaser…
There’s another cool bit of news that landed in my inbox this week, but it is unfortunately embargoed information. It’s killing me but the rules are the rules, I’ll post a mini update when it’s announced and all official-like. I LOVE BEING A WRITER! 🙂
A moment of attempted embeddery.
Just trying out the embedding of You-Tube clips via WordPress…was having some troubles, but an update looks like it stops the code from just dropping off the page when I hit update. It’s been flipping ages since I got a video clip to work on this site. To my sadness though, I seem to have lost the awesome banner that Nyssa Pascoe designed for me. Sigh.
It seems fitting that the attempt at embeddery is used to share the most ridiculous Gunners song. I think that “So Fine” was recorded as a joke, but it is hard to dislodge this early 90s ear-worm. I apologise for the excessive shots of Axl Rose’s junk, which the white shorts do little to disguise (or indeed, flatter).
Travel through time…in style
RIP Daily Cabal
The flash-fiction collective known as the Daily Cabal is winding its way to a dignified end, and myself and several of the previous contributors have given final short pieces of fiction to the site by way of goodbye.
My own piece “Shore-Birth” can be found at the following link:
http://www.dailycabal.com/2011/03/shore-birth/
This piece has much meaning for me, and I wrote it shortly after my son was born, and we first dipped his new toes into an almost still sea, on a weird muggy day. It became the opening for a much longer story, but I could never quite get it to work. This story narrates the birth (or rebirth) of Raoul Mithras, the protagonist of my WOTF winning story “The House of Nameless”.
So a story about birth amongst death seems an appropriate send-off for a noble venture. Something like four solid years of flash fiction, updated daily. Previous writers for the Daily Cabal included Angela Slatter, Sara Genge, Jeremiah Tolbert, Luc Reid, Daniel Braum, and Jason Erik Lundberg amongst many other talented and prodigious scribblers. Thanks for having me folks, it was a blast!
2011 Ditmar Awards Shortlists
I went offline for a few days, and returned to see that the 2011 Ditmar Awards Shortlists have been released into the wild. Lots of great works, and like the recent Aurealis shortlists it looks like a solid selection in all categories. Even cooler, my Writers of the Future winning short story “The House of Nameless” has been shortlisted in the Best Short Story category
Best Short Story
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* “All the Love in the World”, Cat Sparks (Sprawl, Twelfth Planet Press)
* “Bread and Circuses”, Felicity Dowker (Scary Kisses, Ticonderoga Publications)
* “One Saturday Night With Angel”, Peter M. Ball (Sprawl, Twelfth Planet Press)
* “She Said”, Kirstyn McDermott (Scenes From the Second Storey, Morrigan Books)
* “The House of Nameless”, Jason Fischer (Writers of the Future XXVI)
* “The February Dragon”, Angela Slatter and Lisa L. Hannett (Scary Kisses, Ticonderoga Publications)
And even better, every single person in this category is a peep or a buddy of mine, with strong samples of their writing represented in the short-list. It’s just too close to call, but the good news is, I’m gonna be happy for someone no matter what the result 🙂
The complete shortlist can be found here, and I gotta say, right across the board it’s a beauty.
http://2011.swancon.com.au/natcon-fifty-ditmar-awards/
Congratulations to everyone who rated a mention, commiserations to those who missed out. And many, many thanks to those who put my story forward in their nomination form, it’s great to know that folks enjoyed it enough to enter it into the Ditmars. The free e-book version of “The House of Nameless” can still be found here, for those attendees who are looking at their form and trying to suss out their final vote: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/43525
Thanks again! 🙂
Midnight Echo #6 Table of Contents
Without further ado, it’s time to announce the Table of Contents for issue #6 of Midnight Echo, the magazine of the Australian Horror Writers Association. The theme for the issue was science fiction/horror, and we’ve picked some absolute beauties for you!
- “Out Hunting for Teeth” by Joanne Anderton
- “Trawling the Void” by Alan Baxter
- “Silver-Clean” by Jenny Blackford
- “Graveyard Orbit” by Shane Jiraiya Cummings
- “More Matter, Less Art” by Stephen Dedman
- “Seeds” by Mark Farrugia
- “Earth Worms” by Cody Goodfellow
- “The Wanderer in the Darkness” by Andrew J McKiernan
- “Dead Low” by Cat Sparks
- “Surgeon Scalpelfingers” by Helen Stubbs
This issue will also contain interviews with Chris Moore and another well known sci fi author who will be announced later, and all sorts of other bits and pieces. I can promise you some great fiction from these fantastic authors, who’ve done a top job of exploring our SF/Horror theme, as originally conceived by David Conyers. These are all quite meaty reads, and we’ve done our best to keep it all killer, no filler.
Many thanks to my fellow co-editors, David Conyers and David Kernot, who were absolute legends in helping pull this together, and to Leigh Blackmore and the rest of the Midnight Echo team for their hard work behind the scenes. Not sure of the actual publication date just yet, but will post more when this information comes to light.
Congratulations to the successful authors!
Pooch Hooch
