It’s a couple of weeks into spring in Australia by now; here’s a slightly belated winter wrap up.

I had two stories published in The Dread Machine this winter. It’s wonderful to find a relatively new publisher that really likes my stories!

The first of these stories was Watchhouse, a dark science-fiction story about removing privacy (and worse) from queer people in the not-so-distant future. The beautiful cover for The Dread Machine’s Issue 1.2 was loosely based on this story, which was a lovely surprise. Please be aware that a big content warning of ‘deadly homophobia’ applies, so exercise caution if that’s something that could be especially upsetting to you.

My second story in The Dread Machine is Traces of Us, Hot Enough for Dinner. This is a dark fantasy time loop story about a demon apocolypse, with some strong lashes of dark humour throughout, and its one of my favourite pieces I’ve ever written. The title was actually generated by an artificial intelligence after I fed said AI the entirety of Next Curious Thing, my short fiction collection.

I was also very pleased to interview Charles Payseur about his new short fiction collection, queer speculative short fiction, editing, and a bunch of other things.

I posted two YouTube videos in winter:

1. Structuring Short Stories

2. Awful Writing Advice: Show Don’t Tell

It hasn’t been a very fruitful season for actually putting words on paper, but I’m hopeful that as lockdown eases and the weather warms up I’ll be writing new stories again. I’ve certainly got plenty of ideas!

Wishing everyone a lovely spring/autumn. Thanks for reading. 🙂