My Beautiful Sky

A story in 100 words? It's madness!

7/6/2017

Actually, no it isn't – it's micromadness! Once again Micromadness is celebrating the short short form. The annual competition runs alongside the National Flash Fiction Day competition in New Zealand. Writers are invited to send in their stories of up to 100 words and 22 will be selected to be published, one a day, from the 1 June.

I'm very delighted that one of my stories has been chosen. I don't know when it will be published – but have been enjoying reading the work of other writers. So many ways to interpret this form. And it all leads to some very creative writing.

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Life, the Universe and artist dates

7/12/2016

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I took myself on a wonderful Artist date this morning. (If you want to know more about Artist dates, check out The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron.) I took some reading matter for 'artistic nourishment' (see photo) to a new coffeeshop called 'Park Ranger' opposite Scorpio Books in Riccarton. Afterwards I popped into Scorpio books, where I browsed for a bit and bought two books. One was chosen randomly and the other was deliberate. It was curious that they at first seemed to be polar opposites - and yet... Perhaps in fact they complement each other. Both are attempting to make sense of something 'imagined' or 'envisaged' – and who is to say which one holds the most truth? The books are 'Emmanuel's Book', comprising the messages of a supernatural being, as channelled to Pat Rodegast; and 'Reality is not what it seems: the journey to quantum gravity', by eminent theoretical physicist, Carlo Rovelli. I'll let you guess which one was chanced upon randomly...

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And the winner is...

29/11/2016

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... me.

I am so delighted to be the overall winner of the MindFood Short Story Competition!! The December 2016 issue has some very complimentary things to say about my writing :o) And I get $1000 to spend!

I'm going to use the prize money to pay for a series of writing retreats. I have a little hideaway in Oamaru that's very cheap so my $1000 will go far.

The winning story, Superhero, was in the March 2015 issue. It was inspired by my mother who sadly passed away last month (October). So in a way it is very timely. In sorting out my Mum's affairs I discovered lots of her writing. So I know where the writing urge comes from.

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Horror anthology sneak peek

19/11/2016

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The fabulous Fantastic Books publishers chose Halloween as the launch date of their latest anthology: a collection of 32 horror stories, all of which are exactly 666 words long. It was quite a challenge to write and must have been even more of a challenge to edit! My story is called 'The Number of the Beast', and to get you in the mood, I'm giving you a taster...

The Number of the Beast
We all have a number. Me? I’m one in a hundred, according to psychologists. Those who are born like me have a capacity for extreme violence without conscience. Of course, you can’t tell who I am just by looking at me. I walk unnoticed among all the other statistics: the seven in 100,000 who will suffer a brain tumour, the eight people who will drown in a garden pond this year.

Who shall I be for you? The Grim Reaper, Kali, the Devil? I like to think I’m just a person doing what I was born to do. I know my purpose; there’s not many who can say that. I like to think that I do my job well.

These Auckland summers are something else when the weather is so warm and close, the air just hanging there, making people sticky. That’s how it is this morning. I checked the forecast – there’s an 80 per cent chance of a storm. When it’s so hot and humid, people sleep with their windows open. Even though they heard about me on the evening news; even though they know I strike at night...

If you want to read more of this, plus stories by Michael Brookes, Stuart Aken, Linda Acaster, Nathan Robinson, Regina Puckett, John Scotcher, Chris Chambers and more, then head over to Amazon, where you can pick up a paperback or Kindle edition.

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