Hi Guys! Am in the middle of the Brisbane Writers Festival which has been good fun, especially because I’ve had a chance to have a good chinwag with Margo Lanagan. The panels for the children’s programme have been excellent and all the kids  have been incredibly polite and excited to be at the festival. I’ve signed many, many exercise books and pieces of paper! I have one more event to go, which is a panel with Trent Jamieson on Saturday on SF writing.

Then it’s the downhill run on my Tara Sharp novel and finishing off the year’s events with SheKilda and Supanova.

Angel Arias is due out in the next three weeks and some reviews have started seep through. You can read some of the MDPWeb staff reviews here and here.

I’ve been so busy that I haven’t had a chance to send Brigitte issue 2 of Peacemaker. It’s so close to being finished but just needs another day’s work. If only I could find a day spare! Grrr! SOON! WILL DO, Bridge! Promise!

Some news on the comic front!

As of next month issue 1 of Peacemaker will no longer be on special at .99c AUD and will now cost $3.99 AUD.

The good news is that for your money you will also get the short story (approximately 5k words) that the character  is based on and a bunch of concept art from Brigitte Sutherland, along with her commentary, as part of the new price. Although the comic follows a different story line from the original short story, you can see the development of Virgin’s character and the heavy influences of the Australian Outback and spiritual weirdness. Brigitte’s commentary also gives some sneak peaks into my novel in progress.

Issue 2 is in the pipeline and will be double the size of issue 1. It will follow the same pattern of a reduced price initially, and then a package deal with extras when the price increases.

For anyone who has already purchased the comic and would like the short story and concept art extra as well, you can email me via this website and I will arrange it for the price of .99c AUD.

N.B. Many thanks to Tehani Wessely at Fablecroft for making the short story pdf available for me. The story was originally published as “Gin Jackson: Neophyte Ranger” in AGOG Smashing Stories, Cat Sparks (ed.), AGOG! Press, 2004, and later reprinted  as Virgin Jackson in Australas Imaginarium, a Fablecroft publication. Australis Imaginarium is still available for purchase and is full of terrific stories.

Loving this ad created by Brigitte Sutherland (click to enlarge):

And for anyone that would like to catch up for a signing or just to say howdy, I’ll be at this panel in August with a bunch of great authors! See below.