With the Vic’s new Chronos Awards, there’s been some discussion about the role of the various Aussie SF awards. For anyone doubting the Australian Shadows Awards’ validity, please bear in mind that the Australian Horror Writers Association has more members on its books than the number of people who attend the SF Natcon each year. Add to this the Aussie horror writers not on the AHWA’s books (there are some) and the whole bunch of SF writers who dabble by publishing the occasional horror short story… well, you see where I’m going? It’s an award with a strong base, few categories, and with a view to the future.

The AHWA’s Australian Shadows Award is open for 2009 with two big changes:
1. There are now 3 categories instead of 1 – Short Fiction, Long Fiction, and Edited Publication.
2. I’m the new Awards Director!

Aussie (and NZ) horror writers, editors, and publishers, you can get the skinny here.

As raised by Martin Livings, I wanted to clarify that the stories and publications written/edited and published in 2008 by the Australian Shadows judges (me, Chuck McKenzie*, and Brett McBean*) and awards director Kirstyn McDermott* were ruled ineligble for awards consideration.

This included Kirstyn’s Aurealis Award-winning story “Painlessness”, Midnight Echo #1 (co-edited by Kirstyn), Black: Australian Dark Culture Magazine (due to my involvement), Black Box (edited by me), and any stories from the judges (like my Voices story, “A Picture of Death”).

Individual stories that appeared in Midnight Echo, Black Magazine, and Black Box were eligible (as evidenced by Paul Haines’ nomination for “Her Collection of Intimacy” from Black #2) but the publications themselves (because Australian Shadows compares novels with anthologies, collections, magazines, and short stories) were ineligible. It’s one of the sacrifices we make as judges/award directors.

Does that make sense?

This will all be in my judges report (online March 13).

* Lots of Macs here, eh?

By now, word should be cropping up in all sorts of places around the internet, and perhaps even a few media outlets, that the finalists for this year’s Australian Shadows Award have been announced.

The AHWA website and HorrorScope have the shortlist of finalists. Congratulations, one and all!

This is the second and final year of my stint as an Australian Shadows judge and what a pleasure it has been. The Australian Horror Writers Association is one of the most professional – and certainly the most enthusiastic – peak bodies for writers in Australia. My fellow judges Chuck and Brett have ensured the selection process was quick and painless. Thanks guys. The choosing of the winner now lies with guest judge Sarah Endacott. The judges reports will appear when the winner is announced next month (Friday March 13).

Now that I’m the AHWA’s Vice President, one of the duties of the job will likely see me taking on the reins of the Australian Shadows Award Director role – a position deftly handled for the last couple of years by the indomitable Kirstyn McDermott. Should be a bundle of fun!

HorrorScope has been going great guns in 2008! We may not be the darlings of the awards set (the tremendously overworked Rob Hood the deserving exception in that regard), but it’s tremendously satisfying to be doing the hard yards and putting the runs on the board (to mix my sporting metaphors).

The big milestone is HorrorScope reaching its first 100,000 readers. I never thought we’d reach so many people in such a relatively short time! As I said on HorrorScope, thanks for the loyal readers – and especially thanks to the hard-working editors who form the backbone of HorrorScope. HorrorScope is not a one-man show, it is a co-op based on consensus and a spirit of camraderie. I feel the team have a shared desire to promote Australian dark fiction that is infectious, and I’m proud to be a part of it.

For writers and fans of horror from the 90s, I’ve conducted an informative and entertaining interview on HorrorScope featuring Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond. This dynamic duo is the first team at the helm of the Australian Horror Writers Association‘s Midnight Echo e-zine and are a wealth of info on horror over the last two decades. You can read the interview here.

The new additions to the HorrorScope team are really adding to the output, too! In March, we set a new record of 73 posts. It all bodes very well for Aussie horror, in my book.

Keep an eye on HorrorScope over the next week or so for some more intriguing bits and bobs.

PS. Congratulations to Terry Dowling for winning this year’s Australian Shadows Award! Congratulations also to the nominees and honourable mentions – I very much enjoyed reading your work as one of the judges. I’ll be continuing on as an Australian Shadows judge again this year, and it should be fun!

I have finally completed my duties as an Australian Shadows Award judge. Today, the Australian Horror Writers Association released the list of finalists and honourable mentions. Congratulations to the well-deserved nominees! Our judges reports are also online and worth the read for anyone interested in the horror field from 2007.

I enjoyed judging for the Australian Shadows Award with Gary and Mark (and Kirstyn hovering in the background). So much, in fact, that I’ve agreed to a second year in my judging tour of duty. I’m not sure who the other judges will be (Mark has completed the second year of his ‘tour’).

Today also heralded the discovery of not one but two reviews for Angela’s Australian Dark Fantasy & Horror 2007 edition (featuring my story “The Garden Shed Pact”).

Chuck McKenzie’s review at HorrorScope is here.

Martel Sardina’s review at Dark Scribe magazine is here.

Although Martel doesn’t mention my story, Chuck says of “The Garden Shed Pact”:
‘The Garden Shed Pact’ by Shane Jiraiya Cummings deals with spiders. Or, to be exact, one very big spider. What could well have become a standard big-bug shocker in the hands of a lesser writer here is elevated by the author’s focus on the human element – loss, guilt and redemption – plus the niggling suspicion, raised through the way in which the author presents his protagonist, that there may be more than a whiff of mental illness involved here.

Thanks Chuck! Both reviewers have nothing but praise for the antho, which I feel (as someone who co-edited the first but not the second) is a superior product to the first volume.

While on the subject of brilliant reviews, my story “The Cutting Room” in Apex Publications’ Gratia Placenti anthology, has scored tremendously well with the reviewers.

Michele Lee at Dark Scribe said:
“The Cutting Room” by Shane Jiraiya Cummings easily surpasses its sex and gore façade. In this tale of a bizarre incident in an autopsy room and a corpse who isn’t quite done with the living, Cummings shows not only an innate knowledge of what happens after death but also an ability to twist a story around a reader like a deadly trap. Playful and sexually-charged in all the wrong ways, this tale of dead love puts the stories of necrophiliac morticians to shame.

Norm Rubenstein at Horror World mentions in passing:
Shane Jiraiya Cummings’ The Cutting Room is a very different, graphic, and entertaining take upon an autopsy, not necessarily the easiest of combinations to pull off.

At Fear Zone, Steve Vernon didn’t quite take to the story, while Gabrielle S Faust loved the anthology but didn’t go into specifics.

Still, I’m hard pressed to be disappointed by any of the above.