The Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2011

The Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2011, edited by Liz Grzyb and Talie Helene, has been released, and features my collaboration with David Kernot, "Winds of Nzambi". Volume 2 covers the best fantasy and horror by Australians and New Zealanders published in 2011.

The contents are:

• Peter M Ball "Briar Day" (Moonlight Tuber)
• Lee Battersby "Europe After The Rain" (After the Rain, Fablecroft Press)
• Deborah Biancotti "Bad Power" (Bad Power, Twelfth Planet Press)
• Jenny Blackford "The Head in the Goatskin Bag" (Kaleidotrope)
• Simon Brown "Thin Air" (Dead Red Heart, Ticonderoga Publications)
• David Conyers and David Kernot "Winds Of Nzambi" (Midnight Echo #6, AHWA)
• Stephen Dedman "More Matter, Less Art" (Midnight Echo #6, AHWA)
• Sara Douglass & Angela Slatter "The Hall of Lost Footsteps" (The Hall of Lost Footsteps, Ticonderoga Publications)
• Felicity Dowker "Berries & Incense" (More Scary Kisses, Ticonderoga Publications)
• Terry Dowling "Dark Me, Night You" (Midnight Echo #5, AHWA)
• Jason Fischer "Hunting Rufus" (Midnight Echo #5, AHWA)
• Christopher Green "Letters Of Love From The Once And Newly Dead" (Midnight Echo #5, AHWA)
• Paul Haines "The Past Is A Bridge Best Left Burnt" (The Last Days of Kali Yuga, Brimstone Press)
• Lisa L Hannett "Forever, Miss Tapekwa County" (Bluegrass Symphony, Ticonderoga Publications)
• Richard Harland "At The Top Of The Stairs" (Shadows and Tall Trees #2, Undertow Publications)
• John Harwood "Face To Face" (Ghosts by Gaslight, HarperCollins)
• Pete Kempshall "Someone Else To Play With" (Beauty Has Her Way, Dark Quest Books)
• Jo Langdon "Heaven" (After the Rain, Fablecroft Press)
• Maxine McArthur "The Soul of the Machine" (Winds of Change, CSFG)
• Ian McHugh "The Wishwriter's Wife" (Daily Science Fiction)
• Andrew J McKiernan "Love Death" (Aurealis #45, Chimaera Publications)
• Kirstyn McDermott "Frostbitten" (More Scary Kisses, Ticonderoga Publications)
• Margaret Mahy "Wolf Night" (The Wilful Eye - Tales From the Tower #1, Allen & Unwin)
• Anne Mok "Interview with the Jiangshi" (Dead Red Heart, Ticonderoga Publications)
• Jason Nahrung "Wraiths" (Winds of Change, CSFG)
• Anthony Panegyres "Reading Coffee" (Overland, OL Society)
• Tansy Rayner Roberts "The Patrician" (Love and Romanpunk, Twelfth Planet Press)
• Angela Rega "Love In the Atacama or the Poetry of Fleas" (Crossed Genres, CGP)
• Angela Slatter "The Coffin-Maker's Daughter" (A Book of Horrors, Jo Fletcher Books)
• Lucy Sussex "Thief of Lives" (Thief of Lies, Twelfth Planet Press)
• Kyla Ward "The Kite" (The Land of Bad Dreams, P'rea Press)
• Kaaron Warren "All You Can Do Is Breathe" (Blood and Other Cravings, Tor)

In addition to the above tales, the volume will include a review of 2011 and a list of recommended stories.

Purchase it online at Indie Books as hardcover or tradepaper and at Amazon.com.

Award Winning Australian Writing 2012

David Kernot and my story "Winds of Nzambi" will be appaering in Award Winning Australian Writing 2012. Our story won the Australian Horror Writers Association's Short Fiction Award, appeared in Midnight Echo #6 and soon to be released in the Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2102.

Not bad for a story we thought we weren't entirely certain it would work.

Here is the blurb from Melbourne Books, publisher of Award Winning Australian Writing 2012:

Selections for Award Winning Australian Writing 2012 have been finalised!

Click here to view the list of included pieces, authors and competitions.

This year we received more submissions than ever, and it was very difficult for the selection team to arrive at the final list. The number of selected pieces is 52 — more than any other edition of AWAW. Coincidentally, this number mirrors how many weeks there are in a year: how very apt for a collection celebrating the National Year of Reading.

A big thank you to everyone who submitted award-winning pieces. And a special thanks to Mark Tredinnick, winner of the 2011 Montreal  Poetry Prize and 2012 Cardiff International Poetry Prize, for writing this edition's foreword.

Expect the book at your local bookshop in early November!

 

“Winds of Nzambi” appears in Ticonderoga’s The Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror

Sometimes news comes pleasantly out the blue, and to discover recently that David Kernot and my collaboration, “Winds of Nzambi” would be appearing in Liz Grzyb’s and Talie Helene’s The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror, was exciting news indeed.

  

This was David and my first collaboration (we have another very different collaboration in the works) and we were earlier pleasantly surprised to discover that our story won the Australian Horror Writers Association’s Short Fiction Award for 2011, and was then published in Midnight Echo 6.

The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror features 32 stories and poems first published in 2011, from New Zealand and Australia writers, and published by Western Australian outfit, Ticonderoga Publications. The contents are:

• Peter M Ball "Briar Day" (Moonlight Tuber)
• Lee Battersby "Europe after the Rain" (After the Rain, Fablecroft Press)
• Deborah Biancotti "Bad Power" (Bad Power, Twelfth Planet Press)
• Jenny Blackford "The Head in the Goatskin Bag" (Kaleidotrope)
• Simon Brown "Thin Air" (Dead Red Heart, Ticonderoga Publications)
• David Conyers and David Kernot "Winds of Nzambi" (Midnight Echo #6, AHWA)
• Stephen Dedman "More Matter, Less Art" (Midnight Echo #6, AHWA)
• Sara Douglass and Angela Slatter "The Hall of Lost Footsteps" (The Hall of Lost Footsteps, Ticonderoga Publications)
• Felicity Dowker "Berries & Incense" (More Scary Kisses, Ticonderoga Publications)
• Terry Dowling "Dark Me, Night You" (Midnight Echo #5, AHWA)
• Jason Fischer "Hunting Rufus" (Midnight Echo #5, AHWA)
• Christopher Green "Letters of Love from the Once and Newly Dead" (Midnight Echo #5, AHWA)
• Paul Haines "The Past is a Bridge Best Left Burnt" (The Last Days of Kali Yuga, Brimstone Press)
• Lisa L Hannett "Forever, Miss Tapekwa County" (Bluegrass Symphony, Ticonderoga Publications)
• Richard Harland "At the Top of the Stairs" (Shadows and Tall Trees #2, Undertow Publications)
• John Harwood "Face to Face" (Ghosts by Gaslight, HarperCollins)
• Pete Kempshall "Someone Else to Play With" (Beauty Has Her Way, Dark Quest Books)
• Jo Langdon "Heaven" (After the Rain, Fablecroft Press)
• Maxine McArthur "The Soul of the Machine" (Winds of Change, CSFG)
• Ian McHugh "The Wishwriter's Wife" (Daily Science Fiction)
• Andrew J McKiernan "Love Death" (Aurealis #45, Chimaera Publications)
• Kirstyn McDermott "Frostbitten" (More Scary Kisses, Ticonderoga Publications)
• Margaret Mahy "Wolf Night" (The Wilful Eye - Tales From the Tower #1, Allen & Unwin)
• Anne Mok "Interview with the Jiangshi" (Dead Red Heart, Ticonderoga Publications)
• Jason Nahrung "Wraiths" (Winds of Change, CSFG)
• Anthony Panegyres "Reading Coffee" (Overland, OL Society)
• Tansy Rayner Roberts "The Patrician" (Love and Romanpunk, Twelfth Planet Press)
• Angela Rega "Love in the Atacama or the Poetry of Fleas" (Crossed Genres, CGP)
• Angela Slatter "The Coffin-Maker's Daughter" (A Book of Horrors, Jo Fletcher Books)
• Lucy Sussex "Thief of Lives" (Thief of Lies, Twelfth Planet Press)
• Kyla Ward "The Kite" (The Land of Bad Dreams, P'rea Press)
• Kaaron Warren "All You Can Do Is Breathe" (Blood and Other Cravings, Tor)

 

Special congratulations to Stephen Dedman, whose story “More Matter, Less Art” appeared in Midnight Echo #6 which David Kernot, Jason Fischer and I edited last year, to the talented team at Brimstone Press for Paul Haines "The Past is a Bridge Best Left Burnt" from The Last Days of Kali Yuga, and Jason Fischer for his inclusion.

The volume will include a review of 2011 and a list of recommended stories.

  

The Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2011 is scheduled for publication in July 2012 and can be pre-ordered at indiebooksonline.com. The anthology will be available in hardcover, ebook and trade editions.

 

Midnight Echo 6: The Science Fiction Horror Special Released in November

Midnight Echo 6: The Science Fiction Horror Special, is almost complete and will be out in November 2011.

Today Midnight Echo has a new website and includes a press release on issue 6, an interview on the issue with myself a co-editors David Kernot and Jason Fischer, and details on how to submit for Issue 7 edited by Daniel I. Russell.

It also includes my story co-authored with David Kernot, "Winds of Nzambi".

Kindle Edition of Macabre and Award Plaque

I discovered two very cool things today. The first was that Brimstone Press' Macabre is now available as a Kindle Edition on Amazon.com.

The anthology, edited by Angela Challis and Marty Young, with a very cool cover by Shane Jiraiya Cummings, featured my West African zombie spy horror novella, "Sweet as Decay" co-authored with David Witteveen. Now this book is available to the world. Here is the blurb:

Explore Australia's dark literature past, present, and future all in one landmark anthology! From the very earliest colonial ghost stories through to grim tales of modern life, Macabre will take you on a journey through the dark heart of Australian horror. With classic stories from Australia's masters of horror alongside the best of the new era, Macabre: A Journey through Australia's Darkest Fears is the finest dark fiction anthology ever produced in Australia.

Macabre features 38 stories from Australian literary legends such as Henry Lawson, Barbara Baynton, Marcus Clarke, David Unaipon, Mary Fortune, and A. Bertram Chandler; modern masters such as Terry Dowling, Kaaron Warren, and Sean Williams; and the 21st century's brightest new horror stars: Stephen M. Irwin, Shane Jiraiya Cummings, Paul Haines, Richard Harland, David Conyers, and Will Elliott.

Macabre: A Journey through Australia's Darkest Fears is the winner of the 2010 Australian Shadows Award, and it was nominated for the 2010 Bram Stoker Award!

The second piece of news is that I received my plaque for my win in the Australian Horror Writers Association's Short Story Competition this year. I'm very excited. My second writing award.

"Winds of Nzambi" was co-authored with David Kernot, and will be published in Midnight Echo 6, out in a couple of months.

"Winds of Nzambi" co-authored with David Kernot wins Australian Horror Award

I've just learnt that David Kernot and I have just won the Australian Horror Writers Association's 2011 Short Story Competition, with our tale "Winds of Nzambi", a supernatural horror tale about slave traders in 16th Century Africa. It was great to collaborate with David, and I learnt a lot from him through the process.

Thanks must go to the judges, Kaaron Warren, Stephen Dedman and Lee Battersby, who I know will have worked very hard on assessing all the stories, and Jason Crowe of the AHWA who worked hard in the background. Also congratulations to Nicholas Stella who won the Flash Fiction category, and to everyone who got an honourable mention.

"Winds of Nzambi" is now going to be published in a future issue of Midnight Echo, probably issue 7. It is going to be awkward if it appears in issue 6, as David and I (along with Jason Fischer) are editing that issue.

Anyway, here is the press release:

The AHWA is proud to announce the winners of the 2011 Flash and Short Story Competition.
 
Flash Fiction Category

Winner

• Duncan Checks Out by Nicholas Stella

Honourable Mentions

• "Homonculus", by David Rasborsek
• "Jaxon's Gift", by Natalie J E Potts

Short Fiction Category

Winner

• "Winds of Nzambi" by David Conyers and  David Kernot

Honourable Mentions

• Love Story, by Cassie Britland
• Slither and Squeeze, by Tracie McBride