Kim Wilkins at work on a new book, yay!

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 4 Comments

One of my favourite authors Kim Wilkins has taken herself and her family from Brisbane to England to research and write her new novel. I can’t wait to read it. I know she has been busy, but it’s been a while since her last adult fantasy – Rosa and The Veil of Gold (just The Veil of Gold in the US, I believe). While I’ve enjoyed her young adult books on a level, I couldn’t quite get into her “Kimberley Freeman” romances, so I’m excited that after some years we’ll be getting another thick and well-researched adult fantasy.

Kim was studying at the University of Queensland, ahead of me as I was beginning my masters. She had already published a couple of novels then and won the Aurealis Award in 1997 for The Infernal. My favourite of her novels is The Autumn Castle, which is a complex and dark almost Gothic romance with parallel worlds and devious, devilish plot twists. She’s published something like 20 books now.

Twig and Twine – new ambient album from The Green Kingdom

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

Following the wonderful eponymous album on SEM and delicious follow up “Laminae” on The Land Of, The Green Kingdom’s new album “Twig and Twine” is out now on Own Records.

Listeners familiar with Michael Cottone’s work, as The Green Kingdom, from his earlier albums are in for a treat. Twig and Twine is at once a progression from the earlier works but also a compliment to both. Using more complex arrangements and crisper instrumentation this new album highlights Cottone’s skill as a composer with a fine sense of sound and atmosphere. Part of the blurb on the Own Records site describes tracks that “blur the line between soundscape and structure”, and I second that. This is exactly the kind of engaging music that is precise enough to be both background and foreground. I found that listening to it immediately following his previous two albums, it really shines like a kind of capstone. And as a stand alone album, this is one of my highlights from the year.

The Stinger, by Asher Ellis on Flashes In The Dark

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 1 Comment

(If I’ve figured out how to stop trackbacks, finally, then this shouldn’t appear on the Flashes In The Dark site like this. If it does, I’ll have to come up with another way for posting links to blogs … )

Asher’s wicked flash horror story has just appeared on Flashes in the Dark. This is a very cool story, which reminded me of inadvertantly waiting until the end of the credits in Zombieland, just way creepier.

Asher builds the tension so well … you’ll just have to read it yourself

Grrrrr trackbacks/pingbacks/whatever

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

… so I thought I had set the option to have no trackback and pingbacks when I write a post here, but my last post has put itself up as a comment at Flashes in the Dark. Crappy. I like to put the direct link in on my post, but it looks naf, I gotta say, and I feel like a fool when it happens.

I found another checkbox buried in the options today which might have been doing it, so hopefully it’s fixed.

Fiancées Among Us published in Flashes in the Dark

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

My latest story ‘Fiancées Among Us’ has been published in the fabulous Flashes in the Dark. It was intriguing to write something more supernatural again, lots of my recent stories have been a bit more reality based. Or not. Anyway, this is my entry for their Worst of Love contest.

Yay, I think I’ve figured out how to stop the pingbacks happening – if this appears as a comment under the story, sorry I really didn’t mean it to. Whew, technology (wordpress having been invented after I was born).