Two out of three

Antipodean SF #152 is online now, and the very first story in this issue is Blame Games by yours truly.

You can read it here.

I got the idea for this story 5/2-09, according to my notebooks, although the core of it is based on a newsletter I wrote for The Emerald Hill Times way back in *gulp* 2003. I used to be quite engaged in local community affairs when I live in St Kilda, and I wrote some very long, passionate and (at least I thought so) witty letters for EHT which usually ended up as Letter of the Week. I also got hate mail, private as well as public, with slurs about my Ozstralianess based solely on my name, which I, of course, subsequently responded to, but hey, that’s another story. I haven’t written it yet, but...

Blame Games first went out under a different title 1/8-09 but was rejected. It has since been accepted for publication twice. Two out of three ain’t bad for such a little story.

And now for something completely different

I've spent a nice, lazy Good Friday sleeping in, pottering about the house, reading, and messing around with a couple of SF themed prose poems, one a horror piece about alien sex, the other about the love between a married couple of different species growing stale.

This is my new, fun thing to do, or rather, it's an old fun thing that I loved doing as a kid and which I've started doing again recently. There's something about train travel that seems to be conducive to the assembling of a poem, and working on one perks me up more than a cup of coffee. I love the playing around with delicious sounding words and rhythmic sentences and amusing ideas, and since I have no illusions about ever becoming a Poet Laureate, or even a Poet Averageate, there's no self-imposed pressure of creating something publishable.

However, that said, following Heinlein's Rules of Writing (send out everything you finish) I did submit my first effort, and it was - knock me over with a feather - accepted!!

So now you can read Paradigm Shift over in issue #142 of AntipodeanSF.

This piece was conceived 18/8-09 on the train as a Very Dark and Serious Short Story, but once I sat down at a keyboard and the first line came out, it changed to a much lighter poem. I submitted it the first time 15/9-09, but it was rejected. I sent it out again 4/10-09 and it was accepted seven weeks later. I hope you enjoy it. I was certainly mightily entertained by the writing of it.

Oh, and HAPPY BIRTHDAY Hans Christian Andersen. You were a huge influence on me when I was a child, both because of your stories and because of your Danishness. Danny Kaye had something to do with it as well.

These pictures are by Anne Anderson, an art nouveau illustrator of children's books. She illustrated more than 100 books, some with her husband, Alan Wright, whose style is somewhat similar.