Second-draft mantra.

I want one!

Check out this amazing book bundle of Shirley Jackson Award winners and shortlistees. Some excellent titles on the list (including my novelette, #TheAtticTragedy from @meerkatpress.bsky.social). Get on it!

Fungal content

So, I rescued a turtle this evening. How’s your day going?

Great night at Lost Souls’ The Horror of Care with readings by @kaaronwarren.bsky.social @spooktapes.bsky.social Ben O’Mara @aarondries.bsky.social MC @fionnmacpherson.bsky.social & music by Jenny Sawer at Gang Gang cafe! Incredible stories & a privilege to listen to Ben’s nonfiction piece 🖤

Canberra PPL... your friendly reminder that @kaaronwarren.bsky.social, @aarondries.bsky.social and I, will be reading at Gang Gang cafe this coming Wednesday, alongside a whole bunch of talented Canberra folks. Get in on the action!

Oh yeah – I straight up fkn LOVED this book! Get on it if you dig good things.

🏆🎃THE ATTIC TRAGEDY by J. Ashley-Smith: Forget jump scares. This Shirley Jackson Award-Winning novella is pure, slow-burning gothic dread. The perfect atmospheric read for a dark Halloween night. https://smpl.is/adxux #Horror #GothicHorror #Ghosts @J. Ashley-Smith

Privileged AF to get my grubby mitts on an ARC of this near-future fever dream. Avail yourselves of a copy - and a pair of knee-high railroad spike boots - the split second it drops! @kkoja.bsky.social @meerkatpress.bsky.social meerkatpress.com/books/dark-m...

Fantastic thread, thank you! 🙏🏻 I loved “The Beautiful Thing You One Were” by @spooktapes.bsky.social in Bourbon Penn. I also have a FUBF “Bird’s Eye View of the Old City” (magpies again) upcoming in Drabblecast in a few months 🖤 www.bourbonpenn.com/issue/33/the...

This David Lynch episode of Sesame Street is the worst.

Separated at birth?

Spooky writer friends, if you have a project @australasianhorror.bsky.social mentorship program applications are open until the 17th! 👻 australasianhorror.com/mentorship-p... I had a fantastic experience being mentored by @spooktapes.bsky.social in 2022 and blogged about it if you want more info:

Undertow’s Best Weird Fiction of the Year is the gold standard anthology for strange stories - I’m so glad it’s back after what seemed a lifetime. Delighted and honoured The Beautiful Thing You Once Were made it into the list of notable stories, alongside some of my favourite authors of the genre.

Life goals

Weird fiction people? Legends! 🖤 Thinking also about the writing advice I got from my amazing AHWA mentor @spooktapes.bsky.social back in 2022 to imagine your ideal reader (singular) when revising, and the effect you want the story to have on them, which I still find really helpful today

Delighted to learn my tragic, magic realist magpie love story – The Beautiful Thing You Once Were – has been shortlisted for an Aurealis Award. Some stories you just love irrationally, and this one broke my heart over and over as I wrote it... 1/3 Ping: @bourbonpenn.bsky.social

Editor: Love the book, Leo. It’s another masterpiece. But do you really need the 2nd epilogue? Tolstoy: Stet. How else will my readers understand my book’s themes without an essay to explain them? Editor: Ok. Let’s say we keep the 2nd epilogue… does it really need all 5 chapters? Tolstoy: Stet.

#womeninhorrormonth CALVARIA FELL by @CatSparx & @KaaronWarren blurred so many genre lines. And horror was one of them. Salute to these two talented authors! https://smpl.is/8sbjz#womeninhorrormonth #CatSparks #KaaronWarren #CliFi #WeirdFiction #DarkFantasy #Horror @Kaaron Warren @Cat Sparks

SKIN is a very intense book about love, art, pain and letting it all go, and if @lostmirror.bsky.social didn't make me laugh so hard this would have been a very serious portrait 💀 And @meerkatpress.bsky.social has the presales now plus incredible swag #queerhorror #industrial #art

My stuff from last year in case you're voting for awards and need a reminder of stuff!

Congratulations to Joel Dane's THE RAGPICKER, a Foreword Indies Finalist | Science Fiction. An amazing book and we are so happy to see it on this list! https://smpl.is/a3lmo #forewordindiesaward #JoelDane #DarkSciFi #Dystopian @Joel Dane

I don't, in a million years, think my novella will garner enough votes for a Hugo nom. I'm not deluded. But I do know it is a damn good book, & worthy of your time. And to paraphrase Bilbo: why shouldn't I, have a crack at the prize? (Ballot closes March 14).

Huge congrats to Seb Doubinsky's THE SUM OF ALL THINGS, a Foreword Indies Finalist | Fantasy. We love this book & are excited to see it on this list. https://smpl.is/a3lhw @SebDoubinsky.bsky.social #SebDoubinsky #ScienceFiction #forewordindiesfinalist

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the Czech playwright Václav Havel, who became President of the Czech Republic after the Velvet Revolution. Despite Soviet oppression, Havel continued to write in spite of the dangers, hiding his growing manuscript in a hole in a tree.

Poor Google is a tad unsettled by my current research...

Fungal content.

Bookmail! Ariadne, I Love You by @spooktapes.bsky.social (Arrived today, @meerkatpress.bsky.social ❤️) #booksky For more: meerkatpress.shop/products/ari...

this may be my favorite bookshelf ever. Not to mention the southern reach trilogy which we didn't publish but love. @spooktapes.bsky.social I like the way Ariadne looks on this shelf!

When you leave your 15yo alone at the beach for an hour…

From the vault! @malskene just uncovered a lost video (c/o @alskene) of my first gig with Superfine, circa 1995. Lambchops, Lennons, and a naked chin. Thirty fucken years, man... (Time has not been kind to that ponytail.)

Saturday morning, the kids led a family conversation about who was our GOAT. When they asked me, I had no idea (I always falter when someone asks me my favourite anything). Then I opened the paper and saw that David Lynch was dead, which answered the question for me.

The male line.

Congrats to all the Ditmar Awards winners, including @chpearcewrites.bsky.social @garthnix.bsky.social @spooktapes.bsky.social @kaaronwarren.bsky.social @aarondries.bsky.social @lookingglassgirl.bsky.social! #Australian #Awards #SpecFic #Books

How it started. How it’s going.

My 9yo knowing the lyrics to The Spice Girls’ ‘Wannabe’ is, it turns out, equivalent time-wise to me at his age knowing the lyrics to ‘All Shook Up.’ And if that doesn’t make you feel like a crusty old fucker then I don’t know what will!

Thinking about this aphorism from E.M. Cioran: “Write books only if you are going to say in them the things you would never dare confide to anyone.” An impossible ideal? Or an essential first principle?

Buying my newest novel directly from Meerkat Press is the best to support me and my publisher. Any signal boosts are much appreciated.

“The Measure of Sorrow is full of parents and children lost in a world of darkness, grasping for meaning and connection, and often using the latter as a proxy for the helplessness of the human condition writ large… www.seizethepress.com/2023/09/04/g...

Just gleefully backed this awesome project. If you dig comics, kooky space adventures and cannibalism, I suggest you get in while the getting’s good. (And the rewards are damn fine too!)

The mighty @meerkatpress.bsky.social are now on BlueSky! Give them a follow, then grab yourself some books with this awesome Halloween deal. meerkat-press-shop.fourthwall.com

Happy 5th birthday to my collection, NOTHING IS EVERYTHING, first published by Undertow Publications in 2018 and still available (in both hardcover and paperback editions). https://undertowpublications.com/shop/nothing-is-everything-trade-paperback

Been in that post book-launch slump for a while now, so am stoked to see The Measure of Sorrow getting some love. Absolutely floored by these words from Aussie horror legend @alanbaxter.bsky.social (which features way less cursing than the DM he sent me after throwing the book across the room).

Introduce yourself with some jobs you’ve done apart from the one you do now: - art museum attendant - musician - pot washer - telephone interviewer - filing clerk in the room of forgotten things

Au train.

I stumbled across a fantastic (and appropriately grim) review of #TheMeasureOfSorrow in issue 90 of ASIM... “J. Ashley-Smith deals in a specific kind of pitch blackness... He allows his characters to be their flawed, hideous selves while keeping heroism like a bauble, forever out of their reach..."

Behind the scenes of Destroy All Monsters

“Australian gothic with a good dose of cosmic horror… these stories are poignant reflections on broken relationships and the insurmountable distances between us.” Wonderfully insightful (and generous) review of #TheMeasureOfSorrow www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

First stab at nikujaga, and… yum!