Dirk Flinthart – January 9 2022

Launz Burch, writing under the pseudonym Dirk Flinthart is an author, editor, librettist, poet and playwright. His work has appeared in MAX Magazine, the Good Weekend and the English Sunday Telegraph. It appears frequently in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine (ASIM) and the Agog! anthologies. Striking Fire is an e-book collection of Dirk’s old and new short stories. It contains Sanction, which features the two principle characters in Path of Night, Dirk’s first full-length novel. His other series include the Red Priest stories. Dirk has adapted stories for short films, written radio scripts, interviews, plays, and his early works include Brotherly Love and This is Not my Story. His other writing includes a back-packers’ guide, the libretto for an operetta called Bedlam, and he has had at least one peer-reviewed paper (on the topic of online education) published under his pseudonym in an international education journal. Dirk is the editor of ASIM and two anthologies: How to be a Man (co-edited with John Birmingham) and Canterbury 2100: Pilgrimages in a new world. He holds a degree in Entomology, teaches Ju Jitsu, is learning Iaido and is conducting postgraduate research in education at the University of Tasmania.

Path of Night: Book One of the Night Beast Series
FableCroft Publishing, 2013; ISBN 9780980777086
15+ years
Medical student Michael Devlin is in trouble. Being infected with an unknown disease is bad. Waking up on a slab in a morgue wearing nothing but a toe-tag is worse, even if it comes with a strange array of new abilities. With his flatmates murdered and an international cabal of legendary man-monsters on his trail, Michael’s got nowhere to hide. His only allies are a hot-tempered Sydney cop and a mysterious monster-hunter who may be setting him up for the kill. If he’s going to survive, he’ll have to embrace his new powers and confront his hunters. But can he hold onto his humanity when he walks the Path of Night?

Angel Rising
Twelfth Planet Press, 2008; ISBN 9780980484113
15+ years
The New Ceres planetary charter forbids the use of all modern technology. Law confines the people to the ways of 18th-century Earth. But beneath the surface, rebellion and revolution simmer constantly. Proctor George Gordon, a hidden protector of New Ceres, knows all too well how easily such situations can bubble over, but nothing can prepare him for interstellar warfare in his own technologically challenged backyard. What odd coincidence brings him to the Sunrise Isles to be confronted by ninja and warrior nuns? Who is the strange but compelling amnesiac girl he finds in the convent, and what do the off-world nations want with her? And how can he really be sure who to trust?