‘First To A Hundred’ published in Tincture 8

I remember years ago an author I knew saying publication was like buses – nothing and then they all arrive at once. The next few weeks are a bit like that.

Today I’m ecstatic to see Tincture Eight go live, with my story ‘First to a Hundred’ in it. It’s almost two years ago now, since I first put pen to paper to write a ‘cricket story’. Only ever intended as a piece of flash fiction and some kind of bent challenge to myself as an up-yours to Australia’s cricket loving summer, it quickly evolved into something all together different.

The first section I wrote in less than an hour after spending several days chewing on the idea of beach cricket and equality for girls. I left it at the end of that first section, expecting that was it, I’d achieved a piece of flash fiction and went to do the weekly shop. Ten minutes later as I was pulling into Garden City Shopping Centre I knew that wasn’t the end of it and what was going to happen next. By the time I’d got a trolley and begun the shop I was choking down tears knowing how it was going to end. I rushed home and poured it all out onto the page in a little over two hours. And it was done.

All in all, it was one of those effortless stories that you are gifted once in a blue moon,  appears fully formed and writes itself. It went out to beta readers that night who tweaked next to nothing in it (except for the alignment with a tissue box and some spelling mistakes) and since then it’s been goodwill hunting for the right home.

I’m so very glad that home is Tincture. Daniel Young, the publishing editor, has been a brilliant support of my non-speculative fiction writing since Tincture first began in 2012.

The 1st December, the start of Summer, is the perfect publication date for a story that drips with the heat and pressure cooker environment of the summer before high school. Think Duran Duran, Reef Oil and Sweet Valley High books. Then think blue cabbage hat, green zinc cream and the spin of a soggy tennis ball on sand. That’s just the start.

Many thanks to Adam Byatt, Paul Phillips and Dan Powell who all beta read it back in 2013, and also to Stacey Larner, who proof read it. And thank you to Daniel.

Congratulations and happy publication day also to Sean Wright and Adam Byatt who both have poems in Tincture Eight and Emily Craven who also shares the Table of Contents with a short story.

Here’s a little snippet of ‘First to a Hundred’.

– – –

Five minutes. Five runs. Six balls to bowl.

It’s going to be over before lunch one way or the other. I look down the churned up pitch to Dougie, wondering how I came to be the one he’s facing down. I look at the battered stumps and imagine putting the tennis ball through them, like I’ve already done three times today. I weigh up the pros and cons of a short bounce or a long bounce on the hard sand left by the retreating tide.

Or bugger it, I could just throw under arm and let him thump it out into the surf for six. Let Dougie claim his moment of glory. At the end of the day it doesn’t really matter to me.

They only tolerate me because I can bowl as good as, if not better than, most of them.

“Amazing natural off-leg spin,” Gibbo commentated from the footpath, when he saw me throwing a ball against the garage door two years ago and invited me down to their summer-long game.

So each year my bowling action and the fact I can’t hit to save my life, so I don’t hog the batting order, gain me entrance to the game on the beach. Charlie says it’s really only because the Connors, who had two sons, sold up at the summer before we arrived and they were short bodies in the field. Gibbo tells me Charlie is full of shit.

It’s Jimmy who starts the chant: Dougie—clap clap clap—Dougie. It’s infectious and one by one the others join in. I throw the ball up and down as I’ve seen the other boys do and wait for the chanting to die out.

I’ve no idea what the deal is, with throwing the ball up and down, see no point to it, but I do it anyway. I’ve learned in the last two summers you find your place blending in; everything else is, as Gibbo says, icing on the cake.

SpeedPoets Call Back Final

Earlier this month I shared my cut-up poem. Yesterday I had the pleasure of performing it as part of my set at the SpeedPoet’s Call Back Finals. And allowing myself a moment of additional reflection, it’s a year since I first put down the first few dodgy lines of what became ‘Paper Mâché’ in the cafe area of an indoor playground post corporate Christmas party (and NaNo and 79,000 words in 28 days!).

ACCIDENTAL CALL BACK (with apologies to Andrew Phillips)

The first time you step onto a stage to perform, the last thing in your mind is winning. In fact, I’d only ever been to SpeedPoets once, to the 2013 final and had no real idea how the whole thing worked. So I was a bit gobsmacked when Simon Kindt announced back in April that I had won the Call Back slot for the month.

Since then I’ve been silently (and more recently, not so quietly) stressing about performing eight minutes of poetry. In the last few months, with my self esteem and confidence bottoming out to a new low, the prospect of writing new poetry, practicing and performing felt entirely overwhelming.

Two weeks ago, I started to catalogue in my head what I already had and hadn’t read over the course of the year. I’d been hording ‘Paper Mâché’ just in case I didn’t write anything new–which was lucky, because I hadn’t written a whole lot. There was ‘How Fossils Form When Conditions Benefically Interact’. And upon opening No Need to Reply to look at ‘Eclipsed’, the poem that closes the collection, I hit on turning the final piece ‘Closure’ into a poem. With a few simple tweaks, and then a few extra lines last week, it became ‘Body Warmth of Beginners’, a title I’ve had in my notes app for a very long time.

On the first run through, the three poems came in at 8 minutes and 11 seconds and I knew I didn’t have to look any further. Sometimes you can just be lucky.

For the last two weeks, while I battled a renewed plunge into depression, I practiced when I could–inflicting the set on unsuspecting friends (thank you Rob and Rowena) when the opportunity arose.

THE FINAL

Although I wasn’t able to get up and perform from memory yesterday, as I had hoped I’d be able, I was actually able to perform the poems, rather than just read them. And because I knew the poems well enough, there was a chance to engage with the audience from the stage during my set. There was this lovely moment, where I zoned in on a couple sitting to the right hand side of the stage and I whispered into the microphone ‘his lips pressed to the inside of her wrist’.

Chris Lynch (who read the most exquisite and sensual poem about mangoes!) and savanu (who did not crucify himself on stage although he assumed the stance of the crucified) tied as Call Back Poet of the year. But there was so much excellent poetry – Vanessa Page’s closing line was among my favourites.

As a new poet and a beginner performer, it was an honour to stand on stage yesterday with more experience performance poets. Many thanks to Helen Stubbs and Ben Payne who came along as my pit crew. Thanks also to Sean Wright and Stacey Larner who were exposing me to poetry long before I thought I might even have a chance to writing it. And also to Andrew Phillips, who insisted before he left the country, that I stop calling myself an ‘accidental poet’ and instead embrace it.

Of New Endings and New Beginnings

August is set to be a massive month if my to do list is anything to go by.

Oddly matched

Submit Submit Submit!

I managed to make my target of six stories for the #6in6 challenge (literally by the skin of my teeth about 9 hours after the Australian deadline – hooray for international time zones!). From that massive outpouring of words (I wrote over 24,000 new words!) I have five stories still to be submitted. They are all beta read and awaiting rewrites. This is where the new endings bit of the title comes from.

Several of the stories need (or needed new endings). My science fiction story ‘The Leaves No Longer Fall’ requires a massive rewrite of the final third and it’s taken time to get all the pieces to fit together in new way. ‘At Arm’s Length’ needed a new ending (because I believed the characters deserved a happy ending rather than the bleak one it originally had). At this point in time, the response has been positive for the new ending of ‘Arm’s’.

The plan is to work on one story a week leading off with ‘Leaves’ (it is the most time sensitive – wish it wasn’t the one requiring all the work though). Two of the stories should be easy rewrites and coexist nicely in a single week. The plan is to have them all submitted by the end of the month.

New Collaboration

On the beginnings front, I am working with Tasmanian writer, poet and musician Claire Jansen on a short story collaboration as part of Ben Walter’s digital residency. Ben’s using his residency to pair Tassie writers with those on the mainland (or further afield). Claire and I met randomly in one of the comment streams on the Facebook group set up by Ben and and we have been throwing ideas around via email for the last week. This morning I wrote the first installment of what will be a look at various lives as they crisscross in a 24-hour period. We’re aiming to each write six short pieces each.

Here’s a small taster of the rough and ready words that poured out this morning:

From where he lay, the crack between the curtains glowed with the golden fissure of dawn and he imagined the light stealing in. Seeking him out. Exposing him for what he was.

And he deserved it.

He’d told Helena, just one night to get it sorted out with Amber and ensure she had somewhere else to go. Now, oh Christ.

Amber slept curled in a ball, her head on his shoulder, sour breath grazing his neck. He extracted his numb arm, climbed out of the tangle of sheets and stood naked at the window watching the dawn creep across the city. The clouds curled and whisped, lit by the rising sun, in such a way that it looked as though fire rolled across the bay. A pending immolation of the guilty, he thought and pulled the curtains closed, plunging the room back into darkness.

New Look eMergent Publishing

After dragging myself through the wilderness of distance education and home school, things are finally starting to settle down and after all the beta reading I did for the #6in6 I am hankering to get my editing and publishing hat on again.

First up is a revamp of eMergent as a business entity including a new website (oh, how there will be cries of joy and probably a few tears when that old, grey, miserable site is gone!). The new site will be breezy and colourful but maintain the minimalistic feel of the original. We are working toward all that happening for a 25th August relaunch.

And I’m plotting to possibly get a new project up off the ground. Several pieces have to fall in place for this to happen so watch this space.

 

What does August have in store for you?