A (belated) Macabre Congrats to our Authors

I'm a little late in posting this but then I am known to be all arse about face and upside down...Anyway, aside from the award nominations Macabre is picking up as an anthology, a number of our Macabre authors are picking up some great recognition for their brilliant stories:

• Richard Harland's “The Fear” is being reprinted in Ellen Datlow's Year's Best, with 7 others making the honourable mentions list:
• “Monsters Among Us” by Kirstyn McDermott
• “Erina Hearn and the Gods of Death” by Kyla Ward  
• “Here Be Monsters” by Susan Wardle 
• “Sweet as Decay” by David Witteveen and David Conyers 
• “Hive” by Stephen M. Irwin
• “Feast or Famine” by Gary Kemble 
• “Take the Free Tour” by Bob Franklin
• Kirstyn's “Monsters Among Us” has also been nominated for a Bram Stoker Award in the Superior Achievement in Short Fiction category
• Andrew J McKiernan's “All the Clowns of Clowntown” has been shortlisted for an Australian Shadows Award in the Best Short Story category

So raise a glass with me folks, and congratulate them all. 

Editing Macabre was a huge learning curve for me, one filled with many ups and downs, long, long hours spent researching old magazines and newspapers (old as in 1830s etc), and reading lots and lots of stories (and I mean lots and lots!). But through it all, through all the trials and tribulations, our contributors remained professional, patient, and just damn awesome to work with. They never gave up hope in seeing Macabre published.

So here is a belated Thank You everyone for sticking with it and putting up with my often inane emails. As someone once said, youse guys rock. 

The brick--er, book, is just great as a door stop once you've finished reading it, too. 

And would I do it again? Hell yeah!

(but just don't tell my wife I said that)

Awards and Stories

I've well and truly sated my muse these past few weeks, inspired by some Great News, so the shifty sideshow freak shouldn't be complaining any. I've also been writing as if I'm holding a burning pen, reading old Weird Tales stories from the magazine's original run, and watching lots of cool flicks. Even my dreams have been truly bizarre.

But it's not enough for him; the more of a creative appetite I get, the more demanding he gets. It's as if I'm slipping more and more into his backstage world of shadows, where he can get a better grip on me and it's not so easy to ignore what he whispers.

But you know what? I'm loving it! I'm feeling inspired like I haven't for a long, long time. I guess Good News will do that for you.

What Good News? I hear you say...and what's with capitalizing the blasted words?

Well, let me tell you, seeing as how you asked...

Macabre has made the final ballot of the 2010 Bram Stoker Awards for superior achievement in an anthology, which is bloody awesome!

But wait, there's more. Kirstyn McDermott's Macabre story 'Monsters Among Us' has also been nominated for a Stoker in the Long Fiction category. It keeps going, too: the anthology has been short listed for the 2010 Australian Shadows Award, with Andrew McKeirnan's story 'All the Clowns in Clowntown' likewise shortlisted in those awards for Best Short Fiction. And to top it off, Richard Harland's story from Macabre, 'The Fear', will be reprinted in Ellen Datlow's Best Horror of the Year 3!

Go Macabre!

And as for my own writing, check out HorrorWorld next month (April) as my story 'Behind the Midnight Blinds' will be featured there.

It's a story I'm pretty proud of, and one I wrote while living on Pitt Town Road. It's mostly based upon real events (apart from the supernatural events, that is). An old, empty house next door, ancient books stashed under the only piece of furniture left in the place, and a sensor light outside my bedroom that kept coming on in the middle of the night...

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that Blade Red's awesome Dark Pages anthology, in which I have a story ('Clip Notes') was shortlisted for an Australian Shadows Award in the best edited collection category. How could I forget that?? Terrible, Marty.