Covid 19 has put a damper on public appearances, but in-between lockdowns I was excited to attend Supanova Comic Con & Gaming convention as a guest panellist at the Melbourne Showgrounds on 22^nd -23^rd May, 2021.

The event was a joint book launch by IFWG Publishing Australia for two anthologies of Australian SpecFic stories published by IFWG Publishing Australia: Spawn – Weird Horror Tales About Pregnancy, Birth and Babies edited by Deborah Sheldon and Cthulhu Deep Down Under Volume 3 (CDDU3) edited by Steve Proposch, Christopher Sequeira and Bryce Stevens.

It was fun and liberating to talk to fans and catch up with other writers and artists, and we did book signings and a panel event, with Christopher Sequeira and myself representing CDDU3, and writers Janeen Webb, Charles Spiteri and Tracie McBride there as contributors to Spawn. Janeen Webb also too the opportunity to announce her forthcoming alternative history novel (written in collaboration with Andrew Enstice), Five Star Republic, the first book in their “City of the Sun” trilogy, due for publication on 1^st September, 2021.

On Stage and Book Signing Table photos courtesy of Anna Spiteri.

I’m happy to announce that my longish short story “The Key to Eternity” will be published in Cthulhu Deep Down Under Volume 3 (edited by Steve Proposch, Christopher Sequeira and Bryce Stevens) by IFWG Publishing Australia under their premier Dark Phases imprint. This is the third and final volume in the fantastic Cthulhu Deep Down Under anthology series.

My tale takes place on the docks and waterfront of Darling Harbour and Millers Point in 1925, after a Norwegian sailor named Gustaf Johansen (from H. P. Lovecraft’s 1928 short story “The Call of Cthulhu”) arrives in Sydney with a mysterious artefact. He is the sole suvivor on a ship named The Alert, a disabled island trader that is brought into port after being shot to pieces.

The publisher, Gerry Huntman, says the anthology brings together “some of the greatest scribes of the weird and startling from the land down under bring you brand new stories in the Lovecraftian genre, taking you from the realms of contemporary Australian cities, to the blood-soaked, post-colonial past (touching the powerful original cultures of the land), and even hinting at the disturbing future of Terra Australis.”

I’m proud to be included in this book as the Table of Contents includes some of my favourite Australian SpecFic writers:

• Introduction – Cat Rambo
• All the Long Way Down – Alf Simpson
• Farewell to Elephant – Cat Sparks
• The Third Party Doctrine – Steve Proposch
• Come His Children – Alan Baxter
• The Depiction – Julie Ditrich
• The Key to Eternity – Steven Paulsen
• They Are Impatient – Maurice Xanthos
• Dead Language – Steve Kilbey
• Asleep Beneath the Dripping – Jason Fischer
• Supersymmetry Blues – David Conyers
• Afterword – Jack Dann

The book is being released on 1^st May, 2021 in Australia and 30^th June, 2021 in North America. It will be available through all the normal retail bookselling channels, and wholesale distribution is through: (Australia/NZ) Novella Distributors; (North America) SPU/IPG; (UK/Europe) Gazelle; (elsewhere) Neilsen/Ingram.

I’m delighted to have “Two Tomorrow” a short story from my collection, Shadows on the Wall (IFWG Publishing Australia), reprinted in The Ampersand Issue 2. The print edition of this magazine is distributed free throughout the Mornington Peninsula tourist locations and hotels in Melbourne.

The Ampersand is published by djprojects, a multi layered creative arts business run by Julie Collins and Derek John, who also established the & Gallery. The gallery initially operated as a pop-up feature in Spencer Street, Melbourne and is now a permanent contemporary gallery in Sorrento, Victoria.

The magazine including my story “Two Tomorrow” is available free to read online here.

The Australian SF Snapshot Project was started in 2005 and has taken place six times in the past 15 years. It is designed to provide and overview of Australian (and now New Zealand) writers working in the Spec Fic scene. In 2020 in was compiled by Tehani Croft who undertook the mammoth task of interviewing over 200 writers. The full 2020 list is here and my interview is here.

Following on from the successful Weathering the Future exhibition in Ballarat, I have a short story titled “Why?” published the They Are Us exhibition, another collaboration between Ballarat Words Out Loud and the Soldiers Hill Artist Collective (SHAC). Once again, the exhibition is curated by writers Jason Nahrung and Kirstyn McDermott, except this time it is a reversed ekphrastic process where the writers wrote their pieces first and the artists responded to the prose and poetry in a variety of media, including painting, photography, woodwork, weaving and sculpture.

My story, the “Why” was represented with artwork by artist Helmut Stenzel, who works in a diverse range of creative media, with a strong interest in typography and the process of traditional Letterpress printing.

If you’re going to be in Ballarat between February 24th and April 5th call in and have a look at the They Are Us ekphrastic exhibition being held in the Lounge Gallery at Billy’s Bar and Bistro, Mercure Ballarat Hotel and Convention Centre, 613 Main Rd, Ballarat. Photo of Helmut with his artwork and my story courtesy of Jason Nahrung.