Madeleine D’Este

Don’t Forget to Vote in Critter’s Readers Poll

/ jonblackwrites / Leave a comment

If you’re a fan of scifi, fantasy, horror, mystery, or any other corner of speculative fiction/genre fiction, don’ forget to vote in the annual Critters Readers Poll – a reckoning from fandom of the most interesting, most exciting, or just plain best offering from indie publishers during calendar year 2023.

VOTING ENDS 6:00 a.m. (Eastern USA time) MONDAY, JANUARY 15. WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?

A great honor for me

I’m a little sad that, because of publishing schedules, I didn’t have any eligible titles come out in 2023 (hold on to your proverbial hats, 2024 should more than make up for that). My successes in the Critters’ Poll over the years have been very important for establishing my career as a writer, both critically and commercially. But, even without yours truly, some amazing works have received nominations this year.

As a way to get really easy blog content, I thought I’d talk about some of the nominees I vote for (and why).

For Best Mystery Novel: Radcliffe by Madeleine D’Este, from Deadset Press. If you’re someone I talk about books with or if you follow my blog (where she’s a regular guest poster, including the excellent “official playlists” for her titles), you’re already familiar with Madeleine. She writes Australian-focused fiction, often with a supernatural element, and has true gift for stories exploring the intersection of quirky personalities and bizarre locations. Radcliffe, the story of eccentric residents of a lonely apartment on the outskirts of Melbourne, is her superlative work in that regard. (She’s also an upcoming 18thWall Productions author!)

For Best Steampunk Short Story: “The Falcon and The Goose” by David Lee Summers, in the anthology Grease Monkeys: The Heart and Soul of Dieselpunk from eSpec Books. Summers is southwestern author whose work does several things I adore: including weaving historical events into his fiction and using historical figures in cameos or even not-so-cameos. “The Falcon & The Goose” pits one of the turn-of-the-last-century’s greatest rail engineers against two of its most notorious outlaws in a life-or-death rail vs. airship race.

For Best Anthology: the aforementioned Grease Monkeys: The Heart and Soul of Dieselpunk from eSpec Books. Among all the various [x]punk genres, Cyberpunk and steampunk are favorites (and I may have some interesting things to say about clockpunk in a year or two), but Dieselpunk has a special place in my heart. But, like all the other [x]punks, Dieselpunk has style-over-substance problem. By focusing on the folks who make the technology go, “Grease Monkeys” sidesteps that problem and delivers an anthology of solid stories about the nuts, bolts, and grease of a different reality.

Additionally, all other things being equal, anything from Third Flatiron Publishing is usually going to have both the quality and the spin to get my vote.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. Go vote! And I’ll see you on the nomination list next year. 😉

GUEST POST: Radcliffe, the Official Playlist

/ jonblackwrites / 1 Comment
Madeleine D’ Este

NOTE FROM JB: Yeah, I’m always happy to temporarily turn my blog over to someone and get good content on someone else’s dime (hey, I am a writer after all). But it is always a true pleasure to have a guest post from Madeleine D’ Este. There are few writers active today whose work I enjoy as much. If you asked me to reduce to a single sentence what appeals to me about her writing, if I’m going to eschew “because it’s really cool,” I will have to go with “She has a unique gift for crafting tales which explore the intersection of eccentric characters and eccentric locations.” Never has that talent been as remarkably on display as it is with her latest offering, Radcliffe.

Madeleine knows about my passion for music. And I know, every time she has a new release, I can look forward to having an “official soundtrack” for the piece dropped in my inbox. I knew her soundtrack for Radcliffe would be something really special. I was not disappointed.

RADCLIFFE PLAYLIST

…a weird apartment building full of weird women…

My new novella Radcliffe was released in August 2023 from Deadset Press.

A three-storey ramshackle house in North Melbourne is full of secrets. Tamsin is led to the building by a voice inside her head – a voice that tells her ‘Death is Coming’. With no respite from the eternal summer heat, can Tamsin find out who death is coming for and solve the riddle of Radcliffe?

Radcliffe is a gothic tale about a weird apartment building full of weird women. Meet the characters and their songs; Bunty, Defne, Cecily, Riko and Tamsin.

BUNTY

The longest resident of Radcliffe, Bunty is an octogenarian ex-ballerina always has a tale from her days on the stage.

‘A Night on Bare Mountain’ – Mussorgsky, Berlin Orchestra

A Night on Bare Mountain features in a compilation produced by the V&A ‘Diaghilev and the Golden Age of the Ballets Russes 1909-1929’ accompanied many hours of editing Radcliffe.

DEFNE

Defne is a late-blooming photographer with a penchant for the grotesque. Growing up in the 90s, Alanis would have rocked Defne’s suburban world.

You Oughta Know – Alanis Morrissette


Curiously, this is an example of how characters are not autobiographical, because I’ve never been a fan of this song and yet it’s perfect for Defne.

CECILY

The twenty-something psychology student Cecily is fascinated with the human condition and diagnoses everyone she meets.

Only Human – Rag n Bone Man


This song was also often playing in my dodgy 24-hr gym when I escaped from editing.

RIKO

Riko is a twenty-something industrial musician and DJ.

Corporate Slave – Snog

This song is from the grandfather of Australian industrial music, David Thrussel aka Snog. While I imagine Riko’s music to be more abrasive, something like Snog would have lit her original fire. I saw Snog live in 2022, supporting Pop Will Eat Itself in Melbourne. The show was amazing and bonkers.

GAIL

Gail is a reclusive writer with a dark past.

Red Right Hand – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds


How could I do Australian gothic without Nick Cave? Needless to say, writer Gail has some anger issues as well as a way with words.

TAMSIN

The main character Tamsin is a tax accountant and auditory psychic.

Love is a Losing Game – Amy Winehouse


Life has been a little unfair to Tamsin and she would have spent many nights singing along with Amy’s pain.

RADCLIFFE

The first song I thought of when Jon asked me to put this post together. A weird apartment building full of weird women? A gothic tale?

Happy House – Siouxsie and the Banshees

Madeleine D’Este

Madeleine D’Este is a writer of dark mysteries. Growing up in Tasmania and studying law (but never practising), she lives in inner city Melbourne surrounded by books. When not writing, D’Este enjoys podcasts, knitting, forteana, indie films, kettle bells and coffee as ‘black as midnight on a moonless night’.

www.madeleinedeste.com

Radcliffe is available from all good ebook platforms and in paperback from bookshop.org.

GUEST POST: Bloodwood – the Official Author Soundtrack

/ jonblackwrites / 1 Comment

JB’s NOTE: Writing across a variety of genres Madeleine D’Este has consistently delighted me. With her most recent release, the horror/dark comedy Bloodwood, Madeleine ups the ante by offering something new under the sun: a fresh (pardon the word play) take on the undead. Knowing my fascination with how music and narrative intertwine, she has graciously shared her soundtrack for the story.

Bloodwood – how do you fight a vampire in Australia?

Bloodwood is a tale of ecological funerals and roaming revenants set in the fictitious town of Ludwood in the Goldfields region of Victoria, Australia. When I first got the idea for Bloodwood, I knew I wanted to bring a new spin on the tired vampire cliches, and Bloodwood questions whether the old world folklore would apply in a new land.

To put readers in the right spooky mood, I’ve collated an official author soundtrack, a list of dark songs from Australian and elsewhere. Although Bloodwood is not all grim – there are sparks of dark Australian humour throughout, and so I’ve thrown in a few cheesy tracks to lighten the mood.

DEAD EYES OPEN – SEVERED HEADS

An Australian dance music classic, a song which frightened many youngsters with its strange spooky vocals about the murder of Emily Kaye.

And then the dead eyes opened…

BELA LEGOSI’S DEAD – BAUHAUS

As Brigitta, the strange East European backpacker, says…‘The truth is very different to Hollywood… The creatures are not well-dressed aristocrats. Vampires are monsters. Pure and animalistic.’

TOZ – JAKUZI

During the bleak days of final edits of Bloodwood, I listened to this album from the dark synth Turkish bank Jakuzi on repeat and absorbed myself into the deep vocals.

GALLOW DANCE – LEBANON HANOVER

More gothy mood setting with Lebanon Hanover with their Joy Division meets Swiss Neko vocals sound.

A GOOD HEART – FEARGAL SHARKEY

Wait, what? A vampire book and Feargal Sharkey? Ten points for any reader who has spotted the reference.

THE CULLING – CHELSEA WOLFE

The current queen of goth indie rock, Chelsea Wolfe. Sparrow, the gothy high school work experience kid would listen to Wolfe over and over in her dented hatchback as she drove through the empty dark country roads of Ludwood in search of a revenant.

DAY-O – HARRY BELAFONTE

A song which strangely has taken on a supernatural life of its own

TAINTED LOVE – SOFT CELL

Shelley, Bloodwood’s main character, loves a car singalong to commercial radio and Soft Cell’s cover of Tainted Love is a classic pop banger.

And a song which plays on Shelley’s mind.

BACK IN BLACK – AC/DC

Where would an Australian soundtrack be without some Acca-Dacca? While I prefer old school Bon Scott era AC/DC myself, I picture Back in Black playing in the background as the kitted-up Shelley and Brigitta approach the revenant’s lair in slow motion.

“If a soul is laid to rest

With a perched black crow as its guest

And then a shadow crosses the pall

And a mourner’s tear does fall

Dry your tears and beware

Cross yourself and prepare

Below the soil, new life brews

It’s the living it pursues”

Bloodwood

Bloodwood – how do you fight a vampire in Australia?

Nothing interesting ever happens in sleepy, rural Ludwood. Not until undertaker Shelley sets up shop with her eco-friendly burials.

Her latest funeral, farewelling an environmental legend, was meant to help her struggling business – even the gatecrashing priest condemning her heathen ways didn’t damper her spirits. Much.

But when frightening screeches wake Shelley in the middle of the night days later, she finds an empty grave and things start to go wrong. Horribly wrong. Like vicious attacks in Ludwood wrong.

Were the priest’s protests of blasphemy right? Has Shelley unwittingly unleashed the undead and reduced the headcount in Ludwood instead of reducing their carbon footprint?

And where does Shelley even start? There’s no manual for hunting vampires in the bush!

Madeleine D’Este

Growing up in Tasmania, obsessed with books and the shadows at the end of the bed, Madeleine now writes dark mysteries and female-led speculative fiction. Her supernatural mystery novel The Flower and The Serpent was nominated for the Australian Shadow Award for Best Novel 2019.

Her latest release, Bloodwood is available at Amazon.

You can contact Madeleine at www.madeleinedeste.com or @madeleine_deste on Twitter.

GUEST POST: The Flower and The Serpent – Official Author Soundtrack

/ jonblackwrites / 3 Comments

JB’s NOTE: I recently had the pleasure of discovering The Flower and the Serpent by Madeleine D’Este, a remarkable and adult-friendly YA tale straddling the line between horror and supernatural mystery set in 1992 Tasmania. Knowing my fascination with how music and narrative intertwine, Madeleine was gracious enough to sit down and assemble a soundtrack for the story.

Picture yourself in 1992, in Hobart, Tasmania.

These were the days of no internet, when Tasmania was an isolated island at the bottom of the world and new music came from the radio or television – Triple J and Rage or magazines like the NME.

This is the setting of my latest novel, The Flower and The Serpent, a supernatural mystery set during a high school production of Macbeth.

To help you immerse yourself into the world of The Flower and The Serpent, I’ve curated an official author soundtrack. It contains a selection of songs my characters would have liked around the early 90s and a few atmospheric pieces which inspired me during the writing process.

Don’t Go Now – Ratcat

A poppy breezy Australian early 90s classic, Ratcat was a permanent fixture on the stereo at teenage parties in the early 90s.

 

Tomorrow Wendy – Andy Prieboy

A dark depressing song for the teenage bedroom angst.

 

Connected – Stereo MCs

At a time when electronic music left the clubs and re-entered the mainstream.

 

Hieronymus – The Clouds

Another indie music Australian classic with a little more of an intellectual edge.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-gl3Ma3wew

 

Leave Them All Behind – Ride

An epic shoegaze classic.

 

Higher Than The Sun – Primal Scream

Perfect for skating through the empty suburban streets at night with a joint in hand.

A Forest – The Cure

The classic Cure track which conjures up dark forests and spooky things within them.

 

Wardenclyffe – S U R V I V E

Readers have likened The Flower and The Serpent to Stranger Things, which is interesting because I didn’t make it past episode 1 of the TV show. Perhaps the similarity is due to the music. While writing the book, I avidly listened to S U R V I V E and two of the members of the band are responsible for the Stranger Things soundtrack.

 

Titel 2 – Bohren & Der Club of Gore

1992 was also the era of Twin Peaks and Bohren & Der Club of Gore continued the ‘doom jazz’ spirit of Angelo Badalamenti’s Twin Peaks soundtrack with their own languid dread-laden jazz.

——————–

The Flower and The Serpent – Modern day Shakespeare meets supernatural mystery with this nail-biting young adult horror.

Who am I?

Madeleine D’Este is a writer, reviewer and podcaster from Melbourne, Australia. A lover of folklore, black coffee and dark synths, find out more at www.madeleinedeste.com or connect with her on Twitter at @madeleine_deste.