When friends ask me what inspired the novella Army Dreamers, I tell them the star of the show is Black Mountain aka Kalkajaka (Spear of Death), a strange geological formation set in a foreboding landscape found 25km south-west of Cooktown, managed and protected as a national park.

I’m posting this here because a great piece popped up today on the ABC website documenting the Aboriginal significance of Black Mountain, and its ongoing reputation as a place of angry spirits. Well worth a read.

As to my fictional take on the place, plenty of creative license has been used. I didn’t even know ‘Military Horror’ was a legit sub-genre when inspiration struck one morning on the train. What transpired on my keyboard is a little bit ‘post-colonial anxiety’, a sort of Dog Soldiers-meets-Kadaicha experience, parked under a pen name (lest anyone think I only write horror). Enjoy!

Buy your copy of Army Dreamers here. (Nightmares free!)