Madness of the Mind, now at Amazon

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

Madness of the Mind is another anthology from the growing Static Movement imprint. I guess the title says it all really. Two of my stories are included – “The Tuatara Terrarium” and “The Wasps’ Nest” – both dark, gothic stories, and interrelated with characters and settings appearing in both stories.

These stories are two of my favourites in part because they’re so different from much of my work. They’re most likely influenced by Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy, populated with odd characters in a very gothic setting.

The anthology is available now from Amazon, and also from the

No news today – landslide

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 1 Comment

No news today – I’m flat out catching up with things after driving a couple of hours north to collect my parents when their car became undriveable from being hit by a landslide. They’re fine, but shaken, and the car might even be repairable.

Landslide:

The landslide shoved the car right across the road to around about where the photo is taken from. Please excuse the cellphone-ness of the picture quality.

Car (actually, normally blue):

I’ll carry on as normal on Monday …

Moss Wall Collection – ambient music by Sounds The Songs Of Seabirds

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Sounds The Songs of Seabirds is the moniker used by Bob Singley, a prolific ambient/improvisational folk artist from the Pacific Northwest. With numerous releases available through Bandcamp there’s a huge array of music available.

Moss Wall is a series of releases – seven long albums in a variety of low key styles. Bob allowed me to curate a collection of tracks for Zenapolae as a kind of overview of the series. Nine tracks, at least one from each release:

1. one rain drop
2. freezing rain
3. green leaves hanging on a limb
4. spores
5. as the high winds carry the birds
6. love (four)
7. frozen fog
8. marmot
9. purple nettle at trail 8

You can stream or download the compilation from Zenapolae here.

Redcord… flash fiction in Antipodean Science Fiction

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 2 Comments

Antipodean Science Fiction is an online Australian speculative magazine which publishes flash fiction up to 500 words. They’ve published a couple of my stories over recent years – ‘Puncture Wound’ and ‘How Things Fall’ (both archived at The National Library of Australia’s Pandora Web Archive) – and this new piece is kind of interrelated to both of those, using the character (such as a character can be in a 500 word piece) Bayliss. She also appears in my story ‘Xuento’ in the Lame Goat Press book Kings of the Realm – A Dragon Anthology (yes, that’s a hard sci-fi story in a book about dragons).

The story, Redcord MacroNano Engine in Error State in the September issue is a hard-sci adventure. It’s fun taking these characters out for a spin in the depths of vacuum and I think I’ll keep on writing about them.

Stone Goddess in The Best of Lame Goat Press

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 1 Comment

Christopher Jacobsmeyer, editor of Lame Goat Press, compiled this collection from the five volumes Horror Through the Ages, Kings of the Realm: A Dragon Anthology, Diamonds in the Rough, The Next Time and Howl: Tales of the Feral and Infernal, the first five anthologies published late last year and early this year – some of these are now out of print. “Thirty stories from the anthologies, including one brand new one. Revisit the history of LGP in all its glory.”
My story, and one of my personal favourites, “Stone Goddess” is included in the anthology. This is the second ‘reprint’ of the story – it was also read by Barry J. Northern as a podcast at Cast Macabre.
The anthology is available from Amazon here

Lame Goat Press has had a busy and fraught year, and appears to no longer be active. Fortunately many of its volumes are still available – and this book makes for a great sampler.

Two stories published in Novus Creatura

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 1 Comment

Aurora Wolf publishing picked up the Novus Creatura anthology through Static Movement. I did see a contents list once, but can’t track it down at the moment – I’m still waiting for my copy in the post. I suspect that it includes many of the usuals, and a few new authors, so I’m in for a treat.

The premise behind the anthology was to have stories about new creatures – no zombies or werewolves or vampires – some kind of creature unseen before. My two stories are the very short and grim ‘Breathe Me In’ (not to be confused with my longer story from Flashes in the Dark – ‘Breathe In’, which is very different), and ‘Zombie Vampire Robot From Mars: A Kirsten Challenger Mystery Romance’ (okay, so I kind of twisted the rules there), something longer and lighter.

Novus Creatura is available now from Amazon.

I’ll post again with more thoughts (and more links), once I have the book in my hands.

Morning News – Microflash in Dog Days of Summer

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 1 Comment

My story “Morning News” was one of several Special Jury Award winners in Michael J Solender’s Not From Here Are You Dog Days of Summer competition. The competition called for stories exactly 101 words long that included the word ‘summer’. The story is available, along with other stories from the competition, in the downloadable E-chapbook Dog Days of Summer 2010, and will also be published online on the Not From Here, Are You blog in the near future (I’ll post a link then).

The chapbook is definitely worth downloading – some wonderful stories there from the likes of Sam Adamson (the winner – Michael interviews Sam here), Karen Schindler, Laurita Miller, Tomara Armstrong, Angel Zapata, Jodi MacArthur, Erin Cole, Lee Hughes, Eric J. Krause, Laura Eno, Chris Allinotte, and Jim Bronyaur , among others.

Zencast 012 – mix by Venus Vulture

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 1 Comment


Zenapolae is a netlabel that releases a range of ambient and experimental music. They also have regular ‘Zencasts’ of hour-long mixes of tracks from the label and from other netlabels.

Recently I completed a mix exclusively made up from Zenapolae releases and it’s available from Zenapolae as Zencast 012 – you can download it here. The mix is a very blended piece, using long sections of various tracks overlaid with long sections of others.

Tracklist
1. Todd Christopher – aurumplateau
2. Saffron Slumber – Of Ice, Water, and Steam
3. Petal – Meridian
4. Ingredient – Striations
5. zenasprime – esion2 (edit)
6. Maszyna 01 – kosmos
7. d/form – 00:11:59::00:21:15
8. Petal – Occlusion
9. lolpix – Ephialtes
10. Weird Fields – Carousel
11. Raumwerk – Mitte (edit)
12. AmgSphont – zatpacu
13. Instruction Shuttle – Further Adrift
14. d/form – 00:51:09::00:60:00
15. Saffron Slumber – Of Ice, Water, and Steam

enjoy

Final note – keep an eye out for part 3 of The Rotated

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

While I’m on hiatus the third part of The Rotated, my novel, should appear in the September issue of Infinite Windows – probably around September 1st. Check it out – if you haven’t read any yet, start with part one in the July issue.

There is probably a way to make this post on or around the day, but I’m staying simple and lean for the moment. For the briefest second I thought about writing twenty-four posts ahead of time and letting them out a day at a time, but you know, I just don’t have that much interesting stuff to say – I’ll stick to the fiction.

Catcha later in September