Hello, and welcome to another sporadic blog post!
“The Lingering Taste of Your Last Supper” won the Shallow Waters flash fiction competition run by Crystal Lake Publishing through their Patreon, which is awesome! This gave me the opportunity to read the entries for the following contest round, choosing the theme (“Red”) and selecting the shortlist from dozens of submissions. An interesting experience, and one I’m keen to repeat in some way at a later date.
“1284” will appear in the flash fiction anthology It’s a Kind of Magic from Specul8 Publishing, due out in September. It’s something a little different for me — a spin on the old Pied Piper tale.
“Nemesisters” has been published by Nightmare Fuel Magazine and you can read it here. This and the aforementioned two tales are pieces I wrote during my story-a-day experiment in February, which, as you can see, has already proven itself worthwhile. And yes, I lifted the title from a Babes in Toyland album.
“Il re giallo” will appear in Strange Aeon: 2023. This is a rare example of a story that features elements created by other writers, in this case Robert W. Chambers’s The Yellow King mythology blended with the oeuvre of 1970s giallo films — an intriguing juxtaposition I found too good to resist. The story was initially set to appear in a now-abandoned anthology paying tribute to the late Joseph Pulver.
In another fascinating development, “Andromeda Ascends” has been accepted for publication as a reprint in a forthcoming anthology by Polish press Planeta Czytelnika — which will see my work translated into another language for the first time. Seriously, how cool is that? The novelette first appeared in Beneath the Waves: Tales from the Deep (between works by Brian Lumley and Clive Barker, as I never tire of pointing out!) and was shortlisted for a 2018 Aurealis Award, the first time my work achieved that distinction. It’s also the opening tale in my second short story collection, which is currently out on submission and will hopefully appear sometime before the seas swallow the Earth.
“Trash and Treasure” appears in Where the Weird Things Are Vol. 2 from Deadset Press, which has now been published digitally for Kindle here and on Smashwords here.
“Tempest & Mooncalf” appears in Unknown Superheroes vs. the Forces of Darkness from Ghastly Door Press, accompanied by three original illustrations by editor Will Jacques (and appearing alongside new stories by Simon Bestwick, Owl Goingback, Lee Murray, Geneve Flynn, Jonathan Maberry, and more), and you can buy the book here.
My first article on Shepherd is called The Best Australian Short Story Collections with Real Bite, and you can read that here. One great local collection I didn’t include (because it wasn’t out yet, and because I had to narrow the list down to a vastly unrepresentative five books!) is J. Ashley-Smith’s The Measure of Sorrow, which is on sale now and features a glowing blurb by a certain long-haired author with whom you may be passingly familiar.
A new interview with yours truly by Lee Pletzers has just gone up, and you can read that here.
Meg and I flew over to Canberra for the 2022 Aurealis Awards in June, which gave me another opportunity to hang out with some of the best writers and people in Australia’s amazing spec-fic community. I can’t say enough nice things about my peers, and I’m looking forward to catching up with them again soon. Here is the list of award winners. And here are a couple of shots by Cat Sparks, showing us looking uncharacteristically serious at our table with T.R. Napper, Aaron Dries, Kaaron Warren, and J.S. Breukelaar! (You can check out Cat’s Flickr album of the whole night here.)
We spent the next day exploring the capital, which ended with a rare opportunity to be photographed in front of a TARDIS in full “action hand” mode!
So, what else have I been up to? Writing, of course, and editing — becoming almost obsessed with the next draft of an epic novel! I’ve been working on this one for a long time, and I’m not sure what to do with it once I’m satisfied, but there you go. You don’t pick the tales that trap you in their complicated webs, you just hang on and hack your way through. Hard work is often the best tonic for troubled times, or at least a hole to hide in, and it’s a pleasure and a privilege to find such an escape in words.
I also caught The World is a Vampire when the festival made its way to Adelaide in April, featuring some of my all-time faves — it was my second time seeing Smashing Pumpkins live, my third for Jane’s Addiction — and in May, Meg and I attended an author event for Aussie thriller writer Christian White, who, in typical dark-scribe style, is a lovely guy. In June, we hit a cult cinema screening of Dario Argento’s sublime Suspiria in a 4k restoration, where I won a VHS copy of Sorority House Massacre thanks to local tape purveyors Vicious Video.
Well, that about covers the last four months, broadly speaking. Stay tuned for the next round sometime in, oh, eight years or so, ha ha.
Listening:
Purge, Godflesh — In Times New Roman…, Queens of the Stone Age — The Age of Pleasure, Janelle Monáe — I Inside the Old Year Dying, PJ Harvey — The Mollusk, Ween
Reading:
Tell Me I’m Worthless, Alison Rumfitt — The Strange, Nathan Ballingrud — Such a Pretty Smile, Kristi DeMeester — The Curator, Owen King — Small Mercies, Dennis Lehane
Watching:
Red Dwarf — Terrifier — Terrifier 2 — Monk Season One — Suspiria (1977)
Cheers to you, and I hope this epistle finds you adequately healthy to discharge your duties.
MRD
Matthew R. Davis 