A farmer is confronted by two desperadoes;
A tourist does her terrible best to evade a tracker and his dog;
A teenager discards his civilised mask inside a lonely roadhouse.

This collection of 28 short stories propels the reader through a kaleidoscope of Australian lowlife. In a range of styles, from dirty realism to noir, Deborah Sheldon pens the kind of fiction that is tough enough to shock, yet tender enough to hurt. An exploration of what it means to be human in the face of brutality, Mayhem: Selected Stories, is perfect reading for pulp novices and crime aficionados alike.

Praise for Deborah Sheldon:

“[This is] short fiction told masterfully. Sheldon’s stories have that rare ability to speak volumes between each word. There are pieces of life’s puzzles the reader must complete, wonderfully unsettling strips of humanity that linger in the mind long after closing the book.” – Craig Bezant, Dark Prints Press

“Deborah Sheldon explores the rich vein of violence that runs through Australian society… The merely disconcerting and the deadly are juxtaposed and those who don’t know the difference, pay the price.” – Antonia Hildebrand, Polestar Writers’ Journal

“Sheldon specialises in the little moments that reveal the chaos and terror beneath.” – Elizabeth Rutherford-Johnson, The Short Review (UK)

A bit about the book, in Deborah’s words… 

Mayhem: selected stories comprises 28 of my crime and dark-themed short stories. Most were originally published by magazines such as Island, Crime Factory, [untitled], Tincture Journal, and Shotgun Honey. Every story nagged at me to be written. A line of dialogue, an opening sentence, a plot point, a thematic arc – something in each piece compelled me to work on it. Personally, I love the short story form. I buy and devour plenty of short story collections every year; my bookshelves are laden with them.

My favourite character is always the protagonist of the story I’m currently writing. By that rationale, I have 28 favourite characters in ‘Mayhem: Selected Stories’. My job was to tell each of their stories as honestly as possible.

Mayhem: selected stories is now available direct from the publishers, Satalyte Publishing (soon available everywhere).

Robert Hood is a highly respected, award-winning author, considered by many to be one of Australia’s grand masters of horror and weird fiction. Though over his 40-year career (to date) he has published speculative fiction of all kinds, he has notably produced 43 short stories that feature ghosts, hauntings and spectral horrors. These memorable tales display his ability to make the fantastic real, to embrace weirdness, and create human characters whose inner and outer lives, haunted by mortality, are laid bare and revealed to be our own worst nightmares. Ranging from melancholy reflections on life and death, through disquieting tales of dark humour and vengeance, to chilling visions of ghostly apocalypse, Hood’s stories are sure to draw you into a terrifying world that in the end is revealed to be irrefutably our own.

Peripheral Visions is a one-of-a-kind reference collection that includes all of Hood’s 43 ghost stories to date, three of them especially written for this volume.

“Rob Hood is Australia’s master of dark fantasy, seducing the reader with stories that are lavishly grim and rife with a quirky, unpredictable inventiveness.” (Sean Williams)

“Rob Hood is so good at what he does, he’ll have you believing in ghosts by the end of the first story in this brilliant collection.” (Kaaron Warren)

Peripheral Visions is a large volume of work, with a word count over 220k. In trade paperback format it will be published in two volumes, spaced over a month. Here is the appearance of the two covers, when laid side-by-side.

A single volume hardcover edition will also be published, with internal illustrations by Nick Stathopoulos. The exciting part of this publishing effort is a signed, limited hardcover edition, which can be pre-ordered now. There are only 200 limited edition copies available (numbered), each of which includes a Nick Stathopoulos-designed signature page, and a bonus ‘chap-ebook’ containing several zombie stories, titled Haunted Flesh: Stories of the Living Dead. These editions will disappear quickly, so we recommend interested readers pre-order now. IFWG Publishing Australia will not be repeating this offer.

The offer:

• Hardcover Book: 6.14″ x 9.21″ (156mm x 234mm), creme paper, plain cloth binding with spine imprint, and matt cover sleeve.
• 43 stories: a mix of short stories, novelettes and a novella. Over 220k words of fiction, spanning the period 1986 to present. Three stories, including the novella, are new, published for the first time here.
• The book will also contain extensive notes on all stories, and a table that registers the complete publishing history of each story, including all reprints, and any awards or short listing for awards.
• An introduction by World Fantasy Awards winner, Danel Olson.
• The book is divided into six categories of ghost stories:
  • Haunted Places
  • Haunted Families
  • Haunted Minds
  • Haunted Youth
  • Haunted Vengeance
  • Haunted Realities
• Each category of the book will include an illustration by Nick Stathopoulos, as well as a frontispiece.
• Each book will have a signature page (also illustrated/designed by Nick Stathopoulos), signed by Robert Hood, and numbered from 1 to 200. The sequence number provided will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. There will never be any other signed limited editions produced for sale, beyond this 200.
• Each purchaser will also get, as an added bonus, a chap-ebook titled Haunted Flesh: Stories of the Living Dead, containing several zombie stories, totalling to approximately 20k in word count.

Orders:

From Out of the Dark is a SF/H anthology set in the gap between galaxies, in the immense darkness of space with all the frightening aspects and contemplation billions of light years of unseeable entities can bring.

A collection of 10 short stories by 10 unique writers, including Tony Shillitoe, Gene Stewart and Gregory L. Norris. Some stories travel the same road, some not so close, some are classic space opera and some are strangely different. But these are not just first encounters. This is not horror added the SF or SF added to horror by slight of hand. These are journeys into places we cannot and will never imagine outside of telescopes and maths.

Edited by Robert N Stephenson (Altair Australia Publishing), an award winning author of novels and non fiction/fiction collections, with over 100 short stories published across the world. As an editor, Robert has edited over 30 full length novels, as well as Altair Magazine for 3 years, and other anthologies in SF and Horror.

Books of the Dead Press (http://www.booksofthedeadpress.com/)

E-book: ISBN 978-1-3117783-8-3

Suspended in Dusk is the latest anthology from Books of the Dead Press, and the first for Australian editor Simon Dewar. Featuring 19 tales from a mix of new and established authors, and an Introduction from Bram Stoker Award winning Jack Ketchum, Suspended in Dusk hits its mark more often than not.

It’s always nice to have a note or introduction from the editor at the beginning of an anthology; a place where they lay out their thoughts and goals, their targets. Simon Dewar does this quite well. He tells us that the stories are all about change, and the time between those changes, much as dusk is “the time between the light and the dark”. Some of these changes are metaphorical, while others take the theme more literally.

To the stories! I might not mention all of them, only the ones that really stood out for me. This isn’t to say there are any bad stories in the anthology; that certainly is not the case. Any reader of horror will find plenty here to enjoy, and those tales that weren’t quite for me might be exactly what another reader is looking for.

First up is “Shadows of the Lonely Dead” by Alan Baxter. A beautifully written and emotional tale about a hospice worker with a gift for easing the suffering of the elderly as they slip into death, and the greater ramifications that has on her life outside the hospice.

Anna Reith’s “Taming the Stars” takes us to the dark and gritty side of Paris, with a story of a drug deal that goes horribly (and gruesomely) wrong.

“At Dusk They Come” by Armand Rosamilia invites us to a small town at sundown for a well written take on the old tale of ‘doing deals’ with the nefarious.

Rayne Hall brings us “Burning”, a Southern Gothic flavoured tale with a conspicuous absence of the supernatural, but all the more horrifying for it. As in real life, “Burning” shows us that people — especially those isolated by the ignorance of their own world views — are much worse than any monsters we can imagine.

Chris Limb’s “Ministry of Outrage” reveals the truth behind corporate and governmental conspiracies in a tale that is all too scary for its plausibility.

S.G.Larner give us “Shades of Memory”, wherein religion reigns in post-apocalyptic Queensland and the locals of a small town, who want no part of it, have some ghostly superstitions of their own.

“Outside In”, a strange Quantumpunk-Noir by Brett Rex Bruton, is one of the most interesting pieces in the anthology. The story begins: “I swing my feet from beneath the warmth of the covers and down on the cold, hard copy of the opening paragraph.” I stared at that — “hard copy of the opening paragraph” — and wondered if it was some kind of strange typo, an editor comment inserted by accident. But no, it isn’t! It is slips like this, in the walls of reality between story and reader, that really made this story stand out for me. Very original.

“Would To God That We Were There” is the creepy science fiction story I’ve been trying to write for years. I even have 10yr old opening paragraphs that are near identical. I never knew where to take the idea, but it seems that Tom Dullemond did, and he does a wonderful job of it.

The anthology finishes on a high-note too, with Angela Slatter’s “The Way Of All Flesh”. I love a post-apocalyptic story that doesn’t focus on the actual apocalypse, but instead on the people who are trying to get on with their lives. “The Way Of All Flesh” accomplishes this brilliantly, subtly, and in the end, very disturbingly. It’s a fitting end to a collection of so many fine stories.

As I said earlier, I haven’t mentioned every story; only those that really shined for me. A few of the other stories just weren’t too my taste, or I found personally a little predictable. Be that as it may, there isn’t a badly written story here. In every case the prose is well constructed and, in a few stories, quite beautiful.

Overall, Suspended In Dusk is a very good collection. I think there’s something for everyone’s taste — vampires, werewolves, ghosts, zombies and plenty of nefarious humans — and I’m sure others will find things in certain stories that I didn’t. And the mix of authors, old and new, means you’re certain to be introduced to someone you’ve never heard of before: which I think is the most exciting part about reading any horror anthology.

Thirteen O’Clock will always have a third party contributor review the Contributing Editors’ work. Such reviews will be unedited (aside from standard corrections to typos and grammar), posted in full (be they negative or positive), and will always be accompanied by full disclosure of Baxter, Dowker, and McKiernan’s place at Thirteen O’Clock. At no point will Baxter, Dowker or McKiernan review their own work.

Last Year, When We Were Young
by Andrew J McKiernan

Satalyte Publishing (www.satalyte.com.au)

Paperback: ISBN 978-0-9925095-2-1
E-book: ISBN 978-0-9925095-3-8

Review by Greg Chapman

Andrew J. McKiernan’s collection, Last Year When We Were Young, is proof yet again of the incredible writing talent that can be found in Australia and further still, proof that horror can have a meaningful voice that goes well beyond blood and gore.

Whether it is a story about a secretary taking phone messages from the dead, a group of clowns trying to avoid forced conscription in a travelling circus, or astronauts encountering cosmic monsters in the depths of space, the impossible in McKiernan’s stories never fails to engage because the stories always orbit characters that are quantifiably human.

McKiernan’s deft hand with prose is also addictive, with each turn of phrase sweeping the reader away from reality. Although many of his supernatural tales exude mysterious atmosphere, demonic forces or faith, I think the stories where the uncanny takes a back seat are where he really shines. Here the horror is less inexplicable, but no less haunting. The tales, White Lines, White Crosses, The Memory of Water, Calliope: A Steam Romance, and the title story being prime examples.

Overall, the collection is engrossing, every story leaving the reader with sensations of loss, hope, melancholy, repulsion and joy. It’s not often that a writer can convey such a broad section of emotions, but this is what makes collections so worthwhile – and enjoyable.

I recall reading one of Andrew’s Facebook posts some time ago about how he was finding it a real challenge to select the stories for Last Year, When We Were Young, but I can safely say that he and Satalyte Publishing have put together a wonderful treasury of fiction that is well worth any reader’s time, horror fan or no.

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Last-Year-When-Were-Young/dp/0992509521/
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22523234-last-year-when-we-were-young

Review by Greg Chapman (http://www.darkscrybe.blogspot.com/)

Guidelines are as follows (taken from FableCroft’s website):

Stories should be between 2,000 and 12,000 words and contain speculative elements – science fiction, fantasy and horror and their sub-genres are all welcome, but we recommend researching FableCroft’s past projects for an idea of the sort of stories we publish. Generally, no erotica or splatterpunk is desirable. Please query the editor before sending stories outside those limits.

We are seeking original stories only, for first and exclusive world rights (for a period of twelve months, excluding any subsequent Year’s Best reprint request) – no reprint submissions please.

No simultaneous submissions please.

For multiple submissions, please query first.

Submissions open: December 1, 2013

Submissions close: February 28, 2014

Anticipated publication date: August 2014

Electronic submissions only. Please send story as an rtf or doc attachment to fablecroft [at] gmail [dot] com, with the subject line: SUBMISSION: Title of Story

Please be cautious to only submit final, proofread copy – ensure you have checked all your edits and removed all track changes in your document.

The editor will respond with a submission received email within 48 hours, but story selection may not occur until up to one month after the deadline. This anthology is open worldwide.

Payment will be AUD$75.00 and one contributor copy of the print book. Further royalties will apply for e-book revenue – information about royalties will be provided in contract negotiations with successful authors and is dependent on final book details.

Thanks to Jonathan Strahan for the title idea, from his Aurealis Awards acceptance speech in May this year.

This collection has no central theme other than the stories’ ability to scare the hell out of the reader! Tales steeped in psychological horror sit alongside visions of strange worlds and inner landscapes drenched in blood. ‘Quiet horror’ sits comfortably next to more visceral portrayals of the monsters that lurk deep within the human heart. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle famously once said, “where there is no imagination there is no horror” – the horror expressed by the authors in Fresh Fear show that imagination is indeed tantamount to excellent story-telling. Prepare yourself for 28 tales of terror-inducing fiction that will have you checking the locks on every door and window of your abode!

Table of Contents

Scathe meic Beorh – God of the Wind
Robert Dunbar – High Rise
Ramsey Campbell – Welcomeland
Lily Childs – Strange Tastes
Lincoln Crisler – Nouri and the Beetles
Jack Dann – Camps
Thomas Erb – Spencer Weaver Gets Rebooted
Brandon Ford – Scare Me
Carole Gill – Raised
Lindsey Beth Goddard – The Tooth Collector
JF Gonzalez – Love Hurts
Dane Hatchell – ‘takers
Charlee Jacob – Inside the Buzzword Box
K Trap Jones – Demon Eyed Blind
Tim Jones – Protein
Vada Katherine – Block
Roy C Booth & Axel Kohagen – Just Another Ex
Shane McKenzie – So Much Death
Shaun Meeks – Perfection Through Silence
Adam Millard – The Incongruous Mr Marwick
Christine Morgan – Nails of The Dead
Billie Sue Mosiman – Verboten
Chantal Noordeloos – The Door
Don Noble – Psych
WH Pugmire – Darkness Dancing in Your Eyes
William Todd Rose – The Grave Dancer
EA Irwin – Justice through Twelve Step
Anna Taborska – Out of the Light

There’s a quote attributed to Harlan Ellison about writing which goes: “The trick isn’t becoming a writer. The trick is staying a writer.” If this is taken as true, then Martin Livings has certainly mastered the trick. For twenty years Livings has been publishing horror fiction fairly consistently, and of a quality high enough to have received multiple nominations (and a couple of wins) of nearly every major Australian speculative-fiction award there is. He has published a novel, novellas, and novelettes, but it is in the short story form that Livings is most prolific, and possibly, at his best.

Living With The Dead is Martin Livings’s first published collection of short stories. Brought to us by Dark Prints Press, the book (in its physical form) is a striking and hefty trade paperback with a marvellously evocative monochromatic cover illustration by Vincent Chong. Inside are twenty three stories; a reprint story for each of Mr Livings’s published twenty years, plus three brand new stories. That might seem like a lot of stories for a single-author collection, but this isn’t just a ‘greatest hits’ compilation. Living With the Dead is more a retrospective collection of Livings’ writing career to date. While not presented in publication order, the decision to include so many stories does mean a more variable collection overall. But, considering the high quality of the stories throughout, this matters little, and the inclusion of so many tales does give an interesting (and more complete) overview of Livings’s progression as writer.

Being as there are so many stories, I’ll limit myself to commenting on those I found exceptional and name dropping those that I found merely good. As you’ll see, even that will still cover a great portion of the collection.

Lollo is the lead-story, and as it is a story about an evil clown doll, it is sure to creep out a large portion of the horror reading genre. I’ve never really been bothered by that particular fear — I think clowns much maligned, in fact — but Lollo was written well enough to keep me hooked. Maybe it’s the 80s slasher film feel to the story that lifts it above the typical evil-clown tale? Sort of like a Tarantino mash-up of 80s horror. Whatever it is, Lollo is a great lead in to the collection and certainly sets the tone.

You Ain’t Heard Nothin’ Yet is the first original tale to the collection, and one that tickled both my ‘what if’ and ‘film history’ buttons. The premise? What would a snuff film from the era of Silent Film be like? In typical Livings style, he holds back from the obvious tack of hack-and-slash gore until the last excruciating moment. I’m glad that, after a rough publication history, this story has seen print. It’s a really good one.

Running is a story originally written for Agog Press’s giant monster anthology ‘Daikaiju’. It takes the absurd ‘sport’ of Running With the Bulls and makes it even more absurd. And yet, at the same time, Running is a touching story of how the forces of nature (such as hurricane Katrina) can affect and change our lives. It is often this mix of the absurd with the touching that makes Livings’ work so memorable.

Piggies is a story I missed when it was first published, and a good thing too or I probably would never have written my own The Final Degustation of Doctor Ernest Blenheim. The ideas are so similar, that Piggies acts almost as a prequel. What lifts Piggies far above my own story, is Livings’ ability (like that of his story’s protagonist) to cut things right back to the bone. Piggies is short and sharp and all the more disturbing for it.

In Nomine Patris (see, I’m listing near every story here!) is another short tale. Incest, abortion, cannibalism, religion and all handled sensitively in only 3 1/2 pages. Where many authors would pad out a idea like this, Livings leaves you with only the barest of bones. It is restraint like this that makes Livings well worth reading.

Hooked is possibly the most twisted tale in the book. Not for the gore or surreal twists of Livings’ other works, but for the way it takes our childhood dreams and turns them into something much more horrible and (probably) much more realistic. Here J.M.Barrie’s Peter Pan is given the Livings treatment, with all our favourite characters descending into crime, prostitution and drug addiction. A cautionary tale maybe, for those who find it too hard to give up their childhoods?

Living With the Dead, the title story, is one of the older tales in the collection. Despite the spectre of HIV/AIDS Hysteria having long faded from our media-ruled consciousnesses, it would be too simple to change this tale of social cleansing to a more modern disease or even life-choices and other perceived ‘differences’ (such as sexuality or religion) and for it to still have relevance. Keeping this in mind, Living With the Dead loses none of its impact almost 20 years past its original publication.

Birthday Suit is another story original to the collection, and my favourite of the lot. Others must have thought so too, because Birthday Suit was recently short-listed for just about every Australian spec-fic award and won the Australian Shadow Award for best Horror Short Story. The tale has the feel of Ray Bradbury about it, of normal lives lived and the bittersweet experiences that can bring. I won’t even go into the premise of Birthday Suit, because I want you to discover it for youself. It is so good an idea I can’t believe nobody thought of this before. But, then again, I’m glad it is Martin Livings who was the writer who did think of it as he certainly does the concept justice. Birthday Suit is so wonderful and beautiful and sad, that (even though I’d read it before) it really topped off the collection for me.

A few other stories deserve mention. Down Town, Smiley, Into the Valley and The Last Gig of Jimmy Rucker (written with Talie Helene) are all wonderful too. This isn’t too say that any of the stories in this collection are bad or not worth reading. Some are indeed more mature, more assured, than others but all were deserving of their initial publication and it is a treat to read them all collected here.

Overall, Living With the Dead is a great collection of tales, although a little uneven at times. It shows Martin Livings to be an author who enjoys tugging on his readers’ heartstrings just as much as he enjoys severing them. Twenty years is a long time to have been publishing short stories but, on the strength of Living With the Dead, I’m hoping that in twenty years I’ll be waxing lyrical about Martin Livings’ second retrospective collection.

Blurb: In a place where no stars appear in the night sky, a group of strangers whose ancestries reach back to an earlier apocalyptic disaster are brought together to track down a resurrected corpse that might hold the key to the End of the World. Described by science fiction legend Jack Dann as “one of the strangest and most interesting visions to come out of the modern horror/fantasy genres,” acclaimed author Robert Hood’s Fragments of a Broken Land: Valarl Undead is an epic tale of greed, dying magic, strange monsters, and a motley group of heroes, with a strange and breathless climax you won’t easily forget.

When I think of Fantasy as a genre, I don’t often get the modern Epic Fantasy image of Dwarves and Orcs and Elves questing through majestic forests in my mind. I’ve always been more drawn to the works of Clark Ashton Smith, Fritz Leiber, William Hope Hodgson, Robert E Howard, Jack Vance, M. John Harrison and Michael Moorcock. Their fantasies were always so much more ‘otherworldly’ than the faux-Europes and other earth-analogues of modern Epic Fantasy. Their worlds were far-distant not only in ‘place’ from our own, but often also far-distant in ‘time’. Long past or far, far in the future, they were as foreign and exotic to the reader as if they really had just stepped into another country and culture.

Fragments of a Broken Land: Valarl Undead, the debut adult-novel¹ from Robert Hood, has this Otherworldliness in spades. The ‘world’ of Tharenweyr is as strange and exotic a place as has ever existed in fantasy fiction. Indeed, it is not even a world but a solid firmament (or a ‘seed-like emanation’ as Hood puts it on his website) that exists separate from space and time as we know it. It has no sun or moon or stars. Not even the infinite void of space to stare into. Instead, Tharenweyr is locked within its firmament, a mysterious wave of energy that washes from the ‘Worldly Gods’ of the north to the ‘Dark Gods’ of the south and creating the semblance night and day.

The novel begins with Remis, a young and newly graduated spellbinder interested in starting her own magical artifacts business, who is being pressured (threatened, intimidated) into working for a powerful Merchant House. She’s also having horrible nightmares in which she finds herself trapped inside the body of a hideous corpse-like being. And then there’s Tashnark, the bastard son of a commercial slaver. He’s having dreams that he is the powerful warrior Bellaroth, questing across some strange otherworld that exists on the shoulders of a vast cosmic monster.

It is the chance meeting of Remis and Tashnark – their respective dreams unknown to each other – that sets the course of lifting Fragments of a Broken Land.. out of individual nightmares and into a fantasy who’s cosmic scope rivals anything by Lovecraft or William Hope Hodgson. Gods battling Gods. Ancient artifacts and the prophesised return of catalysmic events that will wipe Tharenweyr out of existence. And, as always, Gods using normal people as their pawns.

In the hands of Robert Hood Fragments of a Broken Land… becomes so much more than just a Fantasy or Sword & Sorcery adventure though. The philosophical and spiritual underpinnings Hood has evoked for the world and its people almost demand a denser tale. In this sense, Hood certainly delivers. At times Fragments of a Broken Land… can be a hard read. You need to concentrate a bit. Divest some of your attention in the book. But believe me, the effort is worth it; Fragments of a Broken Land… will have your brain spinning in Gnostically-induced circles.

One thing that really did stand out for me is Tharenweyr’s main city of Ko’erpel-Na. The characters of Fragments of a Broken Land… all have a wonderful depth — their sense of humour, of justice, the way they try and interpret their world and the way they react to it — but the city is just as much a character too. It reminded me of Fritz Leiber’s Lankhmar or M. John Harrison’s Viriconium. It’s dirty, it’s crowded and full of disease and poverty, but there is also a feel to Ko’erpel-Na that speaks of age and so many lives lived within its walls. The impression I got of the city and its people was quite vivid, quite ‘real’. It seems a place just begging for a million more tales to be told.

Overall, Fragments of a Broken Land: Valarl Undead is a brilliant fantasy novel of the type we seldom get to read these days. Dense and exotic and full of ideas. It’s also full of sword & sorcery action too, and the type of cosmic horror that leaves you paranoid about your own reality. Really, what more could you ask for in a book?

Don’t believe me? Want to check it out for yourself? Mr Hood has three other Tharenweyr ‘Fragment’ stories to read for free on his website [http://fragmentsnovel.undeadbackbrain.com/]. Definitely worth checking out as a teaser and to get a feel for the world before tackling the very worthy Fragments of a Broken Land: Valarl Undead.

Oh, and the cover by Bob Eggleton? It is brilliant!

Footnote:
1. Robert Hood is the author of 5 previous Young Adult Novels, 15 Children’s books, published 3 collections of his own work, and edited a further 5 anthologies.