Kris Ashton

Received news this morning that my essay ‘The Slow-Burn Brilliance of Midnight Mass’ has been shortlisted for the 2022 Australian Shadows Awards. It’s a sort of analysis-cum-review of Mike Flanagan’s fantastic Netflix mini-series.

A friend of mine, the artist Graeme Quinn, first recommended I watch the Midnight Mass and it was our fascinated discussions about it afterwards that inspired the essay.

This is my third nomination for a Shadows Award and thanks must go once again to the non-fiction editor at Aurealis, Terry Wood, whose enthusiasm for my sometimes zany ideas motivates me to see them through to fruition.

This year the award winners will be announced in a ceremony at Asylumfest on October 28. Fingers crossed third time’s the charm and I can bring home the trophy!

In other news, I finally completed a new horror novel, Sorrow Lake. While historically I have finished the first draft of a novel in around four months, this one took nearly two years. Why? Simply put, it almost died during COVID lockdown – and afterwards my ‘regular’ life became a lot more hectic, which left a lot less time for writing. I was unwilling to let the novel go, however, so it sputtered forward in increments of a few hundred words. I don’t recommend writing a novel this way!