I’ve got a story in the new Big Issue, which hits the streets today. Entitled ‘Solstice’, it’s part of the magazine’s annual Fiction Issue, which this year is focussed on fiction about the end of the world.
I’ve not had a chance to read the whole magazine yet but since it features stories from writers of the calibre of Margo Lanagan, Miles Franklin shortlistee Tony Birch and Sophie Cunningham, as well as an essay by the depressingly multi-talented James Franco I’m sure it’s brilliant.
Of course it’s always a buzz when a new story goes out into the world, but I’m particularly pleased about the publication of this one (which is set ten minutes from now amidst the melting glaciers of Antarctica) because it’s also the first part of the novel I’ve been working on for the past few months, and which I’m very, very excited about.
So what else can I say but do yourself a favour and grab a copy of the magazine today? After all, how often do you get to grab a pile of great stories and help people who really need it at the same time?
’Martian Triptych'
Appears in Jack Dann's Dreaming in the Dark and Best Australian Stories 2016
’The Changeling'
Appears in Jonathan Strahan's Fearsome Magics. Compare prices for the UK print edition and US print edition; also available for Kindle (US and UK) and most other ebook formats.
Beauty's Sister
(compare hard copy prices on Booko; also available in the UK for Kindle, and in Australia for Kindle, iBooks, Google Play, and Kobo)
Into the Deep: Diving into Time and Tide
The Library at the End of the World
Could bringing Neanderthals back to life save the environment?
Terror, hope, anger, kindness: the complexity of life as we face the new normal
Unearthed: Last Days in the Anthropocene
The End of the Oceans
A Family of Disguises: Michael Ondaatje's Warlight
The Element of Need: Murder and Memory in Adelaide
(available in the UK for Kindle, and in Australia for Kindle, iBooks, Google Play and Kobo)
Work in Progress: On Writing The Resurrectionist
Slippery Migrants: what eels do when we're not watching
Sunburnt Country review: Joelle Gergis on a fraught future with climate change
Maybe I'm Amazed: A New Appreciation for Paul McCartney
Made Things: Jeff Vandermeer's Borne
Strange Weather: Writing the Anthropocene
James Nestor’s Deep: Freediving, Renegade Science and What the Ocean Tells Us About Ourselves
The Beginning is Nigh: Caspar Henderson’s Book of Barely Imagined Beings
Encounters With The Uncanny: On Ghosts, Ghost Stories and Brain Science
Margaret Atwood's In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination
Lev Grossman's The Magician King
Susan Casey's The Wave: In Pursuit of the Ocean's Greatest Furies
Ian McDonald's The Dervish House
Summer and the Myths of Australianness
William Gibson's Zero History, Spook Country, Pattern Recognition and Distrust That Particular Flavor
Bloody beauties: the rise and rise of vampire lit
Never real and always true: on depression and creativity
The idiot box grows a brain: the rise of the new television
Perfect worlds, in miniature: stories by Annie Proulx, Robert Drewe, Michael Chabon and Anne Enright
Stealing memory's thunder: James Frey and the rise of the fake memoir
Reblogged this on Plots and Playgrounds and commented:
This looks interesting :).
Hello James, thanks for your short story which I read tonight on the train. There is a Big Issue vendor near the steps at Parliament Station in Melbourne who each night says, out of the side of his mouth, “goodnight everyone, have a great night…” repeated many times. He said he had sold a number of copies already and wondered if the edition had been advertised on the radio. I enjoyed your story very much – the same flowing prose. Two biological clocks ticking… a clever juxtaposition I thought. Looking forward to that new book!!!! best wishes, Gordon
Thank you – now I just have to finish the damn thing!
It’s frustrating that overseas readers don’t get to read the story, since the magazine doesn’t offer an e-edition. Somebody ought to advise them to join the 21st century. Is it possible that you make the story available for those of us who can’t pop out to the corner newsagent’s? I’m sure that there are other readers who’d be willing to pay for a Kindle download, for example.
Usually I’d say something similar, but The Big Issue is a bit of a special case because it’s specifically designed to provide a product the vendors can sell. But either way knowing you’re excited to read it is lovely!
Yes, at the moment I’m reading The Deep Field with pleasure, but am curious about your short stories too. They’re such different forms, and I must admit that The Inconvenient Dead was less to my liking. But it’s only one story, and I do so enjoy your criticism/blogging as well as your novels.