Breaking amazing news, this evening the Australian Horror Writers Association announced the winners of its annual Australian Shadows Awards, and to my absolute surprise and delight, my story “Birthday Suit” from Living With the Dead has won the award for Short Fiction!  Considering I was up against Felicity Dowker, Jason Fischer, Andrew J. McKiernan, Marty Young, and TWO stories by powerhouse (and foreword writer for my collection) Kaaron Warren, I didn’t think I stood a chance, so I’m utterly flabbergasted and humbled by the results.  I’ve been writing professionally for over twenty years now, and this is the first national award I’ve won in that time.  So at this rate, I’ll most likely win my next in around 2033!

All the results are available here:

http://www.australianhorror.com/index.php?view=334

“Birthday Suit” is a very special story for me, and is dedicated to my writing inspiration and friend, Paul Haines.  We all miss you heaps.

I should also point out that this now-award-winning story is still available to download for free here:

http://www.darkprintspress.com.au/books_living.html

The book is also for sale here, so if you haven’t bought it yet, now is the perfect time!  I should also mention that Craig Bezant, commander-in-chief of the Dark Prints Brigade, also won a Shadow tonight for editing the truly excellent anthology Surviving the End, which features a story by me as well, so in a way, I can bask in the reflected glory of that win as well.  Craig and I will be clinking skull trophies when we get out hands on them, I’m sure!

The good news keeps on coming… after “Birthday Suit” was nominated for a Tin Duck, then Living With the Dead was nominated for an Aurealis Award, now comes the news that both “Birthday Suit” and Living With the Dead have been nominated for Australian Shadows awards, “Birthday Suit” for Short Fiction and Living With the Dead for Collection.  That’s amazing news; I’ve been nominated for the Shadows in the past a couple of times over the last twenty years, but never twice in one year, so I’m really happy that the hard work Dark Prints Press and I have put into Living With the Dead has been recognised.  I’m so proud and humbled yet again to have been nominated with such an esteemed list of amazing writers, and can’t wait to hear the results; win or not-win, it’s all good with this crowd in the running!

The complete list of nominees is available HERE:

http://australianhorror.com/index.php?view=325

And remember, you can read “Birthday Suit” for free and purchase Living With the Dead HERE:

http://www.darkprintspress.com.au/books_living.html

Yes, after twenty long years in the making, it appears that my collection Living With the Dead is so huge, so amazing, that it requires not one but two book launches in order to get off the ground.  Yes, there’ll be a smallish launch at GenreCon in Parramatta NSW next weekend, then a fortnight after that we’ll be in Perth WA to launch it again, this time at Stefen’s Books in the CBD, so all my Perth friends and family can make it.  Yep, this is a nationwide book launch tour, baby!

The details of each are:

Living With the Dead GenreCon Launch
Sunday November 4th 2o12, 3pm-4pm (AEST)
The Rydges Parramatta (at the convention!)
(this will be happening during the Australian Horror Writers Association community showcase, for which we give our sincerest thanks!)
Facebook Event: http://www.facebook.com/events/349618555128834/

Living With the Dead Perth Launch
Saturday November 17th 2012, 11pm-12pm (AWST)
Stefen’s Books, Shop 8 Shafto Lane, Perth, Western Australia (then afterwards at The Generous Squire across the lane!)
Facebook Event: http://www.facebook.com/events/383858688349095/

I hope to see both east and west coasters at these events, and to press copies of this book into your unsuspecting hands!  Big thanks have to go to GenreCon, the AHWA and Stefen’s Books for kindly allowing us to launch.  You all rock!

Yes, in a moment of the purest and most shameless cross-promotion since A Current Affair had stories about The Voice pretty much every night, the author of that other Dark Prints Press novella  released today, Vaudeville’s Greg Chapman and I have interviewed each other.  And the results are… well, the results are below, or half of them at least.  The other half will appear at Greg’s blog.

- Tell us a little about yourself. Who is Greg Chapman?

Dark fiction author and artist from Rockhampton in Central Queensland; father of two fiery redheaded girls; former newspaper journalist who went over to the dark side of public relations. Mostly though I’ve got my head in the clouds, dreaming up a new tale or piece of artwork.

My writing fluctuates between Poe and Barker. I like my fiction to be equal parts horror and terror. For some reason my work seems to feature children encountering monsters both real and imaginary and probably has something to do with my childhood phobia of the dark.

For most of my life I’d dabbled in writing stories and drawing comic strips, but it wasn’t until 2009 when I nabbed a spot on the Australian Horror Writers Association’s Mentor Program with Melbourne author Brett McBean, that I started to really get serious.

In 2010 I finished writing my first two novellas Torment and The Noctuary and they were published in e-book and paperback in 2011 by US small publisher Damnation Books. I had a few other short stories published here and there, but I got a chance to pick up the drawing pens again around the same time when author Mark Farrugia contacted me about doing a vampire comic strip called “Allure of the Ancients” for AHWA’s official fiction mag Midnight Echo.

Rocky Wood, president of the Horror Writers Association and Stephen King guru saw that strip and subsequently contacted me about illustrating a graphic novel with fellow Bram Stoker Award winner Lisa Morton. That graphic novel, Witch Hunts: A Graphic History of the Burning Times, was published by McFarland in May of this year to critical acclaim.

I guess it goes without saying that I owe the AHWA a massive debt of gratitude.

The last two years have been frenetic, but fun and Vaudeville is another notch on my belt.

- Where did the inspiration for “Vaudeville” come from?

A number of places. Circus performers and eccentric stage actors have always fascinated me and one day I imagined what it would be like if a troupe of evil actors rolled into town and created havoc. I also wanted to expose that terror through a child’s eyes and touch upon themes of grief; how children experience loss. In the end though I wanted to create some memorable, grotesque monsters and scare the crap out of readers. I hope I’ve succeeded in capturing all those aspects in the story.

- What can we look forward to seeing from you next?

Probably more art than any writing right now. I’ve got another installment of Allure of the Ancients to draw for Midnight Echo #8 and possibly some more comic work for an overseas publisher that I can’t really talk about yet

I have been agonising over my first novel for the last 2 years and I’m hoping to tackle that again soon. Another novella about Halloween (yes, another novella) is begging to be completed and I’m currently reading like a madman as judge in the short fiction/collection category of Australian Shadows Awards. I’ve never been so busy in my life – but I’m loving it.

- And finally, Beatles or Stones?

Although I never had the privilege of growing up with them (yes, I’m from Generation X!) I certainly have a fondness for The Rolling Stones!

You can find Greg at his blog, at:

http://www.darkscrybe.blogspot.com.au/

There’s been a very positive review of Brimstone Press’ magnificent octopus Macabre over at Innsmouth Free Press.  Fellow AWHA alumni Amanda Spedding says some very nice things about it, and my story “Crawlin” gets a mention, which I’m chuffed about, because in a book that big, getting noticed ain’t easy!  She says:

There are so many stories in this section I enjoyed, each one a new gift to be unwrapped. One worth special mention is Martin Livings’ “Crawlin”. The first person narrative of this piece, the agony and the desperation of the character, is reinforced by the style. Bare-bones punctuation drives this story forward, and the disjointed thoughts, feelings and experiences transported me completely into the main character’s hell.

I’m so glad she liked it; when pitching it to Angela and Marty, we all agreed that people would either love or hate this one; it isn’t a wishy-washy piece, whatever else you might say about it!  The entire review is available HERE.

This is something that’s been in discussion for a little while now (and no, not that something, it’s another something), but after a fruitful meeting today, and since I’m going back to the day job next week, I feel pretty confident in announcing that new local small press Dark Prints Press will be publishing the first ever collection of my stories, tentatively out around late 2012 or early 2013.  At this stage it’ll be called Living With The Dead, and it’ll be a”best-of” style collection, taken from all the years I’ve been doing this, and with some originals as well for good measure.   It seems fairly appropriate that it’ll be coming out more or less exactly twenty years since my first short story publication, and I’m heartily excited about the prospect.  I’ll be pimping the hell out of it down the track, of course, once the whole project has proceeded a bit further, but for the moment I’m just bouncing at the idea of having a collection out there!

For those who don’t know the work of Craig Bezant and Dark Prints Press yet, might I suggest checking out his quite long-running dark fiction free webzine Eclecticism, and perhaps buying a copy of his first print anthology, a collection of the stories published in the webzine, An Eclectic Slice Of Life?  Craig was also once my mentor in the AHWA mentorship program, and now he’s my editor, which I guess makes him Darth Vader to my Obi Wan!