That ultra-short story Not Today Cheree is out now in the August issue of Static Movement. Loads of other great writing to check out in the magazine too.
Author: Sean Monaghan
Writer. Voracious reader.
99 word story coming out in August
I wrote an ultra-short flash story – fits in the under 100 words category. It will be coming out in the August issue of the fabulous Static Movement magazine. Check out earlier editions – there’s heaps of great writing there. I’ll post a full-link when the edition is published.
New horror story published
Funny, I don’t know that I’d intended to become a horror writer, but about half my output this year has fitted in the genre. Latest story is Second Visit, published on July 23rd in The Daily Tourniquet. Hopefully a sufficiently complex tale in under 1000 words.
Copyright resolved …
Well, after more investigations it looks like all the below is not applicable. I still have the right to do as I wish with recordings – release on a netlabel is fine and those older recordings will stay available.
mood: joyous, excited
Copyright problems
Edit: now on 23 July – the below has become redundant in view of new information that has come to light … ah well.
Over the last couple of years I’ve released some music as digital downloads through international netlabels. The music has been covered by a Creative Commons licence – which means that I give up certain rights (ie. royalties) to make the music available. The licence is an Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0
Sounds simple, huh? I sign the licence and people can download for free, nobody pays, nobody receives payment. Except, uh-oh, I joined APRA, which protects copyright for New Zealand artists (eg. if a copyrighted track gets played on the radio, APRA ensures that any fees get to the artist). That seems like a good idea in case I release some copyrighted (as in not Creative Commons) music. Except that some of the music was released on a netlabel in a country where APRA’s equivalent asks for licence fees for members. Meaning that the label owner may have to pay them, who I presume would then pay APRA who would then pay me. Except that I’ve relinquished my rights to payment quite clearly. Apparently that doesn’t wash. The label owner can’t pay (of course not, s/he does this as a hobby, for the fun of it, not for money) so will have to take my music off the label. So here’s the craziness:
Because I belong to APRA, which protects the abuse of my music, my music is going to be unavailable.
Believe me, I think APRA do great work (which is why I joined). It’s too easy for artists’ work to be used for the benefit of others (eg. ambience in a cafe) without any reward for the artist. Many people depend on this kind of remuneration for their livelihood and APRA’s work, along with other agencies, is great in protecting that. But the irony here is that my work will become entirely unavailable because of APRA’s protection as it applies internationally.
While the netlabel scene is small time when related to the music industry as a whole, I feel sad that this little bit of New Zealand culture on the international stage is going to be hobbled by what is really a technicality.
It looks as if I will have to resign my APRA membership in order to make my music available in the future. Even then, it also seems that because of being an APRA member at the time the music was released it’s now going to be permanently unavailable through the netlabel.
mood: sad, disconsalate
Poetry published
Some of my Fibonacci poems have been published in issue 4 of The Fib Review. Some nicely slick poems there. Fibonacci poems have the formal syllable sequence 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 (each line has the number of syllables of the previous two lines combined). More info on Fibonacci poems on their main page.
Flash Fiction challenge story published
Powder Burn Flash posed and interesting challenge: write a story that involves a wedding cake in the middle of the road – however you pursue that idea. It’s both invigourating and challenging to write with a distinct and especially weird constraint, and I really wanted to make the challenge idea critical to the story, rather than just adjunct (say by shoe-horning the wedding cake into an existing story).
I’m pleased with my story – Crossing County Lines – it’s very stripped back with lots for the reader to fill in, but I do think that the wedding cake in the middle of the road remains integral to the piece. If it was taken out, would the story work?
Venus Vulture track on NTNS best of- compilation
The Venus Vulture track Distant Rainfall part 2 from the Heavy Skies EP has been included on Stroll, one of the four best of NTNS radio – AprMayJune 2009 compilations, which also includes tracks from Resting Bell and TestTube labelmates, Phillip Wilkerson, Sylvie Walder & entia non and d’incise. Mark of NTNS has been a great supporter, as well a playing tracks on the radio show, he also included a track from Signal Artifacts on the end of year compilation Sun in 2008.
Under The Stone Bridge
My story Under The Stone Bridge appeared in Flashes in the Dark on June 25th. Yes, creepy horror again. Flashes in the Dark is a very cool and dynamic site – a new story every day, plus Lori Titus’s serial; definitely worth a visit and a read.
Shifting sands
It seems there’s a shift going on here as my writing year expands faster than my soundscape year. While this has been a good year for Venus Vulture, I notice that the blog has become more focused on my fiction and writing – it has been my best year for writing by far too. And typing this post will push the most recent music post off the blog’s frontpage and make my header “ambient music yada yada” sit atop a bunch of posts about flash-fiction. That’s kind of weird, so I’ll be re-thinking a little. Should I have separate blogs for each? Next year’s secret project will have its own blog, and probably my focus will be on that anyway. Perhaps I’ll just change the header. If I can figure out how to do that – it must be possible since I put it in there in the first place ….
Sean Monaghan - Writer 