Haven, Maine appears to be just another lively, New England seaside town, complete with quaint shops, scenic beaches and a busy harbor. But when FBI Agent Audrey Parker (Emily Rose) first arrived on a routine case, she encountered the mysterious underside of Haven. Her investigation lead her to discover that Haven has a secret: it’s home to a number of people suffering from supernatural afflictions.

Audrey found that she is uniquely qualified to handle these supernatural events – referred to in local legend as “the Troubles” – and after discovering that Haven might hold clues about her own mysterious past, she chooses to stay in the town to do so.

Haven, based on the Stephen King novella “The Colorado Kid”, is the story of Audrey’s entry into this seemingly normal town. Across the seasons, Audrey’s quest to understand herself and the great mysteries of Haven will drive her ever deeper down the rabbit hole.

Do you want a copy? If so, just leave a comment over at the post on the Thirteen O’Clock site and tell us you want in and we’ll randomly pick three winners in a week or two. We’ll have a full review of Season 2 up there soon.

PLESE NOTE! This offer is only open to Australian residents.

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It’s always a great opportunity to hang out with old friends and meet a few people for the first time, or meet the meatbags of friends who had previously only been virtual. I really love the strength of this community and I’m proud to be a part of it. After lubricating at the Rydges bar, we all trooped to The Independent Theatre for more drinks, nibbles and then the presention, brilliantly MCd by the lovely Kate Forsyth.

Slideshow presentations by Cat Sparks and Rob Hood were brilliant (the cow being a particular highlight), but the real joy was watching the tremedous efforts of great Aussie writers get rewarded with shiny trophies, especially as some good friends were among the recipients. I also got to collect the award for Best Sci Fi Short Story on behalf of Robert N Stephenson, who couldn’t be there to collect it himself. I hope I did justice to his speech, which I read from my iPhone after frantically searching it out as I ran to the stage. There are dangers to live-tweeting an event if you suddenly find yourself required to participate.

I’ll repost the full shortlist below, with the winners in bold. Congratulations to all the winners and nominees!

FANTASY NOVEL

The Undivided by Jennifer Fallon (HarperVoyager)

Ember and Ash by Pamela Freeman (Hachette)

Stormlord’s Exile by Glenda Larke (HarperVoyager)

Debris by Jo Anderton (Angry Robot)

The Shattered City by Tansy Rayner Roberts (HarperVoyager)

FANTASY SHORT STORY

“Fruit of the Pipal Tree” by Thoraiya Dyer (After the Rain, FableCroft Publishing)

“The Proving of Smollett Standforth” by Margo Lanagan (Ghosts by Gaslight, HarperVoyager)

“Into the Clouds on High” by Margo Lanagan (Yellowcake, Allen & Unwin)

“Reading Coffee” by Anthony Panegyris (Overland)

“The Dark Night of Anton Weiss” by D.C. White (More Scary Kisses, Ticonderoga Publications)

SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL

Machine Man by Max Barry (Scribe Publications)

Children of Scarabaeus by Sara Creasy (HarperVoyager)

The Waterboys by Peter Docker (Fremantle Press)

Black Glass by Meg Mundell (Scribe Publications)

The Courier’s New Bicycle by Kim Westwood (HarperVoyager)

SCIENCE FICTION SHORT STORY

“Flowers in the Shadow of the Garden” by Joanne Anderton (Hope, Kayelle Press)

“Desert Madonna” by Robert Hood (Anywhere but Earth, Couer de Lion)

“SIBO” by Penelope Love (Anywhere but Earth, Couer de Lion)

“Dead Low” by Cat Sparks (Midnight Echo)

“Rains of la Strange” by Robert N Stephenson (Anywhere but Earth, Couer de Lion)

HORROR NOVEL

NO SHORTLIST OR WINNING NOVEL – TWO HONORABLE MENTIONS AWARDED TO:

The Broken Ones by Stephen M. Irwin (Hachette)

The Business of Death by Trent Jamieson (Hachette)

HORROR SHORT STORY – TIE

“And the Dead Shall Outnumber the Living” by Deborah Biancotti (Ishtar, Gilgamesh Press)

“The Past is a Bridge Best Left Burnt” by Paul Haines (The Last Days of Kali Yuga, Brimstone Press)

“The Short Go: a Future in Eight Seconds” by Lisa L. Hannett (Bluegrass Symphony, Ticonderoga Publications)

“Mulberry Boys” by Margo Lanagan (Blood and Other Cravings, Tor)

“The Coffin Maker’s Daughter” by Angela Slatter (A Book of Horrors, Quercus)

YOUNG ADULT NOVEL

Shift by Em Bailey (Hardie Grant Egmont)

Secrets of Carrick: Tantony by Ananda Braxton-Smith (black dog books)

The Shattering by Karen Healey (Allen & Unwin)

Black Glass by Meg Mundell (Scribe Publications)

Only Ever Always by Penni Russon (Allen & Unwin)

YOUNG ADULT SHORT STORY

“Nation of the Night” by Sue Isle (Nightsiders, Twelfth Planet Press)

“Finishing School” by Kathleen Jennings (Steampunk! An anthology of fantastically rich and strange stories, Candlewick Press)

“Seventy-Two Derwents” by Cate Kennedy (The Wicked Wood – Tales from the Tower Volume 2, Allen and Unwin)

“One Window” by Martine Murray (The Wilful Eye: Tales from the Tower Volume 1, Allen and Unwin)

“The Patrician” by Tansy Rayner Roberts (Love and Romanpunk, Twelfth Planet Press)

CHILDREN’S FICTION (told primarily through words)

The Outcasts by John Flanagan (Random House Australia)

The Paradise Trap by Catherine Jinks (Allen & Unwin)

“It Began with a Tingle” by Thalia Kalkapsakis (Headspinners, Allen & Unwin)

The Coming of the Whirlpool by Andrew McGahan (Allen & Unwin)

City of Lies by Lian Tanner (Allen & Unwin)

CHILDREN’S FICTION (told primarily through pictures)

The Ghost of Annabel Spoon by Aaron Blabey (author and illustrator) (Penguin/ Viking Books)

Sounds Spooky by Christopher Cheng (author) and Sarah Davis (illustrator) (Random House Australia)

The Last Viking by Norman Jorgensen (author) and James Foley (illustrator) (Fremantle Press)

The Deep: Here be Dragons by Tom Taylor (author) and James Brouwer (illustrator) (Gestault Publishing)

Vampyre by Margaret Wild (author) and Andrew Yeo (illustrator) (Walker Books)

ILLUSTRATED BOOK / GRAPHIC NOVEL – TIE

Hidden by Mirranda Burton (author and illustrator ) (Black Pepper)

Torn by Andrew Constant (author) and Joh James (illustrator ), additional illustrators Nicola Scott, Emily Smith (Gestalt Publishing)

Salsa Invertebraxa by Mozchops (author and illustrator) (Pecksniff Press)

The Eldritch Kid: Whiskey and Hate by Christian Read (author) and Michael Maier (illustrator) (Gestalt Publishing)

The Deep: Here be Dragons by Tom Taylor (author) and James Brouwer (illustrator) (Gestault Publishing)

ANTHOLOGY

Ghosts by Gaslight edited by Jack Dann and Nick Gevers (HarperVoyager)

Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2010 edited by Liz Grzyb and Talie Helene (Ticonderoga Publications)

Ishtar edited by Amanda Pillar and KV Taylor (Gilgamesh Press)

The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume 5 edited by Jonathan Strahan (Night Shade Books)
Life on Mars edited by Jonathan Strahan (Viking)

COLLECTION

Bad Power by Deborah Biancotti (Twelfth Planet Press)

Last Days of Kali Yuga by Paul Haines (Brimstone Press)

Bluegrass Symphony by Lisa Hannett (Ticonderoga Publications)

Nightsiders by Sue Isle (Twelfth Planet Press)

Love and Romanpunk by Tansy Rayner Roberts (Twelfth Planet Press)

OTHER AWARDS

Peter McNamara Convenors’ Award went to the Galactic Suburbia podcast team.

Kris Hembury Encouragement Award went to Emily Craven of Adelaide.

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People Believe a LOT of Nonsense on Evolution, Creationism, Religion

I’m not talking about creationists, that goes without saying. I’m talking about the fact that a very high percentage of arguments by people who claim that evolution and religion are compatible are in fact nonsense. Via Jerry Coyne, an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education that made me lose my faith in humanity just a little more. In terms of both the article and the comments. It’s a microcosm of the kind of muddle-headed thinking that often comes up when evolution and religion are discussed together. Here we go:

The article is about a theory advanced by Dan McAdams (a professor of psych specialising in narrative psychology) about public acceptance of evolution is so low in the US. According to McAdams, humans make sense of their lives through narratives. We constructing them about ourselves and also respond to them when others advance them. Evolution may be a wonderful and elegant explanation, but it’s a bad narrative. No purpose, no quest, no protagonists/antagonists. “You can’t really feel anything for this character—natural selection,” McAdams says. Sounds like a great parody on the Onion but he’s serious! And according to this analysis, evolution will always be an uphill battle.

The biblical story of creation, in contrast, couldn’t be richer. Talk about drama! Characters who want things, surprising reversals, heroes, villains, nudity. There’s a reason it outsells On the Origin of Species, and it may be why scientists haven’t had more success at moving the needle of public opinion.

Without denigrating the field of narrative psychology, this is beyond ridiculous. Thankfully the whole article was succinctly demolished in the third comment so I don’t even have to do anything:

Surely the obvious comment is that the US is anomalous among developed (and relatively highly educated) countries in its high level of skepticism about evolution. This argues strongly against explanations grounded in universal human psychology, but supports religious explanations, since the US is also highly anomalous in its level of adherence to Biblical religions.

Of course the other obvious point is that plenty of other scientific theories are just as unnarrative without people having a problem accepting them. Again, a stray commenter’s few sentences are right on target.

Poppycock. Does gravity require a narrative? Do magnets require character development? Do people inquire about agency and plot development before taking medicine? The need for myths and legends may be powerful – but if it excludes the acceptance of science, it’s the culprit not the solution.

It goes on and Michael does a good job of covering the whole topic. It’s interesting stuff from the point of view of storytelling and so on, even if it is vexing. Read it all here.

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Is it an oblique reference to accidental pregnancy? Because, let’s be honest, any of life’s blunders are rarely wonderful.

I don’t even…

Here’s the meat of this post:

If you are eligible to vote in the Ditmar Awards, you MUST vote in the Ditmar Awards.

The Ditmars are a popular vote award, which means they’re a popularity contest. While we’d love to think that only the best work gets recognised, and while that certainly is a part of it, it’s naive to think that there are not other factors at play. People voting for their friends, or voting against people they don’t like, or getting together with pals and discussing who they’re going to vote for in order to consolidate their efforts and so on. Yes, it’s a type of corruption, to a degree. But it’s exactly how popular vote awards always have worked and always will. That’s just a simple fact. I know the committee in charge does all they can to make the process as fair and transparent as possible, but the very nature of the beast can’t be changed.

The only way to lessen the impact of that kind of activity and increase the likelihood that the awards are a balanced and fair expression of talent and worth is to have as big a pool of voters as possible so the activities of any dedicated and active few don’t dominate or skew anything. Therefore:

If you are eligible to vote in the Ditmar Awards, you MUST vote in the Ditmar Awards.

EDIT: Following this post I got a couple of messages which basically questioned whether it was directed at anyone or group in particular. It’s not. It’s directed at everyone. Myself included. I’ve chatted with friends about the awards and said, “So, you gonna vote for me then?” *wink, wink* They may or may not vote for me, but that’s potentially corrupting the result. We all talk about the awards, talk about voting and so on. That’s why I said above about how that’s just how popular vote awards work and you can’t change the nature of the beast. You can, by adding your voice, make that beast a lot fairer and a better example of merit. If you did think this was all about you, I can only ask: Narcissist much?

Eligibility to vote comes from being a member of this year’s Continuum convention in June (where the Awards will be given) or being a member of last year’s NatCon, which was SwanCon in Perth.

If you weren’t at SwanCon last year and can’t get to Continuum this year, but you want your voice heard, you can buy a supporting membership of Continuum here: http://continuum.org.au/join/ which entitles you to vote, as per the Ditmar rules. (You also get a copy of the convention handbook, your name printed in the members list (optional) and access to the Continuum members email list.)

Voting is incredibly easy, and the preferred voting method is via the online form. I just made my votes and it took less than five minutes. It’s as simple as filling in your name and email, typing a few numbers in a few boxes and clicking Save. You do that here: http://ditmars.sf.org.au/2012

Other voting options are:

The official ballot paper, including postal address information, may be downloaded as a PDF format file from: http://ditmars.sf.org.au/2012/2012_Ditmar_ballot.pdf

And votes will be accepted via email to: ditmars@sf.org.au

I’ll reprint below the full shortlist, so you can study that and think about what/who to vote for. If you’re not sure about any particular category, just don’t vote in that category, but don’t let that stop you from voting at all. If there’s any category that you have an opinion on, vote in it!

No one can complain about the results of a popular award if they were eligible to vote and didn’t. Only as many voters as possible will give anything like a balanced and fair view in keeping with the broader view of the community and fandom. So, hop to it!

Here’s the full shortlist for all categories:

Best Novel
* The Shattered City (Creature Court 2), Tansy Rayner Roberts (HarperCollins)
* Burn Bright, Marianne de Pierres (Random House Australia)
* Mistification, Kaaron Warren (Angry Robot Books)
* The Courier’s New Bicycle, Kim Westwood (HarperCollins)
* Debris (The Veiled Worlds 1), Jo Anderton (Angry Robot Books)

Best Novella or Novelette
* “The Sleeping and the Dead”, Cat Sparks, in Ishtar (Gilgamesh Press)
* “Above”, Stephanie Campisi, in Above/Below (Twelfth Planet Press)
* “The Past is a Bridge Best Left Burnt”, Paul Haines, in The Last Days of Kali Yuga (Brimstone Press)
* “And the Dead Shall Outnumber the Living”, Deborah Biancotti, in Ishtar (Gilgamesh Press)
* “Julia Agrippina’s Secret Family Bestiary”, Tansy Rayner Roberts, in Love and Romanpunk (Twelfth Planet Press)
* “Below”, Ben Peek, in Above/Below (Twelfth Planet Press)

Best Short Story
* “Breaking the Ice”, Thoraiya Dyer, in Cosmos 37
* “Alchemy”, Lucy Sussex, in Thief of Lives (Twelfth Planet Press)
* “The Last Gig of Jimmy Rucker”, Martin Livings and Talie Helene, in More Scary Kisses (Ticonderoga Publications)
* “All You Can Do Is Breathe”, Kaaron Warren, in Blood and Other Cravings (Tor)
* “Bad Power”, Deborah Biancotti, in Bad Power (Twelfth Planet Press)
* “The Patrician”, Tansy Rayner Roberts, in Love and Romanpunk (Twelfth Planet Press)

Best Collected Work
* The Last Days of Kali Yuga by Paul Haines, edited by Angela Challis (Brimstone Press)
* Nightsiders by Sue Isle, edited by Alisa Krasnostein (Twelfth Planet Press)
* Bad Power by Deborah Biancotti, edited by Alisa Krasnostein (Twelfth Planet Press)
* Love and Romanpunk by Tansy Rayner Roberts, edited by Alisa Krasnostein (Twelfth Planet Press)
* Ishtar, edited by Amanda Pillar and K. V. Taylor (Gilgamesh Press)

Best Artwork
* “Finishing School”, Kathleen Jennings, in Steampunk!: An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories (Candlewick Press)
* Cover art, Kathleen Jennings, for The Freedom Maze (Small Beer Press)

Best Fan Writer
* Tansy Rayner Roberts, for body of work including reviews in Australian Speculative Fiction in Focus! and Not If You Were The Last Short Story On Earth
* Alexandra Pierce, for body of work including reviews in Australian Speculative Fiction in Focus!, Not If You Were The Last Short Story On Earth, and Randomly Yours, Alex
* Robin Pen, for “The Ballad of the Unrequited Ditmar”
* Sean Wright, for body of work including “Authors and Social Media” series in Adventures of a Bookonaut
* Bruce Gillespie, for body of work including “The Golden Age of Fanzines is Now”, and SF Commentary 81 & 82

Best Fan Artist
* Rebecca Ing, for work in Scape
* Lisa Rye, for “Steampunk Portal” series
* Dick Jenssen, for body of work including work in IRS, Steam Engine Time, SF Commentary and Scratchpad
* Kathleen Jennings, for work in Errantry (tanaudel.wordpress.com) including “The Dalek Game”
* Rhianna Williams, for work in Nullas Anxietas Convention Programme Book

Best Fan Publication in Any Medium
* SF Commentary, edited by Bruce Gillespie
* The Writer and the Critic, Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond
* The Coode Street Podcast, Jonathan Strahan and Gary K. Wolfe
* Galactic Chat, Alisa Krasnostein, Tansy Rayner Roberts and Sean Wright
* Galactic Suburbia, Alisa Krasnostein, Tansy Rayner Roberts, and Alex Pierce

Best New Talent
* Steve Cameron
* Alan Baxter
* Joanne Anderton

William Atheling Jr Award for Criticism or Review
* Liz Grzyb and Talie Helene, for “2010: The Year in Review”, in The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2010 (Ticonderoga Publications)
* Damien Broderick and Van Ikin, for editing Warriors of the Tao: The Best of Science Fiction: A Review of Speculative Literature (Borgo Press)
* David McDonald, Tansy Rayner Roberts and Tehani Wessely for “Reviewing New Who” series, in A Conversational Life
* Alexandra Pierce and Tehani Wessely, for reviews of Vorkosigan Saga, in Randomly Yours, Alex
* Russell Blackford, for “Currently reading: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke”, in Metamagician and the Hellfire Club

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This week, it’s Patrick O’Duffy.

Who is Patrick?

Patrick O’Duffy is… hang on, should this be first-person or third-person? It’s always weird talking about myself in the third person. It’s too much like I’m Bruce Wayne talking about what a strange fellow that Batman character is.

Okay, I just compared myself to Batman. Which is flattering, but not very accurate. Let’s start again.

I’m an editor and publisher by day, a writer and self-publisher by night, and again I’m falling back upon Bat-metaphors. Anyway, I used to write a lot of material for role-playing games, mostly about vampires and demons and monster-hunters but also occasionally about fantasy adventurers and pirates. Strange that those streams never crossed, really. These days I leave the role-playing for the weekends and write stories about haunted hotels and forensic accountants, and then publish these stories online as independent e-books.

Gosh, what else? I used to live in Brisbane and now I live in Melbourne. I like video games and superhero comics. I like Dungeons & Dragons and microbrewery beer. I dig both genre fiction and literary fiction and don’t understand why so many readers prefer one over the other. I’m a nerd, but my wife thinks I make nerdishness look good.

Oh, and I have a new book out.

What are you tooting?

What happens to your online identity when you die? Who will update your blog when you’re no longer here? And how can you protect yourself from scammers after you’ve passed away?

Help is here.

Kendall Barber calls himself an obituarist – a social media undertaker who settles accounts for the dead. If you need your loved one’s Facebook account closed down or one last tweet to be made, he’ll take care of it, while also making sure that identity thieves can’t access forgotten personal data. It’s his way of making amends for his past, a path that has seen him return to the seedy city of Port Virtue after years in exile.

But now his past is reaching out to catch up with him, just as he gets in over his head with a beautiful new client whose dead brother may have been murdered – if he’s even dead at all. If Kendall doesn’t play his cards right, he could wind up just as deceased as the usual subjects of his work.

On the other hand, Kendall may know more about what cards to play than anyone else realises…

The Obituarist is the story of one very rough week in the life of Kendall Barber. It’s a story about death, identity and how technology affects our interaction with these concepts. It’s a crime story featuring an unlikely detective, angry bikers, a seductive client, illegal chemistry, erratic drug dealers, identity theft, unhygienic cops and a fair bit of swearing.

Interested? Here’s a little to whet your appetite further:

Jay Moledacker was far more handsome in death than he ever had been in life. Okay, not true, but at least his Facebook profile picture was now a lot more dignified. Not difficult, since his profile picture while alive had been a photo of him drunk and vomiting onto a horse during a racing carnival.

Now that he was dead – of an embolism, rather than being kicked to death – he looked regal, elegant and a good six years younger. That’s because I had to use his graduation photo; everything after that point seemed to involve Jay throwing up, getting punched in nightclubs or out cold with FUCKWIT written on his chest in mustard.

A life well lived. Well, a life. Lived.

And it had fallen to me to close it all down.

Which didn’t stop my clients – his parents – from dicking me about on the invoice.

The Obituarist is a novella, available as a $2.99 ebook in a variety of formats. You can find it at Smashwords – http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/157386 or the Amazon Kindle Store, with other outlets soon to follow.

Read it now. Before you die.

And if you’re interested in Patrick’s other books and projects, check out his blog or follow him on Twitter (@patrickoduffy).

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Further chatting and some links supplied by friendly tweeters backed this up. When I tweeted: “I predict that e-ink devices could be the fastest invention in history to become old-fashioned”, futurist Mark Pesce replied:

@mpesce: They’re already charmingly quaint.

From a shiny new technology to obsolete and replaced in very short order. Already, the Kindle is “charmingly quaint”, like a gramophone player or a phone with a cord and dial. I’m a bit disappointed about this, because I love my Kindle. The thing I like most, apart from the very easy on the eyes e-ink screen, is that it’s a dedicated reading device. No distractions. It holds books and other documents that I need to read and that’s all. There are enough interruptions everywhere else – I don’t need them in a book too. Plus, the battery lasts literally weeks.

But I do have a slight issue in that I love my comics. I’ve read comic books forever and still buy several titles a month. I’d be happy to move to reading those digitally, but for the colour and graphic delivery I’d need a tablet like an iPad. I’ve yet to be able to justify the expense of an iPad purely for reading comics. But if it was for all my e-reading… And that doesn’t even begin to address the multi-media reading experience, with linked footnotes, video content and so much more that tablets make so easy.

But here’s where another problem presents itself. Reading novels (or other straight, unadorned text) from a tablet is problematic at the moment. It’s hard to see outside in the sunshine. The tablet has a terrible battery life, compared to the weeks and weeks I get from my Kindle. The backlit display is more tiring for the eyes. And herein lies the reason tablets are taking over – all those things are being addressed and improved at a furious rate. The tablet is starting to achieve all the positives of a dedicated e-ink reader, along with all the other things it does, making the strengths of e-ink irrelevant.

It’ll be a while before the tablet screen, ink, battery life and so on are as good as, say, a Kindle, but not that long a while. It will happen.

What this boils down to is actually something bigger. The device itself is becoming irrelevant. The beauty of the tablet is that it is a convergent device. You carry one thing and it does everything you need – reading, writing, web surfing, social networking, etc. This leads to a paradigm shift in content creation and delivery. As Eoin Purcell said on Twitter during last night’s conversation:

Things will be sold, but selling will take different forms. Subscriptions, memberships, ads, events, readings etc.

His point being that the content will be in the cloud, the creators and publishers will earn through the things he mentions in the quote above and that content will be consumed on a variety of devices. The device itself becomes irrelevant – all it needs is access to the cloud and a comfortable reading experience. That’s the tablet with the battery life, screen resolution and daylight clarity I talked about above. The implication here is that not only does the device itself become irrelevant – as long as you have one, any one will do – but the concept of an ebook is also irrelevant. You don’t buy a book. You subscribe to a publisher and access their content, whenever, wherever. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this…

So the dedicated e-reader, like the Kindle or Kobo, is already dead. It just hasn’t stopped kicking yet. Amazon know this, so they’ve released the Fire, which is a tablet device. Others are following suit. For those of us who prefer a dedicated e-ink device, we should make the most of it now. Before long we’ll be the hipsters of the digital reading world, congregating like those people in record stores who still buy vinyl and talk about what stylus they prefer. I wonder if half the people reading this even know what a stylus is.

(For further reading, I’d recommend this article on the subject by Eoin Purcell. Interestingly, this article is already more than two years old.)

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And remember me saying in the previous post about how Ticonderoga are producing some of the best books in Australia at the moment, with some of the best covers? Seriously, check that shit out. That’s another sweet-looking cover. Compared to a lot of stuff coming out these days you could be forgiven for thinking that covers are deemed unimportant and can therefore be bland and unimaginative. But not with Ticonderoga.

I can’t wait to read this book, with sixteen paranoirmal tales from a selection of great authors. It’s available now, from here.

Damnation and Dames (tpb)
[978-1-921857-03-4 ]

edited by Liz Grzyb & Amanda Pillar

The anthology brings you sixteen stories of murder and mayhem, monsters and mysterious femme fatales.

324 pages

• Lindsy Anderson – The Third Circle
• Chris Bauer – Three Questions and One Troll
• Alan Baxter & Felicity Dowker – Burning, Always Burning
• Jay Caselberg – Blind Pig
• M.L.D. Curelas – Silver Comes the Night
• Karen Dent – A Case to Die For
• Dirk Flinthart – Outlines
• Lisa L. Hannett & Angela Slatter – Prohibition Blues
• Donna Maree Hanson – Sangue Sella Notte
• Rob Hood – Walking the Dead Beat
• Joseph L Kellogg – The Awakened Adventure of Rick Candle
• Pete Kempshall – Sound and Fury
• Chris Large – One Night at the Cherry
• Penelope Love – Be Good Sweet Maid
• Nicole Murphy – The Black Star Killer
• Brian G. Ross – Hard Boiled

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Incidentally, how freaking sweet is that cover? Ticonderoga are producing some of the best books in Australia at the moment and they always have outstanding covers.

Felicity’s work is dark and unrelenting, with delicious stories of revenge and consequence. She mixes the fantastic with the horrific and the mundane with a masterful stroke of beautiful prose. Don’t take my word for it:

“She is one of those rare and talented writers of horror who can creep you out while still making you admire the graceful construction of her prose.” – World Fantasy Award nominee Angela Slatter

“Felicity Dowker is one of the all-too-rare writers who really understands both horror and its appeal. She can show the terrifying aspect of things as outre as enchanted dragons or the zombie apocalypse, or as commonplace as dysfunctional families and the Santa Claus army. To borrow her own words, ‘It hurts, and it’s horrible, and it’s beautiful . . . and we might as well enjoy it’.” – Award-winning Stephen Dedman

The book is available for pre-order now, so go get some. The official launch will be at Continuum in Melbourne in June, so get there too if you can.

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