Dear R.J. Astruc,

This is XXXX, one of the editors of XXXX. Unfortunately, we have to reject both poems because they don’t adhere to our submission requirements (poetry must be sixteen lines or fewer; see our FAQ page). If you happen to have any poems that are less than 16 lines, please consider submitting those by this Friday, which is our deadline. However, in lieu of the formal letter we typically send, I wanted to write you personally because I was so taken with your poems.

I absolutely loved them, particularly “Something Not Quite LIke Morning”, and I feel that you may have better luck sending this to another XXXX journal called XXXX. Here is part of their mission statement: “XXXX.”

I encourage you to submit to both poems to the editors there. I have already alerted them about your poetry (though I did not send your work), how much I liked it, and how upset I was we could not accept it at XXXX.

All of us here at XXXX send our best wishes to you on your path as a writer. We hope to receive submissions from you again.

Good luck,

XXXX

The latest collection to go up is THE ONE CALLED ZEEM. The collection contains all five Zeem stories. Three of them are pretty good, and one of them is fucking brillaint. One of them is kinda balls, though. Here’s the blurb:

“The witch is in the health-food aisle. If I stand on my tiptoes I can see her from my register, tossing a jar of organic pasta sauce from one hand to the other. She’s frowning at herself in one of the mirrors tucked above the vegetable shelves—practising her evil eye, I guess, or working on a hex. The other Tesco’s customers are giving her a wide berth, correctly assuming that a woman with a platinum blonde crew-cut and a leering devil tattoo on her shoulder is not one to be messed with.”

Zeem is a fairy. Not the kind with sparkling wings and magical dust, the Arabian kind that works at Tesco and keeps a large supply of perfumes, air fresheners and detergents on hand at all times. Because they’re delicious. Zeem was a soldier a very, very long time ago, but now he lives in a London tenement with a local DJ, an Irish thug with a heart of gold, a collection of immigrants and various small-time criminals. It’s a good life, even if sometimes he has to help sort of an invading demon, discuss politics with a homosexual vampire or remove a wayward spirit from outside the window on the third floor.

The One Called Zeem collects five previously published Zeem stories, following Zeem on his adventures through the streets of a myth-soaked modern England. The Perfume Eater (first published in Strange Horizons, 2007) pits Zeem and his neighbours against an enemy from the past and was short-listed for an Aurealis Award for Best Fantasy Short Story. In A Hat Full of Leaves (first published in Aurealis, 2009) Zeem is forced to seek help from a tattoo-loving witch when an overgrown homeless man causes trouble. The Flying Woman (first published in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, 2008) sees Zeem’s best friend and sometimes-lawbreaker Johnny Flannery attempt to quell the screams of something ancient and powerful. Johnny and Babushka (first published in Electric Spec, 2010) was reprinted as part of Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror in 2011 and puts a very Zeem twist on a Christmas-style myth. Finally, What Would Luminael Do (first published in Reflection’s Edge, 2008) forces Zeem to navigate a tricky social and political situation as a local vampire is persecuted for his lifestyle choices.

Zeem is pretty normal for a thousand year old Persian fairy, he just manages to get involved in some abnormal situations. He’d rather be sitting at home watching TV and chugging a bottle of bleach. But that’s what you get for being nice.

One of the very few original pieces I’m going to release this year will appear in Hot Mess – a climate change themed anthology. It’s a book of fiction by semi-indie and indie authors… and me, heh. Anyway, it’s all about climate change and what could possibly happen in the future.

It’s pretty great and there’s lots of lovely art and also the money goes to charity, or at least some of it does. My story is about Venice going underwater and a Botero exhibition I saw while I was there about five years ago. This sounds less exciting than it is – no, I tell a lie. This doesn’t sound exciting at all, and it won’t be when all the cool places are underwater. Unless we develop gills, which would be fun.

In it, the main character Art, is selected to become the new member of the famous boy band, TINKER.

I’ve no idea how to organise this scene or how long it ought to be. Help!

Part one

Part two

I currently have two books available from small presses, one a slightly smaller press than the other. The first book isA Festival of Skeletons, which has been out since December of 2010, and the second is Harmonica + Gig, which came out in mid 2011. A Festival of Skeletons doesn’t sell particularly well, but I’m assured its sales are fine for a small press. Harmonica + Gig, which is a relatively straight science fiction story, sells fuckin’ great. However, Harmonica + Gig is available in bookshops and has had coverage in publishing magazines which I think makes a difference.

Also, it’s not about bum-jokes and psychic morticians, which I feel probably helps.

Admittedly having only 1 month of experience in self publishing (and only 2 weeks of experience in self publishing original fiction) under my belt doesn’t make me an expert, but I have found the whole thing quite promising. In the past two weeks I’ve sold 30 books, most of which were Street of Two Doors, which is my only proper “indie publishing” title.

Yes, it doesn’t compare even slightly to the sales Harmonica + Gig gets… but it’s not bad for two weeks and not bad for a first attempt either, especially one without any marketing beyond my itty bitty twitter list and this blog.

I’m not sure if I’m going to do this again – I really like the support of a publisher, because I’m rubbish at marketing – but I can see that it could really work out for people who are ready to put themselves out there.

*Please note, I love the publisher of Clockworld. They’re the greatest people ever. But I really, really hate comic sans.

When he finally finds his voice it’s a slight, yet audible country drawl.  ‘Used and abused,’ he says philosophically, balancing the hubcap on his forearm as if it were a dinner plate.  ‘Partially my fault, but I was only a kid then and didn’t know any better.  Belonged to my old man for years, pride and joy of his life, never a scratch on it.  I have it a month and all of a sudden the gearbox is faulty, the tires are shot to ribbons from doing one-eighty in fifty-degree heat.  A valuable lesson learnt on the Nullabor: you want to road-trip, you take a 4WD.  This girl is pretty, but she ain’t solid.’

Out here in the open the breeze is a little like winter but brimming with all the raw potentiality of spring — a June morning that aspires to be a February afternoon.  Bird song — a hem of myrtles and lantana — and us slap bang in the middle of a fifty metre clearing, tinkering with this hunk of scrap metal.  Right behind us the hotel, and beyond that the motorway: shuffling chrome shoulders and petrol belches.  I in a tight fitted shirt and he swaggering about in low-slung jeans as if he owns the place.  And perhaps he does, but we haven’t made it that far yet.  Still making with idle pleasantries and the age-old game of one-up-manship that some boys play with cars before they discover women.

‘She ain’t solid, but she got sentimental value,’ he tells me.  His grimy fingers navigate the detritus of oil and tubing and organs.  ‘My old man died in this car doing sixty miles an hour down a dual carriageway.  A heart attack, nothing special.  Lucky for the Citroën he dies with one foot on the break pedal.  When the police turn up he’s laid back in the driver’s seat, expression of bliss on his face: they reckon he’s stoned until they feel for a pulse and…’  He makes a gesture.  ‘…nothing.  No heartbeat, and the mirror won’t fog like it’s meant to.

‘Now ordinarily they’re supposed to call in to the station, get an ambulance round before the crowd gets too thick.  But the chick on duty is new to the job, doesn’t have the first clue of procedure, and figures it’s her duty to first and foremost to inform the family.  So she checks my old man’s driving license.  Adelaide, it says — that’s where he used to live, before the divorce came through and he migrated east.  A full day’s drive from Melbourne.’

A pause: he’s located a vital artery somewhere in the ribcage of the Citroën, hisses and whistles and spits at it for a time, like a broody hen mooning over her chicks.  ‘Sometimes smart people do crazy things,’ he continues.  ‘The policewoman hoists the body into the passenger seat, belts him in.  Climbs into the Citroën, calls her mum — something’s up, got to give a man his last rites — and heads off for the A8.  Drives seven hundred kilometers with no company but a stiff and a Lightfoot cassette playing on a perpetual loop — my old man was a real fan, throw back of the sixties, I guess.’

Did I mention his face?  The boy has this wide broad desert countenance, all pale and gormless with the features huddled together for what pithy shelter they can find.  His eyes are fishlike and blue and slippery and do not settle on anything for long.  Also I have noticed there is something asymmetrical about the way he moves — a sloping, a definite sloping, not so pronounced as a limp but more a subtle preference for the right.  He’s half vanished now into the Citroën’s engine and when he speaks there’s an echo to it, a reverberation against the metal.

‘Seven hours later she’s at our front door, rings the bell.  Her: I’m sorry to inform you that there’s been a death in the family.  Me: Oh hell.  Her: Yeah.  He’s in the car if you want him.  I go round to the Citroën and look in, and sure enough, there’s the old man, slumped over the glove compartment.  The bald bit at the top of his head kinda winking at me in the sunlight.  I ain’t the kind of guy to cry normally, but seeing him there — I burst into tears.  She holds me, just holds me, and she’s crying too.’

The Citroën creaks a protest as he adjusts his weight, wrests himself from the navel of the thing; his eyes flick past me, across my face, over my shoulder and on into the bush.  ‘Guess you kind of had to be there to understand,’ he says finally, something harder in the lines of him.  It occurs to me abruptly that I’ve missed my chance, my in — that what he’s laid out between us now is fraying, all ends and no conclusion.  Mouth burbling like a goldfish gasping air, brain coming almost but not quite to terms with this crude symposium of his unfortunate circumstance, I attempt to make amends.

‘Cheer up, city boy,’ he teases, managing in his barely sapient way to understand my gibberish perfectly.  ‘Out here, things die all the time.’  To illustrate his point he jerks his chin toward the landscape, crushes a wandering ant into the duco with the pad of his thumb.  Something smearing, something unsaid — and then only the car and the blond boy and the four hundred miles that separate me from him, him from me.

I leave him.  On the way back to the hotel a weakness pools in the back of my knees, and in the far distance a lone dog howls werefully at the sun.

I want to use some real characters from that era. The three I’m thinking about are:

• John Caesar
• Billy Blue
• Elizabeth Williams
• Alexander Pearce

I’m going to write them in their late teens/twenties, which isn’t correct for all of them – Pearce is chronologically about 25 years younger than the others – but I can see this being more of a young adult story. I can’t think of any other interesting characters from that era.

• Dark Country. This is a post apocalyptic novel I’ve never finished and really should because it’s quite good. Currently has 22,000 words to it, and it’s horrifying and stark and everyone gets murdered and raped. What happens? The world has ended, and our main characters live in the city of Holding, a military base and ex-prison. The mistress of a General has a vision of a prostitute being raped and enlists the help of a jaded veteran to help catch him. The veteran has secrets of her own, relating to her violent military service. I suspect it’ll wind up being about 40,000 words.
• The Service. I’ve done no writing on this baby. It’s a science fiction story. In the future, prisons close and the prisoners are sent back in time to the Jurassic period. There’s no option of return. It’s the civilised way of removing undesirable people from earth – it’s not the death penalty, technically. A society has evolved as a result of these people being sent back. One girl is trying to get back to her own time; she’s helped by a guy who was born in the Jurassic to criminal parents. I’m seeing this as about 30,000-40,000 words. Lots of room there for sequels, too.
• All the Cigarettes. Chick-lit. Girl gives up cigarettes, falls in love with work accountant, tragedy, love, withdrawal. And so on and so forth. I’ve got a few thousand words of this, and can see this hitting 10,000, but no more. I’d consider this an interesting little writing exercise.
• [Untitled] Tinker Tailor is the biggest boy band ever. They’ve just chosen a new member, Art, thanks to a hugely popular reality television show (Who’s The Next Tinker?). Art is excited as all fuck until half-way to a gig, when the band stop their tour bus, get out , and fight a giant tentacle monster. It turns out Tinker Tailor isn’t just a boy band. That’s their cover so they can fight Lovecraftian evil. Oh yeah.

So what do you think? What should I write? Actually, it’s more about the order I write them in.

If you’ve got the time please do write me a review on Amazon or Goodreads, it’d be spiffin’ lovely.

In other, sadder news, Dory Previn died. I’ve listened to her music since I was a child and she never fails to either depress me, creep me out, make me cry or make me laugh. Or some combination of the four. Amazing woman, incredible poet.