ED Day Ends

The last chapter of my online novel about life in Sydney after a virus pandemic kills millions is now online. I'll update soon about what I'm going to do with the novel now it's finished (short of a few changes), and why I chose to publish it free online.

Here's an excerpt from the last chapter of ED Day : Dead Sydney :

"This depopulation thing was always going to happen eventually, Paul,” Bossbloke said. “You know that, don't you? The world was already running out of food, water, energy, everything. We had to find 18 million football fields worth of land every year just to keep up with all the hungry mouths being born, while established farmland across the world was turning to fucking desert, or covering over with ice. This had to happen. They would have eaten the whole world.”

“The planet couldn’t sustain so many useless eaters,” I said, I knew what he wanted to hear.

Bossbloke grinned and clapped his hands, once. Crack, like a rifle shot. “Exactly!"

"If selective depopulation didn't happen, billions would have starved to death," I said.

Bossbloke nodded. "Exactly. What was the choice? Depopulation by virus, which means quick deaths, or depopulation by starving people to death? There is no choice. In the end, it really was an act of mercy."

Go Here To Read The Final Chapter In Full

Go Here To Read ED Day : Dead Sydney From The Beginning

Busy 'Killing Sydney'

Last week I did an interview by e-mail with Gary Kemble from the ABC's Articulate blog, on the the reasons why novelists publishing their work online, for free, will mean a brighter, far more exciting future for writers and the book publishing industry. An industry that is seriously in the doldrums right now, and in dire need of a revolution. $37 or more for a paperback novel in Sydney bookshops? No wonder so many first-time novelists never get a chance to find an audience.

There's also plenty of rambling in the interview about the online serialized novel ED Day, what it's been like to write a novel and publish each chapter online as soon as it's written, and where the story might be now heading.

A quick thanks to the readers here who've been sending links from the ED Day blog to their friends, both here and overseas, vastly expanding the audience. The readership of the novel has already grown beyond all my expectations and is now nudging 4200, in 19 countries. So thanks again.

Go Here To Read The Articulate Interview

The Lambs Of Temptation

The second chapter of the online novel, ED Day, is now up. It's free to read and download and new chapters will be published three to four times a week :

ED Day : Chapter Two


ED Day is the story of how 300 survivors of a massive bird flu pandemic, that kills millions in Sydney alone, rebuild their lives and society in the city centre. They clean up the streets, stockpile food and water, but they are 'trapped'. Outside of the city, something terrible is happening, but so far the survivors only have glimpses of what is going on.

Here's an excerpt from Chapter Two :

...nearly everyone is hanging for fresh meat. A big fat juicy steak smothered with fried onions and sauce is only the stuff of fantasies now. Lots of fantasies.

Nobody yet has snuck into the pen where we keep the sheep and lambs we rescued from the petting zoos in Darling Harbour. Butt some of the survivors get this weird look in their eyes when they’re standing around watching the sheep and lambs crop the grass in Hyde Park.

I probably do, too. There's about sixty legs of lamb walking around the park most afternoons, with Preacher as their shepherd. Trader was drooling over those lambs one day last week, and he pointed out that some of the lambs were snacking on the wild mint that's popping up all over the park.

"Look!" he said. "They're just asking for it!"

Go Here To Read Chapter One Of ED Day