2012 Australian Horror Writers Association Mentor program opens!

If I could offer any emerging author one piece of advice – if you can, get a mentor!

I wouldn’t have been published at all (I say humbly) if it wasn’t for the Australian Horror Writers Association’s mentor program in 2009. My mentor Brett McBean, a well-known horror author from Melbourne put up with me and my writing for several months, but it was his tireless efforts and advice which helped me find publication with Torment and The Noctuary in 2011.

I recently found my application submission letter to the mentor program. Here it is here:

Ever since I was a teenager I have told stories. From writing and drawing my own comic books to self-publishing little A5-sized photocopied novellas, I have always had a passion for creating my own worlds and characters and sharing them with people.

I haven’t had the grand success that I am after yet, but I am chasing that dream – the dream of seeing my name on the front cover of a thick tome, filled with the words and sentences I wrote.

I hope that the AHWA’s Mentor Program can help me achieve that dream. I know that I am not quite publishable yet, but I know that I want to hone my storytelling into written word of publishable standard. To have someone, who has already achieved that dream to guide me, would be invaluable.

I have many stories that I want to share with the world and if a mentor can help me, even with some simple editorial advice, then I would be indebted to them.

Editorial guidance is something that is lacking in the publishing industry and frankly it has always hindered me in my efforts to be a professional writer. So I was very happy when I read that the AHWA has a mentor program.

If I am not accepted I am not going to let it get me down, instead I’ll just get back to that keyboard and telling stories, even if I am the only one who reads them.

I don’t want to waffle on, so I’ll let my writing speak for me.

Thank you for considering my application.

Regards

           Greg Chapman

I’m not saying it helped me get my foot in the door, but I think what I have accomplished since, provides proof of the value and success of the mentor program.

Now, once more the very good people at the AHWA are hosting the program and there are some terrific mentors that new authors could have the opportunity to work with:

David Conyers
David Conyers is an Australian science fiction and occasional horror author residing in Adelaide. With John Sunseri he is the co-author of the Lovecraftian spy thriller collection The Spiraling Worm and the author of the sequel novella The Eye of Infinity. He is the editor of the anthology Cthulhu’s Dark Cults, with Brian M. Sammons the editor of Cthulhu Unbound 3, with David Kernot and Jason Fischer the editor ofMidnight Echo 6: The Science Fiction Horror Special, and a contributing editor for Albedo One, Ireland’s longest running magazine of speculative fiction.

David’s short fiction has appeared in various magazines including Jupiter, Book of Dark Wisdom, Midnight Echo, Innsmouth Free Press and Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. He has also appeared in over a dozen anthologies including Monstrous,Through the Wormhole, Cthulhu Unbound 2, Best New Tales of the Apocalypse, Horrors Beyond, Award Winning Australian Writing 2008, Scenes from the Second Storey, Macabre,and The Black Book of Horror.

He has been nominated for several awards including the Aeon, Aurealis, Ditmar and Australian Shadows, recently made the preliminary ballot in the Bram Stoker Awards, and has won both the Australian Horror Writers Association's Flash Fiction and Short Story Awards.

Kaaron Warren
Kaaron Warren sold her first story at 28, and has sold close to a hundred stories since then. Her first short story collection, The Grinding House won two Ditmar Awards and the ACT Writers and Publishers Award. Her second collection, Dead Sea Fruit, also won that award. Her third collection, Through Splintered Walls, was published this year.

She has three award-winning and nominated novels in print through Angry Robot.

She will be special guest at Natcon in 2013, based in Canberra.

Jason Fischer
Jason Fischer lives near Adelaide, South Australia, with his wife and son. His fiction has been described by reviewers as "strikingly original" and "weirdly imaginative", while noted for containing "greasier genre elements". Jason has a passion for godawful puns, and is known to sing karaoke until the small hours.
Jason attended the Clarion South writers workshop in 2007, and has been shortlisted in the Aurealis Awards, the Ditmar Awards, and the Australian Shadows Awards. He won the 2009 AHWA Short Story and the 2010 AHWA Flash Fiction Competitions, and is a winner of the Writers of the Future contest.
He is the author of over thirty short stories, with his first collection appearing soon from Ticonderoga Publications. His “After The World” series of zombie-apocalypse novellas are available from Black House Comics.

Cam Oliver
Cameron has been working in the film and television industry for over ten years, with a background in professional writing and editing focusing on screenwriting.

Over the last four years Cameron has worked with Greg Mclean (Wolf Creek) as an in house directors assistant in a developmental and analysis role, giving him access to some of the best horror scripts in Hollywood.

He was also directors assistant to SFX Makeup specialist, Justin Dix on his debut Sci-Fi Horror feature, 'Crawlspace' (currently screening at the Cannes Film Festival) and has script-edited and written for a number of other projects across various mediums.

Joseph D’Lacey

Winner of the British Fantasy Award for Best Newcomer, D’Lacey is best known for his shocking eco-horror novel MEAT. The book has been widely translated and prompted Stephen King to say “Joseph D’Lacey rocks!” Other titles include Garbage Man, The Kill Crew, Snake Eyes, The Failing Flesh and, forthcoming, Blood Fugue.

Greg Lamberson
Gregory Lamberson is an award winning filmmaker and author who specializes in the horror genre. He is best known for his films ‘Slime City’ (1988) and its sequel, ‘Slime City Massacre (2010)’, as well as his ongoing occult detectives series of novels The Jake Helman Files, which so far includes ‘Personal Demons’ (2009),  ‘Desperate Souls’ (2010), 'Cosmic Forces' (2011), and 'Tortured Spirits'.  He is also the author of the werewolf series The Frenzy Cycle, which includes 'The Frenzy Way' (2010) and 'The Frenzy War' (2012).   His other books include the novel Johnny Gruesome (2008) and novella Carnage Road (2012), as well as the instructional film making book Cheap Scares: Low Budget Horror Filmmakers Share Their Secrets.  In 2012, Snow Shark: Ancient Snow Beast, which he produced, will be released on DVD, and Model Hunger, which he is producing and Debbie Rochon is directing, will go before the camera.   His previous films ‘Undying Love’ (1992) and ‘Naked Fear’ (1999) are included in the 2-disc DVD "’Greg Lamberson's Slime City Grindhouse Collection’.

If you aspire to be an author, be willing to admit that you might not be quite ready for publication and put your application in to the program. It might just be the very thing you need to make that aspiration a reality.

FOR MORE INFORMATION on the Mentor Program visit http://www.australianhorror.com/member_home.php?view=95

Review: Night Terrors Anthology

(First published at Thirteen O’Clock April 2012)

Night Terrors Anthology

Editor: Karen Henderson

Publisher: Kayelle Press

ISBN: 978-0-9808642-8-1 (pbk.) / 978-0-9808642-9-8 (eBook)

Published: 13th April, 2012

Pages: 256

If you’ve never read horror before and are looking for a good place to start, then Kayelle Press’ Night Terrors Anthology might be for you.

The 256-page anthology offers up 17 short tales of horror by authors from across the globe, including three classic stories.

As a whole the anthology delivers on its promise in providing some scares and suspense, but to me some of the tales were a little under-developed.

Perhaps there were a few too many vampire-related stories (three in all), but at least the vampires didn’t sparkle! JC Hemphill’s vamp story A World Not Our Own certainly delivered on mood and atmosphere. Hunting Shadows by Mike Brooks, had a Buffyesque quality to it, but the story’s hook – the introduction of the enigmatic aelfar – is over far too quickly. Maybe Brooks plans on returning to them in a longer format. The third vampire tale, Like Father, like Daughter, also had a lot of promise, but again was too short.

Don’t get me wrong there were a number of stand-out stories: Depths, by CJ Kemp was a very engaging tale about two boys who find an imaginary cave where they can stretch their imaginations. But this “Aladdin’s Cave of Wonders” becomes all the more menacing when one of the boy’s uses its power to rid himself of an abusive stepfather. Kemp gives the boys plenty of depth in the tale.

Hangman by Lisamarie Lamb was a delightfully disturbing twist on the Hangman game. This particular version of the game, however, is a favourite of a band of monsters who live in an attic of her new school. Things take a delicious turn when the little girl realises that if she spells out the name of one of her bullies, they meet a tragic end.

The only werewolf tale, Last Night in Biloxi, by Robert J Mendenhall, is a satisfying story of survival in the tradition of some of the old EC Comics: ignorant jerk intimidates poor old man, only to sufferer the severest of consequences; some of Mendenhall’s passages are truly blood-curdling.

Other stories worth noting were The Lucky Penny by Tim Jeffreys and Product 9 by Lindsey Goddard – the only tale with a sci-fi horror bent.

My pick of the bunch however (and this is solely based on the merit of the story) is the very last tale – Andrew J McKiernan’s White Lines, White Crosses. The story deals with the all-too-present horror of road deaths and the inevitable danger reckless youth can put themselves in behind the wheel.

McKiernan’s horror is more subtle and rooted in the psychological than its predecessors, focussing on the dire consequences of risk and how one tragedy can create an unstoppable domino effect. There is a supernatural element to the story, but if anything it takes a back seat, which IMHO was a good way to round off an anthology that maybe relied a little too much on common horror tropes.

Review: The Broken Ones by Stephen M. Irwin

(First published at Thirteen O'Clock - March 2012)


Title: The Broken Ones
Author: Stephen M Irwin
Publisher: Hachette Australia
ISBN: 9780733627132


Blurb:

Three years ago, on what’s become known as Grey Wednesday, the world became haunted. Everyone suddenly acquired a personal ghost – a friend, a lost sibling, an ex-spouse, an enemy – which is unshakable as a shadow. These peering, silent phantoms have driven millions to despair, and the global economy is in freefall.

Stephen M Irwin’s follow up to his first novel The Dead Path (2010) is an engrossing blend of the supernatural and police procedural with a dash of the apocalypse – a combination that doesn’t disappoint.

In the novel, the world has virtually been turned upside down in the wake of “Grey Wednesday” – a disaster of gargantuan proportions that saw the Earth’s poles shift, creating all manner of destruction, with earthquakes and planes plummeting out of the sky. Worse still, everyone in the entire world (including Brisbane, where the story is set), suddenly found themselves haunted by the ghosts of their past, with long-dead relatives, friends, lovers and enemies following them around.

Everyone has to learn to live with their ghosts, but with society an absolute wreck, some can’t handle the stress and crimes like murder flourish. With the existence of the supernatural now living proof, many of these murderers are quite happy to use the term “the ghosts made me do it” as readily as they draw breath.

Which brings us to Detective Oscar Mariani; the lead officer of a unit tasked with investigating crimes believed to have been perpetrated by ghosts. It’s his job to separate the real murderers from the ghosts and, given that the majority of his suspects are very much alive, his job doesn’t carry much success, prestige or respect.

But when Oscar is called to a gruesome scene of a young girl with occult symbols carved into her flesh, the possibility of supernatural involvement is all too real. Oscar of course becomes obsessed with the case, all the while trying to reconcile the mistakes of his own past and handle the politics within a seemingly corrupt police force.

Oscar’s “mistake” is a core thread of Irwin’s marvellously intricate plot. The detective’s own ghost is a young boy who appeared before Oscar as he was driving, forcing the detective to crash his car with tragic consequences.

In Oscar, Irwin gives us the classic flawed hero; a tortured soul seeking redemption, but the author brings him to life with such clarity, that the mystery almost becomes secondary. The supernatural element of the novel evolves as the story progresses, moving the focus off the ghosts and more towards Persian mythology and there’s also terrifying monsters of the feathered variety lurking in the shadows, but it’s all just lying under the surface.

There are of course sub plots a plenty, including Oscar’s tenuous relationship with his former cop father, his tenuous relationships with other police officers who were once his friends and, his tenuous relationships with the lives of the families Oscar destroyed with his “mistake” on Grey Wednesday, but as in all good tales, everything weaves together in perfect symmetry to a horrific and tragic climax.

With simple language that is still somehow powerfully evocative, Irwin paints the perfect picture of a Brisbane gone terribly wrong and a man who seeks justice for a murdered girl and his own atonement. It’s a grand supernatural murder mystery that would even, dare I say it, some of today’s best thriller writers a run for their money and is well deserving of its recent Honourable Mention in the finalist list for the 2011 Aurealis Awards.

It would be good to see Irwin return to this world in the future and perhaps give us more ghosts of the past. The post-apocalyptic premise he has created is a unique one and deserves more exploration in his distinctive style, but whatever he writes next I’ll certainly be lining up for a copy.