Saturday, August 21, 2010

The Bitterness of Being Human

Feeling a mite bitter with mankind today so I thought I'd pen a poem. Something a little different...

People are strange
Jimmy Morrison said,
but they're more than that,
worse than that;
People are human,
and there's no end to what
humans can be...

Yeah, okay, pretty crap, but it does the job.

Sometimes people amaze me and I'm amazed at that. After all of this time, to still be shocked and stunned by what people do... No wonder our poor planet is having an identity crises, hot and cold flushes; it's revolving around so many people...

Monday, August 16, 2010

Macabre's nearly here...

...and I'm damn excited!


It looks bloody awesome - and it's a door-stopper at 672 pages. There're a whole swag of kick-arse writers in the anthology, going all the way back to John Lang's first ever Australian ghost story from 1836.

I'm real proud of this; Angela and I worked hard to get it together, and all of those involved have been fantastic to work with. Thanks all for your patience and perseverance, and here's to a wild launch at Worldcon in September!

The sheer scope of this project meant it wasn't possible to include everyone who deserved to be in there, but that just means there's enough material for a volume II sometime down the track. I still have a pile of stories from the colonial era right up to the 1980's looking for a home (got some great pulp era stories, too).

But for now, make sure you enjoy this Macabre feast - with 36 stories, it's an honest to goodness fuckin' smorgasbord!!

Check out the details (including the really important ordering info!) here: http://www.brimstonepress.com.au/macabre.htm

Oh! And a big THANK YOU to everyone who voted for my story 'Black Peter' for the Ditmar Awards! That story is now nominated in the Best Short Story category, and that's just cool :)

I'm gonna go git me a scotch and raise a toast. Then I'm 'a gonna drink that there scotch.

'Black Peter' was also honourably mentioned by Ellen Datlow in the Best Horror of the Year volume II, so looks like that's at least 3 glasses of scotch I'd best go enjoy...