Hello and Welcome
to the Cat Sparks Gallery.

NEWS:

My story 'Seventeen', published in the CSFG anthology Masques, won the Aurealis Award for best young adult short story. The awards were presented in Brisbane on 23 January, 2010. Check out photos from the night here.

Paul Haines and me

I'm currently serving as a judge for the 2009 Aurealis Awards in the category of best anthology and collected works. Finalists will be announced on the site in early December.

I was awarded the Best Fan Artist Ditmar for Scary Food: a compendium of gastronomic atrocity at the 2009 Natcon in Adelaide. A big thanks to all who voted for the book and to those who donated material to it or purchased it as part of the cancer fundraiser it was produced for. A full list of Ditmar winners can be found here.

My story 'Sammarynda Deep', published in the Senses Five Press anthology Paper Cities won the Aurealis Award for best fantasy short story category. The awards were presented in Brisbane on January 24th, 2009.

photograph by Karen Tyrrell

Canterbury 2100: Pilgrimages in a new world, edited by Dirk Flinthart, was launched at Conflux. Cover art by Nick Stathopoulos.

I have been invited to be a guest at Conflux 5: the fifth speculative fiction convention held under the Conflux name in Canberra. The other invited guests are Liz Gorinsky, Jack Dann, Gillian Polack and Bruce Gillespie.

Canterbury 2100 anthology

Many people have been asking where we're at with Agog! Press' forthcoming anthology Canterbury 2100 (working title) edited by Dirk Flinthart.

Canterbury 2100 is still open for submissions. The submission period has been extended because haven't yet received enough of the right kind of stories to fill the anthology. We are now aiming for a launch date of Conflux, October 2008. The full submission guidelines are here, but here is the gist of it:

Canterbury 2100 will be a series of short stories linked by a common framework. Envisioned as a riff off of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales from fourteenth century England, the individual stories will be narrated by individual members of a disparate group of travelers on a pilgrimage of sorts to Canterbury. However, for our purposes it will be the Canterbury of 2108, and the stories need to reflect that.

The premise of the collection suggests that these are stories told orally, to pass the time on a long trip.

The stories should reflect the society which created them. Today's readers learn about C14th England by reading the fiction of the time, and reconstructing the people who created and appreciated it. Canterbury 2100 allows the same kind of experience of an imaginary future society. We aim to create for readers the sense of place and time behind the stories. Creating that sense of a "real-history world" by imagining and writing the fiction of a shared imaginary setting, represents the real challenge to the writers taking part.

In other words, the stories need to represent not exactly the 'true future history', but the stuff which the people of that imaginary future history would like to believe in. It bears the same relationship to our collective imaginary future that present-day TV series and novels and movies do to our present-day real world, and it's immediate past.

We're interested in just about any kind of story, because the nature of the setting will instantly make it science fiction. You want to write a romance? Fine. As long as it can believably be a romance that might be told for amusement by a traveler in Canterbury 2100. Same with horror, adventure, and just about any other genre you care to name. I can see where a mythic retelling of Gilligan's Island might work beautifully, for example - reflecting a culture in which the Gilligan stories have passed into oral tradition and legend. Way-out post-humanism? Sure: in a difficult, post-eco-disaster world, people might well fear human/machine weapons, or long for the indestructibility of a downloaded life.

Canterbury 2100 seeks submissions from Australian and New Zealand authors until May 2008. Standard manuscript formatting applies. Payment offered: AUS $30 plus a copy of the anthology. Email your submissions as .rtf or .doc files to Dirk Flinthart at: canterbury2100 at gmail.com

For more information, check out the guidelines in full here. Feel free to bug Dirk if you have an idea you're not sure about.

Merry Xmas from Agog! Press

Aussie spec fic specialists invade New York City!

Jack Dann, Justine Larbalestier, Deborah Biancotti, Jonathan Strahan (hiding), The Australian Consul-General, Margo Lanagan, Trevor Stafford, Kaaron Warren, Garth Nix, Robert Hood, Alisa Krasnostein, Scott Westerfeld and me. November 2007

Daikaiju!3: Giant Monsters vs the World will be launched at Conflux 4 on Saturday 29 September 2007. Check out the awesome cover art by Nick Stathopoulos!

New anthology forthcoming from Agog! Press: Working title 'Canterbury 2100'.

Inspired by the classic 14th Century Canterbury Tales of Chaucer, we're seeking short stories from a group of travellers on their way to Canterbury in 2107. We don't want stories about our shared imaginary future - we want the stories of that future, the stories that people tell to amuse, impress and entertain one another during the long, dark, post-climate-change evenings. In a future where storytelling is once again a valued skill, what will our stories say about the world and the people who live in it?

Canterbury 2100 will be edited by Dirk Flinthart.

Further information available here:

Daikaiju2: Revenge of the Giant Monsters was launched at Convergence2. It'll be available from Amazon.com in a week or two.

Sean Williams and Amanda Nettelbeck got married in Adelaide last weekend. Here are some of the wedding guests at the post-wedding BBQ:

Simon Brown, Scott Westerfeld, Jonathan Strahan, Sean Williams, Marianne Jablon, Amanda Nettelbeck, Bill Congreve, Dave Cake, Justine larbalestier, Michelle Marquardt, Nick Stathopoulos, Deborah Biancotti, Robert Hood and Cat Sparks.

Dinner with Gardner Dozois and Susan Casper on their last night in Sydney, Feb 2007

Nick Stathopoulos, Chris, Deb Biancotti, Adrian, Terry Dowling, Cat Sparks, Susan Casper, Gardner Dozois and Robert Hood

Agog! Press plans three publications during 2007: Two further anthologies of Daikaiju stories edited by Robert Hood (because you can never have too many) and a third project which is a secret at the moment, but I can confirm that it will not be edited by me.

I plan to spend 2007 writing stories and upgrading my computer graphics skills.

My story The Golden Hour has been published in WyR[E]d and is available to read free online.

Photos of my recent trip to World Fantasy Convention in Austin, Texas, and my visit to LA are up on Flickr.

My story 'Street of the Dead' which was published in Cosmos magazine is now available to read free online.

This photo of Rob and myself was taken at the Aurealis Awards in Brisbane this year by Mark Greenmantle.

Check out the review of Agog! Ripping Reads in the August issue of Locus magazine.

Agog! Ripping Reads was launched last weekend at Conflux in Canberra. An account of the launch can be found at talking squid

Agog! Press is pleased to announce a new anthology of quality speculative fiction to be launched at Conflux, Canberra, in June, 2006. Click here to see who's in it.

Daughters of Earth: Feminist Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century edited by Justine Larbalestier is now available in the US through Wesleyan University Press.

I did the cover art!

Press release Thursday, 27 October 2005

Agog! Press has reached an agreement with Prime Books, for US distribution for their entire backlist, including their latest release: Daikaiju! Giant Monster Tales, edited by Robert Hood & Robin Pen, as well as the forthcoming sequel volume Daikaiju! 2: Revenge of the Giant Monster Tales, from the
same editors.

The award-winning Agog! series features stories by well known Australian authors such as Damien Broderick, Terry Dowling, Simon Brown, Justine Larbalestier, Sean McMullen, Lucy Sussex, Scott Westerfeld, Sean Williams and Jack Dann, alongside emerging authors including Deborah Biancotti, Brendan Duffy, Claire McKenna, Kaaron Warren, Kim Westwood and Paul Haines.

NOW FEATURING :

Check out the new anthology from Agog! Press: Daikaiju! Giant Monster Tales
Edited by Robert Hood & Robin Pen

AND

you can buy it online from
Australian Online Bookshop

(along with the other Agog! Publications, Agog! Smashing Stories , Agog! Terrific Tales, Agog! Fantastic Fiction and AustrAlien Absurdities.)

Plus!

Check out my online portfolio.

And visit the photo gallery (and make sure you're not in 'em).

this site was updated on 28 June 2010