Mark Webb's Blog, page 19

Very poorly updated blog

Hi all and happy new year.

This blog has been very quiet of late. In the last 2 months I’ve changed jobs and taken the family off on holiday for a few weeks, and I’m afraid that has left very little time for blogging.

On the plus side, I have a pile of books that I’ve read which I’ll hopefully be posting reviews for over the next couple of weeks, including the last of my 2013 Australian Women Writers’ challenge books (a series by K. E. Mills) as well as some other Australian books by Jason Fran...

Very short flash fiction piece

Hi all. Antipodean SF has been kind enough to publish another one of my flash fiction pieces. This one is a very short piece called Hindsight is a Bitch and it comes in at around 100 words (I said short, didn’t I?).

You can also read it on the ePub or mobi version of issue 185 available at the e-Reader page of the Antipodean SF website.

I for an online competition, but submitted it to Antipodean SF when I inexplicably failed to win. I hope you enjoy.

Have you been keeping up with Galactic Chat?

Sean Wright has been interviewing up a storm lately on Galactic Chat, a podcast that I (too) occasionally help out with.

Since I last posted about Galactic Chat there have been a LOT of new episodes. Sean is an interviewing machine, there is no doubt about it. Interviews have included:

Episode 29: Narelle Harris (horror and romance writer) chats to Alex
Episode 30: Tansy Rayner Roberts (fantasy writer) chats to Sean
Episode 31: Tracey O’Hara (paranormal thriller writer) chats to Sean
Episode 32:St...

Caution: contains small parts by Kirstyn McDermott – review

This review forms part of my contribution to theAustralian Women Writers 2013 Reading Challenge. All my 2013 AWWC reviews can be found.

Caution: contains small partsby Kirstyn McDermott is the latest in the Twelve Planets series released byTwelfth Planet Press. It includes the following stories:

What Amanda Wants
Horn
Caution: Contains Small Parts
The Home for Broken Dolls

Kirstyn McDermott is an author who I can rely on to produce excellent quality, lovely prose that creeps me the hell out. I’...

The Expanse Trilogy by James S.A. Corey – review

I first came across the first book of the Expanse trilogyLeviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey (pseudonym for the collaboration of authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck) in a review of one of the later books in the series on the Random Alex website. I have been looking for some good old fashioned space opera, and while Alex’s review ofLeviathan Wakes itself was a little underwhelming, I was drawn in by her description of the series as a whole.

The series is made up of three books:

Leviathan Wakes
C...

Supporting the Kaleidoscope Pozible campaign

Over the last couple of years, I’ve quite enjoyed a lot of the work coming out of the Australian small press publisher Twelfth Planet Press. TPP have published some genuinely interesting books and taken some risks while investigating innovative forms of modern reading (for example, their Twelve Planets series).

So when I heard that Alisa Kranostein, the principal behind TPP, was dipping her toe in the crowd funding wading pool, I was keen to support them. A bit of a blurb for the campaign foll...

GenreCon 2013 – a running post

So, I’ll be keeping a running post of my experiences at GenreCon this weekend, just adding bits as the muse takes me (and time permits).

10/10/2013 – travel

I flew in last night (Thursday) and made my way to the hotel. Entirely predictably, they had lost my reservation so my first 1/2 hour was spent standing at the check in counter while a variety of people tried to work out what had went wrong. In the end they gave me an upgraded room for the convention price, so I can’t complain too much. My...

So, anyone else going to GenreCon this weekend?

I’m heading up to sunny Brisbane this weekend to GenreCon. “What is GenreCon?” I hear you ask. And I quote from their website:

GenreCon is a three-day convention for Australian fans and professionals working within the fields of romance, mystery, science fiction, crime, fantasy, horror, thrillers, and more. One part party, one part celebration, one part professional development: GenreCon is the place to be if you’re an aspiring or established writer with a penchant for the types of fiction tha...

The Regersek Zone

Hi all,

It’s been a long time between posts – I’m afraid family life and day job have turned Mark into a very dull boy. Well, dull in terms of my writing. I’m a barrel of laughs when it comes to assessing the potential impact of altering the legislative framework governing the employment of public servants in my great state. But then, it’s hard not to be a wacky funster with material like that to work with.

Despite the temptations that drag me away from my blog, I did want to surface for long e...

Galactic Chat Interview – Jason Nahrung

Well, mynext interview for the Galactic Chatpodcast is now up. I interviewed dark speculative fiction author Jason Nahrung. It was an honour to get the chance to interview Jason – I’ve been a big fan of his writing for a long time (you can see my previous reviews of andelsewhere on the site).

Jason writes at the dark end of the speculative fiction spectrum, and has a broad and deep knowledge of the horror genre in particular. I’ve spoken with Jason at a couple of conferenc...