Masters of Horror, here I come!

Awesome, the cover art for the MoH anthology has been revealed and I gotta say, it looks damn cool!

You'll find my story 'Fireflies of the Bushfire' nestled neatly inside. Publication date is scheduled for about April... more details soon.

In other news, I'm about 1/3 of the way through the copy edits of my novel and boy oh boy am I sick of this...... but hang in there Marty, nearly done. Just gotta add that final polish and then it's off to US agents we go.

A big THANK YOU to Paula, my editor extraordinaire, who has made this book so damn amazing. Hope those sunny Californian skies are looking after you well :)

Onwards and upwards Paula!

Being Scared...

So have you been scared lately..?

I don't mean scared for your life in the real world, cos that just sucks, really. I lived in Canberra (in one of the worst hit suburbs) when those bushfires ripped through the place and I was pretty damn scared then. The fire front reached the house accross the small cul-de-sac road from me before the wind turned it away (my short story Fireflies of the Bushfire, to be published this year, is based on that experience). Absolutely terrifying. This lil' ol' kiwi had never experienced anything remotely like an Aussie bushfire before that.

But I'm talkin' about the fun kind of scared! Y'know, that 'HOLY JESUS!' moment where you're just freaking the hell out and LOVING IT!

I used to have 3 crazy dreams on a semi-regular basis when I was growing up, one was about zombies chasing me, the next about T-Rex coming after me, and the last about Jason from Friday the 13th hot on my heels. All were pretty much unstoppable, and I used to wake up terrified. Not fun. Man, I'd be a psychiatrist's wet dream...

But no, that's not really the fun scared I'm talking about, either.

I reckon the most fun scared I've been was during Paranormal Activity--especially that scene where the lady's leg is-- well, I'd best not spoil it. But crap, that movie did a major number on me. Blair Witch frightened the heck outta me too, but PA was so much better. I saw this a few weeks ago and I reckon it's the spookiest movie I've ever watched.

Maybe I'm just a wimp.

How about in a book? That's much harder, although The Monkey's Paw by WW Jacobs was pretty damn terrifying. Novels? Hmm.....

There was a novel by Richard Laymon that freaked me out - can't remember what it was called but it was about this sicko who broke into this family's house and killed the parents, then went after the kids. That got me, but only because shit like that happens in our fucked up world. Goddamn people. My money's on the sharks.



(and don't even try with your flying tanks - they'll run out of fuel eventually and then where will you be? Yeah, you know it, punk)