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SNAFU at the Aurealis Awards - Round 2

4/6/2020

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Very happy to announce that my short story Canute, from SNAFU: Last Stand, has been shortlisted for an Aurealis Award in the category of Best Science Fiction Short Story.

See the full list of finalists here.

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I'm a bit of a pessimist so when I see a movie about alien invasion,  find it very hard to believe in a happy ending:

Independence Day - Human race smooshed from orbit

Battle for Los Angeles - Ditto

War of the Worlds - No way an advanced alien race would fall to the common cold.

So when I got the chance to write my own take on humanity's last stand I grabbed it.

Canute follows the last human settlement in the UK as it ekes out its desperate final days in the face of an advancing, semi-sentient nanotechnological plague that has consumed the rest of the country. It's full of action (as all SNAFU stories are) but it's also about why we continue to fight against impossible odds and what's worth fighting for.

Huge thanks to Geoff and AJ from Cohesion Press for picking up this story and making out what it is.

You can pick up a copy of SNAFU: Last Stand here.

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SNAFU: Medivac

3/14/2020

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No, it's not SNAFU cashing in on the medical problems plaguing the planet at the moment. It's actually a mix of reprints and original stories re-released for a good cause.

Many people will be familiar with author James A Moore. As well as writing great books like the Serenity Falls trilogy he has also been a regular feature in the SNAFU series of military horror anthologies.

​Unfortunately James has been doing it tough recently. And Geoff and the team at Cohesion Press have stepped up to produce SNAFU:Medivac.

Authors have donated their stories free of charge and all proceeds will go towards helping James out with his medical expenses.

It's available for pre-order now. Just click the photo for the Amazon link.

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The Inevitable Star Wars Post - No Spoilers

1/3/2020

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Well its not as bad as I thought it would be. 

I was ready to dislike this movie. I'd heard all the spoilers and watched YouTube analyses and on that basis I couldn't see any way in which this film would be a satisfying conclusion to the Skywalker saga. And it isn't - not really. But it's not the disaster I was expecting.

Imagine you are playing chess and at the start of the game you decide that white will win by a back rank checkmate with the opposing king obstructed by his own pawns. The game then starts and, as things often do, circumstances start to work against you. So, in order to maintain your original plan of the back rank mate, you start to bend the rules a bit... then a bit more. Now this bishop can move like a knight, now pawns can move backwards... 


That's what this movie feels like. JJ Abrams knew what needed to be in place for the finale: a personal triumph from the movie's heroine set against an epic backdrop. But in order to get there he needed to push a lot of pieces around in ways that felt decidedly un-natural.

I'll leave the spoilers to another post, but suffice to say that whenever a character needed to know some information, they just did. Whenever they needed to find something, they simply stumbled across it. I would usually call this lazy writing, but there is nothing lazy about this movie. In this case it was a series of desperate shortcuts taken in order to reach a destination which could not, under any circumstances, be missed.

That it hangs together at all is a tribute to the fact that filmmaking is at least as much art as it is science. On paper this movie should not work. If it was a scientific formula, the experiment would fail. But it doesn't fail, not quite. 


The problems it has are all structural and related to the plot and the work that needed to be done to make a functional trilogy from the point Rian Johnson left it at the end of the Last Jedi. How much those faults will affect your enjoyment of the film will depend on how much stock you put in that aspect of filmmaking. 

It has a few things going for it: a universally uplifting message that is hard to go against, pretty graphics and decent performances from a likable cast. 

I still can't believe the utter lack of coordination between Rian Johnson and JJ Abrams and the consequently jarring middle movie of the trilogy that necessitated all this rough carpentry.

I'll shed no tears over the death of a franchise, for that is not what this is. But I will mourn what could have been: a beloved original trilogy, universally timeless themes, an extant and well-realized aesthetic; an original cast still vital (at least at the start of this new trilogy). In the end they took Wagu steak and made it into a cheeseburger. I guess we should be thankful. It could have been a lot worse.

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Release Day!

12/14/2019

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SNAFU: Last Stand

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It's finally here.SNAFU: Last Stand was released to the public today.

I've had an advance copy for a while, so I've been able to read a few of the stories and there are some real crackers here.

I particularly enjoyed Skitter by Anna Stephens with it's fresh and brilliantly realized fantasy setting. And there are many other favorite authors (Alan Baxter, Jason Fischer and Patrick Freivald to name but a few) whose stories I'm looking forward to reading.

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My story even gets a shout out from Tim Miler in his forward:

"This collection is truly a buffet of style, tone and desperate action. Do you want a post-apocalyptic and heart-rending story about nanotechnology gone wrong? Try 'Canute'."

If you're a fan of action-packed stories, you're bound to find something in here to enjoy. You can get your copy at the links below:

UK
USA
Australia


And if you really want to help an author out, please leave a review or rating on Amazon or Goodreads or your own social media or blog.


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Wolves at the Door in Print

11/25/2019

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The excellent Cohesion Press is finally releasing its catalogue of e-book anthologies in print. Next up is Wolves at the Door.
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​This was my first sale to Cohesion and my story Taking down the Top Cat about a military raid on a drug lord’s compound that takes an unexpected turn into the macabre is one of many great stories from authors like Kirsten Cross and James A Moore.

Cohesion Press, and particularly their SNAFU series of military horror anthologies, are focused on bringing you action-packed short stories that blend military detail with other-worldly horror.

They’ve even caught the eye of Hollywood with some SNAFU stories being adapted for Netflix by the award winning animation series Love Death & Robots.

Stories in this book typically have a theme of lycanthropy (If you’ve seen the excellent movie Dog Soldiers, you’ll have a pretty good idea of what’s in store), but the authors manage to apply that theme to a wide range of stories from Scotland in The Middle Ages to the modern day jungles of Columbia. There’s a bit of something for everyone – provided that they’re fans of fast-paced action (and are not too squeamish). You can pick up a copy of Wolves at the Door here…

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SNAFU: Last Stand

11/25/2019

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​My fourth outing with Australia’s own Cohesion Press is coming out later this year.
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​SNAFU: Last Stand features action-packed stories of desperate standoffs, heroic sacrifices and thriling rear guard actions from authors like Alan Baxter and Patrick Freivald and features a forward from Tim Miller of Deadpool and Terminator: Dark Fate fame.

Cohesion Press typically publishes stories of military action with a slice of science fiction or the paranormal. I can’t give away too much about my story, Canute. Suffice to say that I thought I’d maxed out the action and horror and then the editors’ comments came back saying they wanted even more! So I guess this one’s going to be a pretty wild ride.

You can pre-order SNAFU: Last Stand Here…
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It's done... well, kinda.

1/3/2018

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So I think I can say the novel is finished! Not that anything is ever really finished, but at least it is as good as I can get it by myself. So what now?

Well that depends. If there's any interest from the traditional publishing industry (i.e. if I get an agent or any interest direct from publishers) then no doubt they will want some input. If I self-publish then I will probably engage my own editor and there will be (yet) another draft based on their recommendations and artwork to commission and all the rest of it. But for now I can say that ​The View from Infinity Beach is done!
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SNAFU at the Aurealis Awards

2/20/2017

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​When I was working in Singapore, there was a phrase in Singlish that always stuck with me. You’d say someone was “blur” or “blur like sotong”. Sotong means squid in Malay and to say they were “blur” like a squid meant they had that same dull, glassy-eyed expression that you saw on those hapless molluscs in a fish market. If you were blur, then you were obtuse, oblivious to everything around you; you weren’t in on the joke or up to speed with current events.
 
Anyway, I’ve been so blur recently that I didn’t even realise that Non-Zero Sum had been nominated for an Aurealis Award, and only found out when I got tagged in a Facebook post saying it had made the shortlist!

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t’s an open secret that writers are their own worst critics. By and large we have no idea how stories are going to be received. Occasionally you get a good feeling about a story. Something about it just gives you an expectation that other people are going to like it just as much as you, but that feeling is rare. Here’s where I should say that I had just such a feeling about Non-Zero Sum, but the truth is I didn’t. I liked the central idea: that nuclear explosions rip open a gate between worlds and allow things to come through.  I liked the characters--a military HAZMAT team sent to a nuclear accident to gather data and then running into supernatural, monster weirdness--the action scenes were fun (imagine if HP Lovecraft had grown up playing Doom and Quake), but the story never jelled for me. I always felt I could have done more with it.
 
Shows what I know... Told you I was blur.
 
Non-Zero Sum probably won’t win. It’s up against some stiff competition, and this style of fast-paced action stories may not be to the judge’s taste. But what the hell… it’s shortlisted and I’m running with that and slapping a big “Finalist” sticker on this post anyway. 
 
Thanks to Geoff Brown, AJ Spedding and everyone at Cohesion Press. You guys are the best!

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SNAFU and the Sofa

1/10/2017

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2016 was a bit quiet on the writing front, too much going on IRL, but it ended on a high note with the publication of SNAFU:Black Ops featuring my short story The Waking Dragon. This is my third outing with the SNAFU series (stories of mine also made it into Hunters and Wolves at the Door) and they're always a lot of fun. Hopefully this shows through in the story itself. Obviously my fellow contributors and I did something right as Black Ops is curently sitting pretty with a 4.5 star average on Amazon. Apart from your humble correspondent there are also stories from Jonathan Maberry, Nicholas Sansbury Smith, James Lovegrove and... as the saying goes... many more. If you're a fan of action stories with a supernatural or sci-fi twist then it's definately worth checking out.

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​In another three-peat, an older story of mine, rounded out the year for the Hugo award-winning Starship Sofa podcast. Taking the High Road won the Jim Baen Memorial Writing Contest in 2012 and follows a doomed expedition to Mars as they find a new way of living on a comet hurting out of the solar system. Its guaranteed to piss off anyone who knows anything about orbital mechanics, but apart from that its a fine read, in fact it's one of my favourites. It's one of those stories that you look back on and think, "Did I really write that?" I think they did a great job turning it into an audiobook and its free! Why not have a listen and check it out for yourself?
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More SNAFU

4/19/2016

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The cover art for the next SNAFU anthology is out and Dean Samed has done the business again.

One of the "many more" is going to be none other than your humble correspondent. I'm still working on the story. This is the first time I've been asked to contribute to an anthology before the story has actually been written. Nothing like contractual obligation to get the creative juices flowing!

I'm trying something a bit different with this one. In the past I may have been guilty of being a bit too formulaic. This one is going to have its share of red meat too--SNAFU readers want their fix of military action with a spec-fic twist that Cohesion Press always delivers--but at the same time it's going to be a bit mind-bendy.

Will I pull it off, or is this where i jump the shark? Only time will tell.

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