Fiction: 'Gingerbread' for Eve's Harvest

Eve's Harvest has been published through Odyssey, is available through Amazon, and looks pretty amazing! You can also see a preview, which means reading a few pages of my story for free! Check it out here. The theme is 'One', so my story, and many of the others, centre on the concept of one true love, which, is not entirely original, but given the feminist slant of lip magazine, who published the anthology, you can expect something a bit different to the usual drivel.

Feature: Madman National Cosplay Championships for Rave Magazine

For RAVE Magazine, issue 969. It was a fun day!

On the weekend the RNA showgrounds were invaded by the most colourful collection of characters  has ever seen. ANNA ANGEL reports on the highlights witnessed at the MADMAN NATIONAL COSPLAY CHAMPIONSHIPS.
It ain’t easy being a national cosplay (costume role-play) finalist, and as I found out at the weekend, months of painstaking stitching, hand-dying and collecting animal skeletons are just par for the course. If you call yourself a cosplayer because you once made out with Mary Jane (i.e. your right hand) while wearing a Spider-Man mask, these costuming spectaculars, sets, props and finely rehearsed skits would put you to shame. That is, if the cosplay community weren’t overwhelmingly supportive. For the second year, Madman Entertainment and Supanova presented the country’s biggest festival of anime, manga and video game cosplay, with the Brisbane leg scoring the additional gong of naming Australia’s best cosplayer. The finalists – five state champions and three wildcards – took to the stage after a morning of anime madness and mutual costume appreciation.

Updates and inspirations: Frock Paper Scissors launch

The new-look Frock Paper Scissors is finally live, and I couldn't be prouder of the way it's turned out. The contributors were all so talented and amazing to work with, and this project has definitely been worth all the tears, emails and late nights. It will continue to be updated over the coming year, but the frequency is up to circumstance at the moment. I will also be posting some of my own work featured on the site, but I'm generally just ecstatic to see it all come to life, after so many months of planning, deliberating, discussing and editing. Until it the reins are handed over next year, this has been/will be my 'baby'. To use an awkward analogy, the past months have been a bit of a gestation period (and those final hiccups and stresses, the labour?), and I'm exciting to see where else it can grow.

Review: 'Walk' by Israel Cannan for Rave Magazine

Belated review for Rave, published earlier this month.

Israel Cannan - Walk
(Poets Corner)
Soul-searching and country wandering
Track names like Set Me Free, The Revolution Fight and Rise indicate the angry chords of a wayward activist. Whilst Israel Cannan’s first full-length release is at times political, he comes off more as a likeable old soul than a jaded socialist. Walk is the result of Cannan’s penniless cross-country meandering, and the places and people along the way. Because of this, it feels like the indie-rock soundtrack to an over-saturated montage of road-trip escapades and self-discovery – Ben Harper meets a travelling gypsy and makes a movie about it. There’s reflective soundscapes as he’s rolling through the countryside (Letting Go and the standout Set Me Free) and spirited, layered tracks as our protagonist faces the world’s wrongs (The Revolution Fight, One Fine Day). There’s tracks to build the interwoven romantic tensions (The Final Day) and accompaniments to the touching final scenes (Forever This Time). With songwriting talent this strong, that film would be worth the price of admission.

ANNA ANGEL