The Writing Show 2005 Archives

Cameron Rogers has been an itinerant theatre student, a stage director, and stand-up comic. He spent three months cutting up vegetables in a stainless steel cubicle beneath a shopping mall in the company of a defecting Soviet weightlifter. He almost got suckered into working at what turned out to be a Yakuza-run all-gay bowling alley in Kyoto. His last real job was with the Crime Management Unit of the Queensland Police Service, where crime really didn't pay but he got to hear a lot of stories.

His first novel, The Music of Razors, has been published in Australia and is currently being shown to publishers in the US, UK and Europe.

Cameron lives in Melbourne, and is finishing his second novel, Fateless. He also writes children's fiction under the pseudonym of Rowley Monkfish. He can be contacted via the Howard Morhaim Literary Agency.

Marty Young is president and founder of the Australian Horror Writers Association (AHWA). Currently finishing his Ph.D in paleo-oceanography, Marty is co-editor of Macabre: The New Era in Australian Horror, which will be published in 2006. He sits on a number of horror award panels, including those of the 2004 and 2005 Aurealis Awards, the inaugural 2005 AHWA flash and short story competition, and the 2006 "Australian Shadows" award. Marty's first short story will be released on Halloween 2005 as part of the "Shadow Box" e-anthology, and his first novel, 809 Jacob, is finished but awaiting some minor edits before he finds a home for it.

Robert Hood, who read "Nobody's Car" for us on Day 1, has been a perpetrator of scary fiction for several decades. Among his books are the short-story collections Day-dreaming on Company Time (FIP, 1988) and Immaterial: Ghost Stories (MirrorDanse Books, 2002), as well as novels such as Backstreets (Hodder Headline, 2000) and the Shades series (Hodder Headline, 2001). He recently co-edited Daikaiju! Giant Monster Tales with Robin Pen (Agog! Press, 2005), which is a remarkable collection of stories from around the world inspired by the Japanese tradition of giant monster films.

Hood has won a number of awards for his fiction; a lesser, but cooler, claim to fame is that one of his horror stories, "Autopsy," was banned in Queensland. This story can be read on the Shadowed Realms Web site, where it is currently being serialized.

"When Kristy Stevenson returns to the small town of Summer's End after a year and a half in hospital, the school's principal is missing; her former-best friend, an outcast, is part of the "cool group;" and the rivalry between Owens Academy and nearby Riley High is nearing fatal proportions.

Can she figure out what's going on--before it's too late?"

>From Luke C Jackson, writer of The Unclaimed, Summer's End is a supernatural suspense novel suitable for readers 12 and up. It's scheduled for release in late 2005.

Kaaron Warren lives in Canberra, Australia. Her short story collection, The Grinding House, from CSFG, was published this year. Her stories have appeared in anthologies in Australia, USA and the UK. Her short story, "A Positive," won an Aurealis Award for best horror story in 1998. This story is being made into a short film by Bearcage Productions.

Richard Spurling writes crime, horror, and thrillers for adults and children, both novels and short stories. His short stories have been published by Wakefield Press and Streetbike magazine. He currently appears on the Internet at From the Asylum and HorrorMasters.com. In the past, he has appeared at AntiSF and in Adrenalin, among others. Richard has written two non-fiction books: Rewrite: the Hidden Craft and Burning Away the Black Mist, a guide to depression from the perspective of a sufferer. Both are available from his Web site, www.richardspurling.com.

Matthew Tait was born in Adelaide, Australia in 1977. After finishing high school in 1993, he made a ridiculous decision to take up writing and be poor. For a while, he lived in a delusional state, thinking that success was going to be handed to him on a silver platter. Then, unfortunately, reality hit, and he realized that years of practice, rejection, and working other jobs was the only way to achieve this goal.

It began in his ninth year at school, fed up with the education system. The time was right to find another passion . . . some sort of escapism to eclipse the expectations of a religious and sports orientated high-school regime. "I was handed a copy of The Long Walk by Stephen King," he says, as if the name holds little merit in today's popular culture. "After that, my life changed . . . and definitely for the better."

Matthew's stories from Ghosts in a Desert World have been published in numerous e-zines. Currently, he is at work on the Reunion trilogy: Meridian, Olearia, and The Hope of Kinfold. He lives with his partner Lani White and a Siamese cat named Oscar, who is like their only son.

Tim Kroenert is a 23-year-old writer from Melbourne, Australia. He works as a writer and subeditor in the editorial department of a major non-governmental organization, contributing features, film reviews, short stories and opinion pieces to two national publications. He's also a contributor to the videogame art/culture mag JumpButton. His real passion is fiction writing, and he especially enjoys revelling in the dark and/or gruesome.

Bill Congreve is a Sydney-based writer, editor, book reviewer and independent publisher. He has edited a number of short story collections, including Intimate Armageddons (Australia's first modern, original horror anthology), Passing Strange, Bonescribes, and Southern Blood. He has acted as a judge for the Aurealis Award on five occasions.

His most recent anthology is The Year's Best Australian SF and Fantasy, One, co-edited with Michelle Marquardt. This is the first of an annual series showcasing Australian speculative writing. The US edition is The Year's Best Australian SF and Fantasy, 2005. Details can be found at www.primebooks.net/books/book_detail.asp?isbn=0-8095-5059-8.

Bill's short stories have been published in a range of magazines and anthologies including Faerie Reel, Tenebres, Event Horizon, Terror Australis, Aurealis, Bloodsongs, and Cross-Town Traffic. His vampire stories have been collected in Epiphanies of Blood. His publishing company is MirrorDanse Books.

Stephen Dedman is the author of the novels The Art of Arrow Cutting, Shadows Bite, and Foreign Bodies, and more than ninety short stories in an eclectic range of genres. His most recent book is Never Seen by Waking Eyes, a collection of 24 of his best horror stories.