horror

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Oz Horror Con: bloody good fun

oz horror convention 2013 posterMy Sunday was spent at Oz Horror Con, as a guest of the Australian Horror Writers Association, and it was fun, and I hope it happens again next year, bigger and better.

As one might expect from a first event, it had its share of squeaky hinges: a non-accessible venue, for instance, and a touch of confusion in the organisation, and from the outside, an ad hoc marketing campaign. We writer types were largely based in an upstairs room, echoing in its emptiness, a closed door making it even harder for those arriving to be aware of our existence. So that’s some of the negatives that can be easily addressed next time round. The big blow, in having marquee author Ramsey Campbell inability to attend, was unfortunate in the extreme.

The positives largely outweighed what amounted to teething troubles: the venue, the Donkey Wheelhouse, had wine cellars that would make a Hammer Horror stage designer drool. Not so easy if you’re mobility impaired even when the elevator works, but creating the right atmosphere, even if you need a lot of signage to help folks navigate (and find that upstairs room). It also had an excellent pub directly across the street and Spencer Street Station (oops: Southern Cross) nearby, too.

The variety of exhibitors was most excellent: make-up artists, funky sculptors and jewellers, talented graphic artists, purveyors of weird stuff. Throw in a bunch of wonderful cos players and you’ve got atmos coming out the wazoo.

More bodies would’ve added to that atmosphere, and one can only hope that word will spread, attractions will grow, and the audience will increase.

The panels, and they were many and varied, were well attended by an informed and interested audience; occasional zombie screams penetrating the bricks and steel door just added to the fun of it all.

As it was, Oz Horror Con was a very friendly event, a wonderful opportunity to meet other creatives and talk shop, in a relaxed environment. It has laid the foundation for a major cross-platform horror-themed gathering with numerous options for further synergies with filmmakers and other genre and literary events, a night program perhaps; indeed, the AHWA was a noticeable participant in the program this year, and it was pleasing to see its banner (or at least, some posters) flying.

Oz Horror 2014? Bring it on.

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Blood and Dust on the Christmas tree

blood and dust by jason nahrung

You can’t get much more Christmassy than outback vampires spreading mayhem in a Monaro, can you? That’s what publisher Xoum thought, too, and they’re spreading some Blood and Dust at tinsel time, just to keep it real.

Read an extract from Blood and Dust

Blood and Dust is now available digitally, at Amazon, iBooks … all over the place.

Also out: Kirstyn’s Perfections, at the Xoum website and Amazon(and all the rest)!

And of course, Salvage is still available in paperback ($17.50 inc postage) and for Kindle.

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The Next Big Thing

Angela Slatter tagged me in this Next Big Thing writerly chain thing, in which we answer the questions below before sending the same queries off to five of our pals. Blood and Dust is my next ‘big’ thing, to be released soonish in digital format by Sydney publisher Xoum. Let’s get started.

blood and dust by jason nahrung1) What is the working title of your next book?
Blood and Dust.

2) Where did the idea come from for the book?
The story began more than 10 years ago in a role playing game I was running while living in Rockhampton. Add in my dissatisfaction with the watering down of vampire as monster and metaphor, plus my love of Australian stories, and this yarn finally emerged. It originally moved from the outback to the big smoke, back to the outback, so I’ve cut the yarn into two standalone novels. Blood and Dust happens mostly in rural, regional Queensland; The Big Smoke — still a work in progress, and uncontracted — happens primarily in Brisbane.

3) What genre does your book fall under?
Let’s call it a supernatural thriller in which bad things happen. Does that qualify as horror?

4) What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
I’ve not thought that far ahead, but it would be exciting to see so many opportunities for Aboriginal Aussie actors to go crazy! It’d be a multinational cast, too: Eastern Europeans, English, Asian-Australians, yobbos. The sequel brings in serious Western European and US action. Get me the casting agent, stat!

5) What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
Bad things happen when an outback mechanic gets caught in the crossfire of an outlaw vampire motorcycle gang and a big city vampire gang.

6) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
Blood and Dust was sold to Xoum by my agent, Selwa Anthony.

7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
The first draft took probably more than a year to pull together. That was in the late 90s.

8) What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
Based on hearsay, because I still haven’t read the sucker, maybe 13 Bullets or, in terms of nastiness and based on the disappointing movie version, 30 Days of Night.

I like to think of it as Anne Rice meets Mad Max.

9) Who or what inspired you to write this book?
This is a little like Q2, but let’s run with it and say Bram Stoker. He’s the chap who crystallised my love of supernatural, Gothic literature with Dracula. You’ll find references to it, Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot and a few others besides, in Blood and Dust: little homages to the greats of vampire lit. How would vampires survive in the Sunshine State? This story is one answer.

10) What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?
If this were a DVD, it’d have warnings on the cover for coarse language, violence, adult themes, drug references, sex. But, y’know, it’s got a big heart, too.


That’s it from me. I direct you to my five victims to find out about their Next Big Things!

  • Cheryse Durrant
  • Chris McMahon
  • Charlotte Nash
  • Patrick O’Duffy
  • Scott Robinson

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    American Horror Story, all boxed up

    American Horror Story season 1

    Connie Britton, Dylan McDermott and Taissa Farmiga arrive at the ‘murder house’.

    Has it been a year already? Ghosts of Christmas past or what?

    Last year we scoffed down American Horror Story, an incredibly thoughtful and homage-laden haunted house story with some exceptional ghost work. Well, season three has just been commissioned, and the first season has recently been released on DVD.

    I got sent a review copy of the DVD package, and it’s handsome.

    Do not watch the extras if you haven’t watched the show. Half the fun is trying to work out the back stories of the characters and, indeed, work out who’s a ghost and who isn’t, and who will become one and who won’t. So an extra profiling the who and the how of the spooks is great to recapture or put things in perspective, but will screw up the show.

    Film fans will enjoy the info about the title credits — great to see some Nine Inch Nails input there! — and the ‘making of’ likewise sheds some light while talking up the show.

    Strangely, for a show that worked hard to avoid cliche even while exploiting so many tropes, the ‘Murder House’ extra, dressed up as a ghost tour visit riffing from the show, added little that wasn’t covered elsewhere, and let the side down.

    The commentary from creator Ryan Murphy on the pilot isn’t overblown and provides some interesting tidbits and insights.

    Online, there’s a shallow doco site about crime scenes/haunted places, and it covers six in Australia. They’ve misspelt Boggo Road in Brisbane and bollocked up the text for Snowtown (awesome movie, by the way!). Sigh.

    Still, watching the pilot again reminded me of just how superb Jessica Lange is in this show — indeed, the performances are first rate across the board — and I reckon it will reward a second viewing to appreciate all the bits ‘n’ bobs the makers have used to set up the succinct 12-parter. I remember being a tad disappointed with the final episode’s touch of twee and apparent set up for season 2 (falsely, because 2: Asylum, is all new), so another viewing could indeed be illuminating.

    One for the Xmas pressie list, for sure.

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    Well, Hello Kitty!

    midnight echo 8Midnight Echo is ramping up to the release of Issue 8 at the end of November — herewith, some dirt on my yarn in the magazine, ‘Hello Kitty’. It includes an extract, which makes me stress that the attitudes and opinions of characters therein are not necessarily those of the author …

    Other writers in the mag include Joe R Lonsdale, Felicity Dowker, Joanne Anderton, Jason Fischer and Andrew J McKiernan — and MORE!

    And Issue 9, with a theme of legends, is open to submissions.

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    Blood and Dust on the digital horizon aka Kevin the vampire lives!

    blood and dust by jason nahrung

    This is the cover for Blood and Dust, my outback vampire novel coming soonish to digital shelves everywhere thanks to Aussie publisher Xoum. I quite like it! (Honestly, the art dept has fkn nailed it, yeah?)

    The cat has kind of slipped out of the bag on this one, but it’s nice to be able to share the horror joy. The story’s more than 10 years and four major iterations in the making, and for those who know — this is the story of Kevin, the vampire. And yes, the Monaro is still there …

    You might have also noticed recently another lurvly book cover hitting the interwebs:

    perfections by kirstyn mcdermott

    Why yes, I have read an unedited version of this novel by Kirstyn McDermott, and yes, it is very good. Coming soonish, too!

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    GenreCon — worth doing all over again

    genrecon logo

    So we’re back home, and now that the work has been caught up on — well, kind of — it’s worth reflecting on the good oil that came from GenreCon in Sydney this weekend.

    Twas an intimate gathering of writers from across the spectrum of crime, romance and spec fic — a melding of minds, techniques, loves and aspirations. And there were agents and publishers (Hachette, HarperVoyager, Momentum, Xoum, Clan Destine, Dark Prints … to name a few) with an interest in those genres. There were international guests Ginger Clark and Sarah Wendell and Joe Abercrombie:

    Ginger let us know about the tough times in publishing and how agents are stepping up to fill the gaps left by publishers, in terms of editing, marketing, production … the line is blurring, the publishers cash-strapped and unable to offer the full suite of resources that has, in the past, made them such a powerful cog in the publishing wheel.

    Sarah addressed author platform — the pros and cons of various social media, the importance of politeness — be a person, she said; converse, don’t declare.

    And Joe: he’s a damn funny, easy-going fantasy writer who seems just a touch bemused to be selling oodles, but highly appreciative, to be sure. It’s all about getting down and dirty with the characters for him; gritty realism over shiny heroics, though he admits there’s room for both, and more, in fantasy’s huge field.

    There was pitching for those with something to pitch — a 70 per cent hit rate for call backs shows some serious quality in the offing, and of the 30 per cent that dipped out, there was a praise for the pitch, even if the actual book didn’t hit that particular agent or publisher’s want list.

    The panels were compelling, ranging from industry to craft to workshop topics — Peter M Ball’s business model for writers gave me pause for thought.

    LA Larkin described plot as skeleton, characters as flesh and mood as blood: I like that, as you might expect.

    There was an awesome debate between planners and pantsers: there was a symbolic glass of water, and a smooch, some of the best insults since Monty Python …

    There was catching up and meeting social media pals, making some new friendships and reinforcing some existing ones. It was relaxed but draining. There was morning and afternoon tea and lunch as well, all of which enhanced the social aspect of the event.

    As usual with conventions, the hotel didn’t quite come to grips with the bar situation, but the staff were wonderful and, from this outsiders’ viewpoint, apart from the race day madness in the bar, all went to plan.

    Martin Livings launched his collection, Living with the Dead, as part of an Australian Horror Writers Association presentation, one of four by various genre groups.

    The opening night cocktail party was a hoot of an ice breaker, and it sounded as if we’d missed out by skipping the banquet and a presentation of romance titles, one featuring a platypus that created quite the stir.

    The good news: plans are afoot for GenreCon 2013, to be held in Brisbane. The calendar is richer for it.

  • In the aftermath of GenreCon, Conflux 9 — Canberra’s science fiction and fantasy convention, also the natcon for 2013 — has announced a pitching opportunity with Voyager’s Deonie Fiford. This is in addition to already announced opportunities with Angry Robot’s Marc Gascoigne. Noice. I’m really looking forward to getting back to Conflux, which has never failed to entertain.