Casper: the sadness of a friendly ghost How can you live with the fact a child died for your cartoon pleasure? You did him no favours taming him, accustoming him to humans. Oh yes, he is a friendly ghost, and you may count that as an accomplishment, but what does it mean? He craves companions, […]
I was given a Kindle for Father’s Day (just passed here in Australia), and a voucher as well – don’t think too kindly of them, they live in fear of the towers of books ready to collapse and take them out – its not hoarding if its books, say I, otherwise libraries would be hoarders […]
Lonely Mormon Lonely Mormons far from home wandering through the great apostasy. Tempted by Coca Cola, shunning coffee and other like beverages, is your truth too good for me? You all rush to share it with the pretty Asian girls. Was there nothing on those buried gold plates Elohim wanted you to share with me? […]
Later … Lee would explore the literary tradition where ‘monster’ was a metaphor: the monstrosity inside us all along … that wasn’t the kind of monster she and Mal had encountered. They met the other kind, with terrible claws and savage teeth. And how many other cryptid-hunters had experienced that moment … realizing that the […]
INTERNATIONAL BURNS DAY I thought that it must have been International Burns Day with the victims on parade, their different scars on display. Marks I had not seen before. Hair up, showing pigmentless flesh below the ear. Flashmark along the arm. Puckered skin running down the rear of a shoulder. Are these the marks that […]
I have just signed and returned the contract for my horror story, The Bride of the Blob, to be published in Andromeda Spaceways Magazine, so yay me! and yay ASM! and yay story! I had a lot of fun writing this story, which scoots around in the world of the late 60s and the terrain […]
I can remember the first time I was asked to provide a short bio, not having published anything before, and all I can say is that I am sort of glad that the print magazine it was in is now out of print, and the website it was stuck in now appears to have drifted […]
Very happy that my story “Build a better mousetrap” has been accepted by Hybrid Fiction magazine. I am looking forward to it seeing the light of day!
Oh dear Lord, now that I’ve typed his name up there, I feel like I will be expected to write a literary essay, coupled with genre pop culture street cred, and we all know that isn’t going to happen. ‘Chronic City’ was the first novel of his I read. What was this and why hadn’t […]
Yesterday reading the Saturday Sydney Morning Herald, I came across Fiona Capp’s short review of “Strange Situation” by Bethany Saltman, which includes: “I wish I could be just like you,” Bethan Saltman’s pre-school daughter said to her one day. The chuffed mother asked her why. The reply came like a blow: “Because then I could […]
