Collecting the gong for best short fiction at the Ronald Hugh Morrieson Literary Awards from living legend, author Clive David Hill CNZM, at TSB Hub in Hāwera last Wednesday evening.
(I asked if I could have the Mayor’s bling, too - no dice.)
Said winning tale, ‘Hugo Garrett’s Exemplary Mowing Technique’, will feature in my upcoming collection, BLACK PILLS, out on April Fool’s next year.
Check out the all the winners here.
A PRETTY MAJOR DOSE OF BUSH JUSTICE - short story /
Ken Oath had heard all about Jack Nines, and wasn’t having a fucking bar of it.
All sinew, mullet and leathery blue-inked muscle, Ken had seen a bit in his short life.
He was nudging fifteen, a Yorta Yorta lad who’d been running a fight club out back until recent.
Bastard rock spiders like Nines fazed him not.
Ken killed the engine of his busted old Falcon ute, discreet under the canopy of a gnarled river gum.
The needy drone of lap steel hung in the flat, baked midnight air.
Nines was home, wasted, as per, it seemed.
Ken peeled back the ute’s tarp, hauling out a jerry can and a long, slender object wrapped in a towel. Checking the knife in his boot, Ken sparked a dart and scanned all three sixty of the horizon.
No one came out here, ever.
Still, it paid to be cautious.
Dropping to his haunches, Ken loped across the creek to Nines’ shack.
There was a crack of dim orange light throbbing through the back window.
Jack Nines’ sick fuck career ended tonight, guaranteed.
Moving quickly, Ken dashed across the wreck-strewn yard and dropped down behind the rusted hulk of Nines’ roo shooting truck…
Read the full story Yarns from the Fuck-You-Ni-Verse.
FIVE STAR SERVICE - short fiction /
Ron Devereux had set up shop at the Wangkur GrintCo servo.
They did actual, bonafide five-star service.
Lower Wangkur, situated at the most desolate western point of Leftish Arcadia, was home to about three dozen. Its sister city, Hogg, was a lazy five hundred or so Ks north east.
Ron – former band manager, occasional bush shaman, indigenous to the region for roughly 25,000 years – pumped petrol, squee-geed windscreens, made laboured small talk, the whole five star deal.
The servo saw ten customers, max, on a busy week.
It was the first day of spring, 2023.
A total fire ban was in effect, not that there was much to burn out here.
The digital thermometer hung next to an ancient cheesecake pin up outside Ron’s office read 47 degrees C.
It was 8am.
Ron had been tooling about with a gas refill, lit cig dangling precariously from his bottom lip, when a late model Beemer materialised out of the desert, encrusted in a shell of thick red mud.
It rolled up to a pump and its noncy German engine sighed as the driver killed the ignition.
The door swung and a chunky looking bloke in full bush costume bounded out.
Freshly pressed check shirt, Levis, suspiciously pristine cowboy boots, a spotlessly clean oversize akubra he’d no doubt got off the internet.
“Hot enough for ya?” he’d enthused, because of course he was the sort of bastard that opened a conversation like that.
Ron sized him up.
Playstation 6 phone case.
Flowing auburn ponytail, turning to rust.
Just shy of fifty.
Yep.
Wanker.
“Fill her up thanks cobber!” old mate chirped, oblivious. “Long drive ahead of me today! I’m a radio journalist, you see – the top brass just shipped me over from Sydney –“
Ron shuddered involuntarily.
“– and I’m off up to do a story on –“
Ron levered the cap off his hip flask, took a swig. He tuned out and pumped the bloke’s petrol. City spivs, especially from that bastard place, got him all homicidal.
The pump clicked and Ron screwed the cap back on.
He lit another cig and squinted at the Beemer.
“Car wash up in Hogg if you need.”
The wanker was still mid-reverie. He handed Ron cash, swung back into the pilot’s seat and flicked a salute as tinted electric windows hummed up…
PREVIEW: RENTAL HELL /
Here’s an excerpt of the edited version of a piece I submitted to the West Australian’s “Best Aussie Yarn” (sic).
Turns out they’re not into downer yarns set in the here and now, nor have they been renters in the last, ah, quarter century or so.
Who’d have thunk.
Anyhoot – there’s a longer form version of this that I have plans for, but please accept this one as a taste of my recent lit-comp alienating stylings for the time being.
(Thanks especial to Steve MinOn for suggesting the edits that squeaked this one in under the word count, too).
You can read the full version in BLACK PILLS: 7 TALES TO ASTONISH & CONFOUND, out now!
THERE had been many disappointments in the DeRoche’s recent rear view, and this catastrophic pile, this hazardous sore, barely a shelter – the sole rental in their budget and within walking distance of a kindy – was the final kick in the guts, confirming the universe held them in considerable disdain.
Reggie, stoic: “Kudos to the Photoshop guy, they really earned their effing keep, eh babe?”
Tobey, succinct: “What an effing shit hole.”
Amity, nearly-five: “Does it have an effing kitty door for a meow?”
Reggie sucked air between her teeth, giving Tobes a look.
“Better apply, right, babe? Lucky thirty-seven?”
Tobes just nodded.
*
“Is that… human faeces?” Reggie gasped.
Property Manager Nickala Grezzdl made a note to get back to the bond cleaners…
THE PUB WITH NO BLOKES - short fiction /
“– Revenant had supped of the Shaman’s elixirs
Yet still its condition was rabid dire
Returned as it did from Wasteland to Bolthole
A journey marked by shit and eldritch fi-iy-yire
Upon the coach trail, the path to Salvation
A portal did open, in the fabric of Real
Beyond that glimmering shroud, strange parallel Nation
A table was set, in house of Libation
Now The Revenant’s Ally, unlikely, the Bard –”
“Hmmm. Yeah, right-o. Nup, fuck that.”
Belching rotten cabbage, Ed Von Satán put the Witchfingerer tape out of its misery.
The undead pub rocker, cresting fifty going on 27 eternal, had been just off the Overdimensional track back into Wangkur when the agonies struck hard.
He was grinding away at a GrintCo Servo Bic, trying to get a lung buster lit, when a phantom vice grabbed his entire large intestine and gave it a hefty twist. Shock had Ed stomping on the accelerator as his good eye momentarily blurred wet. The old Bedford lurched into a scrubby verge, pinging a succession of lane markers. Ed hauled his foot off the gun as alien torment fisted its way southerly.
The van settled in a spume of red dust, which hung sort of hypnotically in the blazing Western Arcadian sunset.
Ed hadn’t noticed anything particularly lyrical about his sitch.
He shouldered the cabin door open, then carefully slid out of the cockpit, the fiery prolapse marching into his sphincter sharpening him.
Ed, mate, his surprisingly calm inner monologue rasped. About those five out-of-date Chiko Rolls and the slab of Four X you knocked off with Ron after he’d serviced the –
The thought was cut off by a turtle’s head touching rarely-laundered cheetah-print bikini brief.
That sharpened Ed even further – he snapped left: fuck all but bush, then right: wouldn’t you bloody know it, long-drop salvation.
He unbuckled and dropped, waddle-shuffling up to the structure. Hot pink
DANGER DO NOT ENTER DANGER DO NOT ENTER DANGER DO NOT ENTER DANGER DO NOT ENTER DANGER DO NOT ENTER DANGER DO NOT ENTER DANGER DO NOT ENTER DANGER DO NOT ENTER DANGER DO NOT ENTER DANGER DO NOT ENTER DANGER DO NOT ENTER DANGER DO NOT ENTER
Read the full story in Yarns From the Fuck-You-Ni-Verse.
BONUS: Home Brewed spec teleplay, episode 1 /
Here’s a spec teleplay I put together as part of the Queensland Writers Centre’s ‘Adaptable’ program. Currently working on some proposals around this, and I thought you guys might dig an insight into the opening chapters as they’d play out on screen.
HOME BREWED REVIEW – DUVAY KNOX (THE PUSSY DETECTIVE) /
☆☆☆☆☆
“Gonzo meets Grunge=GRONZO is this new form dat GARTH JONES has laid out. Debauchery and Demonic Entities reminds me if STANLEY KUBRICK had flipped his moovie EYES WIDE SHUT on its head and wrote THIS joint. Loved the Aussie SLANG and how Garth SLUNG werds round on the page so u was constantly off guard wit wut SICKNESS was cumming next. This book in many ways is social commentary on the world of ENTERTAINMENT & HOLLYWOOD in general. In shawt: peeps are willing to do ANYTHANG for 15 minutes of FAME FUCKERY. Even if it means KONTROLLING and DEMOLISHING a whole crowd of folks. The book format is decidely non-linear (and dats a GOOD thang). Especially, if U R tired of reading da same old formatted shit. U kinda hafta 2 B TAPPED into da ZEITGEIST of pop kulture to undastand SUM thangs. Butt dats good. WAKE YA ASS UP and kno wuts going on round ya!! GARTH delivers. Im glad he wrote this. Cuz its a book U kan open up to any page and it POPS and FUCKS UP ya Sensibilities and Expectations. Git to kno Garth cuz I think HIS is da VOICE of a new kinda Writing.”
Read Duvay.