I’m incredibly excited this morning. I’m a finalist in the 2012 Bloody Parchment anthology! My short story, Death Express, will be appearing alongside some incredible fiction. You can read the announcement for the anthology on the Bloody Parchment blog.

Congratulations to the winners and everybody else who made it. And thank you to the wonderful judges, Cat Hellison, Joe Vaz, Sarah Lotz, Saun Swingler, and Carrie Clevenger. You guys rock!

Will keep you posted as to when you’ll be able to download the anthology. Now, if you’ll excuse me while I do my very silly little happy dance.

I’ve been asked to speak on a panel at the Women Empowering Women symposium being put together by Kisha Mays of Just Fearless. The symposium is being held on the 31st of January at the Hilton Hotel in Johannesburg.

Please join me on the night, even if it’s just to point and laugh at me trying to sound like I know what I’m talking about.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 27,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 10 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

It’s been a rough year! Our beautiful German Shepard, Max, died. My brother was shot 17 times, but miraculously survived. The guy who shot him, after having escaped from police custody (he’d just murdered a policeman), was released on bail and has disappeared. Shortly after my brother was shot, my uncle committed suicide. Just those three things have made it an unpleasant year. But it’s also been one of those years where everything seems to have been put on pause, and friendships that I thought would last came to abrupt ends. It’s always crappy when that happens.

On the other hand it’s been one of those building years. I’ve made new friendships and built on existing relationships. Special people have come in to my life, people from my past have resurfaced and once again become incredibly important to me. I’ve laid the groundwork for future projects and been invited to take part in events for next year. I’ve had some great reviews come out and some not so good ones. I’ve learnt a lot this year. I’ve learnt that not everybody is who they pretend to be and that you can’t please everybody.

2011 has been an interesting year, full of ups and downs, but I’m happy to see the end of it. 2012 is upon us and should prove to be just as interesting. Hopefully there’ll be less drama. And Let’s just hope the Mayans were wrong!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I’ve been a rather horrendous blogger this month. I’ve been a little busy writing a course on Writing Horror which will be available online shortly. But for today I’m a guest over on David Chislett’s blog talking about Writing Horror in South Africa. Please pop in and let me know what you think.

It’s time to announce the winner of my Coffin Hop competition!

The person who came up with the most creative Y word is Joanna Parypinski! Congratulations!

Y = Yog-Sothoth

I’d never heard of this thing before and it even has a Wikipedia page, so if you’re interested in knowing exactly what Yog-Sothoth is, you can have a read here.

Thank you so much to all of you who entered, you all came up with some truly interesting answers.

Today is the first day of Coffin Hop 2011 and therefore I’m running a competition!

Below is my list of A to Z for horror and Halloween. I’ve only left Y open. The person who comes up with the most original association for Y and horror or Halloween gets a character named after them in the sequel to Shadows. The winner will be announced on the 1st of November!

A = Aliens

B = Bodies

C = Claws

D = Death

E = Evil laugh

F = Fear / Fullmoon

G = Ghosts/Ghouls/Goblins

H = Haunted Houses

I = Infectious Diseases

J = Jumping Jitters

K = Killing

L = Living Dead

M = Monsters

N = Nightmares

O = Occult/Outer Space

P = Poltergeists

Q = Quarantine

R = Rats

S = Spiders

T = Trick or Treat

U = Urban Legends

V = Vampires

W = Werewolves

X = X-rated Gore

Y = ?

Z = Zombies

Leave your answer in the comments section as well as your full name and an email address I can get hold of you on. Now pop in at the Coffin Hop site and check out all the other sites participating. There are loads of competitions to enter and freaky things to win.

Here are the gory details for the Coffin Hop!

1) HAVE A SPOOKY FUN TIME!

2) INVITE YOUR FRIENDS AND SPREAD THE WORD!

3) THIS TOUR STARTS: Monday, October 24, 2011 at Midnight (PST)

THIS TOUR ENDS: Monday, October 31, 2011 at Midnight (PST)

Winners will be drawn and posted November 1, 2011

4) MEET AND MINGLE WITH THE AUTHORS! EXPERIENCE A NEW DESTINATION AT EVERY STOP! PARTICIPATE IN EVERY SITE’S CONTEST AND BE ENTERED FOR CHANCES TO WIN MULTIPLE PRIZES! EVERY BLOG VISITED IS ANOTHER OPPORTUNITY TO WIN!

5) PARTICIPATION AT ALL SITES IS RECOMMENDED, BUT NOT REQUIRED. THE MORE SITES YOU HOP, THE BETTER YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING PRIZES.

6) DID I MENTION TO HAVE A SPOOKY FUN TIME?

***Authors have full discretion to choose an alternate winner in the event any winner fails to claim their prize(s) within 72 hours of their name being posted or after notification of win, whichever comes first. Anyone who participates in this tour is subject to these rules***

Today I’ve got a guest on my blog! Fellow South African dark fiction author, Nerine Dorman. So without any further ado I’m handing you over to her.

People have often asked me why I have a preference for dark subject matter. I know for a fact that it drove my mother nuts by the time I hit my teens and I started seriously getting into literature and role-playing games featuring “evil” critters such as vampires and werewolves. Looking back now, I’m still not quite sure where my fascination started. What I do know is that this was definitely motivated by fear.

Things that scared me when I was a young were the creatures of the night, but also more sinister forces—I was raised in a strict religious household—so this included fear of evil cultists and demon possession. These forces could be interpreted also as the fear of being the Other, of being different and possibly damned through having transgressed society’s moral boundaries. I spent my entire childhood scared to death of being outcast and all this bottled repression had to bubble out eventually.

In a sense, as I grew into my own identity, I purposefully set out to recreate myself in the image of the very things I’d been warned against. And it wasn’t just a phase I’d grow out of, either. A decade and a half later, I’m still the unrepentant coffin kid. I tried the whole corporate stint for two horrid years when I was working in an ad agency and I was so miserable I couldn’t wait to get more body piercings.

In a sense, most of my writing reflects this notion of the Outsider, of people or beings who, due to some twist of fate or through their own doings, exist on the periphery of society. South Africa, with its turbulent history, presents many opportunities to explore the concept of the Outsider; at present, my published novels are mostly set in the Rainbow Nation because I’m a firm believer in “write what you know”.

A handful of foreign publishers and agents rejected my writing due to the fact that it’s not “recognisably African” (by their standards) but to be honest, I don’t give a toss. I write the Africa that I know, which is a melting pot of cultures, a mélange of East meets West in the Dark Continent. I carry in my non-conformity into my fiction.

What my foreign readers get, however, is a slice of life of my world the way I see it. There are enough touchstones of familiarity for them to get to know the milieu while I offer them hints of the exotic. Local readers get to see everyday settings given a darker twist. Considering that I’m nominally involved in the local alternative subcultures, I reckon I offer a fairly authentic voice. My friends are indie filmmakers, photographers, musicians, models, performance artists or professional body piercers, among others. I never lack ideas for new stories.

Like many indie-published authors, I walked a long road before publication, and ran the whole gamut of rejections from literary agents and traditional publishers. The publishing industry is, at the moment, in the midst of a massive state of flux and has seen the rise of small and indie presses. With the advent of digital and print-on-demand publishing, many authors are now being given the opportunity to put their words out there. I’m pleased to number among the latter.

Since I made my first sale in 2008 and saw the release of my debut horror novel, Khepera Rising, I’ve since then published three novels and one novella, all through small and independent presses in the United States, with further sales already under my belt. This goes to show that one needn’t hold one’s breath waiting for the local publishers to play catch up.

What I like about working with the smaller presses is that they allow me a lot of creative integrity while providing editorial guidance. They also take care of my cover art and distribution, and deal with vendors and royalty payments—which is not something I like to think about. It’s a great arrangement. While I could go the DIY route (and occasionally do bring out anthologies or self-published titles), there’s a lot of work that goes into that, and I prefer not to play publisher.

There are a lot more opportunities available to writers now than ever before. My advice to anyone who’s about to sit down and write that novel that’s been churning around in their head is to finish the manuscript, get constructive criticism from other writers (there are wonderful critique groups such as The Critters Workshop (for the fantasy, science fiction and horror genres): http://www.critique.org/) and to polish that manuscript to within an inch of its life before getting onto the submissions mill.

Lastly, don’t stop writing, don’t stop improving on your writing, read widely and don’t take rejections personally. If you’re determined and work hard, you’ll succeed.

Bio: Nerine Dorman, who sometimes writes as Therése von Willegen, works as a sub-editor and writer for a newspaper publisher by day; by night she edits and writes fiction. Every year she organises the Bloody Parchment event and anthology under the auspices of the SA Horrorfest. She is a full-time snark. Follow her blog at http://nerinedorman.blogspot.com or on Twitter @nerinedorman

Find her stories at http://www.lyricalpress.com

Download a free short story, written in collaboration with Carrie Clevenger, at http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/68457

I’m incredibly excited to announce that I was interviewed by Joe Vaz last week for the October issue of Something Wicked. I’ve been dying to get into this fantastic magazine since I found out about in 2008. I’ve been doing a little happy dance for the last month, which was when Joe first asked if he could interview me.

You can download this months issue on the Something Wicked website.  It’s packed with original fiction by A.A. Garrison, William Mitchell, and Michael Hodges. And don’t forget the feature interview with yours truly.

You can also subscribe to this awesome magazine and get it in your email inbox every month. It’s important to support indie magazines especially one as good as this!

Let me know what you think of it!

I’m really excited to announce that Requiem in E Sharp has a home! Requiem will be published by the same wonderful publishing company who recently brought you Shadows – Generation Next.

I don’t yet have a date for release, but it should be pretty soon. It’ll be released as an ebook, which makes me feel all warm and fuzzy because no trees will be chopped down for Requiem in E Sharp.

I noticed something with Shadows – most people asked me if it was available on Kindle, hardly anybody asked me if it was available in bookstores.  Interesting, don’t you think?

So if you have a Kindle you can download Shadows here or if you have a nook, you can get it here.

Save a tree – download an ebook!