horror

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Up a tree, with vampires

kathleen jennings illo of Jason Nahrung up a tree

A belated note to acknowledge that the wonderful Dr Brains have picked my grey matter for ruminations on things writerly and vampiric over at their Lair — if the wonderful Kathleen Jennings illo is anything to judge by, I’ve truly gone out on a limb! (Because the Brains, aka Angela Slatter and Lisa Hannett both host — a kind of left and right brain thing, perhaps — I’m linking to them both!)

For those who haven’t seen the blog that this illo riffs off, Goths Up Trees is not only photographically interesting but comes with the kind of endearing snark one would expect — great fun.

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Aurealis #47 in the wild

aurealis magazine issue 47

Very pleased to say that Aurealis #47 is available for download, for $2.99, at Smashwords. It features a Greek mythology story from Jenny Blackford and my Aussie dark fantasy, ‘Breaking the Wire’, plus loads of other tasty tidbits such as punchy reviews and links to recent happenings in spec fic. The download is free for subscribers.

It’s also worth noting that Aurealis is once again open to submissions. It publishes 10 issues a year in the newly adopted digital format.

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Aussies in Bram Stoker Awards running

Congratulations to the Aussies who have crossed the sea to make the final ballot for the Bram Stoker horror awards (five I’m aware of made the long list):

Kaaron Warren for her short story ‘All You Do Is Breathe’ in Blood and Other Cravings.

Jack Dann as editor (with Nick Gevers) for Ghosts by Gaslight.

Rocky Wood for his non-fiction Stephen King: A Literary Companion. Note that Rocky’s Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished
has been updated with a Q&A from the King himself, with profits to go Rocky’s ALS Fund. Available as pre-order only from Overlook Connection Press.

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AWWNYRC #3: The Road, by Catherine Jinks

This is the third book I’m reading as part of my list of 10 for the Australian Women Writers 2012 National Year of Reading Challenge.

The Road

by Catherine Jinks
Allen & Unwin, 2004, ISBN: 1 74114 356 X

the road by catherine jinks

IT’S no surprise that The Road namechecks The Twilight Zone and The X-Files several times. It’s premise is quite supernatural, taking more than a dozen travellers and subjecting them to the strange phenomenon of not being able to get anywhere. This particular stretch of rural road is cursed, it seems; running out of petrol is the least of their problems.

The story begins with a woman and her infant son hiding from her abusive partner on a rural property. He finds them, bad things happen, and then the weirdness kicks in.

Out on the bitumen, car after car of disparate travellers — holiday makers, a truckie, locals going about their business — are caught up in the loop, driving without getting anywhere outside a certain radius.

It takes a while for this large cast to be assembled, primarily because each group gets its own point of view. We find out who they are, what has brought them to be driving this stretch of highway, what they hope to find at their destination. The characters are wonderfully drawn, but the back stories become tedious, a way of trying to provoke some care for the fate of each increasingly desperate set of travellers, but ultimately operating more like speed bumps or cattle grids, forcing the story to slow right down while the latest piece is introduced to the board. Few of the pieces have much to do; their back stories generally tend to be of negligible connection to their plight or the situation’s resolution.

australian women writers challenge 2012There are two characters who provide some continuity, thankfully, but this is a far cry from the incredible tension to be found in the work of another master of this kind of ensemble story, Stephen King. Perhaps because the situation the stranded travellers find themselves in never manifests a deeper message — ordinary people behave ordinarily — or because the characters have only the vague sense of the danger they’re in. The reader knows, which is where the suspense comes from as the story picks up its pace.

Having said that, however, the story is, once it gets out of low range somewhere around the halfway mark, most enjoyable, primarily for its use of landscape. There are some wonderfully descriptive scenes of nature gone awry; provoked, it seems, into being an agent of justice. And Jinks’ prose is a delight.

This is one of those yarns where patience is rewarded — where the destination is actually more rewarding than the journey.


Previous Challenge reviews:

  • The Shattered City, by Tansy Rayner Roberts, fantasy.
  • Frantic, by Katherine Howell, crime.
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    Tales from the Bell Club TOC

    tales from the bell club logo

    I’ve only just stumbled across the table of contents for Tales from the Bell Club (edited by Paul Mannering for KnightWatch Press), in which I’ve managed to place a story entitled ‘The Kiss’.

    It was one of those yarns that popped up out of the ether, a happy collision between a visit to the gallery to see an exhibition about the Secessionist painters of early 20th century Vienna and the announcement of the anthology. In particular, a painting of Count Verona by Oskar Kokoschka and the unavoidable if enigmatic presence of Emilie Floge. It took a while to get this one to come together; I was dreading trying to reconfigure it if it missed the mark for the Bell Club. I realise now that, with last year’s riff on the disappearance of Harold Holt, I’ve definitely joined the ranks of alternative history; bless you, Emilie Floge, and your crazy band of artists! It will be interesting to see who else is rubbing shoulders in the Bell Club halls…

    emilie floge (detail) by gustav klimt

    Emilie Floge

    count verona by oskar kokoschka

    Count Verona, 1910

    The TOC:

    The Adventure of the Laboratory – Kathleen Brandt
    Tell Tom Tildrum – Edward M. Erdelac
    The Quarrantine Station – Lee Zumpe
    A Gentleman’s Folly – Phil Hickes
    The Kiss – Jason Nahrung
    Divine Providence – Robert J. Santa
    The Widow Dotridge – Jason D. Moore
    Spawn Of The Crocodile God – John McNee
    Life and Limb – Andrew Freudenberg
    The Girl In The Cabin – Richard Barnes
    The Wager – Jeff C. Carter
    Sayuri’s Revenge – Helen Stubbs
    Fluke (originally: untitled) – Lynne Jamneck
    The Shrieking Woman – Doug Manllen

    the kiss by gustav klimt

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    ‘Salvage’ available for preorder

    My novella Salvage, a seaside Gothic, is available for pre-order in paperback from Twelfth Planet Press for $15 plus postage.

    salvage by jason nahrung

    “Seeking to salvage their foundering marriage, Melanie and Richard retreat to an isolated beach house on a remote Queensland island.

    “Intrigued by a chance encounter with a stranger, Melanie begins to drift away from her husband and towards Helena, only to discover that Helena has her own demons, ageless and steeped in blood.

    “As Richard’s world and Helena’s collide, Melanie must choose which future she wants, before the dark tide pulls her under … forever.”

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    The novella, Salvage, surfaces at last!

    salvage by jason nahrung

    Twelfth Planet Press has announced the forthcoming publication of my novella, Salvage — big smiles all round. The novella was written primarily over three consecutive years, at my writers’ group retreat on Bribie Island, and then finished off in a fourth retreat on the shore of Lake Weyba at Noosa. The cover art is by Dion Hamill, who also provided covers for TPP’s Horn, amongst others (and not, as previously written here, TPP’s edition of Marianne de Pierres’ Glitter Rose). Now, the edits…

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    Good stuff while my back was turned

    We’re back, and a wee bit tired as the clock has turned over the 36-hour mark since we got up some morning recently in my beloved New Orleans, and here’s some of the stuff that’s been happening in my absence that’s too good not to share:

    Anywhere But Earth, launching today in Sydney, is all systems go at the online store

    Brisbane’s awesome Sarah Calderwood is interviewed on ABC Radio about her debut solo album! The song she sings in the studio is stunning.

    Beat magazine makes it official: The Tea Party have tested the reunion waters and found it warm enough to take another splash — cool!

    Kyla Ward has launched her solo poetry collection, The Land of Bad Dreams, with aplomb — see the vids! (Okay, this actually happened before we left, but we couldn’t be in Sydney for it, and it looks like it was a hoot of a night.)

    Oh, too: Macabre, an excellent overview of Aussie horror fiction, and Surviving the End, in which I have a story, are both available — the first as e-book showing there’s still some life left in the sadly collapsed Brimstone Press, the latter as a pre-order. Check out more happenings in Aussie horror publishing at From the Pit.

    Looking ahead: for those in Melbourne, wicked Brissie band Tycho Brahe support Psyche at the Espy on November 12 — that’s this Saturday. Sad, I was, to miss their Halloween gig back in Bris.

    And this time, my back wasn’t turned, because I was at World Fantasy Convention to see Alisa Krasnostein receive her press’s achievement trophy. A superb effort!

    I am a judge for the Aurealis Awards. This item is the personal opinion of the writer, and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of any judging panel, the judging coordinator or the Aurealis Awards management team.

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    Surviving the End

    surviving the end anthologyDark Prints Press has released the table of contents for its Surviving the End anthology, to be launched at the Swancon “Doom Con” in Perth at Easter next year — lovely thematic resonance, there! (Marianne de Pierres is a good choice of guest of honour, given her dystopian outings.) The antho sounds nice and tight, with extra interest thanks to the inclusion of Craig’s between-story interludes and the novella.

    As well as my yarn, ‘The Last Boat to Eden’, there is:

  • Unwanted, by Martin Livings
  • The Long Ago, by Amanda J Spedding
  • Hiatus, by Michael Bailey
  • The Stuff of Stories, by Kathryn Hore
  • Harvest, by Ashlee Scheuerman
  • the novella, The Failing Flesh, by Joseph D’Lacey
  • and narrative interludes by the ‘Story Collector’, Craig Bezant

    • The end is in sight — bring it on!

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    Stormlord Rising, Snow Crash, Kraken, The Broken Ones, Phoenix Rising: one of these things is not like the others

    Recent reading:

    stormlord rising by glenda larke

    Glenda Larke’s Stormlord Rising, book 2 of the Watergivers series, and quite superb. Just like book 1, The Last Stormlord (reviewed here). In which Larke beautifully uses landscape to sculpt her cultures, right down to the vernacular. Gives religion a thumping, stage-manages her rather large cast very well, manages to cause her characters a few headaches along the way as well. I was particularly chuffed at how book 2 feels quite self contained, while still managing to provide plenty of reasons to read book 3. Which I will do, very shortly.

    snow crash by neal stephenson

    Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. Fair to say that this, along with William Gibson’s Neuromancer (gushed about here), is a core plank of cyberpunk? Still holds up, after all these years, even if no one has bothered to fix that bothersome literal role/roll model. Coolest pizza delivery peeps evah! Will soon be lining up for his massive Reamde — wish me luck.

    kraken by china mieville

    Kraken, what passes for a romp in the land of far-too-talented China Mieville. A little cloudy in its cleverness in places — inky, one could say — as a vibrantly realised magical London (nice nod to a previous short story concerning cartography, too) and uber-clever dialogue as cults and other interested parties are caught up in the tentacles of a plot to bring about apocalypse. Evolutionary stuff!

    the broken ones by stephen irwin

    The Broken Ones, in which Stephen M Irwin gives Brissie a haunted makeover while trashing the place. Occult conspiracies, a tenacious detective and true chills. It’s Irwin’s second novel and, IMHO, shows the maturation of a mighty promising talent. I’ve burbled on about this one over at ASiF. I’m quite looking forward to Irwin’s next book.

    phoenix rising

    And then there’s Phoenix Rising, by Pip Ballantine and Tee Morris. Sadly, a few factors combined to hobble my reading of this one, the first in a series. I say sadly because I was, despite the steampunk lingerie on the cover, really quite keen, thanks to the combination of a Kiwi heroine and rather spiffy dialogue. But then there’s the solo attack in Antarctica carried out in thigh-high boots and a fur coat, the willy nilly distribution of literal and spelling errors, the (non-authorial) disconcerting use of American spelling in a story about a Commonwealth agency in Victorian London: I do hope the new world order of international publishing isn’t all about the lowest common denominator (that’s you, America, or rather, it’s not ‘u’). It certainly isn’t about proofreading, is it? Anyway, maybe it was my flu making me more ornery than usual, but I just couldn’t wade through the glibness and clumsiness. I’ll keep it on hand for another shot, because I really do like that librarian, sorry, archivist, on the cover sipping tea.