Saturday, November 27, 2010

Brain Drain

Work's gone insane in the last couple of months, with massive workloads, stupidly compressed deadlines and the need to turn in 13, 14 or 15 hour days to get the job done. It's settled a little in the last week, but I've come to the conclusion that my brain is now broken.

Today's the first day I've been able to do anything approaching decent writing. Last month I was forced to abandon one story because I just couldn't get my head around it, and it looked for a long time like the same would happen to the story I have due at the start of December. Thankfully today's output - while hardly high art - showed I'm starting to get some of my feeling back. We'll see how it pans out.

So what else has been going on? Well, there have been a couple of good reviews on the old Interweb for publications I've been involved with. Horrorscope recently reviewed ASIM issue 46, and had some nice things to say about my flash story Brave Face:

"In just a few short words, Pete Kempshall’s Brave Face about a prisoner awaiting execution by a terrorist faction will have you cowering under the sheets"

The review also praises Crit Group alumni Amanda Spedding, Chris Green and Marty Young, as well as writerly mate of mine Felicity Dowker, so it's a big win for everyone there. Felicity, Chris and I are also mentioned in a review of the same release at Albedo1 here.

On the editing side, Scenes from the Second Storey has also had another sparkling review, this time at Scary Minds, whose reviewer gives it 8/10, and calls it "a collection that goes to the soul of Australian dark genre dreaming". Pressed to name a top three, the reviewer chooses the stories by Kirstyn McDermott, Martin Livings and Cat Sparks as his faves, but calls the book as a whole "a superb collection that surprises with its outstanding content".

Both Brave Face and Scenes are still available for anyone looking for, say, stocking fillers - check out the links over on the right there.