tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-105396812012-02-16T20:36:01.360+11:00<em>The Online Journal of Andrew J. McKiernan<br />Musings on Art, Writing, Music, Movies and, errm... other stuff.</em>AShRnoreply@blogger.comBlogger301100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10539681.post-31094921505289571892008-08-31T12:32:00.002+10:002008-08-31T12:34:32.204+10:00

As I sit here in the bookshops on weekends it is becoming clearer to me. The 'Self-Help' section of bookshops has become the new Sunday tabernacle: a destination worthy of pilgrimage and reverence.The 'Self-Help' section is always one of the most frequented areas of most bookshops. If you only have one customer in the store, they will probably be standing there in front of the Deepak Chopra's,

AShRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10539681.post-19686842403698276762007-04-14T13:30:00.001+10:002007-04-14T13:32:51.929+10:00

...a shadow may cast a man as often as a man casts a shadow...The Shadow Plays anthology now has a new website (http://elidan.site.net.au/index.html) to coincide with its upcoming release on 21st April.Described by editor Elise Bunter as twelve original stories that "cover the spectrum of darkness and light, fear and wonder, intrigue and adventure", Shadow Plays looks like it has turned into

AShRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10539681.post-23250482456288611702007-03-11T21:27:00.000+11:002007-03-11T21:29:43.871+11:00

I was pretty excited to notice that Ticonderoga Publications have announced the publication in October 2007 of "Shards: Forty Short Sharp Tales" - Shane Jiraiya Cummings' first short story collection, and my first collection of illustrations!As the title so obviously suggests, "Shards" will contain 40 of Shane's stories reprinted from publications such as Shadowed Realms, Dark Wisdom, Andromeda

AShRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10539681.post-1158799276394055852006-09-21T10:39:00.000+10:002006-09-21T10:41:16.406+10:00

Kephra Design are proud to announce the completion of the brand new website of our client Workforce Retention (www.workforceretention.com.au).Workforce Retention specialises in helping organisations to manage retention through effective diagnostic tools, workshops and consulting.Their website is a PHP and MySQL driven portal with Content and Page Management, Client Login areas and a comprehensive

AShRnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10539681.post-1149644513367238012006-06-07T11:31:00.000+10:002006-06-07T11:41:53.380+10:00

I've just heard that my story "All the Clowns in Clowntown" has been accepted for publication in the anthology Macabre: A New Era in Australian Horror.From the website: Macabre, edited by Angela Challis and Marty Young, with the endorsement of the Australian Horror Writers Association, is expected to be a landmark anthology for dark fiction in Australia. It will feature many of the greatest

AShRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10539681.post-1149130174022685072006-06-01T12:47:00.000+10:002006-06-02T10:55:04.666+10:00

Author and editor Shane Jiraiya Cummings has had his stick out to stir the hornet's nest over at his Smoke and Mirrors blog.His post, regarding the number of 'themed' anthologies in the Australian small press at the moment, has gathered the usual amount of disagreeing comments that such posts attract. It is not an noxious post, and the replies (even though most are in total disagreement with

AShRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10539681.post-1149036727516685752006-05-31T10:39:00.000+10:002006-05-31T10:52:07.553+10:00

I have just finished, in the very nick of time, my voting commitments for this year's Conflux Artshow shortlist. All I can say is - Wow!There was an absolutely amazing bunch of art submitted this year. The categories - Student, Comic, Manga, Digital and the overarching Australia and International - were packed with entries. It was extremely difficult to allocate the votes we were given.It will be

AShRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10539681.post-1145510348329675732006-04-20T15:14:00.000+10:002006-04-20T15:28:14.003+10:00

Well, three days since I returned from Conjure and I still haven't blogged the weekend! I will, tonight, but for now I thought I'd post this poem... as I can't think of anyone else who'd want it :)The rain never came.They said it would,and day after day,we waited.A change was expected,late in the evening, they said.We sat up late,breathing in the heat.Even the cicadassounded parched.Tomorrow,

AShRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10539681.post-1141944436857269992006-03-10T09:37:00.000+11:002006-03-10T09:47:16.873+11:00

Well, I've definitely been pretty slack on the updates. A month and a half without a post!The author line-up for the Shadowplays anthology (http://elidan.site.net.au/) has just been announced and I'm very happy to say they have accepted my steampunk story "Calliope: A Steam Romance" for publication! Wahoo!This is really great as it is my first acceptance, and the first publication I sent Cally

AShRnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10539681.post-1135145803480899202005-12-21T17:15:00.000+11:002005-12-21T17:36:35.523+11:00

Happy Summer Solstice everyone!Back in the very early 90s I was in a band called Emily's Child.We had fun, played around the inner-city pubs (when the Sydney music scene was still vibrant and not yet invaded by poker machines), recorded a few songs... and then, after 4yrs, I left. Numerous were the reasons but; I left, the band stuck together for a few months, and then that was it.The strange

AShRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10539681.post-1135143283073715352005-12-21T16:20:00.000+11:002005-12-21T16:34:43.096+11:00

Click on an image for a larger view

AShRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10539681.post-1133315076122626052005-11-30T12:41:00.000+11:002005-11-30T12:44:36.126+11:00

Meet Cobweb.She arrived last night in a box my wife had carried on a train all the way from Paddington.She was pretty scared when she arrived at our house, especially with two wild and excited boys running around the place, but she seems to be settling in quite well already. She slept in the drawer of Kylie's wardrobe last night, despite having a beautiful basket of her own. She has spent most of

AShRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10539681.post-1133169738862003512005-11-28T20:12:00.000+11:002005-11-28T20:34:17.726+11:00

Aurealis passed on my short story The Memory of Water today. I thought the reader's comments in the rejection were okay though;"A nice urban fantasy with a mythic feel. I think the description is overdone in places and it has more of a literary edge - perhaps not quite fantastic enough for us?"Apart from the "overdone description" (which I, Mr.Purple prose, would never do) this is a pretty

AShRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10539681.post-1131590180900080122005-11-10T12:43:00.000+11:002005-11-10T13:41:24.923+11:00

Been too busy to post lately, with multiple stimulating and creative projects occupying my time. Thought I'd pop in and post a quick update, just so everyone knows I'm still kickin'.I resigned from my position with a web design agency [whom I will not name] due to too many differences in opinion on; Project Scoping, Technical Specs, getting a client to sign off before starting work on a project,

AShRnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10539681.post-1123729525210301522005-08-01T09:01:00.000+10:002005-08-11T13:05:25.226+10:00

I finally bought a new PC! It has been a long time coming and the old beast (an AMD K6-2 400 Mhz) had certainly given more than it was originally worth. But, because my old PC was so slow, I hadn't been able to play any games for a couple of years.This was both a blessing and a curse. A curse: because I used to like gaming on my PC; Doom and Quake hold especially fond memories. A blessing:

AShRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10539681.post-1119501327662032722005-06-23T13:20:00.000+10:002005-08-10T18:30:09.560+10:00

I've added a batch of new images to the galleries of the Kephra Design website. Firstly, there are some images of a Gryphon I've been working on for a canvas and acrylic painting. The Gryphon was hand-drawn with pencil on paper. I then scanned it in and the resulting images and started playing around in Photoshop.One image is an attempt to create something that looked like an old manuscript

AShRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10539681.post-1119162314045604162005-04-26T08:10:00.000+10:002005-06-19T16:26:56.446+10:00

Wow! What a great time I had in Canberra!When I first arrived on Friday night for the opening, and the launch of Kaaron Warren's excellent The Grinding House the hotel conference rooms were packed. I'm not a great one for socialising in crowds, I'm more of a one-on-one conversation guy, and it was all very overwhelming at first. There were so many people chatting and laughing, and I knew none of

AShRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10539681.post-1119160072441649832005-04-22T11:30:00.000+10:002005-06-19T15:47:52.443+10:00

Well, the family and I are off to Conflux 2 in Canberra. My first Con! Should be lots of fun! :)

AShRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10539681.post-1109903092556975992005-03-04T13:16:00.000+11:002005-03-04T13:24:52.560+11:00

I posted a link to the article by Charlie Stross on "Five rules for cold-bloodedly designing a fantasy series" (see previous post) to a Message Board I have been a member for a number of years. The Message Board is a busy one, and primarily frequented by readers and writers of Fantasy fiction.I thought that posting the link might be useful to many of the aspiring writers on the list.Instead, it

AShRnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10539681.post-1109890490751454762005-03-04T09:36:00.000+11:002005-03-04T09:54:50.756+11:00

Charles Stross, author of the excellent "Singularity Sky" and "The Atrocity Archives" recently posted an article on his diary entitled: Five rules for cold-bloodedly designing a fantasy series.He goes into the details of the process he went through to plot and plan his next work (a fantasy, not SF). I was quite fascinated by this as I have recently gone through a similar process just before

AShRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10539681.post-1109628060987136852005-03-01T08:30:00.000+11:002005-03-01T13:52:40.616+11:00

The Time Traveler's Wife - by Audrey Niffenegger (A Mini Review).Beautiful, heartbreaking, wonderful, uplifting. If you have a soul that is not numb to this world you will cherish this book. If your soul is numb to the world, this book will wake you up, revitalise you, and show you that Love is an amazing thing worth holding and keeping in your heart.I shouldn't have read the end on the train

AShRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10539681.post-1109062528696873842005-02-22T19:45:00.000+11:002005-02-22T19:56:44.266+11:00

Nothing new for me, but my short story How Does Your Garden Grow was rejected by Dark Animus today :-(I knew it probably wouldn't get in before I even sent it for a couple of reasons;The only genre the story fits in is Horror, but it is not really too horrific, and none too scary. More an old-style 30s or 40s horror, if anything. It was inspired by a Clark Ashton Smith story, but not similar in

AShRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10539681.post-1108947105308704152005-02-21T10:30:00.000+11:002005-02-21T12:06:08.623+11:00

I found this site today: Fantasy Planes - filled with great images of flying-craft that never were. I've always been fascinated by man's attempts at flight, especially those Victorian and early 20th Century contraptions that imagined the future. I have to agree with the site's owner that:"...the most interesting airplanes are the ones that never got built."Take for instance the Bel Geddes

AShRnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10539681.post-1108591652154161802005-02-17T08:00:00.000+11:002005-02-24T09:15:19.356+11:00

I've just finished reading Scott Westerfeld's Succession duology, Risen Empire and The Killing of Worlds. I read them both in paperback, published by TOR in the US, and I wasn't exactly happy with the quality of the typesetting.Both books in the series were filled with typographical errors and obvious bad spell-checking. You know those words that are real words, and so aren't picked up in a

AShRnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10539681.post-1108338841092797302005-02-14T10:16:00.000+11:002005-02-14T10:54:01.096+11:00

Salon has posted an article "The Master of Disgust" on H.P.Lovecraft, creator of the Cthulhu Mythos, discussing the two opposing camps whose views have grown up around his work: those who think Lovecraft was a "hack"; and those who champion him as an artist of "philosophical and literary substance".I love Lovecraft, having first read most of his stuff when I was about thirteen, but I don't

AShRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10539681.post-1107986055807639942005-02-10T08:48:00.000+11:002005-02-10T08:54:15.806+11:00

Tobias S. Buckell is a Science Fiction author (2002 John W. Campbell Award Nominee, and Winner of the 1999 Writer's of the Future Contest) whose first novel is due soon. He recently conducted a survey of 75 published SF&F authors to discover how much they earned from their labours. The results are quite fascinating, and nowhere near as low as I expected it to be. If you want to be published, and

AShRnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10539681.post-1107690970929209582005-02-06T22:19:00.000+11:002005-02-06T22:57:36.730+11:00

I just finished reading Jon Courtenay Grimwood's lastest novel "Stamping Butterflies". I found that this book has a lot in common with M.John Harrison's recent return to SF "Light". They both have multiple plot strands (past, present, near-future and far-future) that interweave throughout. They both concern the science of Quantum Physics, especially as it relates to Chaos Theory and the

AShRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10539681.post-1107571166782632832005-02-05T13:19:00.000+11:002005-02-05T15:18:06.640+11:00

George Underwood is an artist and illustrator, probably best known for album covers such as David Bowie's "Ziggy Stardust" as well as covers for T-Rex, Mott the Hoople and Procul Harum (all great late 60s musicians). He has also done a few Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror book covers in his time (covers for Greg Bear, Brian Lumley and Michael Moorcock).What I like best about his work though

AShRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10539681.post-1107382852786377302005-02-03T08:00:00.000+11:002005-02-03T09:23:29.426+11:00

As this blog is an attempt to get me to write more often and more regularly I thought I would jot down the current writing projects I have lined up in front of me: How Does Your Garden Grow - [Short story - COMPLETE] A pulpy-horror story inspired years ago by Clark Ashton Smith's short story The Garden of Adompha. This one is done, reworked, edited and is currently out in circulation looking for

AShRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10539681.post-1107346434621403302005-02-02T22:42:00.000+11:002005-02-02T23:44:00.813+11:00

My decision to start a blog, like most of my decisions, was rash and impulsive. I wanted somewhere, other than my business website, to keep my family and friends informed of what I was up to. I wanted something that would (possibly) force me to write a little more; discipline me to a daily routine of writing in my journal. And so... I started a blog! I hear that everyone is doing it these days.

AShRnoreply@blogger.com0