DJ Daniels

Category: Uncategorized

  • Rachel Funari Prize Shortlist

    Just a quick jump onto the blog to say I’m thrilled that my short story, An Unexpected Season, has been shortlisted for Lip Magazine’s Rachel Funari Prize. The story is one of my rare ventures into purely literary fiction — no robots, or magic, or any other genre elements! Well, actually, now that I think…

  • 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…

  • A terraformed Mars

    A video from Jamie XX. (It starts slowly as the spaceship approaches, but then …)

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • I like to party and by party I mean …

    read books. So said the sweatshirt worn by a woman I saw this morning on Bourke Street. And I knew exactly what she meant. I’ve been travelling a little lately and, despite the weariness and the longing for home, managed, extraordinarily, to read almost two books in what seemed like one strange, elongated sitting. The first was…

  • 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…

  • Tilly or The last time I trusted someone, I lost an eye.

    We have an Odin dog. The lovely Tilly has lost an eye. (an operation for untreatable glaucoma) She is happier now than these pictures would suggest.

  • Found things

    Literary Starbucks. I never go to Starbucks but I love these micro worlds. Here’s a sample: Haruki Murakami goes up to the counter and tries to order something off of Starbucks’ secret menu. The notion that there might be a secret menu surprises the barista, who has never heard of such a thing. Murakami is…