Tag: Blatant Acts of Self-Promotion

News & Upcoming Events

Year’s Best Australian SF & Fantasy

My internet access is  wonky at the moment, so I’ll be making this brief and hoping it goes through before the modem crashes again. The page for Mirrordanse Book’s Year’s Best Australian SF and Fantasy 4 has gone up along with a copy of the recommended reading 2007 list from the very back of the back. 2007 wasn’t really a big year for me, publications wise – I was still finding my feet post-Clarion and the stuff I did get published was mostly flash – so I was kinda surprised to spot my little SF Flash “Avenue D: The Tankboy’s Ride” among the list. Admittedly it wasn’t a surprise I got today – I picked up a copy of the book while I was down at Conflux – but one calls attention to good stuff when the opportunity presents itself. It’s a damn good read by any stretch of the imagination, and it’s one of the three Year’s Best collections I now pick

Works in Progress

More Last Short Story

Another mention from Last Short Story today, this time from GirlieJones: “The strongest story for me in Fantasy this year was Peter M Ball’s “On the Finding of Photographs of My Former Loves”, which was also when I perked up my ears and hopped on the Peter M Ball train. It’s tender and odd and sad and bittersweet. And beautifully beautifully written. I’m looking forward to reading what Ball does next. “

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Last Short Story

If you’re a fan of the speculative fiction short story, you really do owe it to yourself to be following the Last Short Story blog. It’s maintained by a small group of dedicated readers committed to reading every short story published in the field over the course of a year and making note of their favourites. I was a big fan during the blogs first year, 2007, when it directed me towards some outstanding anthologies I would have otherwise missed – New Space Opera & Interfictions – and directed me towards what would become one of my favourite stories of the year, Garth Nix’s Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz Go To War Again. Being such a fan of the blog, it’s been kind of neat to watch some of the nice things they’ve said about two pieces of my fiction over the last couple of months. About The Last Great House of Isla Tortuga in Dreaming Again   – BenPayne: “… tells