A link of interest

For emerging Aussie speculative ficton authors, the Orbit/QWC manuscript development program. http://www.qwc.asn.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=93&Itemid=92

Good luck to any who enter. *g* I, however, have to get back to Gillian's kitchen where I am making fresh marshmallow frogs legs. She deserves a sweet treat for accepting the situation and getting down to work.

This just isn't comforting

Today's reading has taken me into alternate realities, and deep space. It seemed entirely appropriate after that to read a news item about rogue black holes. The theory is that there could be hundreds of intermediate 'rogue' black holes spawned in the Milky Way.

But we shouldn't worry about the Earth being swallowed by a rogue, mid-size black hole that weighs several times the mass of our sun. No, we should take comfort in the knowledge that, theoretically, they are "unlikely to do any damage to us in the lifetime of the universe." And of even more comfort: "Their danger zone, the Schwarzschild radius, (or gravitational radius) is really tiny, only a few hundred kilometers. There are far more dangerous things in our neighbourhood."

Somehow, this just doesn't really comfort me.

Living In Bad Dreams

My name is markdeniz and as the other half of Eneit Press, I thought it was time I popped in and announced myself to gillpolack's faithful (whilst realising lots of you are my flist anyway and so are probably already sick to death of me).

Anyway, 2007 began extremely well for Eneit Press, with the launch of the company itself in June, before our first book In Bad Dreams - Volume One: Where Real Life Awaits had a rather successful launch in Canberra, Australia, in October.

Yet celebrations were short and forced me to asses the whole company's position when my brother-in-law Fuat, was murdered at his place of work, a university, in Sweden in December. I had planned much for Eneit Press for 2008 and this event just meant everything came crashing down around my ears.

It made me think about the speculative genre, about why we write, why I write, what is our obsession with horror and why did I have to live the things I write about, rather than just have them on the page in front of me?

Much thinking has lead to re-evaluations within the company, as I was due to edit or co-edit three anthologies this year, two for release later in the year and one, a charity anthology, focusing on cancer, due for launch early 2009. The charity anthology has been shelved, due to it being a solo project but I have promised to resume duties on that later this year for a release in early 2010 instead.

Our other two anthologies: In Bad Dreams - Volume Two: Where Death Stalks, co-edited with eneit and Voices, co-edited with amandapillar are proceeding as planned with the two aforementioned editors jumping in to cover where things may get a little much for me.

I was at a 25th Birthday party in 2006 where one of the guests was very concerned that I was to form a publishing company based on the 'darker' side of speculative fiction and was asked why, why did I want to promote a genre that delights in scaring, horrifying and repulsing its readers (here I'm very much focusing on the horror genre - if that is indeed a genre per se)?

This is something that has come to the fore again recently but a topic I am very interested in seeing what Gillian's faithful think about this. Why do you read/write/publish stories about murder and torture, rape and all manner of instances where we human beings are nasty to each other (along with other races - when dealing in fantasy and science fiction)?

I have several ideas of my own but thought I would open the floor with this one before posting about my own experiences later in the week.