Competition Winner

Congratulations to:

MS. PRISS

You have won a free ebook copy of
Sword of Anubis.

If you've already read that story, please feel free to choose another title from Eternal Press and I'll have that ebook sent out to you as soon as possible.

Thank you to all who entered my competition.

If you liked Sword of Anubis, keep an eye out for Shadow on the Crystal coming out next month.


Cheers

Brittany Kingston

The Sword of Anubis

To celebrate the release of my short story, The Sword of Anubis,
I'm giving away one free copy to the first person who can tell me the following:

Where did Morgan's dagger come from?

Post your answer as a comment on this blog or email your reply to: brittanykingstonauthor@gmail.com

Good luck!

--Brittany

Vampire Short Story Releases

I'm really excited to be able to say that two of my historical vampire short stories will be coming out soon with Eternal Press.

If you like a good vampire tale, keep a look out for:

October 2008

Shadow on the Crystal

Cover by Dawne Dominique







September 2008

Sword of Anubis

Cover by Ally Robertson



Both covers blew me away. I love them! I hope you do too.

I also hope you'll enjoy the stories. Thanks to some wonderful editing from Deborah Nemeth, these two historical tales have sprung into life. Don't forget to keep an eye out for them at Eternal Press.

Also don't forget, my art exhibition is fast approaching. And, yes, I'm still throwing ink all over canvases [and everything else] in an attempt to have some new paintings to show off.

Add to all this: At long, long last, spring is approaching and I've been trying to get outside into the garden to gain some sort of control over the jungle before the summer hits. I did manage to scare a few weeds into submission yesterday. I hope word has gone out through the weed vine that I'll be out there again today and possibly tomorrow looking for victims to add to the compost. Sneaky little weeds. They think they can run riot all over my garden..... I'll show them.... hahahahahhhah!

Cheers

Olympic Fever

It's that time again...

Every four years I suffer from a strange condition: Olympic Fever.

Some of my friends are also suffering from this strange condition. It hits us every four years and keeps us virtually housebound and glued to our televisions.

Suddenly I begin to watch sport. Not only that, but I become an instant armchair expert on every sport I watch. You name it - I can judge it from the comfort of my own lounge room.

Well... that's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it! What better reason could there be to stay inside on a cold winter's day? And just so I don't feel totally bad about staying indoors, I do odd things like catching up on the ironing, polishing the floors, mending clothes, catching up on my writing and editing and getting some painting done - the artistic type. This morning during the beach vollyball and men's basketball I even cleaned all the windows - the insides at least.

All in the name of fun!

Good luck to all our Olympians! You're all heroes.

Cheers

The Runes of Earth by Stephen Donaldson

The Runes of the Earth by Stephen R. Donaldson

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
I can't believe it has been 20 years since I read the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.



This is the first book in the last Thomas Covenant series and I'm totally hooked. I want more, and more, and more... The characterization, the setting... again, superb. Utterly brilliant - as I have come to expect from this writer.



Stephen Donaldson is one of the writers who inspired me to become a writer.



This is one author who's books I can pick off the shelf at random and, without even looking, know I'll thoroughly enjoy it.


View all my reviews.

Un4Seen Art Exhibition

Great news on the Art front.

My first local exhibition will be on in September with three other contemporary artists: Fillian Fytch, Robynne Ilott-iiama and Kaye Watt. It's going to be super colourful, and very, very different to any exhibition many local people will have ever seen. It will be interesting to see how it all goes.

Check out our colourful invitations below, specially designed for us by Louise Einersen, a local graphic designer. As you can see, Louise had to work really hard to fit all four of us into a "one-artist" space.

If you're in the North East area at that time, please drop in and have a look around at our work.

Storm Orbs

Hi Everyone!

Take a look at these photos I took last night. Wow! Energy Orbs everywhere. I was trying to take photos of lightning. I failed at that, but look what I caught on film. Unbelievable. Wonderful.

Woo Hooo! They were everywhere in every photo. Click on each image to see the larger view.

Obviously I can't post all the photos here, but these will give you the general feel. It's amazing to think that we were walking around with these floating in the air all around and above us and we didn't even see or feel them.





Cheers

Brittany Kingston

It's Out There... Somewhere

As all authors do, I eagerly look forward to seeing the release of my latest "baby".

"Where the Night Things Are", my latest anthology of poetry, was released earlier this month by Eternal Press, and it was great to see it up there with all the other new books.

There is one little disappointment, though. Poetry is still a poor cousin to novels and short stories when it comes to promotion and review opportunities.

There are no end of sites on the net for people to post their newly published novels and short stories for reviews and sales, but hardly any at all for poetry and poetry anthologies. Most of the sites that review poetry or poetry anthologies are only interested in unpublished work that they can potentially publish themselves. That's okay, but...

Where do we poets go for serious reviews of our published work?

It makes it just that little bit harder to promote a book of poems when there are no rave reviews to quote.

Public opinion is slowly changing. More people are now enjoying short stories. The internet has actually helped the short story industry a lot. Those who want a good weekend read, buy a few short stories from eBook Publishers for their portable eBook readers and laptop/notebook computers. The days of portable computing has opened up the industry to more and more opportunities for writers of short fiction of all genres. That's wonderful.

However, this great revolution still has not spread to poetry.

Even though there are more and more people out there in the world writing really high quality poetry, it is still seen as somewhat of a novelty by those who read and publish "real" fiction.

This, I believe, goes right back to early education levels.

Poetry is only marginally tapped into as a serious genre in schools. It's glossed over. Only the old classic poets are focussed on to any great degree. Don't get me wrong, this is a wonderful thing. However, there are so many poets in today's world whose work would be of great inspiration and benefit to students of the written word, but this work is not being presented to students.

This, in turn, filters right down the line to publishing houses. So few these days are willing to spend any money or time on the poetry market. Let's face it, the poetry market is nowhere near as big as the other literary genre markets. So, who can blame them?

I don't for one moment think that poetry will ever disappear. It keeps bubbling up from the depths of the emotions of one generation to the next. Poetry will always be an important part of many people's lives.

It is a pity that it still isn't seen as an important part of today's publishing world.

So... I'll raise a glass of bubbly to my two poetry anthologies as they join the millions of others out there... somewhere... waiting for someone to accidentally discover them... some day...

Happy reading, poetry buffs!

Getting Back to Business

It's good to be getting back to my science fiction writing again.

Over the past couple of months, my time has been consumed by poetry, GST and business, editing and gardening.

At last I can get back into what I love doing best - writing science fiction and paranormal short stories and novels.

The Shadow Runners has been neglected since the beginning of this year. I'm up to the most important part - the last, technical re-write - and I've not even had the time to get on with it.

I did enjoy putting together, "Where the Night Things Are". That was huge fun, but now that's out and under promotion, my thoughts are turning to more science fiction writing.

If only I could get rid of all the other distractions around here, then I'd have a whole day or two to myself to just write. Wouldn't that be great?

I'll have to just grab the odd moment here and there like I usually do. As frustrating as that is, it's the only way I can get any writing done at all.

Catch ya soon.

Charlton Heston

I am profoundly sad to hear of the death of Charlton Heston.

He was one of my all-time favorite actors. I adored his work and I adored the man. I feel like a light has gone out in the world.


And yet... his films will stand testament to the rich gift he gave to all of us from all over the world, of all ages, nationalities and beliefs. He has left us so many wonderful memories to cherish.

May your spirit soar, Charlton. May you go on to be all that you can be.

Love sincerely

Brittany Kingston
(Heather Williams)