In one of those stranger twists of fate, I have two short stories out in two different publications this week, 'Undertow', which is out in the latest Sleepers Almanac and 'Christchurch' which is out in Volume 6 of The Suburban Review. Funnily enough, they're both old stories which went through a LOT of rejection before this point, so it's a thrill to see them in print after so long. Anyway, you should pick them up! Have a read! Let me know what you think.
Otherwise, you should check these out instead -
WATCHING
I am so excited for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. It's like Buffy meets, well, Jane Austen, and that is definitely up my alley.
I've long been a bit obsessed with ballet, and this piece on what happens after ballerinas retire is a fascinating look at the devotion it takes to be one and the lack of identity when you can't be one any more.
Last October, I had a (very) short Halloween-themed story published on a napkin and distributed through cafés around Brisbane care of the rather exceptional Tiny Owl Workshop. I've been meaning to post it on here for quite a while but am prone to fits of failness. Anyway, here's Raise the Dead. Raise
the Dead She comes back the summer of
‘09, with the earth in her hair and beneath the half-moons of her nails. Her
wedding dress filthy and torn up from the last time, the bullet hole in her
chest deep and black. She is drinking a gin and tonic and has reapplied red lipstick
on her thin, dead lips. “The old haunt,” she says when she sees him. She
grins, and a chunk of flesh at her cheek falls off. She kicks it beneath the
couch. “I still don’t know how you sit in that dress,” he replies,
because she had insisted on a flaring, princess skirt for the wedding and what
else is there to say? He contemplates telling her that he’s remarried since the
last time, but then he doubts she missed the photos in the hall and the
highchair in the kitchen. All the children’s channels in their Foxtel package.
He sits beside her and she takes another drink. The
liquid oozes out the side of her mouth.
“Which is this?”
“Gypsy curse.” The last time was voodoo. She’d had more of a taste
for flesh then and had tried to eat her sister. When they’d put her back in the
ground, she had become herself again; however briefly, and complained about the
laziness of gen y. They never think to localise raising the dead, she said, and
always wail like wet cats when more than one of us wakes up.
“Kids,” her sister replied, clutching at her shovel
and bleeding from the neck. They’d buried his wife alive and she, always the
martyr, had let them. “How long will it last?” he asks now, and watches her
purse her lips, shrug.
“However long it takes them to break it, I guess.”
“Huh,” he says, then gestures to her glass. “Top up?” -- Sophie Overett is a Brisbane
writer. This is her second story featuring a dead woman in a wedding dress. She
hopes it isn’t a trend. @SophieOverett
One of the funny things about writing and submitting to publications unsolicited means that you're sort of at the mercy of the people who staff it. Not that that's a bad thing at all, just a thing I guess. As it turns out, I've been submitting quite a bit this year, as a part of a new year's resolution to suck less, and everything has sort of happened at once, meaning I have been lucky enough to have three things published in April (!!). Two fiction pieces and one opinion piece. I keep meaning to write about it on here, but I'm really not all that good at pimping myself out (I'll get better, I swear!)
Anyway, you can read fiction piece one, Russian Dollsonline for free care of Seizure and the opinion piece,Just Say Yes at LipMag Online. If you're so inclined too, you can purchase Voiceworks #92 and read fiction piece two, Paper Pilgrims, from the Voiceworks website.
After the internet-explosion over the last few days, how could I not start this FF with Julia Gillard's address? There is a lot to love about this, and whilst people are (rightfully so) pointing out her hypocrisy regarding the GLBT community, this still means so, so much politically in Australia right now. This is a balls on the table take-down of a pretty nasty man, and given the recent influx of misogynistic attitudes politically and socially, this was an owning well-deserved. There's a really great round up of all of this stuff (and a whole lot more) over at The Wheeler Centre site by Clementine Ford, and it's definitely worth checking out.
- On a completely different note, the most recent AWM Speakeasy interview is with literary agent Sophie Hamley. It's a great insight into where agents see themselves in the industry and what she herself looks for in a work and, maybe more importantly, in the authors she chooses to represent. Things to take away seem to be a) don't be too precious and b) don't be too crazy.
7. Get into a fight with a famous science fiction author
Not
literally. Do not go punching Vernor Vinge in the face and then claim I
told you to do that. But sure, get into a fight with Vernor Vinge with
your stories. Find something about how Vinge depicted cyberspace
everting in Rainbows End, and write a story that shows how you
think he should have done it. Don't like how Max Barry depicted
cybernetic enhancements in Machine Man? Stick it to Max Barry
by writing your own take on the subject. A lot of how science fiction
has advanced, as a field, is authors trying to one-up each other and
responding to each other's takes on the same basic ideas. Even if you
don't prove everybody else wrong, you might get a really great story out
of it. (Again, do not actually get into a fight with anybody.)
- I'm basically in-love with this article on Angry Nerds & Sex, written by Siobhan Rosen.
- During the course of the week, I found two awesome articles pairing alcoholic drinks with classic novels, and the whole thing has resulted in me and a few friends starting up our own bookclub, Classics & Cocktails. We're running it the first Sunday of the month with the first one being The Great Gatsby and a French 75. I'm thinking I might blog about this here, mostly for the pure hilarity of the thing. If you're wondering about the two articles, you can check them out here and here.
- James Scott Bell has written an awesome post on how to write a novella. As someone currently writing a triptych of the suckers, this was supremely helpful and insightful.
- There's a great post over on LipMag about Robyn Lawley, an Australian model who has just received the job of being Ralph Lauren's first plus-side rep. Woman is gorgeous, plus her tumblr, Robyn Lawley Eats, is basically the best. On the LipMag front too, my new Small Screen Sirens column is up. It's on HBO's Girls and you can check it out over here.
I had a ball at the close of the Queensland Poetry Festival last night, aptly named Evening Draws Back the Sun. The poet performances were all pretty stellar, with LE Scott, Geoff Lemon, Darkwing Dubs, angela rawlings and the wonderful singer-songwriter, Tylea. She has a Myspace page for her music, and I recommend having a listen.
In other exciting news, my second column for Lip Magazine is up today on their website. You can check it out here.
In this-is-super-exciting news, I'm pleased to announce that as of this morning(!), I am a new fortnightly online columnist for Lip, an awesome local feminist magazine. I've been a fan of there's for quite some time, and the reality of getting to contribute is leaving me borderline delirious with enthusiasm. The column is dubbed Silver Screen Sirens and I'll be chatting about representations of women in television, both genre-wise and show-specifically. You can check out my first column over here on The Newsroom. While you're at it, you should take a look at some of their other columns and articles. It's all pretty sweet stuff.
