I've had this competition open since the start of February, and I think it's getting about time to wrap it up. The deadline is now 31st of March.

Here's the bare bones, what it's about:

If you have bought my book, take a picture and send it to me. Best place to get through to me is at shanecart9 AT gmail DOT com.

If you do this, you'll go in the draw to win a few books.

First place gets four, second place gets three, third place gets two.

You get to choose from:

American Gods, by Neil Gaiman.

The Arrival, by Shaun Tan.

Trout Fishing in America/The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster/In Watermelon Sugar, by Richard Brautigan.

Tekkon Kinkreet, by Taiyo Matsumoto.

Kraken, by China Mieville.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon.

Light Boxes, by Shane Jones.

Lights Out In Wonderland, by DBC Pierre.

John Dies at the End, by David Wong.

If you've got any questions, please don't hesitate to ask.

I'm running a raffle/giveaway competition for my new book House Hunter. This is my Newgrounds campaign, and I'll be working on a book trailer (running a couple of contests for that too) and perhaps searching for a voice actor at some point to perhaps collaborate with on a few different related things.

For now, consider this: if you like reading imaginative, creative, and weird books, you should be looking at entering this competition. If you buy my book any time from February 1 onwards and be amongst the first 30 people to confirm this with me via the competition guidelines outlined on my blog: Full entry details here.

You will go into the draw to win some of these books:
American Gods, by Neil Gaiman
The Arrival, by Shaun Tan
Trout Fishing in America/The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster/In Watermelon Sugar, by Richard Brautigan
Tekkon Kinkreet, by Taiyo Matsumoto
Kraken, by China Mieville
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon
Light Boxes, by Shane Jones
Lights Out In Wonderland, by DBC Pierre
John Dies at the End, by David Wong

Thank you, and good luck!

I signed up to Newgrounds about five years ago now. I've always been pretty obsessed with creative shit. I hung around the audio forum for ages, then the writing forum, filling the time in my year off after high school by writing short stories and putting them up here. This was my first taste of creative writing and peer review. I practiced my skills and hung around for a few years, and eventually the Newgrounds Writing Anthology was finished and I, amongst a small group of other writers on this website, had something physical to show for my work.

Around November 2010, I started reading books from a small publisher operating out of Portland, Oregon. They were weird, radical, counter-cultural. They were the Bizarros: wild and fun and entertaining as fuck. In November 2012, they published my first book, a novella called 'House Hunter'.

I wouldn't have this book if not for them. And I wouldn't have made it that far without first starting off here. I don't get on Newgrounds nearly as much as I used to, but I still check in from time to time. If you ever want to talk writing, just get in touch with me on here, or on my blog, or something.

If you're an animator looking to try something a little different, I'd love to work with people on a book trailer, or an adaptation of a short story. I'm also open to creating new content specifically for animation, although part of me knows most animators will just come up with their stories themselves. I'll just make note that my style is bizarre and surreal, and my writing is highly visual, so, you know, something to think about.

I'm with a small press publisher now, so every sale counts, and every chance to spread the word means a great deal to me. So here's a bit about the book:

Finding a good house is a house hunter's job. If you want a great house, you need Imogen. She's the best at capturing young houses and training them to be homes. But all of her skills will be tested when the Association goes after the mythical Jabberhouse in order to breed houses in captivity. With a mysterious helper, Imogen and her house fight to stay alive and keep houses free.

A bizarro adventure, with cockroach people, spider-cars, assassins, house-fights, and a big-ass castle stomping into battle against an ancient temple. House hunting has never been so weird.

It is available from:
Amazon US
Amazon UK
Book Depository
amongst other online retailers (these are the best deals I'm aware of...)

Artwork by Lauren Price
You can learn a bit more about the book through a couple of interviews here:
Jess Resides Here
Dangerous Dan's Book Blog

And yeah, I know most of you are more into gaming and movies and stuff, as opposed to reading books, but if you decide to check it out, that's awesome. If you read it, I'd love to know what you think. And if you help me to spread the word (either by sharing a link on places like facebook or twitter, writing a review up on amazon, or even just telling people you're reading a new book), I would be sincerely grateful.

Here's to hoping 2013 will be filled with weird and wonderful and fantastically creative works of art.

You can read up about the Newgrounds writing anthology in my previous post, and on the Kickstarter campaign here.

What's new is that we reached our goal early on in the campaign, and we're aiming for a new goal of $2,500. This would help us reach a wider audience, and help the development of the anthology in its future prospects.

I'll keep it short this time around. The donations we've recieved so far have been fantastic. If you're thinking about it, consider this: $5 gets you the e-book. You can read the whole anthology. $20 gets you the hardcover edition. You can hold it in your hands and put it on a bookshelf and use it to kill bugs. $50 gets you a short story written by one of us fancy writers in the anthology, just for you. And there's a bunch of other perks listed on the kickstarter.

Basically, we put in all the effort to put it together, you put in all the effort to fund it, we both get something out of it. We're friends. And reading is cool, you know?

Here it comes, our book of words, and we want to share this moment with you.
Thanks.

This thing has been a long time coming. I remember when it was just a handful of writers tossing ideas around about whether we should seriously do this. There were numerous attempts to get this thing off the ground, but the problem was that this was a massive project that would take a lot of time and effort, and it didn't take much to bog this thing down. Someone had a busy life at a certain point in time and they could no longer keep up with submissions. Not enough is happening to spread the word, and there aren't enough quality submissions coming in to fill the anthology. The project changed and developed, editors passed on to new editors, deadlines were shifted back, and shifted back again. I must admit, at times I was frustrated and I lost heart on the project a couple of times. Sometimes it felt like too much.

But now it's come together (and I can't thank Ekublai enough for all the time and effort he's invested into this thing). It's looking pretty slick, and the years of trying to make this thing happen are starting to pay off.

Basically, what this is, is a collection of stories and poems from the members of the writing forum that have been written, submitted, rewritten, edited, refined, edited again, and compiled into a book that will be a real, physical, tangible thing you can buy, right here on the newgrounds store.

What you're supporting when you pledge to this kickstarter project is that this thing will get printed. It's not about us getting paid. It's just a bunch of people doing what we love and making something out of it to say "hey, look at this thing that we made." It's a something that couldn't exist without the community.

Newgrounds Writing Anthology Kickstarter

Right at this very moment, we need $370 to reach our goal. Anything extra will go into making the book more accessible to more people, so that it'll reach beyond Newgrounds, the specifics of which are detailed on the kickstarter page.

Any amount you donate, I am extremely grateful, as are the rest of the writers in the anthology. I've been writing for four and a half years now, and I started out sharing my writing on this site, and it's really helped me a lot. I'm really humbled that this kickstarter has gone so well already, the support I've seen from this site over the years has been so encouraging, and I hope in the years to come, the anthology will become something the writers of this site will shoot for. It's been a great experience, and I really can't say enough how amazed and excited I am to see this thing become a reality.

Thank you.

Yeah, I'm doing NaNoWriMo again this year. I'm not posting the whole thing online like last year, but I thought I might as well post a tasty little excerpt, the opening part of the first chapter of 'Comarama'. It's the second day and I'm currently right on target, a little way into my second chapter.

Chapter One:

The Airport

The man on the television tells me that I should never ever go against the grain. He's sanding down old timber furniture and he's telling me to never go against the grain. Yeah. It was on some DIY show that looked like any other DIY show that all of them seem to flow into each other that I'm not sure which people are coming and going. And the sound of aeroplanes is high on the priority list along with the constant public announcements that rang through the terminal.

First call, all passengers boarding flight 392 to Melbourne, make your way to gate 7.

Yeah, I sat there with a backpack at my feet and watched the people coming and going as the man sanded down his table, making the old new again. Maybe a coat of paint, maybe a coat of varnish, depends on what's in this season. And the people coming and going, they come and go and follow the flow, in through the in gate, out through the out, pushing or pulling their bags and clutching onto their children's hands.

Second call, all passengers boarding flight 392 to Melbourne, make your way to gate 7.

That was the flight I told people I was on. That was the flight that would evacuate my soul from this infernal city. And everyone was the man on the television, telling me to never go against the grain. Don't. Just don't.

It's been some months since I've made a news post here. July or August or something...

Anyway, I've been working on an assignment for uni for a little while now, a literary zine full of experimental poetry and prose and such. And I've finished it and packaged it as a .pdf file, which is available as a free download on my blog.

If you'd like to download itand read it, that would be awesome, if you'd like to tell me what you thought of it, that'd be even better.

I'd also like to talk about the 'National Novel Writing Month', or NaNoWriMo, as it's commonly called. The website can be found here, and a thread on Newgrounds about it here. Basically, it's a challenge to write a 50,000 word novel over the course of the 30 days in November. If you're a writer, it can be a great source of motivation writing within a community with a shared set of goals. So if you've been meaning to finally write that novel, November's the month to get your first draft thrown together. I'll be participating this year, as I did last year, and I'll be writing a postmodern lit-fic novel called 'Comarama'.

I could probably talk about those two items in much more detail, but I think I'll leave things at that for now. Free e-zine and NaNoWriMo.

Enjoy!

It's not quite NaNoWriMo time again, but I've felt a recent lull in my short fiction at the end of my semester break at uni. So, after mulling over a few ideas, going on holidays, mulling them over some more I came home yesterday and started writing my second novel. Well, second time writing a draft of a novel. My last one hasn't gone through the editing process yet, and I feel like I've moved quite a way from it, so I'm not turning back to it just yet, but instead spending this month going all out on something new. Utopia Ltd explores the cultural anxieties of being an identity-less subject in a hyper-commercialised world. Also it's about a cult of individualist armed robbers trying to cripple society as they know it. My aim is to write a Chuck Palahniuk style transgressive fiction novel, placing a strong importance on identity, culture and commodification, in a semi-prophetical warning to the world as it is today.

Here's an excerpt of the first chapter: Fifteen Minutes at Gunpoint

Last November I posted the whole novel on my blog for a while, but I won't be doing that this time. I might tease another chapter or two here and there, but if things go well enough, I feel like it would be something that I'd want to eventually workshop and edit and workshop and edit and submit to publication. Fingers crossed, although it's still a long way away. I'm in chapter three at the moment, hoping to get to 4,000 words by the end of the night.

I hope you guys enjoy what I've written so far, it's the most that I've been able to show you guys for a while. Hopefully I'll be able to write some poems every so often, because I've begun to really enjoy that lately.

Thanks.

I haven't been around much lately, and as a result, the judging of MWC competitions Jan/Feb and March have been taking a while to get some results. I could rant and rave about excuses till the cows come home, but basically, I've just got one excuse, no time. Between work and uni, studying and trying to keep on top of assignments and what not, going out occasionally, I haven't had time to really knuckle down and judge these competitions. I'll get there, and hopefully soon. I've got nothing due at uni for a while, although I've still got a few things going on here and there that are really chewing up my time. Once that's done, however, I should be on the forums a bit more for a few writing related things, nothing major, just regular things to keep my fingers tapping. Maybe a bit of music too, I've been getting into a lot of drum n bass lately, I've bought some music by Noisia, Spor, Sub Focus, and I've been getting into some of the older DnB albums I've had lying around. I'm looking forward to the new Pendulum album, sounds like it's going to be pretty big, and sounds like it'll be along a similar vein as Hold Your Colour, that's next month. So I'd love to give producing drum n bass another crack, last few times I've tried I felt like I wasn't quite 'there yet'. Who knows. But I'm definitely keeping up the writing here and there, doing a fair bit of fragmented stories and drafts and such for class, so even though I'm not posting anything here for a while, I'm still doing my work here and there. :)

Down the Rabbit Hole

I made this song quite some time ago, but I only just now got around to uploading it. I'm really proud of the material I was producing from about 6 months ago. I've also posted a WIP of something else that I started today, which, I must admit, is not up to the same standard. I'd love it if you guys could give it a listen and a bit of feedback. This song is probably one of the best that I've produced thus far, I'm not sure why I haven't been making much music lately. I've mostly just been writing. I'm planning out a novel series and writing a gothic horror short story at the moment, but I'm also starting to tinker around with my music again, which I'm finding to be really cool.

As far as my literature is concerned, it's a bit touch and go at the moment. I start Uni soon, so I'll probably be writing a lot more over the coming months. I'm thinking this gothic horror story could be used as my contribution to the Newgrounds Anthology project gum and I started a while ago, but I've been neglecting, shamefully. I'll get that back into shape as soon as possible. There's also the Monthly Writing Competition going on at the moment. Which can be found here, if anyone's interested.

(shameless plug for my audio etc etc.)