The stories below have all been digitally published and if you click on the titles or synopsis boxes below you can read them here on my site.
Untangling the Future, was first published by Cosmos Online and then Andromeda Spaceways. A million thanks to Damien Broderick (previous editor of Cosmos) for your guidance and encouragement. This was my first published short story and you have no idea what you set in motion!
The two other stories – Jasmine and Arghbleck and Nearly Forgotten, were both ‘Highly Commended’ in the ‘Best of Times’ -a humorous short story competition.
On the Verge won third prize in the 2011 Sydney Inner City Life Competition.
Red Onion Blues was published in Issue 27 of the online postgraduate writing magazine ‘Swamp’. It’s about sex and regret all tossed together with a bit of karma; and the editor I worked with called it: ‘poignant and a little unnerving.’
Frankenfungus, published in ‘Secrets and Lies’ issue 28 of the online postgraduate writing magazine ‘Swamp’ is, as its title suggests, a story about man’s manipulations of nature and how it’s not just viruses we should fear. It’s also about a grieving father and daughter, dark secrets, intractable problems and a solution that comes from an unlikely place. A story which may be fiction, it’s also teeming with spores of truth.
Alice and Bob in Rogue Space was written in 2020, as part of my master’s degree in creative writing.
The unit called ‘Digital Voices,’ introduces students to some of the new and novel ways writers are using the digital sphere to expand and explore their craft.
I was particularly taken with the choose your own adventure story format where readers, by clicking on hyperlinks, can choose different outcomes to the main story. ‘Alice and Bob in Rogue Space’ – the interactive story in the link below – was inspired by a site called Inklewriter – sadly discontinued due to excessive glitches.
Just to explain the genesis of Alice and Bob – my troubled protagonists: they are a theoretical couple used in science and engineering to explain, among many things, cryptography as well as quantum entanglement and the nutty things going on near and inside black holes.
Regular exposure to counter-intuitive physics, mind-bending cosmic scenarios and violent thought experiments must make for a fraught relationship. So, I wanted to dig deeper and find out what’s really going on in Alice and Bob’s marriage.
To engage with this story, you must not only be interactive, but also be able to tolerate extensive silliness, impossible physics and genre subversions. You must also be prepared to travel deep into the rabbit-hole of creative insanity and rogue space and risk completely losing your mind.
So basically, it’s just like spending too much time on the internet.
And finally, apologies to rocket scientists.
Fiction is the lie through which we see the truth.
Albert Camus.
