Many thanks to Tracey and Lyle from Collins Booksellers Ballarat on Lydiard for hosting and organising the event and to Renee for asking such insightful questions. I have been along to quite a few of these In Conversation nights that Collins runs and it was a true delight to sit on the other side of the table, so to speak. If you’re in the area or planning travel, check out their calendar for 2026. I’m definitely booking some tickets!

The icing on the cake was my publisher, HQ Books/HarperCollins arranged for a surprise massive banner – look at that, it’s taller than me! I have a new novel out, people. It’s in the world. It’s being read. It’s real!

Photographs by Collins Booksellers Ballarat on Lydiard and Jason Nahrung.

I am so excited to be able to share the news that What the Bones Know is the Book of the Month in Fiction for QBD Books! This is such an honour and I am so appreciative of the support QBD is showing to my novel and Australian authors in general. Honestly, I can’t tell you how much this means to me.

Over the past few days, I travelled to all the QBD stores in the state of Victoria, from the Melbourne CBD to Gippsland, to sign a bunch of copies in advance of the announcement. Without exception all the staff I met and chatted with were enthusiastic and wonderful people who really, really love books and really, really know their stuff. Booksellers are truly worth their weight in gold.

If you have a QBD near you, you’ll be able to duck in and grab a copy – just look for the little ‘Signed by the author’ sticker on the cover. The locations I visited, leaving a trail of signatures in my wake, were:

• Bayside
• Doncaster
• Eastland
• Emporium (Melbourne CBD)
• Epping
• Forest Hill
• Fountain Gate
• Geelong
• Greensborough
• Highpoint
• Knox City
• Northland
• Plenty Valley
• Southland
• Traralgon
• Watergardens
• Wendouree
• Werribee
• Woodgrove

Full address details for all the stores are on the QBD website.

You can also order What the Bones Know direct from QBD online, although those copies are unlikely to be signed.

NO! I messaged back.
YES! she replied.

My truly gross tale, “It Will Only Hurt If I Want It To” won the Aurealis Award for Best Horror Short Story and I could not be more grateful if somewhat bemused. When I wrote it, I wasn’t certain it could rightfully even be called horror and was well-pleased when Marty Young accepted it for Midnight Echo #20. When it was shortlisted for the Aurealis, I genuinely thought it had no chance of winning but I asked Kathleen if she would accept on my behalf in the unlikely event and dutifully sent along some words. And that’s the lesson, writer-folks. Even if you are absolutely sure something of yours cannot possibly win an award, write an acceptance anyway. Here’s what Kathleen read for me:

I had zero expectation that this quite unpleasant little story of mine would actually win an Aurealis Award, but here we are. Maybe someone should check in with the judges and make sure they’re okay?

Regardless, my sincere thanks to them and to Tehani and all the folks who make sure the Aurealis Awards happen year after year. My thanks also to Marty Young for accepting my story for Midnight Echo and to the AHWA for keeping that magazine going for 20 issues and hopefully many more.

These are tough times for the arts. But community and human creativity has never been more vital. We must keep supporting creatives and small presses – and large presses – and awards and festivals of all stripes. And each other. Always. Thank you.

I mean every single word. And, you know, the story really is horrifically gross. Sorry not sorry.

Clunes Booktown is a wonderful local festival celebrating books, reading and authors. It’s heart is one of the biggest book sales you could wish to attend, with a mix of second-hand, antiquarian and new booksellers along with small press and indie authors setting up shop for the weekend in the small village of Clunes – and I mean IN the village. They’re everywhere, on the main street, in shopfronts, in halls and just about everywhere you can squeeze some tables. You will need the map, trust me!

There are also panels, workshops and author ‘in conversations’ as well as street entertainment, music and a generous selection of food vendors. I’ve been several times as both participant and general punter, and this year and I am beyond excited to join three smart and funny authors on a panel discussing the Australian Gothic – Sean Williams, Lisa Hannett and Jason Nahrung. The four of us have been good friends for many years and, honestly, those sorts of dynamics make the BEST panels.

If you’re going to Booktown, come along and join us for a rollicking good chat!

Where: Clunes Booktown, Clunes, Victoria
Venue: Esmond Gallery @ The Warehouse
When: 1.30pm, Saturday 21 March 2026

Tickets are available now and please check out the full program to see what else is on. It’s going to be a bustling weekend!

Family is often valorised as a source of strength when times get tough, but it can also be a place of danger and discord when ill-kept secrets spill into the light. Four writers working in the darker corners of speculative fiction discuss how family bonds can be tested in intimately unsettling ways.

In very exciting news, my novel What the Bones Know will be launched next month in Ballarat by Collins Booksellers on Lydiard as part of their In Conversation series.

When: 6.00pm, Thursday 5th March
Where: Old Colonists Club, 16 Lydiard St North, Ballarat (upstairs from Collins Booksellers on Lydiard)

Tickets are available now through EventBrite.

What the Bones Know is the first novel I’ve written since moving to Ballarat more than a decade ago and I’m delighted to be able launch it in the place I now call home. If you’re in town, I’d love to see you there!

Later this month I will be taking part in a Sisters in Crime discussion panel in Melbourne which should be a blast. If you’re in town, come join Tanya Scott, Fiona Lowe and myself as we chat with Lyn Yeowart about the darker side of family ties.

Location: The Rising Sun Hotel, 2 Raglan Street, South Melbourne.
Date: Friday, 20 February 2026
Time: From 6.30pm for dinner with the panel discussion starting at 8.00pm. Ticket includes a main course meal and the panel.

Tickets available from EventBrite.

Families may be related by blood – but they can also involve blood-letting, sometimes with fatal consequences. It’s no coincidence that Christmas Day and Boxing Day see huge spikes in family violence. Three Victorian authors – Tanya Scott, Fiona Lowe, and Kirstyn McDermott – dissect the institution of the family and its criminal complexity in different ways. They will reveal all to fellow author Lyn Yeowart.

Delightfully, my story “It Will Only Hurt If I Want It To”, which was published in Midnight Echo last October, has been shortlisted as a finalist for the 2025 Aurealis Award for Best Horror Short Story.

BEST HORROR SHORT STORY
“Catch and Consume”, Ella T Holmes (Aurealis #185)
“The Bottom Feeders”, Fionn MacPherson (Lost Souls Issue 2)
“It Will Only Hurt If I Want It To”, Kirstyn McDermott (Midnight Echo #20, AHWA)
“The Shelter”, Carol Ryles (Midnight Echo #20, AHWA)
“Bitter Skin”, Kaaron Warren (Night and Day, Saga)

The Aurealis is Australia’s premier speculative fiction award and has always been very dear to my heart. It’s an honour to make the list of finalists, especially considering this year the awards received record numbers of entries in the Horror categories. It’s fabulous to see the genre growing so strong again.

I’m grateful to editor Marty Young for accepting this unpleasant little piece and thrilled to see that Midnight Echo itself is a finalist in the Best Anthology category. The ceremony will be at GenreCon in Brisbane later this month. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to attend but I will have all fingers crossed.

The full list of finalists across all categories can be found on the Aurealis Awards website.

I’ve always loved horror movies. Even when some of the gruesome, full-colour covers in the 1980s video store were too terrifying for me to dare hire and bring home. My first clear memory of visceral, bone-deep terror comes from watching Foods of the Gods (1976) at far too young an age, possibly eight or nine. It’s laughably bad in retrospect but at the time it had me too scared to go to my bedroom, fully convinced there was a giant killer rat waiting to devour me.

Even after all these years, which included sitting through some equally terrible offerings, horror remains my favourite film genre and I’ll pretty much pop along to see most new releases at the cinema. (Side note: Hasn’t 2025 has been a bumper year for horror, though? Sinners. Bring her Back. Weapons. Yikes.) So when I was invited to write an essay for Ruadán Books, I knew I wanted to talk about horror on the big and small screen and, more specifically, about an emerging subgenre of which I’ve taken careful and most delighted note:

When ‘EAT THE RICH’ Is Not Enough: Horror Meets Late-Stage Capitalism

Infuriatingly, it feels more and more relevant with each passing week.

In delightful news, I have a short story about to be published in Midnight Echo 20, the magazine of the Australasian Horror Writers Association (AHWA), edited by Marty Young.

“It Will Only Hurt If I want It To” is an odd and icky little body-horror (of a kind) that has been knocking around in my head for a handful of years. I didn’t have the full story worked out, merely an idea and a character or two, but when Midnight Echo posted a call for submissions with the theme of ‘Beginnings’, it all fell beautifully into place. Or horribly, depending on your perspective.

Fun fact, I co-edited the very first issue of Midnight Echo with my good friend and critic Ian Mond back in 2008 when we were both on the AHWA committee. It’s truly wonderful to see the magazine still undead and kicking after all these years – and to find my fiction within its pages at last.

Midnight Echo 20 will be officially launched at Conflux in Canberra this coming weekend (3-6 October). If you’re there, make sure to grab a copy and hit me up to sign it for you. I think there will be a decent contingent of contributors at the convention, actually, so you might like to consider it a morbid sort of treasure hunt.

It’s a book, my dear friends, an actual real live book! Or at least it will be come March 2026! You can pre-order What the Bones Know in print and digital from HarperCollins or from the usual outlets. There will also be an audiobook coming soon.

• Direct from HarperCollins
• Amazon
• Booktopia
• Apple
• Kobo
• Google

A child’s bones, a lost girl, a mind adrift – sometimes what is lost comes back to haunt you … What the Bones Know is a contemporary gothic tale of guilt, grief and redemption.

In the village of Kiln Creek in the Victorian Highlands, a ghost gum falls in a storm. Tangled in its roots are the bones of a small child and the tattered remains of her clothing, including a pair of bright red sneakers.

Single mum Jude Mees is in her early forties and struggling to get her business off the ground while raising her ten-year-old daughter Katie, and managing a fractious relationship with her controlling ex-husband. But when Jude learns that her mother, Nance, who still lives alone on the family property in Kiln Creek, is showing troubling signs of dementia she has no option other than to return and check on her.And indeed, all is not well at the farm. Nance is slowly drifting off into her own world, and there are other disturbing occurrences. Strange smells, inexplicably wet footprints, a voice in the night. As her daughter starts to sleepwalk and Jude’s nightmares begin to take over her days, she begins to wonder whether her imagination is out of control or if something more sinister is happening …

A taut, claustrophobic exploration of what it means to be haunted – by our past, by fractured relationships, by a place we thought we knew and by our own unreliable memories.