The Ballarat Book Launch for my short story collection Shadows on the Wall was a great success. Thanks very much to Jason Nahrung and Kirstyn McDermott for hosting, and to everybody who came along and made it such a success. I had a lot of fun and I hope you did too.

For anyone who was unable to attend the event here are some pics (courtesy and copyright, Jason Nahrung), and a recording of Kirstyn McDermott interviewing me.

Rather than just have me speak at the launch, which might have been quite boring, Kirstyn McDermott interviewed me instead (fantastic suggestion, Jason and Kirstyn!). Here’s the recording of the interview for anyone interested:

Fiona McVie has interviewed me for her Author Interviews blog. You can read it here.

If you’re in Ballarat on Sunday 18th February, Kirstyn McDermott and Jason Nahrung will be launching SHADOWS ON THE WALL in The Printer’s Room (behind Sebastiaans) starting at 2:30pm.

My new book, Shadows on the Wall, is out TODAY! 

It’s available in paperback and ebook from your preferred online retailer (links below) or from your favourite bookshop, so please buy yourself a copy if you like weird and dark stories of science fiction, fantasy and horror. And don’t forget to tell your friends.

If you read it and like it (and even if you don’t like it), please post a review on the platform of your choice.

BUY IT:

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | iBooks | Book Depository | Booktopia | Angus & Robertson

 

Cover painting and internal artwork by Shaun Tan

Foreword by Isobelle Carmody

Shadows on the Wall contains the very best of Paulsen’s dark and weird tales…plus stunning new fiction written expressly for this volume.

• Glimpse a future where population controls force families into terrible choices.
• Visit Colonial British India and experience the awakening of an eldritch horror.
• Walk the steaming jungles of Vietnam alongside the spirits of the forest.
• Light an ancient oil lamp but beware, the shadows on the wall.
• And more…

These stories are beautifully written and subtle, and in their subtlety, they linger uneasily in the minds…Their particular potency lies in the honed sharpness of the writing, in the repertoire of emotional responses to strangeness they offer through brilliant and detailed characterisation…They are shadows, shifting on the wall, barely seen, slipping into our minds to lie, light and cold over our hearts…

• Isobelle Carmody – author of the Obernewtyn Chronicles

Paulsen’s body of work, as evidence by this impressive collection, explores the nature of our fears, effortlessly exposing us to shuddering horrors and milder terrors while drawing us in with utterly real characters.

• Kaaron Warren – author of the multi-award winning The Grief Hole

Shadows on the Wall will take you into some dangerously dark places, places that you know you should not enter, but enter you will, for, alas, you won’t be able to help yourself. The stories contained within are rocket-fuelled with narrative drive. These subtle, ironic, humorous, and sometimes horrific extrapolations and fantasies showcase Paulsen’s wild talent and tight grip on craft.

• Jack Dann – multi-award winning, international bestselling author

 

Distributed by Dennis Jones (Australia) and IPG/SPU (North America)

IFWG Australia have revealed the cover for my forthcoming short story collection Shadows on the Wall. It’s based on a fabulous piece of art by the multi-talented artist, Shaun Tan. Check it out, I’m thrilled!

The publisher wrote: Earlier this year we informed you that we had the great pleasure to have acquired Steven Paulsen’s dark collection of stories, Shadows on the Wall. This will be released on 1 January 2018, but in the meantime we are very excited to reveal the front cover of the collection, with original artwork by Academy award-winning artist and animator, Shaun Tan (Elizabeth Lang, designer).

More information can be found here on IFWG Publishing Australia’s web site:

Cover Reveal: Shadows on the Wall by Steven Paulsen

I have a new novelette called “Harold the Hero and the Talking Sword” written in collaboration with Jack Dann in the forthcoming cross-genre anthology And Then… (ed. Ruth Wykes and Kylie Fox), from Clan Destine Press early in 2017.

Jack Dann and I had been talking for a while about doing a project together when the opportunity to write a story for the Clan Destine Press And Then… anthology came up. He showed his story “The Talking Sword” to Lindy Cameron and she loved it, but suggested it be expanded because the theme of the anthology was for stories with two protagonists, and the demon sword held sway over his “sidekick” in Jack’s original tale.

As Jack and I talked about it, we soon found ourselves brainstorming the further adventures of not just the time-travelling sword, but having his unlikely wielder, Harold the Hero, come to the fore. We took our inspiration from Homer’s Odyssey, and asked ourselves what would happen if the sword somehow lost its powers. The result was “Harold the Hero and the Talking Sword”. It was great fun to write and hopefully great fun to read.