All of which makes it oddly exciting to hear Dexys (now sans not just the possessive apostrophe but the Midnight Runners as well) are back with an album The Guardian is saying is nothing short of brilliant. There’s a long interview with lead singer and songwriter Kevin Rowland and – even more excitingly – a new single, ‘Nowhere is Home’, which is full of the questing passion and anger that makes the best of their back catalogue so electric. You can hear the single below, but I’ve also pulled out two other tracks that are well worth hearing, ’Let’s Make This Precious’, from Too-Rye-Aye and ’That’s What She’s Like’ from Don’t Stand Me Down. So enjoy (and be sure to check out the drummer’s decision to get back to sartorial basics in ‘That’s What She’s Like’).

If you’d like to read my acceptance speech, it’s available on the Pascall website, as is the Judge’s Report, but since I suspect most of you won’t make it over there I’d like to say again how grateful I am to the judges, Geordie Williamson and Alison Croggon (both of whose work I admire immensely) and to the Pascall Foundation itself, for its commitment to the idea of criticism as something important and worthy of celebration. You can also read an extended interview with me over at Stephen Romei’s blog, A Pair of Ragged Claws.

I should also thank all of you, since at least part of the reason I was chosen was the work that appears on this site, work that has been shaped considerably by the generosity and intelligence of the many, many people who have taken the time to comment and engage with each other here. I’m aware things are a bit slow around here at the moment but hopefully that will change once I’ve got a couple of the things I’m working on locked away.

I’ve been meaning to write something about the Review for a while, because it’s a fantastic project on a whole range of levels. The brainchild of Hobart-based writer and editor Matthew Lamb and his Brisbane-based associate, Phil Crowley, it publishes two stories a fortnight, the first by an established writer, the second by an emerging writer nominated by the established writer, with stories published in digital-only form on the Booki.sh platform.

Thus far the Review has published an amazing collection of stories by a fantastic selection of writers, with previous issues featuring work by Georgia Blain, Christos Tsiolkas, Kalinda Ashton, P.M Newton, Kim Wilkins and Susan Johnson, to name just a few.

The story I’ve got in the new issue is a slightly Science-Fictional thing called ‘Visitors’, about a woman involved with one of a community of botanical aliens. It’s short and intense and a bit off-kilter and I rather like it. It also pairs nicely with Rebecca’s story, ‘The Nocturnals’, which is about a couple grieving for the loss of their son and stargazing.

I’m delighted to be part of the growing family of writers who have contributed to the Review. It’s a great project and a real reminder of just what how much creative use of digital publishing models can achieve. I’m also delighted to have played some part in helping to bring Rebecca’s work to a wider audience: I’ve mentioned her before, and some of you may have seen her work in Meanjin or Overland or Best Australian Stories 2011, but I think she’s quite something, and I suspect once you’ve read ‘The Nocturnals’ you will as well.

If you’d like to grab the latest issue of the Review it’s available for $2.99 on Booki.sh (a cross-platform, multi-device, DRM-free and cloud-based e-reader system supported by a number of Australian independent bookshops (it’s good, and very worth taking a look at)). You can also buy back issues for $2.99 or subscribe to Volume 2 for $12.99 (the first 30 new subscribers also receive a free Text Classic).

And while you’re here, you should very free to check out my novelette, ‘Beauty’s Sister’, which was published last week as part of Penguin’s new Shorts program, and is available for Kindle, iBooks, Google Play and Kobo. And if you missed it, you can read my zombies in suburbia story, ‘The Inconvenient Dead’, for free at Overland.

Designed to offer quality fiction and non-fiction able to be read in a single sitting in digital-only formats, Penguin Shorts are also an attempt to create a space in which new and established writers can experiment with work that’s too short for a book and too long for a magazine. The number of works available will grow over time, but for now there are four titles available: two exclusive short works from Women of Letters curators Marieke Hardy and Michaela McGuire, Nam Le’s story, ‘Love and Honour and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice’ and ’Beauty’s Sister’. Full details of all the titles are available on the Penguin Shorts website.

‘Beauty’s Sister’ is a bit of a departure for me. A reworking of Rapunzel, it’s the first of a collection of tales I’ve been working on (and which I’ll hopefully find a way to publish in the next year or so). It’s also a bit more substantial than the other pieces I’ve published recently – in SF/Fantasy terms it’s a novelette – but I think it whips by all the same.

You can read the blurb below, but if you’d like to grab a copy it’s available for Kindle, iBooks, Google Play and Kobo.

“Juniper, living deep in the forest with her parents, is stunned to discover that the beautiful girl living isolated in a nearby tower is her sister. When the two girls meet, what begins as a fascination and a friendship ultimately develops into something truly sinister.

“A story of jealousy, passion and power, Beauty’s Sister is a dark and gripping reimagining of one of our oldest tales, Rapunzel, from acclaimed novelist James Bradley.”

And if that’s not enough Gibson for you, you might want to check out my reviews of Zero History, Spook Country and Pattern Recognition, as well as a couple of follow-up thoughts about Zero History, and a now rather antique review of All Tomorrow’s Parties.

And while you’re there you might want to check out Mardi’s blog, which is a bit occasional (though no more so than this one has been lately) but very worth a look.

If you’re interested you can also read my review of Harkaway’s first book, The Gone-Away World, but in the meantime I thought I might post the first couple of paragraphs, which touch on some ideas about the way changing cultures of reading are transforming literary culture I’ll be exploring further in the not too distant future:

“I sometimes wonder whether the real transformative force in contemporary writing isn’t digitization but fandom, and more particularly the technologies that underpin it. For while digitization is transforming the publishing landscape, the internet is breeding not just a new breed of highly engaged readers deeply invested in their particular area of interest, but also a new hierarchy of taste, founded not in traditional literary verities but in ideas of delight and generic awareness.

“Fandom’s rising power is visible in phenomena as seemingly unconnected as the hegemony of the superhero movie and the influence writers such as Neil Gaiman wield on Twitter. Yet it’s also visible in the rise of a new kind of fiction, one whose playfulness and generic promiscuity might once have seen it labelled post-modern, yet which more effectively elides the boundaries between high and low culture and art and entertainment than the writers of the 1980s could ever have dreamed of doing.” Read more …