Genre fiction
My sci-fi thriller Rotations has just come back from copyediting. Now I’ll be going through it changing, updating, deleting and, possibly, getting grumpy (as in “How dare she think I should delete that!”).
Right now I’m nearing the end of a round of edits on my next novel – The Room (more on that soon) – so in a couple of days I’ll put that aside and get stuck into Rotations and whip it into shape. At the moment looking at getting it published by Christmas.
Jodi MacArthur has a new story published – Free Mercury – at the very cool Beat to a Pulp site. The story is a wonderful exercise in voice: layered, entwined and scary. Recommended read.
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Sun is high in the sky. Hot. Red hot. Flies buzz around it like a pile of bullshit. I stare, watching the flies buzz around and around.
Sirens break out behind me. I look at the road through the cracked windshield. I see I’ve swerved all the way off the road, all the way on to the grass.
Triple V’s first short story ebook release – Deadstick – is now up at Smashwords. Read the first 20% free.
“Deadstick” came from a fairy story I’d conceived, about a burning sailing ship running aground off a fairy village and the problems ensuing. A very different thing to how this dieselpunk story turned out. For a moment I thought of having a pair of stories, one fantasy and one sci-fi, both using that same device. This story, however, wrote itself very quickly, while the fairy one still sits in my head, not quite ready to pour forth. Perhaps it will come to me one day.
Deadstick was originally published in the Static Movement anthology Oil.
My novel should be published by the end of the year. At the moment the manuscript is with the editors – Lucky Bat books. Whew, getting to this point has been huge.
In the meantime I’ve got other stuff to do. Like picking a cover. This is my current rough, after ditching a few other ideas…
What do you think? What needs to change? Font size? The font itself? The angle of the words? Does it need to be busier? Quieter? Does it make you want to buy the book? Click on the picture for a bigger version.
Things will probably change when the artist (Peter Parkinson) gets hold of it. I’m hoping he has time before publication, otherwise I’ll run with something like this one.
Rotations is a near-future thriller. Or is that techno-thriller? I’m still figuring it out. Perhaps it’s sci-fi. Doubtless we’ll work out how to market it best.
As we get closer to publication date, I’ll post some snippets. Parts of it, some might recall, have been previously published online at the now defunct Infinite Windows site. It’s great to take it on again, get it professionally edited and ready to go.
I’m publishing under my Triple V Publishing imprint, where I also had my short story collection Eddie’s on Fire a couple of years back (you can still buy it at CafePress – P.O.D. for $13.95, plus shipping). Triple V is a quiet little thing, but we’ll see how it develops as things go.
Static Movement regular Jake Johnson has put together the first edition of a serial online anthology – Jake’s Monthly: Science Fiction. It’s got two of my stories in – “Where There’s Water”, and a story under the byline Michael Shone – “Katie Stumbled” (previously published in the Static Movement Anthology Bounty Hunter).
Quite a roster of stories in the anthology – , Congregation by Dorothy Davies, Nova by Joe Jablonski, Anomaly by Jay Faulkner, Reality TV by T. Fox Dunham, The Memorial by Ron Koppelberger, Firstfather by Tom Wells, Hylo by Tom Wells, Lemon Pi by John H. Dromey, The Third Crime’s a Charm by John H. Dromey, The Last Singularity by Ran Cartwright, THE POLY UNSATURATED, QUICK DISSOLVING, FAST ACTING, PLEASANT TASTING GREEN AND PURPLE ADVENTURES OF WOMYNGRRL AND boyman by David Perlmutter, The David Effect by Mike Jansen, Eye of the Beholder by Danica Green. Hmm, lots of Static Movement regulars in there. I think that’s around 200 pages? Well, 60,000 odd words. It’s a .99c eBook at Smashwords. That’s gotta be good value – I’d buy a single short story for .99c there.
My story “I am Nano” has just appeared in Australia’s premier print Sci-Fi magazine Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. A fun little piece of nano (well, flash) fiction. Thanks to editor David Kernot for his help with working on the story.
ASIM has been gaining a great reputation and a good following. It’ll also be available in eBook formats soon – at a great price.
Here are the opening words:
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“We cannot be self-aware,” LM said. “There are simply insufficient connections for us to realise anything approximating consciousness.” LM inserted his probe through the cell wall to take a sample. He took a sample every 100 milliseconds.
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My story “The Boxer” appeared in CrimeSpree 41, April/March this year (link goes to Amazon, Kindle edition $2.99 – non-affiliate link). It turns out there was a production error in the printing, with part of the story missing. And so the story appears in full on the CrimeSpree Website. Hope you like it.
Funny thing – I had my own little production error with the story. “The Boxer” was a kind of working title, but it quickly got changed to the final title – “Take the Fall” – which makes more sense. Somehow when I submitted it, I put the old title back on, and that’s how it’s stuck. To add to the irony, there’s a boxer (professional?) with my name too, so if you do an internet search for Sean Monaghan The Boxer, you’re going to find that guy way ahead of finding my story.
BTW “The Boxer” (“Take the Fall”) is an interlinked story with some others – “While He Lay Crumpled” published in The New Flesh, “Join The Band” published in PowderBurnFlash and “Breathe In published in Flashes In The Dark. Read in any order.
The issue of CrimeSpree also includes an interview with Don Winslow. I recently read his book The Dawn Patrol – very different kind of crime-thriller. Interesting guy.
My story “Back from Vermont” has just been published in Takahe 73. Takahe is a New Zealand literary magazine, published three times a year. After a long time of focusing my attention abroad, it’s nice to be published here at home (even if I did write a story set in the U.S.).
The story opens like this…
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In the time before my parents separated my father began building miniature trains and, over the course of an evening, would lay a mile or more of track through our neighborhood then rumble around until first light. It started on a Saturday and that following Sunday morning brought us a stream of folks from around the street, thumping on the door, demanding to see my father. My mother stood in the doorway, trying to deflect them, but for the most part they just wanted to know how they could join in
My story “Imaginary Maid Forgets She Is Late For A Banquet” appears in the Static Movement print anthology, Alternate Dimensions, just published. It’s available now at the PillHill Book Shoppe and should be on Amazon soon.
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Bianca sulked. She’d pushed herself into a corner of the kitchen, crouched and squeezed herself right under one of the benches.
“Bianca,” Paulette called. “Come out.” She paused, giggled a little. “Come out, come out.”
“Wherever you are,” Bianca whispered.
“I’ll teach you, you little snipe. I will teach you a lesson you’ll never forget.”
Bianca looked around the corners of the tiny dark space. She needed magic.
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Two of my stories – Fledgling and Zombie Love For Morons – have been selected for The New Flesh’s second ebook. Download for free from here. The ebook is a selection of the 50 top stories from the year. It’s a fun and eclectic mix of stories (my own two are from the opposite poles of my writing) – including some from known authors like Jodi MacArthur, Angel Zapata, Laura Eno, Erin Cole and … well, too long a list. Download it now and enjoy.
Triple V Publishing 