Where to begin?

It’s easy to jump into the works of a new novelist. They have a nice shiny book that can be plucked off the shelves and dived into. It is trickier for someone whose work is solely found in short fiction publications. And while I do have plans on having a novel published in the future, at the moment I am a writer that falls in the latter category. Therefore, here is a brief run down (and extracts!) of five possible short stories you might want to dive into to get a taste for my writing:

The Glassblower’s Peace

Tomaso is the surplus son. While his father plants his family into every aspect of Venetian society, Tomaso is left to wander through the canals of the great merchant city until he is picked up by the army and given a uniform. There is still not much of a purpose. What city needs an army when it is protected by the most powerful magician of the age?

But there are cracks emerging in the Glassblower’s Peace. An enemy grows more aggressive. And together, Tomaso and the Glassblower herself must uncover what has caused this shift in power.

The Glassblower’s Peace can be found in both Aurealis #114 and Year’s Best Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction and Fantasy Vol. 1. It was nominated for Best Novelette in the 2019 Sir Julius Vogel Awards.

The Glassblower's home was a lanky building, so skinny it looked as if each floor must have had only one room, and so tall that it still looked as if the building had seven or eight levels. Tomaso knocked on the wooden door. He half expected it to swing open of its own accord. It stayed perfectly still. He knocked again. There was still no response. For a second more he waited and then Tomaso decided that the fate of the city was more important than decorum. He hammered at the wood, yelling and shouting, drawing glares from a multitude of nearby windows until he realised that the door was unlocked. With the turn of a handle and the gentlest of pushes, it swung open to reveal a single, darkened room. Chest puffing and red-faced, Tomaso stepped inside.

The sound of wind chimes filled the air. Glass clinked together. A melody formed in Tomaso's ears long before his eyes adjusted to the darkness. The tune made him think of harsh Egyptian summer, the air dry and stale on his tongue. The sun hammered down at him, seeking every patch of bare skin, whipping it until it was an angry red welt and then salt filled his mouth, lodging deep into his throat. He was so lost in the music that he didn't spot the wizened old woman until he could have reached out and touched her lined face. Her wispy white hair sat perfectly still atop her head, like a well-behaved cat, and whiskers were beginning to grow out from under her nose. Everything about her, from her posture to her leathery skin, suggested that the weight of an elephant was bearing down on her shoulders from a life well lived. Yet, Tomaso noticed as the music slipped away like water cupped within his hands, her eyes sparkled, two untouched emeralds within her face.

“What did you hear?” the old woman said, walking past him to close the door. “The chimes, I mean. What song did they sing for you?”

Inheritance

Nandi Harris, to some, was the greatest painter who ever lived. She painted art not as viewing, but as the destination. An artist who combined her work with magic so that the audience could quite simply step inside her paintings and experience them first-hand.

On the occasion of her posthumous final exhibition, the Inheritance Series, become reacquainted with the career of Nandi Harris, from the firebrand political activist to the maverick enigmatic artist.

Inheritance can be found in Aurealis #124.

After a period of quiet, no doubt connected to the birth of four lively and rambunctious children, Harris returned to the art world in 1955 with ‘Their Founding Fathers’. The painting, from outside the frame, seems merely a historical scene recreated. It is one any American would be able to recognise in a heartbeat: the signing of the Declaration of Independence. However, the inflammatory title (Their, not Our) is a clue to what might be found within. It is truly a remarkable painting to enter.

It is like stepping into a furnace. That is the first thing someone experiences upon entering the painting. The heat embraces you, squeezes you. It sinks deep into your lungs. Before you can even recognise the faces of Washington or Jefferson, you are dying. The music comes soon after. Pushing dangerously on the eardrum, it drowns out any of the Founding Fathers’ conversation. Unmistakably, the words of ‘Go Down Moses’ fill the room.[1] The singer is unidentified. The voice is croaky, dry. You wonder if he’s going to be able to make it to the end of the song. The feeling is only emboldened when you hear the snapping of a whip and the cry of anguish reaching every corner of the room. Coupled with the heat, the music makes the room almost unbearable to stay in. You take a step back, readying to leave. And that is when you notice the floor. The dark, varnished floorboards the Founding Fathers stand on are not wood at all. They’re men. Eyes look up at you. Mouths scream.

It is perhaps impossible to state the impact and outcry that ‘Their Founding Fathers’ had in 1955. There were several genuine attempts to have Harris charged with a litany of crimes, including treason.[2] She had to hire private bodyguards for security, but she remained firm in her work. In later years, she refused to discuss the aftermath, and we can only imagine how frightening such a time must have been with four young children. Her commercial reputation was shot. But while the public recoiled from the painting, some progressive critics raved about it. It was a stinging indictment on America’s founding myth, an expression of African American distaste for how a nation of freedom was built upon the back of slaves. More work came, the brushstrokes of Harris lashing out at centuries of injustice.

[1] Harris expressed something close to anguish that ‘Their Founding Father’ was finished before Billy Taylor’s ‘I Wish I Knew’ was recorded. ‘I’d tear the whole thing down and paint it anew, but art doesn’t work like that. You can’t hurl the lightning back into the cloud just because the scene was better an hour later’ she told NPR in a rare interview in the late 1970s.

[2] It was only when the Fifth Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals noted in Harris v King that this was a first amendment issue, and that a further attempt to convict Harris would demand the attention of the Supreme Court, did the matter drop. No doubt there was a fear that the land’s highest court would allow the painting to stand and bring about a wave of copycats. It was best to leave the hanging threat of imprisonment.

Proof of Concept

There was nothing odd about the postcard, nothing odd at all. Except it came from a person who simply didn’t exist.

Proof of Concept is a story about memories, reality, and the fundamental question of whether any of it matters anyway. It can be found in both NewMyths #49 and Year’s Best Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction and Fantasy Vol. 2. It was nominated for Best Short Story in the 2020 Sir Julius Vogel Awards.

I called into work sick the next day. The illness sprawled out, claiming the rest of the week as well. No one challenged me on it. People didn’t tend to upset the principal money-maker. Instead of meeting with clients and finalising the design for some accounting firm’s new headquarters, I sat at my computer with a cup of tea, a declining packet of biscuits, and a trail of Facebook and Google searches. Every so often, there would be a hint of Erin, like the shadow of a bird that had just taken flight.

She wasn’t on social media. Rather, there weren’t accounts I could click on and read. Every so often, though, there would be a comment, a reply to someone else’s post. Ha, that is so true! or Still on for Wednesday? etched onto the internet. Her profile picture sat so small on the screen. I couldn’t see more than the outline of dark skin and curly hair, just like I sometimes imagined. No matter what I tried, I couldn’t make the photograph any larger. For several hours, I simply stared at her, sitting on my computer screen. She wasn’t real. Erin didn’t exist outside of my mind. Yet here she was, setting up dinner plans to meet with an old friend.

I hung up on five different people until my nerve finally withstood the wait before someone answered the phone. An old friend from college, a name I could barely put a face to anymore, had liked one of Erin’s witty replies. I let the conversation drift, pointing in no specific direction, a boat lazily letting the current pick a destination. Erin’s name didn’t appear until the very end. I dropped it into the conversation, a passing reference, a trifle fancy.

“Oh, Erin. I haven’t seen her in years.”

Top of Show

Tia Cyrus, the Anansi, is the greatest performer of her generation. She doesn’t sing. She doesn’t dance. She takes to the stage and simply tells you a story. And as you sit there in a dark theatre, you are transported. You can smell the coffee and the chocolate. You can hear the sad tune of a nearby piano. You are consumed within her words. This is the story of how she does it.

Top of Show, a story about the nature of art itself, can be found in Compelling Science Fiction #11 and Compelling Science Fiction: The First Collection.

Already, I was having second thoughts about this relationship, but I was a journalist and the Anansi was beginning to gain traction in the margin of certain papers. A well-written review could have given my career the second wind it so desperately needed. Four days later, we were walking into the Hackney Empire. Here, in this corner of London, multiculturalism was reality, not theory, and my boyfriend seemed eager to press as many palms as possible. I lurked in the corners and then took my seat in the theatre.

The stage was spartan. The only presence beside two, sleek speakers on either side of the space was an aging, wooden stool. I was reminded of the comedy clubs scattered across the city. As the rest of the audience took their seats, a strange tension began to grow, anticipation bubbling like a pot of water on the stove. First, there was a tapping of feet, and then as time went by, the entire crowd seemed to twitch with nervous energy, as if we knew we were about to witness something special. Intuition became a sixth sense. The room was packed. There wasn’t a spare seat. The journalist inside me squealed; I was onto a winner.

Tia walked on stage without fanfare. While later her performances would be made behind the armour of rich, silk gowns, at that show in Hackney she wore jeans, a peeling Doctor Who shirt and a blue cardigan. She sat on the stool while the crowd chattered, unaware the Anansi had arrived. Music slipped free from the speakers, gentle and quiet, like a lazy river on a Sunday afternoon. A hissing grew out from the back rows, audience members shushing strangers. The lights blinked off. The stage drowned in darkness, and then a single spotlight focussed on Tia, sitting on the stool. The audience fell silent. I almost forgot to breathe. With a sad smile, our Narrator lifted the microphone toward her mouth, and told her story. It changed my life.

Arachne’s Web

Arachne knew as soon as she saw Athena in front of her that she was another mortal in another story about mortal hubris and divine punishment. The fundamental truth in any story involving a mortal and the gods was that the gods were better. But what if they weren’t? What if humanity actually won these encounters?

Arachne’s Web is the reimagining of the myths of Arachne, Marsyas, Semele and Sispyhus as tales of human triumphant. You can find it in Aurealis #132.

With his friends following the stage down the river, the competition began. Apollo stepped forward first. Plucking a melody, the music was as light as air and as soft as silk. It whispered in the audience’s ears. Brushing against the skin, the tune painted a picture within each and every mind. A sunrise over a golden sea, a hawk skimming over snowy mountain tops, a chariot dancing across a cloudless sky. Each image was more beautiful than the next. Apollo’s plucking and strumming quickened, barely noticeable, a heartbeat slowly rising. The song reached into each person’s soul, its fingers massaging the emotions, leading them to the rolling crescendo the god was reaching. When Apollo was done, not a single cheek was dry. A second of stunned silence ended the performance, and then the audience broke out into applause. Even the Muses brought their hands together.

Marsyas came forward, his knees knocking together in the most undignified of patterns. When the aulos pressed against his lips, though, the weight across his shoulders fell away. He was at home; he was doing what he loved. The boy began to play. Where Apollo’s tune was soft like pastry, Marsyas’s was as rich as cream. The melody weaved through the Muses and then out to the audience walking down the riverbank. The silt of the river itself seemed to be dragged up by the earthy tones. People began to dance. Laughter broke out at the sheer happiness of being alive and moving. Marsyas continued to play, feeding off the energy from the river bank, improvising, using their momentum and then reshaping it into something else. People started to chant his name, to match his tune, and he only blew louder, until the fishes leapt out of the water and the birds circled the floating stage, singing out in support.