Borsellino’s latest is a shortish YA fantasy called Ruby Coral Carnelian. The title is a reference to this world’s wizards, the kind of magic they use and their willingness (and success) in using blood magic.

The story sees Del, assistant to the Ruby Warlock, discovering the wizard intends to sell him on to another wizard and realizing that this isn’t going to end well. As Del plans to run, he discovers that one of the Ruby Warlock’s twin step-children, away at boarding school, is in trouble and that the other plans to rescue him. Del ends up helping, and he, Nicholas and Kelsie end up on the run, escaping from powerful people who mean them harm.

So far, so straightforward, and it gets difficult to provide details without also providing spoilers. As always with Borsellino’s work, there is more going on than a simple plot explanation can reveal. The characters are flawed yet sympathetic, the story taking some unexpected turns as they learn about themselves and each other.

Ruby Coral Carnelian initially reminded me of my old favourite Diana Wynne Jones. Like many of Jones’s books, here’s a tale that partly explores what happens when kids learn that the adults in their life aren’t necessarily dependable, and are possibly even dangerous, and must fend for themselves and grow up at the same time.

Adding texture to this are themes relating to gender identity, concepts of privilege, the assumptions we make, and even notions of disability and wholeness.

In trying to capture the flavour of this book, I told a friend ‘imagine Diana Wynne Jones pencilled the art, but then it was inked by a Vertigo artist’.

So that’s sort of it. The core of a story that feels as traditional and as sound as a book by the late great Jones, but with its own freshness (and darkness) that explores new territory and reaches different conclusions.

There are many reasons why I think Mary Borsellino is one of the great underappreciated genre writers this country has to offer. The way she combines horror and compassion. Her capacity to create detailed, believable worlds full of cruelty and beauty. Her splendid characterisation. Her queer sensibilities and sure sense of creating people with real flaws and imperfections that are somehow both very real and simply perfect.

Frankly, I know the hyperbole is a lot for a writer to live up to, but also frankly, I have never yet been disappointed by one of her books. I struggle more to tame my praise than to find enough adjectives to add.

If you’re not sure you want to tackle Borsellino’s longer works like The Wolf House or The Devil’s Mixtape, give Ruby Coral Carnelian a try to see if what makes me pretty much get a literary boner speaks to you too.

• Get Ruby Coral Carnelian for your Kindle
• Get Ruby Coral Carnelian in paperback

Read my reviews of The Wolf House and the Devil’s Mixtape

• Buy Origins and Overtures (The Wolf House) (Volume 1 of The Wolf House) for Kindle or Origins and Overtures (Volume 1) in paperback.
• Buy The Devil’s Mixtape for Kindle

Read my review of Mary Borsellino’s latest erotica story, A Brighter Spark.

• Buy A Brighter Spark (Xcite Romance) for Kindle

Narrelle M Harris is a Melbourne-based writer. Find out more about her books, smartphone apps, public speaking and other activities at www.narrellemharris.com.

It’s a funny thing about theme parks. They can work really well, or they can fall really flat. I half expected this to be one of those latter occasions, but I hadn’t really counted on an essential part of the redevelopment of Kryal Castle.

It was built by storytellers.

There are lots of archetypes in fantasy fiction, especially those in faux-medieval settings. There are knights and ladies, kings and princesses, dragons and dragon slayers, wizards and witches. There are taverns and the quaffing of ale, tournaments where favours are won, and dungeons where dark deeds are committed.

But what might be a tad predictable or shallow in a complex novel of medieval fantasy is just the ticket for creating a framework for a theme park. Easily recognisable archetypes instantly allow the visitor, of any age or preferred genre, to know where they are and how to respond.

The visitor enters Kryal Castle by walking past an animatronic dragon, Red Ruff, who responds to proximity. Then you walk through a series of tunnels, while carvings, chained dragons and Galadriel-esque holographic princesses tell the sad story of the fall of Kryal Castle. About the stolen dragon eggs, and the children who were stolen in return, and how the kingdom suffered as a result.

By the time you emerge into the centre of the castle, you’re set: immersed in the building of this fantasy world. You don’t have to follow the story, but elements of it are scattered all around as you explore.

The origin story is retold a few times a day in the Jester’s Theatre, where the performers and puppets interact with young audience members to discover the moral of the tale. You can visit the dragon egg garden, or see swords and dragon eggs in the Knight’s Tower. There’s a lot to look at.

Kryal isn’t all about staring at exhibits, though – far from it. It’s storytelling, but it’s street theatre too, so there are plenty of opportunities to be interactive with the story, including a maze, a playground, facepainting, and other activities timed throughout the day.  Watching three little girls all trying to pull a sword from a stone was pretty damned adorable. Watching the teenagers tie their friends to the rack or the shutting them in the stocks was fairly gratifying as well.

In the afternoon, I saw knights on the tourney field teaching archery to little kids, and I sincerely hope that at least one them grows up to be either Hawkeye of the Avengers or Merida from Brave. The playing field also regularly has knights showing off their swordsmanship, and horsemanship too, with jousting knights.

There was a real A Knight’s Tale atmosphere about the knights on the field, with the usual town crier (honestly, it’s his regular job, I asked) doing the film’s role of Chaucer while contemporary-sounding, medieval-inspired choral music filled the stands. The audience learned to shout HUZZAH! with enthusiasm while riders attempted to capture rings and hit targets with sword and lance, and later rode at each other with lances that shattered on impact with armour. The setting might have been a story, but the skills were real, which made it enormously satisfying to watch.

I had a long talk with one of the knights, Riggsy (above, in the yellow), about what it took to train a horse to jousting (first, take one fairly unflappable horse; next, train it to do things that don’t come naturally to a horse, like running straight at another horse; thirdly, work out how to ride without having much dexterity in your battle-armoured hands and body; fourthly, try not to fall off, because that bloody hurts).

Riggsy’s passion for his horse, his obvious abilities with weapons and animal, and the fun he clearly has on the field (along with the demonstration of very real skill by both knights) lent the whole thing the frisson of authenticity that makes Kryal work so well. The people working here seem to be having a damned good time, and are happily participating in the theatrical storytelling of the basic concept of this fantasy castle.

That’s the key to Kryal Castle – it’s not trying to be a theme park about medieval history. It’s a theme park about fantasy and storytelling. Your inner six year old and outer proper grown up can both respond to an atmosphere that echoes stories like A Knight’s Tale, the Narnia books, Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings, not to mention every medieval-esque fantasy you’ve ever read. It speaks to the imagination, pitching the balance of the fictional and the authentic just right.

Speaking of having a frisson of authenticity, nobody wants their torture chamber exhibit to be too authentic, but you don’t want a bunch of department store fashion dummies with chipped paint to be propped up with their bland, buy-this-nice-suit faces on either. Kryal Castle has managed to walk that line between the theatrical and the authentic with a really very creepy two-part dungeon.

On the ground floor, a series of static displays of various torture devices leaves it up to the explanatory text combined with some instruments and the occasional gruesome dummy to build a mental image of how horrible punishment could be. However, a tight spiral staircase (headed by a warning that it’s not for the under 12s) leads down to twisting corridors filled with light, shadow and sound. Proximity technology allows the lighting and soundscapes to be timed for the best effect, and I found (to my embarrassment) that not all the shrieks came from the recordings…

Some kids went through it with ghoulish enthusiasm. I enjoyed it immensely too, but I found the sounds of ravens interrupted while pecking at the dead and the meaty thunk of a beheading profoundly unsettling as well.  So I went in, expecting cheesy and ridiculous faux-menacing tableaux, and emerged feeling rather grateful for the sunshine.

And my husband, who openly laughed at me being a scaredy cat, especially considering I write horror?

When he went through on his own, it gave him the collywobbles as well.

Well played, Kryal Castle, well played.

Disclosure: Narrelle travelled to Ballarat dined out magnificently at Jackson’s and Co, Kryal Castle and The Forge courtesy of Ballarat Regional Tourism.

Kryal Castle is open from 10.00am until 5.00pm every day of the year (except Christmas Day), including public holidays.

• Visit the Kryal Castle website
• Ticket info

Narrelle M Harris is a Melbourne-based writer. Find out more about her books, smartphone apps, public speaking and other activities at www.narrellemharris.com.

So off on adventures I went, meeting Jason at Wendouree train station and joining him, Kirstyn and Kirstyn’s mum Cornelia on the pleasant drive to the little booktown that could.

We had not been in Clunes more than fifteen minutes when Kirstyn displayed her secret superpower for the first time. She finds the best, most wonderful, most excellent books in the store – no matter how overcrowded or disorganised the bookshop. No matter if there are three thousand dull books and the prize is buried at the back of the shop, under fourteen boxes and a sleeping elderly cat that bites all who come near. Kirstyn. Will. Find. The. Perfect. Book. She ended the day with four or five gems, but this was her first – a book of fairytales illustrated with photographed book art.

I am filled with envy. It’s a beautiful book.

But the day had its pleasures, even if Kirstyn pounced on all the gorgeous art books.

There was the lovely entry to the children’s areas, where readings took place on and off during the day.

And old fashioned story telling in the form of a Punch and Judy show.

And the unintentionally hilarious buckets of ‘Women’s Books’. I’ve never really understood the use of that term. Is there a hit squad that comes after men who read any of these books? And why haven’t they been hunting me down for reading… not these books. They do present a lovely vision in pastel colours I suppose.

Some attendees were not there for the books. Actually, a lot of people brought their dogs for the day. They must have all been bookish dogs, because they were very well behaved. So were most of the people, especially considering how very crowded the tents, shops and streets were.

One of my favourite little shops had shelves of books by Ethel Turner and Mary Grant Bruce, both staples of my childhood.

That shop also had a whole section on beekeeping, which naturally made me think of Sherlock Holmes as well.

The festival this year covers even more ground than last year’s, with the basketball court behind the courthouse also filled with tents and literature. It’s fabulous but exhausting. After wandering around Clunes for several hours (and yes, I did find a book about music slang terms which I can use in my new rock-and-roll-saves-the-world-from-monsters project), we withdrew with aching feet and returned to Ballarat.

There I refreshed myself at the new Mitchell Harris Wine Bar. Besides stocking excellent local wines (including their own) and share plates, the rather cool venue has this beautiful art by street artist Vexta painted straight onto the distressed-industrial brickwork.

And from there, Tim and I dined perhaps a little too heartily at The Lane, which specialises in local produce. Above you see a lamb that died so that I might have deliciousness, and creamy, perfect cauliflower cheese that could have been a meal in itself. The Ballarat Wightwick Pinot Noir that accompanied my feasting went down rather well too.

Tomorrow I brave not the madding crowds of Day 2 of the Booktown Festival, but the knights errant (and possibly erroneous) of Ballarat’s newly reopened Kryal Castle. I hope to report soon on both jousting and a torture museum!

• Visit the official Clunes Booktown site

Disclosure: Narrelle travelled to Ballarat and Clunes and dined out courtesy of Ballarat Regional Tourism.

Narrelle M Harris is a Melbourne-based writer. Find out more about her books, smartphone apps, public speaking and other activities at www.narrellemharris.com.

Then I read her short zombie love story, Bread and Circuses, and the whole genre changed for me.

I’ve read a lot of excellent zombie fiction since then, and tried my hand at a zombie story myself, but Bread and Circuses remains one of my favourites.

How good was it, then, that Ticonderoga Press scooped up this fabulous writer of horror (and winner of awards) to produce a collection – Bread and Circuses: stories by Felicity Dowker?

SO GOOD is the answer you are looking for.

This collection is replete, from start to finish, with tales full of rage, creeping horror and, almost surprisingly, the notion of love both as a destructive and a redemptive force. The eponymous Bread and Circuses and Jesse’s Gift most readily exemplify that particular theme, but elements of it arise in Red Delicious, To Wish on a Clockwork Heart and Us, After the House Came Back.

The settings for Dowker’s horror are often urban, revolving very much around the home, around children and relationships. Domestic violence features strongly as a theme, as does love and revenge. The whole is imbued with a sense of female power, as well as the consequences not only of abusing others but of willingly surrendering your autonomy (and therefore safety) to another.

Each story has its own voice too. While some names or notions may recur, there is great variety in the types of story being told. Some are drawn from fairy tales, others from mythology; yet others are very contemporary in their conception. Zombies and vampires are represented, as is the horror circus trope, but there are touches of steampunk, of traditional fantasy (dragons and wizards!) as well as urban myth and the great tradition of revenge tragedies.

Felicity Dowker is one of Australia’s best new voices in horror fiction, her powerful feminist approach giving the genre a good deal of…well, fresh blood. Be creeped out, disturbed, challenged and thoroughly (if sometimes unwillingly) captivated!

• Buy Bread and Circuses from indiebooksonline
• Get Bread and Circuses in paperback from Amazon.com
• Listen to the short story Bread and Circuses as a podcast at Tales to Terrify

Narrelle M Harris is a Melbourne-based writer. Find out more about her books, smartphone apps, public speaking and other activities at www.narrellemharris.com.

Henry, a paragon of virtue in a tarnished world, heard trumpets and looked to the sky as he walked past the Federal Court of Australia on La Trobe Street. To his left was the court building, all imposing glass and concrete with its brightly coloured entryway, and the rather less glamorous concrete fountain. Over the road, to the right, was Flagstaff Gardens, filled with morning joggers, tai chi classes, city dwellers taking their city dogs for a run on the green.

To tell the truth, Henry was a little bit smug that he was the only one to hear the trumpets, to notice the call of the angelic host. He thought it more than a little ironic, too, that the call had come while he was part way between the halls of justice on one side and a former cemetery on the other. The final judgement was coming at just the right time and place.

Henry stopped in the street, stood on the edge of the non-functioning fountain (nobody seemed to have cared enough to turn it back on again after the easing of a decade of water restrictions) and held his hands to the sky. Waiting.

The heavenly host played a few more notes and then paused, allowing stragglers to catch up. But no-one else heard. No-one else stopped to look towards the heavens. Well, one or two people, but they were mainly checking for potential rainclouds. This was Melbourne. You could never entirely trust the forecast.

A few people paused to cast a curious glance at Henry, but he wasn’t hurting anyone and besides, the daft bugger in his jeans and hoodie and dark sneakers looked beatific more than dangerous. Perhaps his case had been found in his favour, they thought. One jogger gave him two thumbs up and a congratulatory grin on the way past.

The heavenly host gave a little sigh, looked at their sole audience member, shrugged and figured that maybe Facebook hadn’t really been the best way to send invitations to this particular party. Still, there was no need to blame Henry the Pure for being the only one with manners enough to notice the call.

With a beat of their wings, the host created one hell of a downdraft, which collected Henry and then drew him up. It was a bit startling at first, and Henry kicked his feet, trying instinctively to stand on solid ground. His shoes fell into the puddle of water lying on the base of the defunct fountain. He waggled his socked feet a little, then decided it was quite pleasant, this flying business. Grinning, he let himself be lifted.

Nobody noticed.

So, Henry got to heaven and found himself the sole occupant of a rather more dull than expected paradise.

The remaining inhabitants of the earth mainly didn’t notice that Judgement Day had been and gone, and went on being the embodiment of good and evil, heaven and hell, god and the devil, in their own personal way, sometimes in the very same person, as they’d done ever since they’d been given the gift of choice.

Only one person ever missed Henry, and that was his sister, who had loved her brother but frankly found him so impossibly perfect that she rarely saw him. His perfection made her feel inadequate, whereas most of the time she felt she wasn’t such a bad old stick, really. She was kind to animals and the elderly and bought the Big Issue and tried to be supportive and to be a good friend. As human beings go, she really was a lovely person. Not perfect by any means, but she made an effort. If heaven had been a little less rigid in its spiritual dress code, she might have heard the call.

But rigid it was, and most people are flawed, and really, the vagaries of heaven and hell had never really had that much impact on daily life on earth, the in-between place where devils and angels were part of the same clay that made everyone else.

In the end, the heavenly host withdrew entirely from earthly affairs, and valiantly tried to hide their disappointment from Henry that Judgement Day had been such a fizzer. Words were definitely going to be had with the marketing people.

And the world? It went on, being good, bad and indifferent, depending on the predelictions of its individual inhabitants, as it always did.

Lost and Found is and irregular series of posts about random items I find abandoned on the streets. Sometimes I’ll make up stories about them.

Narrelle M Harris is a Melbourne-based writer. Find out more about her books, smartphone apps, public speaking and other activities at www.narrellemharris.com.

Candle image from Wikipedia Commons; picture by Richard W.M. Jones

I think of myself as a sort of realistic optimist. I mean, I’m not a complete Pollyanna, thinking that everything will be just fine if you just think positively about it for long enough. Life is complex, pain is real and bad people do exist, after all. But I do think that most people are fairly decent, and that good exists in the world along with the bad.

However, I do think that, collectively and individually, the best ‘good’ happens when we do something to make it happen. We have a lot of entropy to fight against and, to paraphrase the quote, the only thing needed for evil to flourish is for good people to do nothing.

I saw a few things recently that got me thinking about this idea – of ‘good’ being the outcome of active choices.

One is a post that I saw on a social media site. The original post was a note that said: They say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time.

The comments were filled with anxiety and distress about being lost to time, but I don’t think memory and identity need to be the same thing. I think you can have an influence in the world long after your name is forgotten.

Despite my blog joking about how my name might live on in history, I honestly think that my name is unimportant compared to the effect I might have on the people I love and the world in which I live. All of us may go on in the world in ways we never anticipated.

After you’re dead, you may not have a name, but a kind word you had for someone, a selfless deed you performed, a word of encouragement you gave or the grace you had to truly listen to someone… those actions in turn can inspire kindness, good deeds, encouragement and grace in others, and so those good things are handed on and on and on. Maybe someone in your nameless future will be stronger and happier because once, even once, you took the time to care, and that act was paid forward.

The second instance was a friend’s Facebook update stating that she was tired of feeling depressed, angry, disenfranchised and essentially powerless in the face of persistent inequalities and injustices in Australian politics, society, and the world in general. She decided that she would try to focus more on the principle of ‘be the change you want to see in the world’.

The truth is that if we decide it’s all too hard and too horrible and irredeemably awful, and turn our backs, nothing will change.

It’s only when we become engaged that we have a hope of influencing things. Maybe as an individual you can’t change the big picture – but we can act within our spheres of influence, and that can become collective. We can be advocates for the issues that matter to us and encourage others to participate in making a noise – and if we keep it up, making a change as well.

Hell, we can just engage with the people around us to be open, encouraging and supportive. Maybe we can’t change the whole world, but we can make one person’s world better than it was yesterday. We can make the time to listen, to say a kind word, do a good deed, make one choice to be the kind of person we want to see.

After all, love is not just something we feel. It’s not just a state. It’s a verb, it’s something we do as well as feel, or it should be.

And thinking about all of these things, I ended up writing something. Well, a song, to be exact.

For context about the song: in the last year I’ve been playing around with writing lyrics. I’m working on a multimedia project which involves a story about a rock band saving the world from monsters, and as a natural progression, I’ve been writing the material that they’ll sing in the book. However, I last played piano regularly around 30 years ago, so I essentially don’t play an instrument. I’m no great shakes as a singer either, but I come up with melodies so that the lyrics work as lyrics and not as a poem (they are two quite different disciplines).

For the book project, I’ve been working with my niece, Jessica Harris, since she is a proper musician, to turn lyrics into songs. This one, however, is all my own work. The melody is pretty simple

Which is all by way of saying, I wrote a song about choosing to be actively engaged in the world, even though it can be downright painful at times, and I’ve written a melody for it, which may be a bit simplistic because I’m not a proper musician. But for what it’s worth, here it is.

If you’re game, here’s an MP3 of me singing this, a-capella.

Battlecry

They say love is hearts and honey
It’s what we feel
We gaze at each other and we sigh
At the altar of Eros, oh we kneel

But love is not a state we are in
Love is not a wailing violin
Love is an action, it is a force
Love is a battlecry
Shout it until you’re hoarse

This is the world I love
I will fight for it
For wisdom and kindness
I will fight for it
Open my arms to the blood and the pain
And I will do it again and again and again

You cannot fight darkness with darkness, only light
The other side of fear is love and the end of night
For every act that is cruel, there is one that is kind
For everyone lost, there is someone to find
For every dark deed, there is one of grace
For the hope of all this, I will take my place

This is the world I love
I will fight for it
Compassion and courage
I will fight for it
And open my arms to the blood and the pain
Open my heart again and again and again

Love is an action, it is a force
Love is a battlecry
Shout it until you’re hoarse

You cannot fight darkness with darkness, only light
The other side of fear is love and the end of night
For every dark deed, there is one of grace
For the hope of all this, I will take my place
Love is an action, it is a force
Love is a battlecry
Shout it until you’re hoarse

Narrelle M Harris is a Melbourne-based writer. Find out more about her books, smartphone apps, public speaking and other activities at www.narrellemharris.com.

Stalemate, first published in my collection Showtime by Twelfth Planet Press, will appear alongside some of Australia and New Zealand”s very best writers of horror and fantasy.  The  collection contains 34 stories and poems:

• Joanne Anderton, “Tied To The Waste”, Tales Of Talisman
• R.J.Astruc, “The Cook of Pearl House, A Malay Sailor by the Name of Maurice”, Dark Edifice 2
• Lee Battersby, “Comfort Ghost”, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine 56
• Alan Baxter, “Tiny Lives”, Daily Science Fiction
• Jenny Blackford, “A Moveable Feast”, Bloodstones
• Eddy Burger, “The Witch’s Wardrobe”, Dark Edifice 3
• Isobelle Carmody, “The Stone Witch”, Under My Hat
• Jay Caselberg, “Beautiful”, The Washington Pastime
• Stephen Dedman, “The Fall”, Exotic Gothic 4, Postscripts
• Felicity Dowker, “To Wish On A Clockwork Heart”, Bread And Circuses
• Terry Dowling, “Nightside Eye”, Cemetary Dance
• Tom Dullemond, “Population Management”, Danse Macabre
• Thoraiya Dyer, “Sleeping Beauty”, Epilogue
• Will Elliot, “Hungry Man”, The Apex Book Of World SF
• Jason Fischer, “Pigroot Flat”, Midnight Echo 8
• Dirk Flinthart, “The Bull In Winter”, Bloodstones
• Lisa L. Hannett, “Sweet Subtleties”, Clarkesworld
• Lisa L. Hannett & Angela Slatter, “Bella Beaufort Goes To War”, Midnight And Moonshine
• Narrelle M Harris, “Stalemate”, Showtime
• Kathleen Jennings, “Kindling”, Light Touch Paper, Stand Clear
• Gary Kemble, “Saturday Night at the Milkbar”, Midnight Echo 7
• Margo Lanagan, “Crow And Caper, Caper And Crow”, Under My Hat
• Martin Livings, “You Ain’t Heard Nothing Yet”, Living With The Dead
• Penelope Love, “A Small Bad Thing”, Bloodstones
• Andrew J. McKiernan, “Torch Song”, From Stage Door Shadows
• Karen Maric, “Anvil Of The Sun”, Aurealis
• Faith Mudge, “Oracle’s Tower”, To Spin A Darker Stair
• Nicole Murphy, “The Black Star Killer”, Damnation And Dames
• Jason Nahrung, “The Last Boat To Eden”, Surviving The End
• Tansy Rayner Roberts, “What Books Survive”, Epilogue
• Angela Slatter, “Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean”, This Is Horror Webzine
• Anna Tambour, “The Dog Who Wished He’d Never Heard Of Lovecraft”, Lovecraft Zine
• Kyla Ward, “The Loquacious Cadaver”, The Lion And The Aardvark: Aesop’s Modern Fables
• Kaaron Warren, “River Of Memory”, Zombies Vs. Robots

Look at my name right there, surrounded by the likes of Isobelle Carmody, Alan Baxter, Stephen Dedman, Margo Lanagan, Jason Nahrung, Tansy Rayner Roberts and Felicty Dowker. Just look! I’m in a  book with Kaaron Warren, people! And Terry Dowling! And all those fine, fine writers! LOOK! (Can you tell I’m excited, and proud, and pleased as punch? Can you?)

Alongside these stories, The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2012 will contain a 2012 round-up and a list of recommended reading.

The book is due out in July in hardback, paperback and ebook editions, and you can pre-order it at Indiebooks Online.

And so, in conclusion: SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Narrelle M Harris is a Melbourne-based writer. Find out more about her books, smartphone apps, public speaking and other activities at www.narrellemharris.com.

The Chronos Awards, according to the award site, “recognise excellence in Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror by Victorians”. It’s particularly nice to be included in the short list for an award for Victorian creators at a Melbourne convention – and with a book that is set so firmly in my chosen home town.

I’m also very proud to be sharing nomination in that category with great writers like Jason Nahrung, Paul Collins and Felicity Dowker and fabulous editors Liz Grzyb and Talie Helene for their Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror collection. Whatever the results of the award, it’s fabulous to be in such excellent company, in this and the other categories as well.

The Chronos Awards are very handsome too: sort of steampunky. (Here is a photo of Kirstyn McDermott’s 2011 award for Madigan Mine, which is another terrific book.)

Whether or not you’re going to Continuum or intend to vote in the Chronos Awards, have a look at the nominations and sample some of the great work being done by Victorian-based writers, artists, editors and bloggers, including:

• Dark Matter Fanzine
• SF Commentary
• Viewing Clutter, (George Ivanoff’s DVD and Blu-ray reviews blog)
• Bread and Circuses by Felicity Dowker (Ticonderoga Publications)
• Salvage by Jason Nahrung (Twelfth Planet Press)
• Walking Shadows by Narrelle M. Harris (Clan Destine Press)
• Year’s Best Australian Fantasy & Horror 2011 edited by Liz Grzyb and Talie Helene (Ticonderoga Publications)
• Dyson’s Drop (The Maximus Black Files)by Paul Collins (Ford Street Publishing)
• Light Touch Paper Stand Clear edited by Edwina Harvey and Simon Petrie (Peggy Bright Books) containing Five Ways to Start a War by Sue Bursztynski and The D_d by Adam Browne
• Epilogue (FableCroft Publishing) containing Steve Cameron’s Fireflies and The Mornington Ride by Jason Nahrung
• Nematalien by LynC in The Narratorium

If you’re a member of the convention, you can vote in the Chronos Awards before 20 May 2013. If you’re not a member of the convention, you can join up! I’ll be on several panels, including a short version of my Writing Sex and Intimacy workshop (strictly for the over 18s). And if you can’t get to the con but would like to vote, you can get a voting membership for $5.

• Visit the Chronos Awards page for all the details!

Narrelle M Harris is a Melbourne-based writer. Find out more about her books, smartphone apps, public speaking and other activities at www.narrellemharris.com.

The maxim that you should start in the midst of the action is taken to heart in Cyanide and Poppies, with the heroine, former nurse Eleanor Jones, kneeling by the body of a dead man in the offices of The Argus newspaper, where she is now a journalist, while waiting for the police to arrive. It’s perhaps a mite too abrupt as a beginning, but it certainly throws the reader into the midst of the business, both with Edward Bain’s murder and the difficulties of a police investigation while a strike is in place.

It also catches us up with Eleanor very quickly, including her change of profession and the ways in which her experiences in the war still haunt her. Her shell-shocked brother Andrew is still struggling with the return to life and Eleanor herself is still determined to deny and kill off her feelings for her unfortunately married friend Nicholas.

Much of the plot unfolds in a strangely muted fashion, reflecting Eleanor’s (and Andrew’s) own disconnectedness from things. The rest of the world intrudes on them, of course – sometimes in immediate and violent ways – but there is a sense of them both viewing the event around them at arm’s length.

But the mystery gathers momentum, including Andrew’s relationship with the vivacious but scandalous medium, Nadine Carrides, and Eleanor’s concerns and doubts about Carrides as well as her colleagues at The Argus. As it does so, there is a sense that the siblings’ lives are also gaining in momentum and purpose, and light begins to break on both the crime and their own relationships and engagement with their post-war world.

The book is elegantly written, with well-crafted characters and a wonderful capacity to evoke the Melbourne of the era. It’s always a pleasure to recognise parts of my town in a book, and even moreso to get a feel for those places in other times and atmospheres.

Cyanide and Poppies has a slow build to a satisfying finale that cracks open light and air on lives as well as mysteries, and that’s a pretty fine thing.

• Get Cyanide and Poppies in paperback
• Get Cyanide and Poppies for Kindle and Book.ish
• Read Gary and Lissa’s review of Death and the Spanish Lady
• Visit Carolyn Morwood’s website.

Narrelle M Harris is a Melbourne-based writer. Find out more about her books, smartphone apps, public speaking and other activities at www.narrellemharris.com.

From his early shows like Sucker, in which he spun a conman’s yarn with astonishing believability, through to his TV series Unbelievable, Leung has combined personable comedy with the search for underlying truths – often while toying with perceptions of reality. It makes his productions hugely enjoyable with a delightful frisson of uncertainty.

Of course, having previously admitted on these pages how fond I am of Sherlock Holmes, Leung’s latest show – Lawrence Leung’s Part Time Detective Agency – was always going to be on my list of Shows To See at the 2013 Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

Leung’s fast-paced show is full of energy and geeky charm. He opens by demonstrating the expertise at his disposal for running a (part time) detective agency, from his earliest forays into uncovering great conspiracies when he was at primary school through to offering observations and plausible deductions on the reasons for differences in kissing in different countries.

A huge key to the success of this show is his live demonstration of his deductive abilities, when he chooses two members of the audience and uses a series of simple questions and his acute knowledge of body language to determine which of them is lying. The demonstration means that the whole evening is predicated on Leung’s authentic credentials as a detective. Like Sherlock Holmes himself, Lawrence Leung, the part time detective, does not rely on gadgets and scientific mumbo jumbo – he relies on brilliant mental work and the demonstrable accuracy of close observation.

Leung’s skill and knowledge are provably real, and convinced of this, the audience eagerly joins in with his investigation of an old mystery – the true culprit behind a prank perpetrated on him at one memorable birthday party.

There are plenty of Sherlockian references, as well as other nods to geek culture while keeping it inclusive and friendly. You can’t help but like him, and to willingly join him in trying to solve this most mysterious of puzzles.

I won’t go into details – spoilers, sweetie – but I can say that Leung is not merely likeable, not merely adorkable – he is smart and genuinely clever. He is also (and being a comedy festival this is the clincher) very, very funny.

See Lawrence Leung’s Part Time Detective Agency at The Swiss Club, 89 Flinders Lane, Melbourne, during the comedy festival until 21 April 2013. ($24.50 to $29.50) Get your tickets online.

(The video on the booking site showing Leung inviting BBC’s Sherlock Holmes to the festival is a treat in itself!)

Other Holmesian links

• Read about the things I’ve learned from Sherlock Holmes.
• Read a GaryView of the Granada series episode The Sussex Vampire

Narrelle M Harris is a Melbourne-based writer. Find out more about her books, smartphone apps, public speaking and other activities at www.narrellemharris.com.