There have been some exciting developments on the Aussie horror front today.

First of all, the Australian Shadows Awards are open for business (nicely coinciding with the opening of the Aurealis Awards and nominating period for the Ditmar Awards).

The judging line-up is awesome: Stephanie Gunn and Craig Bezant return for their second year and they are joined by ScaryMinds’ Jeff Ritchie. The guest judges are Chuck McKenzie, Kaaron Warren, and Rocky Wood.

Most significantly, for the first time, the AHWA is offering a prize pool of $750 for the winners ($250 each for the winners of the three categories). It’s an exciting time for Aussie horror!

The other cool piece of news is that zombiephile Chuck McKenzie has created a spin-off review site from HorrorScope dedicated to zombie reviews. NecroScope will feature all zombies, all the time, and should be a fun place to drop into if you like all things undead. Bookmark it now: http://zombiefictionreview.blogspot.com/