Sunday Short: Aperture by Jennifer Mills

Of course his mother was too short-sighted to buy them a tank, so for the first few days Confucius—the name was Helen’s idea—lived in temporary digs, a plastic juice bottle with the top cut off with scissors, until Jeff finally yielded to its persistence and bought a glass fishbowl, a squat sphere that sat like a model planet on the counter, in the place where he usually dropped his keys. For weeks Confucius did laps around its planet, glowering at him. Reminding him. He hated it. Its eyes took everything in and give nothing away.

This is a rather lovely piece about a man living in China with his girlfriend, only to be promptly visited by his American parents. The short explores themes of isolation and relationship breakdown rather wonderfully through the use of a goldfish named Confucius, who is as quickly out of Jeff and Helen's life as he arrived in. You can read Aperture care of the Meanjin website here.

Friday Finds

- Kill Your Darlings has an excellent podcast over on their blog about the value of agents in Australia. Really interesting stuff. There's also a great list care of DIY MFA telling you three things to know before you publish.

- Chuck Wendig has another awesomesauce list of 50 Rantypants Snidbits of Writing & Storytelling Advice told with his usual cussing charm.

- People are always writing these 'Must Read' books lists, but Flavorwire's 50 Books Everyone Needs to Read 1963 - 2013 is really something else. Excellent array of books (and some pretty surprising ones in there too!)

- Google Poetics! And, in completely unrelated news, a Troy McClure supercut!

- I've always had a huge soft spot for characters wearing eyepatches (they're super great okay) and The Mary Sue has put together an awesome list of 10 Powerful Eyepatch Wearing Characters in Geekdom (Fury! Mad Eye Moody! KING BRADLEY!).

- How lovely is this new lookbook for Project 104 swimsuits?  Gorgeous stuff.

- If you're up for some weekend viewing, why not check out this list of 13 Independent Sci-fi/Fantasy Movies You Need to Watch? There's something for everyone!

- To take you out for the weekend, have some illustrations featuring the patron saints of brilliant female characters. I am chin-handsing all over the place right now.

Orla Kiely Resort 2014

Oh man, I've posted collections by Orla Kiely before, but this new one out for Resort 2014 is gorgeous.The late-fifties inspired prints and the tailored silhouettes are doing things to me. There's not a look here I wouldn't wear. Plus the model is sixties stunning, with her thick bangs and dark eyes. Check out the full collection over here.

Your Mid-Week Art Break: Andrew MacLean

How aces are Andrew MacLean's illustrations? Brilliantly atmospheric and a strong, angular sensibility to it all. He's doing a comic at the moment called Head Lopper and it's, well, pretty gory but awesome. You should check him out.

Sunday Short: Abraham's Boys by Joe Hill

“I don’t know. I am not finish yet.” But as Max spoke, he was already beginning to realize he had made a mistake, allowed himself to get carried away by the fascinating possibilities of the assignment, the irresistible what if of it, and had written things too personal for him to show anyone. He had written you were the only one I knew how to talk to and I am sometimes so lonely. He had really been imagining her reading it, somehow, somewhere—perhaps as he wrote it, some astral form of her staring over his shoulder, smiling sentimentally as his pen scratched across the page. It was a mawkish, absurd fantasy and he felt a withering embarrassment to think he had given in to it so completely.

I've been reading Joe Hill's 20th Century Ghosts at the moment - a rather brilliant short story collection which explores the real intimacies of the absurd and the supernatural in situations that run a little too close to reality. Abraham's Boys is a hard short about two brothers who are confronted with a bitter, unpleasant truth about their father. It's ultimately about the loss of innocence and damaged boys entering desperate situation. It's heart breaking and horrifying and just quite excellent. You can read Abraham's Boys over at Fifty-Two Stories.

Friday Finds

Hannah Kent has written a rather brilliant behind the scenes of her novel, Burial Rites, from conception through to publication. It's a really good read for anyone interested in the process and is beautifully written to boot.

- This is a great post on compiling short stories for your short story collection. Really helpful stuff.

- Love Reading, Hate Books is one-star reviews of classic lit. Super fun and perfect reading for your Friday.

- The Feminist Taylor Swift twitter account has given me life this week. It's incredibly funny.

- Flavorwire has a really interesting exploration of postfeminism in cinema at the moment - particularly in the guise of Spring Breakers and The Bling Ring (or which I have sadly seen neither!). Really worth the read. On a lighter (?) note, they also have a list of the 50 Greatest Movie Antiheroes of All Time and it is basically the best. I love love love a good antihero.

- These 6 Fairytales for the Modern Woman are pretty great too.

- These stunning photographs by Rayyiu Radzi are my happy place this weekend too. Check them out fooreever.

Your Mid-Week Art Break: Adrian Dadich

How great are these cyborg girls by Adrian Dadich? Immensely creative, his representation of weaponry and technology infused with character is doing things to me. Also, I'm totally obsessed with the fox hoodie. *chinhands*

A Turns 15

My little brother, A, turned 15 over the weekend.

I got to co-chaperon a party for his friends alongside my Dad which is always pretty hilarious. Fifteen isn't exactly a forgiving age, one that shows itself in the stretch of gangly limbs and the new canvas of oily, pimply skin. The joke of small jaws and mouths crowded with metal braced teeth. That said, they were a nice bunch of kids. Bright smiled and polite and good friends to A, which always scores bonus points in the tallyboard of  Overett family life.

Poor A's had a rough hand, the only boy and the youngest of the three of us, and by quite a bit too - he's eight years my junior, ten younger than M. Even though my cousin's been off making babies of late, A's still such a kid to my extended family - someone who needs care and a specific type of teasing, not the balls on the line mockery we normally engage with each other. That's changing though, and he's started to bait us all a little too keenly, a smart grin on his speckly face.

A's had the mixed blessing of my sister and I both having moved out of home by the time he hit thirteen, and sometimes I wonder what that's like. Not having the arguable blessing of being an only child, but having sisters who didn't so much live in your pocket as they paraded in and out of your life. It doesn't help that M and I are chaotic personalities at best - loud and big and total time sucks. It's not like what we had growing up though. With us only two years apart, my life was defined by my sister, just like it became defined by A when he was born too. Which is an interesting concept of itself. I was seven when he was born and have a clear, stark memory of it - of Mum on the couch, flushed pink and grinning and then of her after, drained of colour, and I remember thinking she must have leaked it all out into this tiny, red thing that had come out of her. He was so squished up and even though my hands were only small, I could hold his whole body in the space between my sweaty palm and fleshy elbow.

He grows basically an inch a day at the moment, having recently broken the 6' line, and it always surprises me when I come around to see him and he towers over me. Somewhere in the back of my head he's still barely at my hip, tugging on my pant leg to play house or cops and robbers with him. It's weird like that - being a big sister though. So much of my childhood and teen years were teaching him things - how to play Monopoly and Jenga, bake, how to clean the lizard tank. It's all swings and roundabouts I guess though, and I'm excited to see what the next few years are going to unleash - what man's going to climb out of my brother's broadening chest. Excited to see what, exactly, this kid's going to teach me.

Sunday Short: Underwater by Romy Ash

She picks a strand of noodle-like weed off her arm and begins to cry. Swimming has always cured her of hangover, melancholy, tiredness. She’s grown up making her decisions underwater, in the quiet there, or out the back past the breakers, with the water surging around her and the about-to-break waves lifting her way up high and back down again. This is the first time that swimming has made things worse.

If I'm perfectly honest, I have mixed feelings about Romy Ash. She's quite the golden child of Australian writing at the moment and she is, doubtlessly, incredibly talented. That said, I feel she can rely on easy exits sometimes to get you connected to a character - particularly abuse, molestation, etc. It seems to be a feature of a lot of what I've read about her, including her Miles Franklin + Stella nominated novel, Floundering (which is good! And definitely worth reading! I just continue to believe that the sex abuse in that one is entirely unnecessary).

Underwater is a short story of hers published in both the Griffith Review and Best Australian Stories and it really is a lovely and emotive piece of writing. The bond between two siblings traveling to a beach in Japan is biting and sweet, as opposed to just bittersweet, and the relationship of the protagonist with the water is the best kind of beautiful. It's a lovely short story. You can read Underwater over on Ash's website here.

Friday Finds

By now a lot of people have heard about the rape joke made by a creator to a manager at the Electronic Entertainment Expo. It's all pretty hideous, but, on maybe a positive note, it's generated a lot of dialogue about rape language and misogyny in gaming which is always something worth talking about. The Mary Sue has a good breakdown of the situation here as does Gamers Against Bigotry.On a better gaming note, Princess Peach will be a playable character in a mainstream Mario game for the first time since 1988!

- The Wheeler Centre brings it again with Tara Moss talking about evil women. Fair warning: she is super gorgeous and seems to snap her lips a lot? Lovely piece of writing though.

- Chuck Wendig tells you 25 Things You Should Know About YA Fiction

- These six tips for finishing your novel are pretty great too.

- I'm totally enamored with the photography of Robert Kaczynski. Miss Moss has a lovely collection of the pics over on her blog, so check them out.

- 10 Great Books Starring Cats! Because what's not to love about that?

- What your favourite Shakespeare play says about you. Apparently I find unisex t-shirts convenient?

Your Mid-Week Art Break: Riikka Auvinen

How great is the artwork of Riikka Auvinen? A graphic designer from Finland, she utilises water colours beautifully to create these dense, dark worlds and wonderful creatures. Her stuff is pretty excellent. You can check out more over on her deviantart page.

Sunday Short: We Make Women Out of Snow by Tara Cartland

Are you waiting for me to say that she looks like you, Jane? She doesn’t. She looks like whatever is hiding behind the wall of Fitzjames’ chest. She looks kind. He cradles her in the crook of his arm as he climbs the tall stepladder, and places her, gently, atop her own body.

I'm really enjoying Seizure's flash fiction series, Flashers (only a little because I've had one of my own pieces published by them). Tara Cartland is one of those writers you can see exploding over the next few years. Her wonderful time-stop story, Frank O’Hara’s Animals, won the Overland / Victoria University Short Story Prize late last year, and she's since gone on to be shortlisted in the QANTAS Spirit of Youth awards. Her ability to capture brief, scattered moments of life and infuse them with so much weight is pretty marvelous. We Make Women Out of Snow is only a little thing, but it tells of lost loves and aches that rings wonderfully true. You can read We Make Women Out of Snow care of the Seizure Flashers series here.

Friday Finds

- Justine Larbalestier has written a great post on twitter etiquette.

- Despite the dig at Brisbane, Spook Magazine has a pretty great article on being a writer (which is a bit NSFW? Idk. There are a couple of butts).

- This post on 11 Most Kickass Literary Heroines is really interesting and comprises a lot of unusual (but awesome) picks.

- These lady puns are basically the best thing.

- The photography of Marina Refur is doing things to me emotionally. It's so whimsical and just lovely. 

I'll also be reading at Whispers: Out of the Frying Pan on Saturday afternoon. It's my first public reading and I'm pretty excited. It's a free event, so, if you're around, you should swing on by. :)