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What's New?
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 Lurking in AustraliaArticles & Updates by Marty Young |
Most Recent Australian Small-Press Magazine Issues
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May 2009 The global downturn has hit Aussie horror hard, causing a dramatic change in format to our new show-card, Black Magazine. It’s a sad time, but banks rule the roost, unfortunately. Grumbles aside, there’s still enough happening down on these distant shores to please those who like life a little dark. Heck, there’s quite a bit happening, actually. So read on, my monstrous little fiend… (we’ll get the sad news out of the way first)
Black times…The following is from Angela Challis, Editor-in-Chief of Black Magazine: BLACK: Australia's dark culture and entertainment magazine is moving to a free-to-read online format. We are immensely proud that Black Magazine has been embraced by the Australian public and generated thousands of eager readers and fans. We are also proud to have published Australian exclusives previously thought out of reach for an independent press: a new short story from Stephen King, interviews with genre stars such as George A. Romero, Alice Cooper, M. Night Shyamalan, Jared Padalecki, and Jensen Ackles, and many Australian authors, and in-depth coverage of issues outside the realm of the mainstream media. We also published some brilliant fiction including Paul Haines' Australian Shadows Award finalist "Her Collection of Intimacy". However, the magazine industry presents high risks and low returns for a small publisher, and the investment required in money, energy, and time in a period of economic uncertainty has proven too much for a two person management. After much consideration, we have reluctantly decided that issue #3 will mark the final print edition of the magazine. The plan is to relaunch Black in 2009 as an online portal for Australian dark culture. A key component of this plan is to merge Black with Brimstone Press' award-winning HorrorScope website, which currently publishes book and movie reviews and acts as the news source for the Australian Horror Writers Association. Black Online will continue to publish many of the feature interviews, articles, and regular columns that appeared in the print edition. In many ways, the electronic format will allow us greater flexibility and grander scope. For example, the reviews section will be much more comprehensive than those found in the print magazine. We will also be adding a newsletter to alert readers to new articles, new releases, and information of interest to supporters of Australia’s dark alternative culture. Most importantly, access to this darker corner of Australian culture will be completely free to readers!
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The staff at Brimstone Press would sincerely like to thank Black's contributors and readers for their enthusiastic support of the print magazine. We hope that same goodwill will be thrown behind the electronic version of Black. To stay in touch with new developments over the coming months, please keep an eye on the Black website (http://blackmag.com.au) to receive the Brimstone Press newsletter for updates as they happen.
Midnight Echo Issue 1 (and Issue 2!)Midnight Echo, the official magazine of the Australian Horror Writers Association, launched its first issue on Halloween, and included a number of stories that went on to be short-listed for speculative fiction awards, including the Australian Shadows award. Edited by Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond, Midnight Echo Issue 1 showcases the talents of 16 fantastic Australian writers:
Stephen Dedman The editing team was excited to include a new short story from UK writer and World Fantasy nominee, Robert Shearman. Midnight Echo Issue 1 also features what is hoped will be a long running series of interviews with new Australian horror writers. In the first of this "New Blood" series, Stephen Studach interviews Dave Hoskin.
Midnight Echo Issue 1 is available to purchase online from Lulu.com in two formats: The magazine will have changing editors each issue to ensure the content remains fresh. Editors for Issue Two are Angela Challis and Shane Jiraiya Cummings, the people responsible for Black magazine. Submissions are closed for this issue, which will be published in late April. Issue 3 is being edited by Stephen Studach, one of Australian horror’s long-serving masters. The reading period for Issue 3 is currently open and will remain open until July 31st, 2009. Full details on how to submit can be found at http://australianhorror.com/index.php?view=144 . |
Studies in Australian Weird Fiction - Issue #3 out in MayStudies in Australian Weird Fiction (SiAWF) issue 3 will be available from May from the POD publishers Equilibrium Press (http://www.equilibriumbooks.com/siawf3.htm). Articles in Issue 3 range from studies on the works of William Sylvester Walker, L. Furze-Morrish and J. Filmore Sherry to John Brosnan, poet Hugh McCrae and music artist Nick Cave. Interviews with Lyn Battersby, Cat Sparks, Margo Lanagan and Kim Wilkins as well as an insightful study of Australian horror films by Robert Hood. SiAWF delivers an academic forum where Australian authors from all eras are studied, delving right back into colonial times. Colonial Australia is an era rich in horror stories (especially ghost stories), and thanks to the hard work of people like James Doig, a true Aussie horror historian, these previously lost tales and their authors are finally being re-published. SiAWF also features themes, topics, issues and single-focus essays accompanied by interviews, symposiums and notes of interest. Award winning author Robert Hood has a column in each issue called "The Ossuary."
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The AHWA Flash & Short Story Competition 2009The AHWA Flash & Short Story Competition is open to submissions from the 1st January until the 31st May, 2009. What We're After: Horror stories, tales that frighten, yarns that unsettle us in our comfortable homes. All themes in this genre will be accepted, from the well-used (zombies, vampires, ghosts etc) to the highly original, so long as the story is professional and well written. No previously published entries will be accepted – all tales must be an original work by the author. Stories can be as violent or as bloody as the storyline dictates, but those containing gratuitous sex or violence will not be considered. There are two categories for submission:
FLASH FICTION
SHORT STORY Full submission details can be found at http://www.australianhorror.com/index.php?view=57
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Australian Shadows award 2008The winner of the 2008 Australian Shadows award for best work of horror/dark fiction written by an Australian went to… The Claws of Native Ghosts by Lee Battersby (Published in The Beast Within, edited by Matt Hults, Graveside Books) Guest Judge Sarah Endicott, who chose the final winner, said: “I suffer from that curious postmodern affliction “the waning of affect”, where nothing turns me on. No Mad Mouse ride, no exploding body part, no dripping fiend sates me. I never jump from my seat at a black cat sprung on a window. I sit dully by when the masked face peers round the door. I do not flinch at a blade flicked on skin. But still I crave more. Taken on a tour of Wollongong with Robert Hood, a great Australian horror writer, I remarked on the brutal modernism of some of the concrete factories squatting there on the hills, and asked him had he ever wondered if truly one day a giant monster would lurch over? “Daily,” he responded, “and then I imagine a second monster rising up…”
This is what it is to live loyal to horror. More please, but different. This is why it is so hard to write. The writers shortlisted for the Australian Shadows Award managed to press my button: What a pleasure it was to be flayed by these stories. Battersby sent me into the mind of a jealous, ego-centred brute, for a wild ride I couldn’t exit. Douglass took me to the “discontented underground spaces” of London’s 1880s railway tunnels, where two gentleman supernatural investigators discover the imprudence of ignoring the superstitious warnings of past cultures. Fischer’s hero can only just hold back his bile while processing the sluice of human bodies — but can the reader? Green’s is a very short, evocative and nasty piece. The story moves through childhood’s pain, rejection and loss, which tries to compensate by bringing back something buried but not quite dead. Haines (typically) leads us inside someone’s house, into their bedroom and into their sex life, then perversely connects sex and death, dependence and obsession, love and murder.
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Lee Battersby’s “The Claws of Native Ghosts” fulfilled all the criteria for good horror and terror, and thus wins this year’s competition. His consistent attention to voice, his narrative muscle and unrelenting delving into a mind denied its presumed right to have what it wants, all conspire to make this story resonate. Battersby understands his position as a white writer against a black backdrop by avoiding the usual clumsy attempts at empathising with the Aboriginal, while so many Australian writers mishandle the Indigenous element. To the main character, Dawson, everyone — white, black, woman — is an object, and his lunatic ride to achieve his lusty obsessions carries on, heedless of casualty or hypocrisy. Lee has not so much re-imagined early settled Australia as worked to recreate a psychological constant in human history: the mad man with a weapon, and what he tells his god about what he has done. The dread inexorable march of bloodshed won me over. Last, I will acknowledge the generous sponsorship of this award by Altair Australia, and Robert Stephenson in particular, for seeing further: that genre writing must continuously self-regenerate, and that awards and honours keep that magic stuff rolling in. I may have started out with that terrible ennui that comes from simultaneously having too much and not enough, but for now, am sated. Well, not really. NEXT!”
Sarah Endacott More information is available on the AHWA website, including an extended report from the Guest Judge and full reports from each of the three panel judges.
Sinister Reads – publications by members of the AHWASinister Reads (http://sinisterreads.wordpress.com) is a project managed by the Australian Horror Writer’s Association (AHWA) used to promote the work of its members. The blog will be regularly updated with novels, novellas, collections, anthologies, non-fiction, short stories etc, all written by our members. What better place to come than here when you’re in need of a good read??
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BOOKS & ANTHOLOGIES
RECENT BOOK RELEASES
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MOST RECENT AUSTRALIAN SMALL-PRESS MAGAZINE ISSUES
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