Monday, May 23, 2011

Being Prepared

See? This is what I've been afraid of... it's bad enough waking up in the middle of the night from a nightmare in which you're being chased by unrelenting zombies--especially when the neighbours' dogs are barking madly--but when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention begins taking the possibility of a zombie apocalypse seriously you know there's trouble coming. The CDC even released an emergency plan of what to do in such an emergency.

Ah, it's all going to end so badly...

On another note, a huge CONGRATULATIONS to Richard Harland for winning an Aurealis Award for Best Horror Short Story with his brilliantly creepy tale "The Fear." Well done, Richard!! "The Fear" was first published in Macabre and also reprinted in Ellen Datlow's US anthology Best Horror of the Year #3. It's a top notch story, that one.

Congrats also to Kirstyn McDermott, for picking up a gong for Best Horror Novel with Madigan Mine, a truly excellent book. If you haven't read it, go git yerself a copy. Go on, do it. Well done to everyone else, too--a good night was had by all, so the photos would suggest...

And on just one more note, Amazon recently announced that the sales of e-books topped print books for the first time, with 105 electronic books sold for every 100 paper books now. Kindle e-books are outselling hardcover books two-to-one (not really surprising there). The times, they surely are a-changing.

Alan Baxter posted an interesting post on how it is now vital for us, as readers, to provide some kind of quality control over what's published. With the advent (and success) of Print-on-Demand and e-books, anyone can write a book and get it published, regardless of how good--or more likely how bad--it is. Read his post; Alan makes some very good points.

Now then, I'm going to tuck my tail between my legs and slink off with my exhaustion... Damn that Amanda Pillar and her hubby....... Damn their bacardi.....

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Exhausted? At least you weren't almost asleep on a couch and cat that weren't yours when you were meant to be drinking someone under the table...

Marty Young said...

Well, at least there was a table in the room :)