The 2026 calendar of Australian literary events is up!
There is already a healthy listing, especially in the first half of they year, with the big question being: will Bendigo Writers Festival bounce back from this year’s kerfuffle?
The calendar is slightly more streamlined this year, with events yet to be confirmed listed at the bottom.
As always, please feel free to get in touch to bring events to my attention or alert me to errors.
I had the pleasure of being a guest of honour at Conflux, Canberra’s annual convention dedicated to speculative fiction, which ran 3-6 October.
Other GOHs were Kirstyn McDermott, James Bradley, Freya Marske, and Elise Miller, with the event chaired by Cat Sparks and emceed by Nicole Murphy. A fabulous line-up that I was thrilled and a little surprised to be a part of!
If you are interested in science fiction, fantasy, horror or any other reality-tweaking genre, in any form, then this convention is worth consideration.
Over the course of the event, I was a participant in five panels, held a kaffeeklatsch (basically, an arranged but relaxed gathering where we drink coffee and chat about writing, the business, anything at all*), and gave a talk, some of the latter of which I will reproduce here. I also provided a reading from Cruel Nights and a short interview with the Narrative Library** (my second outing with them): I’m under N! [listen here]
My talk included a PowerPoint, and that included some recommended texts in the vampire and climate fiction areas, as well as some advice for writers (some of which I suspect could be applied more broadly).
In case anyone was looking, here are the slides, with the caveat: it’s only the stuff that could fit, and I tried not to stress too much about the other favourites and notables that I had to leave out. Also mentioned/alluded to: Narrelle Harris’s Vampires of Melbourne, Mudrooroo’s Master of the Ghost Dreaming, Keri Arthur’s Riley Jenson Guardian, and Bill Congreve’s Epiphanies of Blood. Also movies Daybreakers, Thirst, Outback Vampires, and Bloodlust.
The Conflux program carried song titles for its programming titles, so I weighed in with my own soundtrack!
As to the promise mentioned in the page title: as part of the chinwag, I mentioned that I’d been beavering away, on and off, for five years on a new novel set in my flooded Brisbane world, and that it was almost done. The ridiculously talented and accomplished Kaaron Warren, who emceed my talk, made me – made me, I tells ya! – promise n front of everyone to have a draft sent to my agent within a fortnight. Well, it’s going out tomorrow, once I’ve settled on the working title, which is driving me crazy. Nothing like a little public accountability!
My thanks to the organisers of Conflux for inviting me along and making me feel welcome, as well as all the attendees who extended the hand of friendship – and good book and movie recommendations!
Major speculative fiction get-togethers are announced for Brisbane and Perth next year, with Conflux dates to be confirmed once they’ve taken a well-earned nap.
* In fairness, a convention is kind of a large, random kaffeeklatsch
** Psst: is that a preview of Kirstyn’s new novel? (She’s under M!)
I’m very chuffed to report that Kirstyn and I will be guests of honour at Conflux, Canberra’s festival of speculative fiction in October this year.
Conflux has always been a fabulous convention, offering plenty of information about the craft and business of writing as well as a great opportunity to hang out with writers and readers, united in their love of all things spec fic.
It’ll be challenging and fun to be taking part as a guest, especially as a double bill with Kirstyn (others are yet to be announced), and I’m looking forward to meeting old friends and making new ones.
I expect I’ll be banging on about the enduring allure of vampires, the Gothic, and climate fiction, and whatever else pops up.
Attending conventions has been a valuable element in my journey as a writer, and I’ve always appreciated opportunities to give back to that. This will be next level, though!
I encourage genre writers to investigate such opportunities, to get insights into the industry, meet like-minded souls, and be part of the community. So come on down, the water’s fine. Memberships are now open.
Today marks the official release day of Into the Cthulhu-Universe, an IFWG anthology that transplants Lovecraft’s mythos into other literary realms.
My short story, ‘Sweet Music’, came out of the blue, or more likely the black: a casual conversation with co-editor Steven Paulsen in which it was mentioned there was a hole in the anthology.
‘Anyone done Dracula?’ I asked.
‘No.’ Eyebrow raised.
‘Give me a week, see if anything emerges…’
And here it is, a little different to the original concept that first dug its way out of the back brain.
You’ll notice some of the hard-copy research material pictured, the exquisite coincidence of a certain Cthulhu castle in Transylvania, the challenge of layering Tepes over Stoker over Lovecraft et al.
I’ve written only two other Cthulhu-esque stories — ‘An Incident at Portsea, 1967’ and ‘Slither’. Nice when things come in threes, even if years apart!
Into the Cthulhu-Universe is now available from the usual online retailers. Find out more at IFWG.
The calendar of Australian literary events is up!
As always, please feel free to get in touch to bring events to my attention or alert me to errors.
The calendar of Australian literary events is starting to populate, with more than 20 on the list already, up until August so far. Adelaide Writers Week is well ahead, having posted dates for 2026 as well!
Next year’s events are still listed under the 2024 calendar – they’ll get their own page in late November.
As always, please feel free to get in touch to bring events to my attention or alert me to errors.
It is a two-vampire-story year, with a short story following hot on the heels of my novella, Cruel Nights.
Sounds like a good reason for a party! Friday the 13th? Even better!
Nosferatu Unbound invites an international cast of writers to revisit the world of its namesake, the marvellous 1922 film.
As it happens, co-editor Steven Paulsen, illustrator Dillon Naylor and a certain Kirstyn McDermott are all fellow Ballaratians (or perhaps more fittingly, Ballarodents), hence: party!
Nosferatu Unbound will be celebrated at a release party, part of Collins Booksellers’ After Dark series, on 13 September at Collins Booksellers in Bridge St Mall, Ballarat, kicking off at 6.30pm. Also on the table will be Cruel Nights, still waiting for its official raising of the glass since its May release. There will be minimal official words, mocktails with a vampiric flavour, and books to buy, get signed, and chat about: as well as the anthology and Cruel Nights, Dillon’s fabulous vampire yarn Batrisha, and more dark tales from the four contributors.
There is a Facebook event to indicate your interest for catering purposes, or drop me or the bookstore a line.
As a further local connection, my story, ‘The Late Stage’, ships the undead off to Ballarat during the gold rush – not all gold diggers are after money, are they?
Kirstyn, meanwhile, has a familiar character of her own hot on the trail of the movie itself. Ooh!
Nosferatu Unbound is officially released on 16 September – keep an eye on the publisher’s website for purchase options.
Ever since I first heard the Brigade album by Heart, sometime around 1990, I reckoned there was a story in it. Not just the micro stories of each song, but a bigger narrative.
I wrote a short one, melding tracks All I Wanna Do (Is Make Love to You) and The Night*. Didn’t much like it, too simplistic, one note. It’s still in the drawer.
Then, in 2019, emerging from four years of PhD in climate change fiction, I felt ready to take a shot at a longer treatment of the Brigade project. But wait. Just around the corner, in March 2020, the Queensland Writers Centre was having a weekend novel-writing ‘boot camp’ with Kim Wilkins. Perfect. Stop writing, get some ideas together, work on something else to fill in the time**.
(Kim, by the way, ran the first QWC workshop I attended after I moved to Brisbane in 1998. It’s where I met my tribe. To a large extent, that workshop set me on this path.)
Brigade, Kim reckoned, probably wasn’t Heart’s best album, when I said during our introductions that my project for the weekend had been inspired by it. I was too slow to add that it might not be their most lauded, but it is the one with the vampire!
It was a fun weekend, bouncing around story ideas and character arcs with each other, emerging weary but also energised, with a note book full of trajectories and ideas that lit a fire under the project. Needless to say, I played a lot of Heart writing the book, especially Brigade, tapping the moods and themes. Cruel Nights (yep, from a song on the album) is still anchored around the meshing of those two key songs, but the entire album is in there.
I did check in with the rights holders about using a stanza for an epigraph*** but it was a bit pricey for this project. Still, I like the compromise of using Heart song titles as chapter headings. Picking appropriate ones from across the catalogue reminded me again of how diverse and accomplished this band is, what a set of pipes Ann Wilson has.
So yes, the long wait between books is finally over, and yes, it’s another vampire story. Also a kind of love song. With Heart.
* funnily enough, All I Wanna Do is not one of my favourite Heart tunes. The Night, it’s right up there, though.
** still working on it.
*** there are some lyrical Easter eggs in the text, but I had to wrap them carefully to avoid any copyright issues.
I’m very pleased to share the news that I have a new book coming out! The novella Cruel Nights is slated for release through Brisbane’s Brain Jar Press on 21 May 2024.
Says the publisher: Brain Jar Press is pleased to present Jason Nahrung’s Cruel Nights, a vampire novella which harks back to the vampire novels of Poppy Z. Brite and Anne Rice while also asking what might have happened to those characters once the nineties were over. It’s an extraordinary read for anyone with fond memories of the grunge era and the horror which sprang up around it.
And the blurb:
…a grunge-soaked tale of love and vampirism in ’90s Seattle.
Charlie died in Nevada, 1973, after seeing Led Zeppelin live on stage and making the wrong choice on the long drive home.
Corey meets him at a TAD gig seventeen years later and feels an immediate attraction. They both swear their night together will be a onetime thing, but neither can stay away.
Corey and Charlie spend two decades building a life together, a mortal and vampire in love, but there are some things Corey’s not willing to give up. She can move cities when Charlie’s eternal youth raises suspicion and she can rebuild her career as a music journalist after every disruption to their life, but as she gets older, it’s harder and harder to be satisfied with their nocturnal existence.
Then a moment of weakness delivers Charlie and Corey the one thing they never expected to have…and their relationship gets more complicated than either of them ever dreamed.
Find out more at Brain Jar Press
NOVEL
Title: Billy Summers
Author: Stephen King
Publisher: Hodder and Stoughton, 2021
We’ve heard this one before. Maestro Stephen King knows it. His titular character knows it. And that’s just the start of this clever, assured tale of an assassin seeking to plump up his retirement fund on a last dicey job. King rounds the edges off his hired gun by giving him a conscience – he only hits bad men, while acknowledging the reality that he, too, is, if not a bad man, not a good man – and making him a reader and also, potentially, a writer. So we find a story within a story, the hitman telling his past as he navigates the perils of his last job. There is a nod to one of King’s early, most successful successes, and tips of the hat to the writer’s craft. There is the humanity that King does so well in creating his characters, the eye for the detail that brings locations alive. And there’s a fittingly killer ending for an adroit thriller.
A version of this reviewed has previously appeared in the Herald Sun