I’m still on a high from my podium finish in The Fiction Desk’s 2018 Ghost Story Competition – and I’m pleased to report the story, ‘Highway Memorials’, will appear in the publisher’s next anthology, alongside runner up Chris Hogben with ‘The Star That Stayed Till Morning’ and winner C. B. McCall with ‘The Spare Room’. The title and publication date have yet to be disclosed, but I expect it will appear sometime in winter (or summer in its UK hometown).
Around the same period, I will have a book review appearing in the pages of Andromeda Spaceways #71, which is scheduled for June. I’ve offered my opinions on Dying & Other Stories: Literary Speculative Fiction by Eugen Bacon (whom you might remember as the editor of the current edition containing my story ‘The Larval Stage’). No spoilers here, except to say that my favourite story from Bacon’s short fiction collection, ‘A Man Full of Shadows’, is available to read for free at Antipodean SF. You should do so.
April has been busy indeed. Here’s a snapshot of what else happened in the past month:
1. I finished the second draft of a mainstream novel I’ve been working on forever. I went back to it a week later and found it dearly needs a third draft.
2. I completed the first draft of a synopsis for said novel. In the past I’ve loathed writing synopses, but this one emerged painlessly. In fact, I’d almost say I enjoyed doing it. I hope that’s a good sign.
3. I wrote my first ever piece of flash fiction, ‘Freckle Face’.
4. I inadvertently wrote my first ever children’s story the way so many authors do – as a way to amuse my daughter for ten minutes. Now I just need to learn something about publishing children’s fiction.
5. Started reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, who grew up in the same Sydney suburb as my cousins. I’m about halfway through it, immensely impressed so far.
6. Raged briefly (or should that be ‘brief?’) about this slab of post-modernist drivel.