Ariadne, I Love You wins a Ditmar!

Ariadne, I Love You wins a Ditmar!

So Ariadne, I Love You won best novella at the Ditmar Awards on Saturday. Absolutely bonkers when you look at the books it was up against. I managed to pull it together enough to give a semi-coherent acceptance speech – this time not just a long list of happy expletives.

Congrats to all the nominees and this year’s winners. But an extra solid shout-out to J.S. Breukelaar who won best novel for The Bridge. A twofer for Meerkat Press!

How fkn chuffed do these kats look?

 

J Ashley-Smith and JS Breukelaar pointing at their Ditmar Awards
Five dark inspirations (Big Indie Books)

Five dark inspirations (Big Indie Books)

Ariadne, I Love You – Blog Tour

I was in a very particular headspace when I wrote Ariadne, I Love You. Keen to explore a very particular kind of supernatural occurrence: one that could be easily justified in rational terms, without being entirely explained away. At the same time, I was obsessed with the idea of inheritance, of the scars the past leaves on the present, and a particular kind of gothic sensibility that arises when a character worries over the same fixation for decades. While I wasn’t trying to emulate any particular story or author, these five books left marks that – in one form or another – somehow found their way onto the page. They are masterworks of glorious ambiguity, of weirdness, darkness and the unexplained. They embody a particular sensibility – at once bleak and wry – that is a comfort on a wintry grey afternoon. They console with tragedy and fear, chipping away at the foundations of what you took to be real. I hope they give you the joy they have given me…

 

Read the full article at Big Indie Books. Then go follow them on Twitter at @BigBooks.