Author: DJ
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The unlikeable female character
I’ve just put aside a short story which has failed to find a home. It was something true and honest, maybe a little too honest, maybe a little depressing, and, at least for now, it’s going back in the drawer. It was about a woman who, despite a magical discovery, only gets older and more […]
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Aurealis #84
The latest edition of Aurealis is out and there’s a new story, Suburban Canticle, from me! As well, of course, as lots of other good stuff including an illustration by Adam Katsaros, short fiction from Tracie McBride and an interview with an author I much admire, Thoraiya Dyer.
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Aurora
I’ve just finished Kim Stanley Robinson’s Aurora. What a book! With one of the main characters a quantum computer on an intergenerational starship hoping to find a new home in the Tau Ceti system. For much of the book, the quantum computer/Ship is the narrator, allowing Robinson to seed the story with all manner of […]
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Write like a man
I can’t stop thinking about Catherine Nichols’ article Homme de Plume: What I learned sending my novel out under a Male Name. My first reaction was … I want to say disbelief, but that’s not quite right. Something more akin to weariness, something like really, still, again? And then I thought about one of my […]
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A terraformed Mars
A video from Jamie XX. (It starts slowly as the spaceship approaches, but then …)
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Something stoic
This wonderful image is a panel from Zen Pencil’s Marcus Aurealis comic. Words of wisdom as well as zombies, what could be better! (I love Zen Pencils. His latest creation contains a Frida Kahlo quote) We are all fighting our own battles, all, as Ram Dass says, just walking each other home. But for the […]
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Everyday fictions
The fiction Apologies for R’s late arrival at school. She was feeling queasy in the early morning but felt well enough to come in later. The truth R had a mini existential crisis revolving around an unfinished assignment. She persuaded her mother to let her stay home and complete it. Her mother made her a […]
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Wise words from Wendell Berry
HOW TO BE A POET (to remind myself) Make a place to sit down. Sit down. Be quiet. You must depend upon affection, reading, knowledge, skill — more of each than you have — inspiration, work, growing older, patience, for patience joins time to eternity. Any readers who like your poems, doubt their judgment. Breathe […]
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Music with stories
I have Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade running around in my head, all because I’m playing in Mosman Symphony Orchestra’s 40th anniversary concert this Friday and Sunday. (March 20 and 22) Scheherazade is, of course, based on One Thousand and One Nights and the tales Scheherazade told to save herself from execution. There are some beautiful solos and […]
DJ Daniels 