OMG Kindle Pre orders are live! PLEASE buy the book, share the links, enjoy the book, and review the book 😀

Other e-book formats:
Rakuten Kobo
Nook, Barnes and Noble
iBook

Paperback Pre-release sales will start soon!

I’m thrilled to reveal the cover designed for my first novel! The book is called Somewhere Else. A fantastic Wellington based artist, Ivan Vega, designed the cover for me. Thanks Ivan!!

Pre launch sales for e-books are already available via Barnes and Noble and Apple Books and Kobo. Further releases for pre sales will be available between now and the Worldcon launch on 29th July.

Oh My!

I’m feeling that feeling you get when you haven’t updated your website in way toooo loooong! I’ve got lots of new publications to add and I hope to get on that over the next month!

In the meantime when you are visiting please be patient if you hit the odd dead link or scrambled anythings. Given the schedule that has created this monster of neglect this will take time. Lots of time!

The Vogel awards are approaching so it is time to get nominating!

You can do it thusly:

Nominations for the 2016 Sir Julius Vogel awards are now being accepted. The nomination period will close at 8.00pm on 28th February 2016. The awards recognise excellence in science fiction, fantasy, or horror works created by New Zealanders and New Zealand residents, and first published or released in the 2015 calendar year. Anyone can make a nomination and it is free!

To make a nomination please email sjv_awards@sffanz.org.nz.

My short story “Mr Schmidt’s Dead Pet Emporium” is eligible and has already been nominated. Additional nominations are appreciated as they help the the story enter the ballot.

Nominations should look something like this:
1) Mr Schmidt’s Dead Pet Emporium
2) Sally McLennan
3) Short Story
4) Year of Publication
5) Professional Awards
6) Horror
7) [your contact details here]

That is –

Name / Title of work
Name of Producer / Author / Creator
What the work is i.e. Novel, TV, Movie, Short Story, Web, Collection, Comic, Art
Year of First Release
What category you think the nomination belongs to i.e. Fan awards, Professional awards
GENRE – science fiction, fantasy or horror
Contact details of the person making the nomination e.g. email or/and phone number

If anyone has a full list of eligible works I’d appreciate being able to share that. Get out there and get reading NZ work and nominating your favourite authors 🙂

I’m pleased to announce my story “Mr Schmidt’s Dead Pet Emporium” is now available in the Fat Zombie anthology edited by Paul Mannering and published by Permuted Press. This is my first fiction publication in America! It is available from Amazon as an e-book and a paperback. You can also get it via Barnes and Noble and Smashwords. Thanks Paul for doing such a beautiful job on this anthology of unlikely survivors of the zombie apocalypse.

Tales to Terrify is currently featuring stories from “Baby Teeth,” an award winning anthology, including my story The Birthday Present.

Head on over and have a listen 🙂

David Gemmel Morningstar award winner Helen Lowe recently featured me on her blog. Thanks Helen!!

This reddit thread on creepy things children say started a discussion with a group of writing friends. We decided to use the thread as inspiration for writing horror and submit our stories to each other. In short order the Facebook page we created filled with links to tales of creepy ankle biters and their friends.

Dan Rabarts, local writer extraordinaire, suggested that the stories coming out were so devilishly chilling we should collect them and see if we could raise money for Duffy’s Books in Homes. So we did. Our Pledgeme campaign to fund paper copies of the book met it’s target in a week!

Baby Teeth is set to become a reality! More than that people have been running with our shorts for podcasts, newspaper articles, and radio interviews.

I have two stories in Baby Teeth: my first ever attempts at writing horror.

“The Birthday Present”

I have long had a story kicking around in my head about fetus in fetu: encapsulated babies that live on inside their twins. It will be quite different to the ”Birthday Present” but, regardless of that, I finally had to let my imaginary encysted friend out to play. The idea first came from an X-files episode called ”Humbug”” about an encapsulated twin that escapes and kills people in his attempt to find a new host. I thought at the time it was purest, wonderfully creepy, fiction. Later an article about an Egyptian child found with a fetus in fetu headlined channel one news. I was hooked on the whole idea: imagine having someone that close to you. Could they be conscious? Doctors say no; but they are found with grey matter, spinal cords, hair, fingers, and teeth.  So why not?

“Practise makes Perfect”

Ahah – this story is straight from another creepy fascination. Young serial killers and how to detect the tendency in people before they kill. What would the inside of a young serial killer’s head look like? I am more fascinated, perhaps oddly, by fictional serial killers than real ones. The challenges of Hannibal and Dexter to function with their emotional deficits move me where the real life exploits of Dahmer, the Wests, et al, leave me utterly… cold.

I now have a Facebook page! Feel free to come over and join the gang 😀

I will be reading at the Wellington Public Library as part of the Readers and Writers Festival for 2013. Please come along and support myself and the other great authors who will be there!