Here for your delectation and delight, courtesy of Argonautica Press and Free Comic Book Day, is a free 34 page comic, SKELLINGTON #1. A skellington picture by me and Mrs Franks! The book is composed of four stories: “The Key in the Wall” is a dark look at a school for the mystical arts, written by me and illustrated by Nicholas Hunter. This story is in fact the first chapter of Shadomancy, which is the first original-printing novel coming up on the Argonautica slate. This story was originally supposed to be a serialized comic, and many of Nic’s amazing illustrations...
https://curiousfictions.com/stories/1989-jason-franks-into-the-adlight Published in 2012, this is a cyberpunk satire about guerilla documentary-making, advertising, and data security. I posted it on Curious Fictions because I saw this article, which makes it look as though the central conceit of the story might soon be a reality: https://futurism.com/startrocket-giant-ads-night-sky-cubesa… Sigh. Obvious influence here from Blue Ant era William Gibson and also Bill Hicks (don’t @me, I’m a Gen Xer), who once said that advertising is the “ruiner of all things good.” In hindsight, the callout to Robert Heinlein’s “The Man who Sold the Moon” is way too obvious, but I guess that’s what advertising...
So, uh, quite unexpectedly, my novel Faerie Apocalypse has made it onto the preliminary ballot for the Ditmar Awards. The Ditmars are not a juried award, they are voted-on by fandom and Australia’s speculative fiction community, so… I owe this nomination to you, my filthy readers. Thank you very much! To celebrate, my publisher IFWG Australia has discounted the price of the Kindle book on Amazon (excluding North America, sorry!) and Gerry Huntman will have discount coupons for the book for attendees at Continuum convention in June if you would like to get a copy. Unfortunately I won’t be at...
So by now you’ve seen the news about my new publishing venture, Argonautica Press, in cahoots with my mate Jason Fischer. This is basically the two of us teaming up to take control of our respective backlists and, I guess you’d say, side-lists. Or you could put it this way: we’re self-publishing our books under a collective banner. Fisch and I have been discussing this for a good couple of years now. I’m not sure but I think it was JF.1’s idea to self-publish some work, initially, and I barged in and demanded he let me participate as well. So...
