Hedge of Yellow Roses – Year’s Best

The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy & Horror 2015 is out, and includes my short story “A Hedge of Yellow Roses”, which was originally published in Hear Me Roar, and also won a Ditmar!

“A Hedge of Yellow Roses” is the story of Vermeille, a vagabond knight (perhaps), who bears three messages out of a kingdom torn by revolution, and on the way stumbles across an old farmhouse and its enchanted, enchanting residents.

The Year’s Best also has all these other most excellent reasons for buying it:

 

• Joanne Anderton, “2B”
• Alan Baxter, “The Chart of the Vagrant Mariner”
• Deborah Biancotti, “Look How Cold My Hands Are”
• Stephen Dedman, “Oh, Have You Seen The Devil”
• Erol Engin, “The Events at Callan Park”
• Jason Fischer, “The Dog Pit”
• Dirk Flinthart, “In the Blood”
• Kimberley Gaal, “In Sheep’s Clothing”
• Stephanie Gunn, “The Flowers That Bloom Where Blood Touches Earth”
• Lisa Hannett, “Consorting With Filth”
• Robert Hood, “Double Speak”
• Kathleen Jennings, “A Hedge of Yellow Roses”
• Maree Kimberley, “Ninehearts”
• Jay Kristoff, “Sleepless”
• Martin Livings, “El Caballo Muerte”
• Danny Lovecraft, “Reminiscences of Herbert West”
• Kirstyn McDermott, “Self, Contained”
• Sally McLennan, “ Mr Schmidt’s Dead Pet Emporium”
• DK Mok, “Almost Days”
• Faith Mudge, “Blueblood”
• Samantha Murray, “Half Past”
• Jason Nahrung, “Night Blooming”
• Garth Nix, “The Company of Women”
• Anthony Panegyres, “Lady Killer”
• Rivqa Rafael, “Beyond the Factory Wall”
• Deborah Sheldon, “Perfect Little Stitches”
• Angela Slatter, “Bluebeard’s Daughter”
• Cat Sparks, “Dragon Girl”
• Lucy Sussex, “Angelito”
• Anna Tambour, “Tap”
• Kaaron Warren, “Mine Intercom”

 

 

 

“A Hedge of Yellow Roses” in Year’s Best

My bittersweet (and Ditmar Award-winning!) post-revolutionary fairytale “A Hedge of Yellow Roses” has been selected for the 2015 Year’s Best Australian Fantasy & Horror! The book is edited by Liz Grzyb and Talie Helene and is available for preorder now from Ticonderoga Publications.

It has a great cross-section of current Australian writers, and if you’re looking to get a survey of what’s happening here then it’s not a bad place to start!

• Joanne Anderton, “2B”
• Alan Baxter, “The Chart of the Vagrant Mariner”
• Deborah Biancotti, “Look How Cold My Hands Are”
• Stephen Dedman, “Oh, Have You Seen The Devil”
• Erol Engin, “The Events at Callan Park”
• Jason Fischer, “The Dog Pit”
• Dirk Flinthart, “In the Blood”
• Kimberley Gaal, “In Sheep’s Clothing”
• Stephanie Gunn, “The Flowers That Bloom Where Blood Touches Earth”
• Lisa Hannett, “Consorting With Filth”
• Robert Hood, “Double Speak”
• Kathleen Jennings, “A Hedge of Yellow Roses”
• Maree Kimberley, “Ninehearts”
• Jay Kristoff, “Sleepless”
• Martin Livings, “El Caballo Muerte”
• Danny Lovecraft, “Reminiscences of Herbert West”
• Kirstyn McDermott, “Self, Contained”
• Sally McLennan, “ Mr Schmidt’s Dead Pet Emporium”
• DK Mok, “Almost Days”
• Faith Mudge, “Blueblood”
• Samantha Murray, “Half Past”
• Jason Nahrung, “Night Blooming”
• Garth Nix, “The Company of Women”
• Anthony Panegyres, “Lady Killer”
• Rivqa Rafael, “Beyond the Factory Wall”
• Deborah Sheldon, “Perfect Little Stitches”
• Angela Slatter, “Bluebeard’s Daughter”
• Cat Sparks, “Dragon Girl”
• Lucy Sussex, “Angelito”
• Anna Tambour, “Tap”
• Kaaron Warren, “Mine Intercom”

 

Books read, things seen: February 2016

Murder! Heists! Creativity! Secrets!

 

Hear Me Roar: Book giveaway

 

Ticonderoga Publications is giving away a copy of its latest anthology Hear Me Roar through Goodreads. The giveaway is currently open and finishes on 1 August 2015.

• Cherith Baldry, “Star Bright”
• Jenny Blackford, “The Sorrow”
• Kay Chronister, “Dustbowl”
• Stephanie Gunn, “Broken Glass”
• Kathryn Hore, “Generation Zero”
• Kathleen Jennings, “A Hedge of Yellow Roses”
• Faith Mudge, “Blueblood”
• T R Napper, “The Silica Key”
• Rivqa Rafael, “Function A:save(target.Dawn)”
• Alter S. Reiss, “Catalysis”
• Jane Routley, “Barista”
• Cat Sparks, “Veteran’s Day”
• Kyla Ward, “Cursebreaker: The Mutalibeen and the Memphite Mummies”
• Marlee Jane Ward, “Clara’s”
• Susan Wardle, “A Truck Called Remembrance”
• Janeen Webb, “A Wondrous Necessary Woman”
• Eleanor R Wood, “The Fruits of Revolution”

My story, “A Hedge of Yellow Roses”, is about what happens to fairytale curses which are given too late, and what becomes of enchanted girls when there are no princes left. It begins:

Vagabonds leave signs in the road for those who know how to read them. Royalists also have their secret language of warnings and betrayals. This story too, in its fashion, is a sign to mark the way I went.

 

Tangled Streets – Bloodlines

 

Ticonderoga Publications has announced the table of contents for its new dark urban fantasy anthology Bloodlines, edited by Amanda Pillar and scheduled for October.

• Joanne Anderton “Unnamed Children”
• Alan Baxter “Old Promise New Blood”
• Nathan Burrage “The Ties of Blood, Hair and Bone”
• Dirk Flinthart “In The Blood”
• Rebecca Fung “In the Heart of the City”
• Stephanie Gunn “The Flowers That Bloom Where Blood Touches Earth”
• Kelly Hoolihan “The Stone and the Sheath”
• Kathleen Jennings “The Tangled Streets”
• Pete Kempshall “Azimuth”
• Martin Livings “A Red Mist”
• Seanan McGuire “Into the Green”
• Anthony Panegyres “Lady Killer”
• Jane Percival “The Mysterious Mr Montague”
• Paul Starkey “The Tenderness of Monsters”
• Lyn Thorne-Adder “Lifeblood of the City”
• S. Zanne “Seeing Red”

It includes my story “The Tangled Streets”, which I wrote several years ago after getting happily lost in Darlinghurst on a crisp autumn day. It’s about streets and city-time and emergency maps, among other things.

 

Skull and Hyssop, or: A New Story and Some Old Drawings

Did I mention I have a new story out in issue 31 of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet? I do! It is called “Skull and Hyssop” and is an airship adventure, introducing the would-be-dashing Captain Moon, an enigmatic Weatherfinder, and Eliza Blancrose (who always wears a very smart hat). I say “introducing” because I have started a story about Eliza’s arrival in Poorfortune, and What She Found There.

Here is the full table of contents:

Fiction

Jessy Randall, “You Don’t Even Have a Rabbit”
Goldie Goldbloom, “Never Eat Crow”
Kathleen Jennings, “Skull and Hyssop”
Owen King, “The Curator”
Sarah Micklem, “The Necromancer of Lynka”

Nonfiction

Nicole Kimberling, “Crazy-Sexy Agriculture = CSA”
About the Authors

Poetry

Lesley Wheeler, “Four Poems”

Cover

Ursula Grant

The two pictures in this post are older drawings which date from the early drafts of the story, when I was still trying to work out the look and feel I wanted – from recollection it spun off a glimpse of the figurehead of the Cutty Sark, a girl with whom I used to work, and the idea of “steampunk but blue”.

 

Print is Dead

Today, on Twitter, Text Publishing was (facetiously?) harking back to the gentler days before the great YA/Adult Lit debate, and wishing for some new pieces on the death of print publishing. I think they wanted links to articles, but I wrote a poem instead.

Print is Dead

Ink stains the sheets.
The newswires said
Behind a locked door
Print lies dead.

TV detectives
Trace white lines
Where the books fell
With broken spines.

(The culprit words
In bright neon
Through dirty windows
Flicker on,

Then flicker off.)
Print lies there, still
Ignoring all the ink
We spill.