Just added to the Black & White Illustration gallery - my illustration for Amanda Spedding's story "Nightmare's Cradle" to appear in ASIM#46 edited by Mark Farrugia.

Click on the image for the full size view.

Just added to the Book Cover Gallery - my cover design for the forthcoming Eneit Press anthology "Baggage" edited by Gillian Polack.

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Just added to the Book Cover Gallery - my illustration and cover design for the wrap-around hardcover dustjacket of Richard L Tierney's collected poetry, "Savage Menace & Other Poems of Horror" from P'rea Press.

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Just added to the Gallery - my internal illustration for ASIM #44 based on the story "Sebastian" by Jason Fischer.

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Just added to the Gallery - my cover illustration for ASIM #46 based on the story 'The School Bus' by Jason Fischer.

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Chimaera Publications, publishers of Aurealis magazine, will be launching a series of six books at Worldcon 2010 (Aussiecon 4) reprinting some long-forgotten classics of Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy. Here are some draft cover designs for the first 6 books in the series.

Classic Australian SF 1: The Crowned Skull by Fergus Hume (with an Introduction by Sophie Masson)

Classic Australian SF 2: The Shrieking Pit by Arthur J Rees (with an Introduction by Sean Williams)

Classic Australian SF 3: Vandals of the Void by James Morgan Walsh (with an Introduction by Sean McMullen)

Classic Australian SF 4: A Bid for Fortune, or Dr.Nikola's Vendetta by Guy Boothby (with an Introduction by Ian Irvine)

Classic Australian SF 5: A Week in the Future by Catherine Helen Spence (with an Introduction by Lucy Sussex)

Classic Australian SF 5: Out of the Silence by Erle Cox (with an Introduction by Van Ikin)

Click on the images for a larger view.

Available now:

SHARDS: Short Sharp Tales

Written by Shane Jiraiya Cummings
Illustrated by Andrew J. McKiernan

ISBN: 978-0-9805677-2-4
160 pages - B Format paperback

Shards is dark fiction at its shortest and sharpest. Each shard is an imaginative fragment, broken, sharp, and poised to draw blood.

Shards is 31 tales of terror by award winning author Shane Jiraiya Cummings, each tale accompanied by a suitable disturbing full-page illustration by myself.

Shards is now available direct from Brimstone Press, or in all good bookstores. If they don't have a copy ask them to order a copy or two in.

"With SHARDS author Shane Jiraiya Cummings and artist Andrew J. McKiernan take us on a guided tour of the darkest backroads of the imagination.  It is wonderfully moody and creepy."

– Jonathan Maberry, multiple Bram Stoker Award-winning author of PATIENT ZERO and THE WOLFMAN 

“Shards cuts you right open and then sets about infecting the wound. Cummings' prose is as the title suggests: short, sharp, and deadly. The tales themselves are relentless, battering you with their suggestive intensity or mocking with bleak humour. Add to this darkly disturbing illustrations by Andrew McKiernan and Shards is one hell of a nightmare.”

– Dr Marty Young, President, Australian Horror Writers Association.

"Shards offers a worthy selection of short-short stories that reflects the author’s prominence in the contemporary upsurge of 'flash fiction' among Australian horror writers. Fans of the short-short form will welcome this darkly entertaining foray into a world gone subtly—and at times unsubtly—askew, from one of Australia’s 'new bloods' of horror. Combined with a wealth of evocative illustrations from Andrew McKiernan, Shards represents a unique horror experience."

– Robert Hood, the 'Godfather of Aussie Horror' and award-winning author of Creeping in Reptile Flesh

"Shards is a maelstrom of images that delivers to the reader intense stories, and repeated sucker punches to their emotions."

– Sharyn Lilley, Eneit Press

"Reading Shards is like being strapped to a rocket, once you're on you can't get off till the end."

– Stuart Mayne, Editor Aurealis Magazine

Shards: Short Sharp Tales
By Shane Jiraiya Cummings
Illustrated by Andrew J McKiernan
Published by Brimstone Press - August 2009
ISBN: 978-0-9805677-2-4

Just added to the Gallery - my illustration for Mark Farrugia's story "Santa's Little Bitch", to appear in the Tasmaniac Publications anthology "Festive Fear" later this year.

Click on the image for the full size view.

Issue two of Midnight Echo, the magazine of the Australian Horror Writers Association has been released into civilisation.

Edited by Angela Challis and Shane Jiraiya Cummings it contains thirteen dark, creepy and downright terrifying tales, including my own story "The Message".

Other authors with fiction in this issue include: Joanne Anderton, Jason Crowe, Bob Franklin, Kurt Newton, Shaun Jeffrey, Felicity Dowker, Christina Alexander, Chris Read, Kris Ashton, David Conyers, Trost and Benjamin Hayes.

Midnight Echo is available as either a print magazine, or as a downloadable PDF.

Electronic PDF Download (ISSN 1836-3873)
Cover Price: US$3.50

Paperback Edition (ISSN 1836-3865)
Cover Price: US$12.95 (plus shipping)

"Slice of Life" is a collection of short stories by Australian author Paul Haines, scheduled to be published in September 2009 by The Mayne Press. It includes his Ditmar award winning story "The Devil in Mr Pussy (or How I Found God Inside My Wife)" along with 16 other, equally disturbing, tales. The cover has just been finalised and is on its way to print. It features an illustration by Jordi Elias and an overall inspiration to the old Mayflower and Panther novels of the 70s and early 80s, especially those of Michael Moorcock. The inside text is set with much the same inspiration - being extremely simple and modelled somewhat after the Mayflower release of Moorcock's 'Book of Martyrs'.

For a larger view of the cover, click the thumbnail.