We are still working on the finalisation for printing of our upcoming anthology Mythic Resonance. I had the privilege of designing the cover (right) and will soon be trying to find some time to set up media releases and a promo video on youtube, etc.

As many of you know, Stephen, Satima and myself run The Specusphere voluntarily, but we are each very busy working as freelance editors (and in my case also graphic design, marketing and website maintenance). We would really like to see Specusphere flourish and (a) deliver more value for fans and creators of speculative fiction in Australia and (b) deliver some revenue to our businesses to help cover costs (financial and time).

What we need most right now is more hands on deck. If anyone is interested in getting involved with the running of this fabulous free webzine, please contact me at master AT specusphere DOT COM or on 0403 124 533. We have always been advertising for more help here but haven’t had much success finding committed individuals (even just for a few hours a month).

We have also been very light on new articles and reviews over the last six months. Submissions have really dropped away possibly because we just don’t have the time to keep pushing it out there or the money to advertise it. We once dreamed of paying writers for articles in the webzine, but we are not there yet — you can help! If you are an aspiring author, every bit of publicity helps get your name out there. If you have a website, think of the SEO benefits you get from posting an article on Specusphere with a link back to your site or blog. If nothing else, please link to us if you can.

Thanks for reading and best of luck with all your own writing and endeavours.

‘Vampire Killer’ Granted Parole. This headline begs the question, as headlines are wont to do, if there can be a vampire killer, that means there must be vampires. So do we have a real world vampire killer on our hands and a real world vampire? Actually, no. In the English language we can have a ‘Vampire Killer’ someone who kills vampires, or a ‘Vampire Killer’ someone who kills in the manner of vampires.

With a one-year-old to look after and a work-from-home business I don't get many opportunities to play games. So when the Skyrim launcher started an endless cycle of going back to user account control, preventing me from getting into Skyrim, I was grumpy!

Some helpful people over at Yahoo! Answers said to delete (or rename) the blob file in the Steam folder to fix this. That forces Steam to re-patch. Skyrim also updated after this and I was then able to get in to the game.

To find the naughty blob file in Windows 7 go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam.

I haven't really played enough of Skyrim yet to fully appreciate it but I have enjoyed it so far. It seems very much like Oblivion but with improved crafting and NPC behaviour.The scenery is breathtaking even for me who has to run the game on one of the lowest greaphics settings!

As far as epic fantasy games go Skyrim is the new benchmark.

Hi all,

Well, it's nearly December and I think we can look back on the quietest year ever on The Specusphere! We've put up barely a quarter of the number of reviews we've averaged over the previous two or three years.

This is mainly because we of the publishing team have been putting much of our energy into producing our first anthology, Mythic Resonance, which should be on the shelves in time for Christmas.