I read a good review of an advanced copy of Vigil<\/em> by Angela Slatter over on Alex Pierce’s blog<\/a>. I remember the short story that the novel is based around, from the anthology Sprawl<\/em>. It was excellent, so I’ve pre-ordered the novel. Go and read Alex’s blog post then think about doing the same, unless you’re visiting this blog from the future, in which case just buy the damn book already.<\/p>\n Speaking of Alex, she also runs a great series of posts over on tor.com focusing on Australian and New Zealand speculative fiction<\/a>\u00a0called Aurora Australis. It’s a great way to keep up with author and publishing news from the antipodes, well worth adding to your monthly reading list.<\/p>\n David McDonald, who I did some parallel podcasting with a couple of years back, is going from strength to strength in the tie in novel space. He recently posted a teaser cover with Captain America<\/a> on it, so that has to be a good sign. Great guy and all round good egg – well worth checking out his work.<\/p>\n My daughter’s love of the Teen Titan Go!<\/em> series has morphed into a desire to own some of the comic books of the same name. We ventured into the city today, and my little girl got her first proper comic books. I could never really afford comic books growing up – pre-internet it was a bit difficult to know where to start, and south-west Sydney wasn’t exactly nerd heaven. Besides, the unrelenting cost! I never could have afforded to follow a series, even if I could have found a reliable source. I’m hoping my daughter might have better luck falling in love with this branch of the speculative fiction tree than I did. And Teen Titans seems like a good place to start.<\/p>\n Well, I hope you’re all doing better than me on the interesting culture news front. If you’re engaged with something fascinating, make sure you drop me a line and let me know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" <\/p>\n <\/p>Hi,\n