As mentioned previously, I wrote a new zombie story for Chuck McKenzie’s zombietastic Necroscope blog, called “Goodnights to Heaven”. The goal was to come up with a christmas-themed tale of the undead, the result of which can be read at this link:
http://zombiefictionreview.blogspot.com/2010/12/fiction-goodnights-to-heaven.html
May you all have a relaxing Christmas, and it is my sincerest wish that your barricades hold off the corpse hordes long enough for you to enjoy a pudding and a brandy 🙂
Heya folks,
I made a promise a while back that a couple of stocking stuffers were heading your way, courtesy of my good self. One of these fiction-related gifts is going live on Christmas Eve, but here’s an early pressie for those who’ve been good (or bad, or aggressively neutral). Over at the Terra Incognita Speculative Fiction podcast, the annual Christmas special has been released. This year’s offering contains my reading of the infamous “Undead Camels Ate Their Flesh”, my first pro-sale from Jack Dann’s Dreaming Again anthology. Even cooler, I share this aural offering with good friend and Clarion South tutor Lee Battersby, who reads “In From The Snow”, his horror-licious tale from the same collection. It’s a damn good tale, was a well-deserved Aurealis finalist, and blends with my tale of dromedary death like PB&J.
Prep your I-pods, and prepare for a pincer movement to the brain. It’s story-time.
http://www.tisf.com.au/ (or via I-Tunes)
(Never have I gotten more mileage from a picture…courtesy of Jess Irwin)
Today marks the official launch of “An Eclectic Slice of Life”, a new anthology which is the brain-child of Eclecticism E-Zine editor Craig Bezant. I’m pleased to say that I have two stories in this book, “Houndkin” (reprinted from the e-zine), and new story “The Ward of Hours”, which is written in the same setting as my Writers of the Future winning story “The House of Nameless”. I share space in this book with authors such as Simon Petrie, Alice Godwin, and award-winning British horror writer Joseph D’Lacey. Given the diasporic locations of the book’s contributors, Dark Prints Press have decided to hold an online book launch, with all sorts of fun stuff popping up during the launch. I’ll let them explain it:
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“Sunday marks the release date for Dark Prints Press’s first publication, the anthology ‘An Eclectic Slice of Life’. To mark the special occasion, we are hosting an online launch party. Since the fourteen contributors are scattered across the globe, this is the best way to get them together. You can read excerpts from each story in the anthology, and there will be fun links to many stories (such as crazy websites, videos, and flash games).
The online launch will be via the Dark Prints Press Facebook page, from 3-5pm this Sunday (12/12/2010), Perth, Western Australia time. That’s GMT+0800, so if you are in the eastern states of Australia, it will be ~6pm (daylight savings), NZ ~8pm, UK ~7am, US 11pm (Sat – LA) to 2am (NY). The Dark Prints Press Facebook page is here: http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Dark-Prints-Press/162390353801760
If you don’t have access to Facebook, you can join in at this news blog, The Realm of Dark Prints Press: http://darkprintspress.blogspot.com You shouldn’t need a blogger account to comment here, and I will try to respond to comments as often as possible. All posts will cross between the two sites.
Remember, this only goes for 2 hours, but you are welcome to visit later and drop a comment. Hurray, the anthology will finally be released!
**** AS A SPECIAL THANKS FOR DROPPING BY – FOR THE LAUNCH DAY ONLY, IF YOU ORDER YOUR COPY OF THE ANTHOLOGY, YOU WILL RECEIVE 30% OFF THE RRP; AND THEN FOR THE REST OF DECEMBER, THERE WILL BE 20% OFF. SWEET! ****”
These two books arrived in the post within a week or so of each other, and are welcome additions to my brag shelf at home. Both of these are reprint anthologies, with the added cool bonus that in both books, I get to share a TOC with fellow Writers of the Future winner Ian McHugh, as well as many other awesome folks. Have already devoured most of the Year’s Best and it’s a solid collection of stories, including Paul Haine’s amazing dystopia “Wives”.
Year’s Best Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy Vol 5 contains “for want of a jesusman” (from Aurealis #42)
Award Winning Australian Writing 2010 contains “Busking” (from Midnight Echo #3)
(for those of you who haven’t read these yet, the first two instalments of my WOTF retrospective can be found here http://jasonfischer.com.au/?p=136 and here http://jasonfischer.com.au/?p=155)
Immediately after the awards ceremony, we writers and illustrators made our way back into the hotel lobby. Before the ceremony, this had been the venue for our swanky dinner, now we found that we were at the site of our first book signing. The organisers of this event are nothing if not awesome, and it makes my head spin to think how quickly they effected this change!
The lobby of the Roosevelt, shortly after its transformation from a dining hall into a book launch/signing. Big stacks of the anthology can be seen in the middle of the room, and along the outside of the room the illustrators wait next to their framed illustrations. Most of the writers can be seen in the middle of the pic, madly signing away.
Just sold my story “Eating Gnashdal” to Keith Stevenson’s upcoming anthology Anywhere But Earth. Nice! Some more info about the book here:
http://keithstevenson.com/CDLblog/submissions/
And a list here of the other authors who so far have been accepted for this book, it already looks like a great line-up of local writers:
http://keithstevenson.com/CDLblog/2010/07/11/abe_update_3/
Many thanks to everyone at Clarion South who helped me with this story, and a big thanks to Russell B Farr for his advice and assistance.
(Here is part 1 of my epic adventure for those who missed it: http://jasonfischer.com.au/?p=136)
So after returning to the Author Services building turning in our 24-hour stories, John Goodwin (President of Galaxy Press) dropped by to give our class a bit of a talk about media, self-promotion, and interviewing skills. This was really invaluable stuff – I’ve done other writing courses/camps/retreats before, and not once has anyone ever told me about how to conduct myself in an interview situation. Here’s a great example: If someone says to you “so, what’s your story about?” can you neatly summarise your tale in thirty seconds or so? Pretty much every time I’ve been asked this question, I come out with “there’s this guy, you see, and he lives in this land where so-and-so happens, and he has the ability to so-and-so, and then…” by which time the other person has a glazed look in their eyes and you’ve officially lost their interest.
Now change this into an interview setting with the media. You’ve got thirty seconds to sell yourself and your new product, to an interviewer who is probably not interested in the genre and who will unconsciously attempt to derail the conversation to more familiar territory. We were taught how to be concise, how to present ourselves, how to stick to the topic and answer the question we really want to answer (much as politicians do in interviews).
We were put into practice with our “twins” (person you’re sat next to for the workshop), and did dry-runs of our interviewing skills until we were blue in the face. This was invaluable, as later on we first prize winners did film and radio interviews, and all the contestants did film and taped interviews with the folks from Author Services after the awards ceremony. At some stage a filmed interview with us will appear at neverendingpanel.com, and we each did a spot for XM Radio. I’m sure glad we had a bit of practice first!
All books published by WOTF winners are kept in a very cool library, and I too have a book here! It’s the skinny one next to The Jane Austen Book Club.
Well, the time is nigh, I have my greenbacks and courage in hand, and Writers of the Future awaits me. I’m taking it stateside for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, to work with some jaw-droppingly awesome writers, attend the award gala, and finally meet my fellow contest winners (who seem like a lovely and talented bunch). The anthology containing the winning stories is now available for pre-order on Amazon:
I love the cover-art on this – absolutely gorgeous! Having collected a few of these anthologies, I can tell you that the essays from the judges are worth the cover-price alone. Years of wisdom is thus dispensed, sandwiched amidst stories that could launch many fruitful writing careers, jammed full of the excellent artwork from the sister contest, Illustrators of the Future.
Still can’t believe my writing is actually in one of these…this sure is a nice feeling, folks 🙂
I will try and blog the Writers of the Future week when I get the chance, but it looks like they keep a pretty hectic schedule. It may be a retrospective account of the workshop and other events, but it’ll all end up on here at some point.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a Future needs getting to 🙂
My story “for want of a jesusman” (from Aurealis issue #42) will soon be appearing in the Year’s Best Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy, Vol 5. This is always a handsome anthology, and I’m absolutely chuffed to have my story appearing in the next volume. Bill Congreve’s introductory essays alone are worth the admission, and I’ve really enjoyed the stories collected in the first four books.
This story also recently scored an Honorable Mention in Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year Vol 2. My reading of “for want of a jesusman” can still be listened to over at Terra Incognita Speculative Fiction, via this link: http://www.tisf.com.au/