Category Archives: apps

apps

Melbourne Literary: Secret Message in Centreway Arcade

IMG_0919The Centreway Building was built in 1911-1912 and refurbished in the 1980s. During the latter work, a designer with a keen sense of irony installed a feature wall in the middle of the arcade.

A grid pattern on the wall is affixed with numerous letters (if you climb up to the first floor you can see them more clearly). Although hard to read, the letters spell out the following message:

“We live in a society that sets an inordinate value on consumer goods and services.”

It’s an intriguingly non-consumerist message for a shopping arcade. Nice work from the refurbishment architects, Cocks Carmichael and Whitford! (The original buildings architects, from the 1911-12 construction, were HW + FB Tompkins.)

For the font nerds among us, the message is in uppercase Helvetica.


A few years ago, I created the Melbourne Literary and Melbourne Peculiar apps in celebration of Melbourne’s standing as a UNESCO City of Literature, as well as some of the daggy, weird and downright peculiar things I love about my city. I thought I’d share the occasional entry from the apps. They are still available on both iTunes and Android, though they are no longer updated.

apps, e-books, Gary and Lissa, short stories, vampires, writing

The Mid Year Review

2012 has been an interesting year so far. By interesting I mean, of course, ‘astonishing’, ‘fantabulous’, ‘exhausting’, ‘exhilarating’ and, quite possibly, ‘TOTALLY ACE!”

2012, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

ONE. March 2012: Showtime

I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned how excited I was to have Twelfth Planet Press invite me to submit to their Twelve Planets series. It was nothing compared to how excited I was to have my submission accepted. After months of work with the publisher, Alisa Krasnostein (a World Fantasy Award winner for her work with TPP) and my editor, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Showtime was released on International Women’s Day. It’s had some great reviews, but more importantly, I’m personally very proud of the work that went into those short stories. For fans of The Opposite of Life, there’s a Gary and Lissa story set at the Royal Melbourne Show. The book also contains a zombie story, a ghost story and a more traditional vampire story set in Hungary, inspired by my travels to that country in 2010.

You can buy Showtime from Twelfth Planet Press.

TWO. April 2012: Melbourne Peculiar

When I’m not writing fiction (or doing the day job) I’ve been known to create apps. My first one, Melbourne Literary, came out a few years ago. Clearly a glutton for punishment, this year I finally finished my second app – Melbourne Peculiar, a guide to everything that’s a little bit strange about this town.

I’m fond of the tagline: Melbourne is stranger than you know. Because it really is.

The app is a fairly personal collection of the things I find odd: things like floral clocks, and hidden anti-consumer messages in shopping malls, and arcane shops and memento mori jewellery. You can even learn about the resting place of the inventor of Vegemite, discover where to get spam, get eggs and truffle oil for breakfast or find a famous composer’s whip collection.

You can download Melbourne Peculiar for Apple iDevices or for Android devices

THREE. May 2012: The Witches of Tyne

A little while ago, I had the great good fortune to win cover art by the fabulous Les Petersen. Since all my other projects already had covers in the pipeline, I thought it would be the perfect time to release a special omnibus edition of my out of print fantasy novels, Witch Honour and Witch Faith, which had been released in hardback in the US in 2005-2007.

So in between writing and editing books and apps, I set about editing the two novels (doing a bit of an adjective and adverb cull, since I’d become a more concise writer since these were published) and adding several short stories and even song lyrics as extra. The result is The Witches of Tyne. It looks terrific, and I’m proud of the result. Extras will be forthcoming in the shape of an actual song to go with the song lyrics, in due course.

In the meantime, you can get The Witches of Tyne from Amazon.com

FOUR. June 2012: Walking Shadows

And hello June! On Friday 8 June, Clan Destine Press and I will be launching Walking Shadows, the long-awaited sequel to The Opposite of Life.

Walking Shadows will be available as an ebook as well as a print edition: stay tuned for links post-launch!

The cover blurb is from Charlaine Harris’s blog about The Opposite of Life:

“A most unusual vampire novel…if you can get this book, do. It’s really a refreshing take on a common theme.”

Which is pretty darned cool.

So thank you, first half of 2012, for being especially fantastic. The latter half may be technically a little quieter, but I’ll be hard at work on the third of the vampire books, so with luck 2013 will contains booky goodness as well.