At the upcoming World Fantasy Convention – to be held in Madison, Wisconsin (3-6 November) – Garth Nix and I will be holding a party and doing what we can to promote Australian science fiction and fantasy to the readers, writers, editors and publishers assembled there.

With that in mind, we’ve decided to assemble a catalog of Australian science fiction and fantasy to be published in the coming year (i.e. between Oct 05 and Oct 06). It is our intention that each book/author shall receive its own page, and shall do so free of charge.

So, if you are an editor, writer or publisher, all you need to do is email the following information to me at jstrahan (at) iinet (dot) net (dot) au:

Title:
Author:
Blurb (inc. quotes, advance review extracts etc.):
Jacket Pic: a 150 dpi image in jpeg format
Extent (no. pages):
Publication Date:
Publisher(s) and Territories:
Agent or rights holder contacts:

All this information must be received no later than September 24.

We will then assemble the catalog and get it out to the world. Because we’d like to do this as a service, and would like it to be as complete as possible, feel free to circulate this request to your editors, publishers, friends. Anyone who would want to be involved and is being published during the time in question.

We intend to be generous in who and what we allow into the book, so if you have any questions, email us and we’ll let you know.

I’ve been working my way around the traps, trying to catch up on everything that needs to be read before the big deadlines come crashing down, and stumbled across a couple cool things. The guys over at Lenox Avenue have a good story by Jay Lake and Jenn Reese, “Dutch Boy Roller Coaster Blue 14-F5 “, which I’m guessing is the only piece of fiction to put Tim LaHaye on the wrong end of the Rapture. I’m not sure it 100% works, but it’s well worth reading. I also read a good review of Lake’s novel, Rocket Science, by John Clute in Interzone. I need to check my notes for the year, but it’s one of the two or three best first novels of the year.

Small presses take chances all the time; it’s the nature of the business. However, when one of the best small presses in the business decides to take a chance, publishing the first short story collection (and I think, first book), by a pretty much unknown writer, and then decides to produce it in what looks to be the biggest print run they’ve ever done, you need to pay attention.

It’s been known around the traps for a while that Pete Crowther’s PS Publishing will publish newcomer Joe Hill‘s debut story collection, Twentieth Century Ghosts, this coming September. It’s only just been announced, though, that the book will appear in three editions, including an affordable thousand-copy trade paperback.

As you can imagine, I began to wonder why. I’d recently read a story of Hill’s in Postscripts magazine, “Best New Horror”, and had thought it was one of the best stories I’d read so far this year. Well, yesterday, in amongst some other reading, I began to work my way through Twentieth Century Ghosts. Because I’m also reading for my year’s bests, I decided to start with the collection’s two previously unpublished stories, “The Cape” and “My Father’s Mask”. The first of these is an amazing story, subtle and powerful. It starts in a place a writer like Stephen King might recognise. A seven-year-old boy is playing superheroes in his backyard, climbing a tree to tease his elder brother, who is fast outgrowing such games and is unimpressed. In an appalling accident, he falls, hurting himself badly. His injuries haunt him into adulthood, as do confusing recollections about what actually happened. To tell more would be to spoil the story, but it’s terrific. I’ll probably read “My Father’s Mask” tonight, and then on through the other twelve stories in the book. If those other stories live up to “Best New Horror” and “The Cape”, then Crowther’s confidence in the book will have been more than justified and he will have published one of the year’s very best collections. If you like great short stories, or horror fiction, this may prove an essential (and affordable) purchase.

a breath test for cancer, from perth, where i live. if it’s real, if it works, wow. cheap, easy, accessible to all. just, wow.

John Klima, illustrious editor/publisher of the estimable ‘zine Electric Velocipede, has done something that any ‘zine editor would love to do: he’s sold out of copies of his latest issue. This is a good thing. A better thing is that, faced with this, Klima has decided to put all of Issue 9 online so that folks can taste the handcrafted goodness that goes into each and every issue of EV. My strong recommendation is to get yourself over there, check it out, and then subscribe.