Nudging words into the light

This week a writer I greatly admire gave me a pretty magnificent shout-out in an interview with theshake.

It was completely unexpected, and in the context of her talking about other really talented (and published) authors, absolutely batshit insane given that I have nothing fictional out there in the universe for people to see.

This wonderful writer, Nina D'Aleo, has a book out called The Last City. Aside from being a thrilling science-fiction and fantasy adventure - and up for Best Science-Fiction Novel at the Aurealis Awards in Australia this weekend - the writing is simply EXQUISITE. So as you can imagine, the recommendation led to a little bit of a happy dance and has helped put a spring back into my writing step that has been lacking for some time.

And yet... the fact remains that I have no actual fiction out there. None. There are non-fiction articles online and in print. There are some fun Lara Croft videos. But the fiction front remains unmanned and outgunned.


I figured this was probably a situation I should rectify. So until the novel is ready to win over publishers everywhere, the revised 'Ashes' script finds a buyer, and those short stories make the cut, I'm going to occasionally throw up some writing here, just for fun.

Ironically the first piece that will go up is my very first sale(!) of flash fiction to a wonderful magazine featuring some of my favourite writers - except that it ended up being pushed back issue by issue to fit in with themes, until something catastrophic happened and the magazine sort of folded into itself and died.

So. In the end it wasn't technically my first sale of fiction. But for a few months last year I got to call it that, which was nice and once again helped propel me forward with a little more enthusiasm than before.

Sometimes that's all it takes. A comment. A kind mention. A sale of a few words crafted into just the right shape to catch someone's eye. It's easy to dismiss how powerful these events can be. Of course, many might consider it the stroking of an author's ego, but in reality all you're doing is picking him or her out of the gutter so they can move further up the street towards the shelter of self-belief (usually unreachable, but at least it's in the nice part of town).

We'll see how this goes. I quite enjoy the idea of flash fiction. It's easily digestible on the morning commute, which is about the only time I have to read these days, and I've often wondered if there was merit in creating a magazine solely devoted to such pieces. Maybe one day.

In the meantime, I'll post the odd story here. Enjoy.