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next year's dread event
European horror fans should be aware that in 2010 the World Horror Convention will be held in Brighton, UK from 25-26 March. The theme is “Brighton Shock!” ? a celebration of the European horror tradition from Victorian times to the present day. Anyone considering coming to the UK for the convention should note that it’s on the weekend before Odyessy 2010, otherwise known as Eastercon, which is the UK’s largest science fiction convention. There have been a couple of press releases sent out from Worldon 2010 HQ lately. The first is that confirmed attending members who are interested in doing a reading at the convention’s “Reading Café” event, can now…
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Bone Mother Podcast
Today you can download and listen to a podcast of my short story, “Bone Mother”, from the horror podcast Pseudopod. The story is read by the lovely and talented Cat Rambo, who is also a terrific writer. Many thanks to Ben Phillips, and the rest of the team at Escape Artists Inc., for putting together such a fine version of my story. I wrote the first draft at Clarion West in 2006, and it was a pivotal story in my progress during the six-week workshop. I’d written a mediocre story the week before, and I felt extreme pressure (from myself) to produce something that proved I possessed even a smidgen…
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sharp, pointy teeth
As someone with an abiding interest in vampire fiction and movies I generally get around to seeing every film that is added to the canon. The other evening 30 Days of Night was on TV, so I finally caught up with it. Most people are aware that this is an adaptation of the comic book of the same name, which was written by Steve Niles and illustrated by Ben Templesmith. The comic disappointed me, which did not incline me towards the film. As I said before, Templesmith’s artwork was wonderful, but there was a shallowness to the story that left me cold. Niles writes well, but the action happened rather…
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a nod of (mixed-up) appreciation
My Clarion West classmate Tina Connolly pointed out to me that my short story “Bone Mother” has been placed on the latest very very long list of stories eligible for the Nebula Awards. It’s nice that at least one SFWA member thought my story good enough for a nomination. What’s amusing to me is that the story is miscredited to Maureen F. McHugh. Maureen is a fabulous writer, so I’m mostly flattered by this mix-up. I’ve pointed out the mistake, and I’m sure it will be resolved eventually. At the weekend I picked up Marjorie M. Liu‘s latest novel, The Iron Hunt. Liu has established herself with a series of…
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FrightFest 2008 Roundup
Another year, another FrightFest. Here are a number of horror movie clichés I could do without in the future: A blood-covered girl being chased in the woods as a hook to start a film A woman being captured, locked up, and tortured Stating at the beginning “Based on actual events” Yuppies being menaced by psycho assailants Creepy mirror scenes that aren’t scary enough Comedy horror flicks that have more gore and rubbery intestines than story or funny lines Oh gosh, the bad guys are kids! The countryside is occupied only by crazies – even if you escape, you can be guaranteed you’ll fall back into their clutches just as you…
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a feast of texts
At this point I’m sure many of you have heard about the official launch yesterday of the sparkly new Tor publisher’s web site. It’s pretty, interactive, and has plenty of content. To celebrate Tor has placed a number of its recent novels online in a variety of formats for free, as well as a plethora of wonderful artwork from book covers. Be quick. You can download them all until the end of the week, and after that they will be whisked away again. I was almost cackling with excitement as I downloaded the texts because it would allow me to road test reading a book on my Eee PC. Just…
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good reading and poor viewing
Hurray! Today the postie delivered my handsome contributor copy of Shroud Magazine, issue 2. I’m sharing the edition with my rather more famous countryman, Kealan Patrick Burke, along with Colleen Anderson, Steve Vernon, Marie Brennan, Nathaniel Lambert, Nate Kenyon, Tom Piccirilli and Ken Bruen, and Christa M. Miller. It’s a beautiful, well-produced, magazine. I’m proud my short story “Home” is in it. Recently, a mysterious benefactor in RTÉ sent me a free copy of Halloween (2007), the version (re)written and directed by Rob Zombie. I’ve gone on record in the past of not enjoying Rob Zombie’s films. Mr. Zombie likes the monsters who chop up and mutilate other folks. The…
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sponsored adventures in writing
I’ll be taking part in this year’s Clarion West Write-a-thon, which is a fund-raising event that shadows the six-week residential workshop (June 22 – Aug 1). The Clarion West Writers Workshop is a non-profit educational organisation whose ethos is about giving emerging writers the space, teachers, and tools with which to improve their craft and evolve into damn fine writers of speculative fiction. It’s an expensive endeavour, and Clarion West not only offsets each student’s costs, it also offers scholarships to many of the students. I was the recipient of the Gordon R. Dickson Scholarship in 2006 and it was a tremendous aid. Carving out six weeks of your life…
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now
Yesterday was a good day.
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a splendid vision
I don’t have as much time for reading as I’d like these days, which means I’m developing a hard-hearted attitude to books: if they don’t grip me I drop them. This is a severe departure in attitude from my halcyon days (when I was younger and had less commitments) where I would always struggle through to the end of a novel. It also means I’m innately suspicious of bigger books. If they just cut out the lard, I think, they’d slim down quickly. Some novels on the shelves could do with a editing regime from a personal trainer. So, when I picked up Un Lun Dun by China Miéville I…
