It’s been bitterly cold and dark in Melbourne, but the sun has been shining on me this week. I got a present in the mail from the Stella Prize as a thank you for their support. That was unexpected. Nicer still was a flash fiction piece being accepted by Fewer Than 500. After several years of submissions and a few different incarnations, my lil story has finally found a home, and a sweet one at that.  With editing and patience, this is a reminder that every story will find its place.

No kangaroos were harmed in the writing of my stories.

Meanwhile, out this week (but not quite yet) is my piece for Kudzu House Quarterly, which I am immensely appreciative of. It took a while for that story to find its home. Rather than shop it around to all the literary places after a couple of rejections, I went niche and found Kudzu. Turns out my story and this publication were made for each other.

In a pleasing turn of synchronicity, both these flash fictions are unrelated slices of something, but with nature featuring prominently, without being stereotypical of Australia (#straya). Both contain nuggets written from my personal experience of rural South Australia as a child, with dollops of melodrama and cups of 100 percent pure unadulterated imagination, and added sugar-free measures of facts, because fiction is not meant to be a warming bowl of biography soup, no matter how it tastes.

I’ll post the links when they come out, here and across all the usual social media places.

See ya for now.