RIP Daily Cabal

by | Apr 1, 2011 | Uncategorized

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

by | Mar 27, 2011 | Awards

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
————————————————————————
* “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

by | Mar 25, 2011 | Publication

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!