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

Publication Day!
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)
Cover Reveal
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:
https://ifwgaustralia.com/2017/09/06/cover-reveal-shadows-on-the-wall-by-steven-paulsen/
New Short Story Collection
I am thrilled to announce that IFWG Publishing Australia will be publishing my short story collection, SHADOWS ON THE WALL, early in 2018.

The book will include the best of my previously published stories, plus new work written since I returned to writing. Shaun Tan has kindly provided art work and Isobelle Carmody has written a lovely foreword for the book.
Thanks very much to Gerry Huntman and IFWG, Shaun, and Isobelle for their support. Here is the IFWG Publishing Australia publicity announcement:
https://ifwgaustralia.com/2017/03/14/new-signing-shadows-on-the-wall-collection-by-steven-paulsen/
New Signing: Shadows on the Wall collection by Steven Paulsen
It is with great pleasure that we announce the acquisition of publishing rights to Steven Paulsen’s dark and weird collection of short stories, Shadows on the Walls. The collection contains stories from award winning anthologies, as well as original fiction. Original cover and internal art will be supplied by the Hugo and Oscar Award winning artist, Shaun Tan.
The collection is expected to be released in the first quarter of 2018.

Photograph by Kirstyn McDermott
Steven Paulsen is an award-winning writer whose speculative fiction has appeared in publications around the world. His bestselling dark fantasy children’s book, The Stray Cat, illustrated by Shaun Tan, has seen publication in several English and foreign language editions. His short stories, which Jack Dann describes as rocket-fueled with narrative drive, have appeared in a variety of magazines and in anthologies such as Terror Australis, Strange Fruit, Cthulhu: Deep Down Under, Fantastic Worlds, The Cthulhu Cycle, and the World Fantasy Award winning Dreaming Down-Under.
Steven has also written extensively about Australian horror and fantasy for publications such as Eidolon, Interzone, Bloodsongs, Sirius, The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, Fantasy Annual, The St James Guide to Horror, Ghost and Gothic Writers, and The Melbourne University Press Encyclopaedia of Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy. His interviews with Australian SF writers have been published in magazine and book form in Australia, UK, Europe and the USA.
