July 5, 2009 - Chronos Awards Shortlist

I'm pleased to announce my short story "Her Collection Of Intimacy" (Black Magazine #2) has been shortlisted for the 2009 Chronos Awards for Best Short Story.

The complete shortlist can be found here: HorrorScope.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

May 9, 2009 - Ditmar Shortlist

I'm pleased to announce my short story "Her Collection Of Intimacy" (Black Magazine #2) has been shortlisted for the 2009 Ditmar for Best Short Story.

The complete shortlist can be found here: HorrorScope.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

March 20, 2009 - X6 Cover

For those interested in cover design and conception, you can see the evolution here.

This is the wonderful beast that will be carrying my near-future, alternate-history Australian love story Wives.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

March 19, 2009 - The Interferers On The Rise!

My story "A Tale Of The Interferers: Necromancing The Bones" has been nominated for the 2008 Sir Julius Vogel Awards (the New Zealand science fiction awards) in the category of  Best Novella/Novelette.

Published in Dark Animus 10/11 originally slated for December 2007 but not seeing the print of day until June 2008, I was VERY surprised and extremely happy that this twisted piece of my psyche has received more notice than it did on publication. And it should! It's dark, twisted and very funny. Uh, well, at least I think it's funny... more info on the story here.

I haven't yet seen who and what else is nominated in this year's awards. Hopefully their website will be updated soon.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

February 13, 2009 - Australian Shadows Award 2008

The Australian Shadows 2008 Shortlist has now been released:

• Lee Battersby - "The Claws of Native Ghosts" (The Beast Within, Graveside Tales)
• Sara Douglass - "This Way To The Exit" (Dreaming Again, HarperVoyager)
• Jason Fischer - "Rick Gets a Job" (Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine #37)
• Christopher Green - "Lakeside" (Dreaming Again, HarperVoyager)
• Paul Haines - "Her Collection of Intimacy" (Black: Australian Dark Culture #2)

The winner of the 2008 Australian Shadows Award will be announced on 13 March 2009.

For more information about the Australian Shadows Award, please visit the AHWA website.

I'm very happy to have made the cut, especially with that story. Okay, Lee, the gloves are coming off for the next couple of weeks...

-------------------------------------------------------------------

January 28, 2009 - Australian Dark Fiction 2008

Over at Horrorscope there is a review of Australian Dark Fiction for 2008. Nice to see two of my stories making the list of recommended reading:

• "Her Collection of Intimacy" (Black magazine #2)
• "Tanihwa, Swim with Me" (Midnight Echo #1)

-------------------------------------------------------------------

December 21, 2008 - Paper and Iron

My Wives novella, sitting at a pretty 26,000 words, sits on my desktop awaiting my fingers. I've got three weeks to hammer out the remaining 10,000 words needed to complete this darkest of tales.X6 dictator, Keith Stevenson, has kindly given me more time than Cat Sparks to finish my great Australian novella (oh, and it is, folks! it is!).

On other writing news, I've secured the cover image for my Slice Of Life collection due out early next year (Feb/Mar 2009). Design of course to follow. I love this piece of art -- it encapsulates perfectly the state of the protagonist in the Slice of Life titled stories, and even better that it is his liver he is cutting out and eating. Nothing like blurring the reality between the fictional and delusional Haines.

And the TOC for The Last Days of Kali Yuga is almost finalised, with very little cross-over between the two new collections.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

November 23, 2008 - The Sound of Mr Pussy

October 31, 2008 - Midnight Echo

The AHWA is extremely proud to present the inaugural issue of Midnight Echo: The Magazine of the Australian Horror Writers Association. You can get it here.

It includes a good number of SuperNOVArians: Matthew Chrulew, Brendan Duffy, Andrew Macrae and Natalie Potts, as well as some of the usual suspects of the Australian Horror scene including: Deb Biancotti, Stephan Dedman and Martin Livings.

Oh, and it includes my Kiwi-exploring-his-roots tale Taniwha, Swim With Me.

October 20, 2008 - Scary Food

The most wonderful Cat Sparks sent me some copies of Scary Food and I have to say the book looks fabulous. It has the feel of one of those Ripley's Believe It or Not or a turn-of-the-century Coles Funny Facts book and is nice and weird to boot.


Thanks to all the contributors (it's a top heavy Aussie horror banquet here too) and to Sparky and Rob Zombie Hood for putting this together.


It may be the smallest Agog! Press title out there, but by God, it's the best looking.


If you're interested, you can buy a copy of this limited print run here.

September 13, 2008 - Black Magazine

The latest issue contains an interview, a story (a teaser from the upcoming Macabre anthology) and some advertising for a writer called Paul Haines.

That's me.

And there's a whole lot of stuff about the Dark Side in Australian culture too. I hope that both me and this magazine stick around for years to come.

September 1, 2008 - Black Box

A Black Box arrived in my letterbox last week.


It looks great onscreen, the stories are pretty good so far (only a dozen or so read).  With flash fiction like this it is hard not to rush the read, which you really shouldn't do because every word is doing something and it can be easy to miss the real twist. The only real criticism is that some of the artwork can give away the punchline (Mark Deniz's story is a good example). The perfect thing to take to work and load up while you can't be fucked working. Or eating your lunch to.


I haven't got to the music yet, but there's some good artwork lurking in this box.

August 18, 2008 - Australian Men's Health

My article on bowel cancer "Trouble Down Below" has been published in the September 2008 issue of Australian Men's Health.

Although not my original title and not quite as colourful as I had intended (ie you probably won't laugh or go ugh as much) the editors have done a great job of making my non-standard article fit their magazine.

It's out now.

(Oh  yeah, woe betide, the difference in per word pay rates between the fiction and non-fiction worlds is staggering).

June 27, 2008 - The Interferers In Dark Animus 10/11

The latest issue of Dark Animus is finally available in print. It is the best looking and most professional edition yet and weighs in at the size of most Australian anthologies. It contains work by Richard Harland, Cat Sparks, and best of all, has published the first of my Interferer tales. James Cain has always taken risks with my stories, Doof Doof Doof being the previous example of a story publishers didn't want to touch, though James took it with relish and it received an Aurealis Award nomination for Best Horror Short Story that year. The Interferers story, Necromancing The Bones is little more extreme than that, originally workshopped at Clarion South to great distaste, then reworked and doubled in length to a small novella. One colleague suggested if I were going to continue to write such filth then I do it under a pseudonym to protect my career and good name. I didn't.

The cover of the latest issue is from a scene in the story, though I don't think Herve, the artist, quite got what my characters were all about, depicting a more Robert E Howard version of one of my boys, rather than the distinctly Haines creature that he is. Dion Hammil, however, nails The Interferers with his internal illustration.

Horrorscope has reviewed the magazine favourably. The Interferers garnered this:

A very amusing and ribald tale poking serious fun at D&D gamers and the stories they create. It seems the adventurers in this world live interconnected lives, with “the good” guys very much in league with the perceived “bad” guys, in an eternal cycle of swindling the common folk out of their money. Filled with acts of bestiality, brotherly love, and profanity, it is a very funny romp through the product of some very twisted gamers’ imaginations.

A previous rejection for the story stated that the magic system wasn't original enough and was too reminiscent of D&D, which was exactly my point. Why does every fucking fantasy trilogy/novel try to create its own magic system? Enough is enough! It should be part of the Turkey City Lexicon. We don't bother to describe how a dragon can exist in a fantasy novel anymore, do we, people? No.

This story, as all Interferer stories are, is dedicated to Mike Dowman, long time friend and travelling buddy, on whom the disgraced knight Scwythe is based.