Category Archives: Uncategorized

Writing is a tough game; like a freaking rollercoaster actually. In the past week, the following has happened – I saw a draft cover illustration for my upcoming novella “Vaudeville”, which I really liked; I volunteered to review a favourite author’s novel, which was later published, I was invited to write an introductory line for anotherContinue reading “Rollercoaster Ride”

The speculative fiction writing industry is gearing up to recognise some of the best in the business, with numerous awards in various stages of competition. The horror world’s most respected awards are undoubtedly the Bram Stoker Awards and there are several Australians who have been nominated including my co-collaborator on Witch-Hunts, Rocky Wood for hisContinue reading “Awards season”

Stieg Larsson’s Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series are extremely popular, with the right blend of intrigue, wit and fully realised characters and the characters, rather than the story are what makes the book for me.At first I was enthralled in the mystery of the case our heroes Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander become involvedContinue reading “Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson”

Very soon I’ll be swapping the drawing board for a notebook and getting back into writing. This week I’ve been putting the finishing touches on the graphic story Allure of the Ancients: The Key to His Kingdom, written by Mark Farrugia and destined to appear in the Australian Horror Writers Association’s official magazine Midnight Echo andContinue reading “Withdrawals”

During a trip to Brisbane last weekend to take my two daughters down to visit their mother who has been on four weeks training for her job, I managed to meet with fellow author Stephen M. Irwin. Irwin is the author of the fantastic horror thrillers The Dead Path and The Broken Ones (both from HachetteContinue reading “Talking shop”

Right now I’m not getting much writing done. The last two weeks have been a bit of a challenge. My wife now has a job after eight years of being a stay-at-home mum, which is fantastic, but part of her employment involves a four week training stint 600km away in Brisbane (which she is still completing).Continue reading “Time is my enemy (at the moment)”

A couple of times a year (probably more than that), I visit the thrift shops where I live; St Vincent de Paul, Lifeline, Salvos. Mostly people go in here to look for clothes, but I enter in search of books!For an avid horror reader like me, living outside a major city, these places are veritableContinue reading “Secondhand bookstores and thrift shops – last refuge for the damned … horror reader?”

Being an Australian, the little I know about Los Angeles comes from the television and films I have digested since I could first understand the idiot box, but after reading Lisa Morton’s stellar horror collection, Monsters of L.A., I have an appreciation of the City of Angels and its raw emotional texture. Morton uses theContinue reading “Review: Monsters of L.A. by Lisa Morton”

When I was at university studying journalism in the late 90’s I enrolled in Literary Theory as an elective. After the first lecture I questioned whether I should drop out of the course. What I really hoped to get out of the course was to learn the art of writing (as if it had aContinue reading “From the back of the desk drawer”

Just last week I had to clean out my office so it could be painted. Amongst all the dog-eared paperbacks, art materials, blank notebooks, Doctor Who figurines, hand-crafted Father’s Day presents and old photographs there were fragments of notepaper, all bearing the scrawl of me, the mad writer. Seeing all those pieces of paper scatteredContinue reading “Paper or Pixels?”