The more I read by Joshua Scribner, the more impressed I am: he just keeps getting better and better as a writer. Check out “My Father” on Infinite Windows, which has come out hot on the heels of the remarkable “Hyperbrain” in Static Movement. I look on in awe: Scribner’s sense of pace, of character, of timing and of twist are both stunning and textbook. He has a website where you can keep up with his (prolific?) output.
Author: Sean Monaghan
Writer. Voracious reader.
Flashes in the Dark – Worst of Love contest results in
Jodi MacArthur’s extraordinary story “Spindled Souls” has won the Worst of Love contest for flash fiction at Flashes in the Dark. Jodi’s story is complex, dark and very multi-layered – absolutely a clear winner. Laura Eno’s wonderful “Ironies” came in second and my own “Fiancees Among Us” made third. Well deserved honorable mentions to Graeme Reynolds and Erin Cole.
Thanks to Lori and Bob for running such a challenging contest. Writers – check out Flashes in the Dark for their next contest: Lycanthropy. That contest closes on March 21st.
Kings of the Realm: A Dragon Anthology – out now
Kings of the Realm, the lastest in Lame Goat Press’s growing catalogue of anthologies is available now both from both CreateSpace and Amazon. Amazon might be a little more convenient, but from CreateSpace the publishers get a little more folding green, which has gotta be good for their future. The anthology includes two of my stories: “Xuento” a hard-edged science fiction adventure story, and “Scattered Dunes” a character-driven fantasy story.
Taupo Edge 1973 – new Venus Vulture track on Reverbnation
I have just put a new Venus Vulture track Taupo Edge 1973 on my Reverbnation page. The three minute track is just a quiet varied drone, with some voice and field recordings. Hopefully a little haunting. I hope you enjoy this – you can stream or download for free from the site. There’s also an earlier three minute piece there “Tolela Visiting the Ghost July 1913”, which is one of my personal favourites.
I’m focusing this year on writing a little more than music so releases might be a bit light for a while. I have tracks submitted elsewhere for compilations, and a couple of concept pieces – an album and an ep – which I will tinker with, but without deadlines. I guess part of the vague plan too is to make a three to five minute track each month – then by the end of the year that’s about album length. It’s good, I think, to make a little music from time to time to use a different part of my creativity.
Join the Band, out now on PowderBurnFlash
My story Join the Band is out now on the crime writing site PowderBurnFlash. This is a quirky and compressed story, and some readers might notice links between it and an earlier piece – While He Lay Crumpled published last August in The New Flesh. Yes, there’s a bigger story at play here, which also involves (though it’s not obvious yet) Breathe In from Flashes in the Dark, and two other stories in late draft stage which will be looking for publishers in the next couple of months.
Uh-oh, typo
Crap. I just got my copy of The Next Time and I’ve left a typo in my story “Berg”. Yes, I do proofread, and proofread again, but this has slipped through. It’s clear to me what I’ve done – made a late change to a sentence and missed deleting an “s” and the apostrophe. It probably worked fine in the original sentence, but now, of course, it looks wrong and dumb. My apologies to the editor, publisher and the other writers. I guess the message for me here is to get someone else to do a final proofread of my pieces too.
Two new flash stories published, available online now
My horror story Into the Green Pit came out in issue 369 of Bewildering Stories, last week while I was off the net on retreat.
Another story, more of a thriller, though a little horror, The Cottage Garden has just come out in the February issue of Static Movement. It was cool to write something set in New Zealand.
The retreat was great – more on that in another post.
Year’s best fantasy, 9
A last minute post here before I’m off. TOR books, a science fiction imprint which has been around for ages, is making The Year’s Best Fantasy 9 available in chunks for free from their website. You have to be a registered user, but as with many sites now, that only takes a moment. I discovered that a story by one of my favourites, Kim Wilkins “The Forest”, was in there. Nice to be able to read some fantasy again from her (oh, I haven’t read it yet, just registered, downloaded and printed – I’ll add it to the pile of reading for the week away).
On hiatus – back in ten days
Yay, I’m off for my writing retreat (I guess a little like Jodi’s cave) for a week. I have a stack of first-draft manuscripts to work through. Some of them feel close to what I was thinking so might just take some editing, others are pretty loose and bedraggled and will quite possibly need full re-writes from scratch. I’ll also be looking at the pesky last chapter of the novel and try to knock that into shape. I will also be doing some story outlines for stories I’ll think about developing in coming months. It’ll be a busy year. Mood: excited.
Currently reading – Hypothermia by Arnaldur Indridason
I got a copy of this book – the seventh in the series apparently. I’ve just started in on and so far I’m engaged and intrigued. Indridason wrote the novel which was filmed as Jar City, which I’ve blogged about before. I’m not usually one for police-procedurals, but this one is off to a good start.
Sean Monaghan - Writer 