My First Thunderclap

The anthology Disquiet is now available in ebook from Amazon. To celebrate the occasion, the publisher is running a promotion on Amazon from 3 to 9 January, 2015 – for that week only, you’ll be able to savour the delights of Antipodean dark fiction and poetry  in electronic form for US 99 cents. And to help spread the word about the promotion, I’ve decided to give this newfangled Thunderclap thing a go.

If you’re already familiar with Thunderclap – perhaps you’ve supported a few campaigns, or several, or run your own campaigns – then great! Here’s the link to my campaign. If you choose to support it, that’s even more greatness.

https://www.thunderclap.it/projects/20158-disquiet-unsettling-fiction

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, then read on.

Thunderclap tells us that they are “the first crowd-speaking platform that helps people be heard by saying something together.” If you have a message that you want to convey to a wider audience than your current social media avenues allow, then you can set up a Thunderclap campaign. If you can attract a minimum of 100 supporters to back your campaign, then at the appointed time your chosen message will be broadcast automatically by Thunderclap through their Facebook, Twitter and/or Tumblr feeds. Setting up a Thunderclap campaign takes minutes, and the no-frills version is free. For supporters, it’s even easier – a couple of clicks of the mouse, and you’re done and dusted.

Thunderclap’s case studies make for interesting browsing; users as diverse as L’Oreal, The White House and Univision have run successful campaigns reaching millions of people, with the most successful campaign to date going out to over 381 million people.

My ambitions are far more modest; 100 supporters, and a few more readers of Disquiet than I can entice from my immediate circle. Already the few people I’ve mentioned this to who have chosen to support the campaign have brought with them over 22,000 potential pairs of eyes on the message.

Imagine what we could achieve with your help.

 

OK, so technically this is lightning, not thunder, but you get the idea…

New Release: Disquiet

I’m beyond excited to announce that Disquiet is out now from Creativia Publishing. Disquiet is an anthology of poetry and fiction from Australian and New Zealand authors. As the title suggests, a common thread weaves its way through these stories and poems – a dark, discomforting, unsettling thread.

Disquiet contains two of my short stories, “Riding the Storm” and “The Truth About Dolphins”. The first, set in rural Australia, is a story about secrets and lust and elemental forces given human form. The setting for the second is based on my old hometown in New Zealand; it may appear at first to be a revenge tale, but there’s a lot more going on beneath the surface (literally and figuratively) if you are brave enough to look.

This anthology also has me listed on the front cover as co-editor alongside fellow Kiwi writer John Irvine, although I don’t think the title of “editor” entirely encapsulates the way this book came into being; it started off as a joint project of just John’s and my work, a collection of stories and poems set in the Antipodes, then we included a third author, then he suggested a fourth, then somehow it metamorphosed into an anthology involving 17 authors. So what would that make John and I – compilers? Overseers? Conspirators?

The paperback of Disquiet is available from online book retailers (or feel free to jot down the ISBN and go pester your local bookstore to order a copy), with the ebook due out from Amazon any day now.