This Is Not Patience

Useless I

Breakfast has never been a regular feature in my diet. Unless it's special, like eggs benedict or pancakes, it doesn't exist. Recently I've been forced to add it to my day. I dislike the weight it has added to my hips and belly. I don't need any more cushioning, but my stomach does.

Most mornings I take a painkiller before I've finished getting dressed.

Job Interview

He said: "So, what qualities do you bring to the position?"

I said: "That's a pretty broad question."

She said: "This is your opportunity to tell us how great you are."

I said: "Oh! I'm awwwwwesome!"

The above conversation based on a true story. "Based on" meaning "word for word".

Useless II

Some mornings it doesn't matter that I've eaten, or what I've eaten. Some mornings my body won't have a bar of it.

It usually hits on the train into the city; a slab of nausea; an intense cold sweat that leaves me dehydrated in seconds; and that heavy distance between me and my body; all the harbingers that indicate I am about to collapse and/or puke.

Speaking of Puke

So I suck at breakfast and I suck at dinner, but I take lunch very seriously. Usually because by that point I'm starving.

If it weren't for habitual thinking I would have used lunch to illustrate this post, but to be honest, it would have been equally tedious. I cook batches, freeze batches, and eat the same thing every day for weeks on end.

The last batch I cooked was soup that deviated from my normal vegie soup, so of course it was scrotum. I've been eating poo soup for months.

Last week I decided to experiment again and have a go at making dal makhani. Which would have worked fine if I had black lentils instead of black beans.

Oh well. Can't go too bad with all those spices.



All last week, except Friday when I had peanut butter toast.

Useless III

Like today.

Tempus Can Go Fug Itself

I feel I should comment on the changing light, the newly opened sky, and the longer warmth in the days. They say that people who live with marked seasons feel the passage of time deeper than those close to, say, the equator. Any other time I would have rolled all over this unwrapped season, welcomed that passage of time. Not now. I have had to draw myself in close to these passing seconds. I cannot support the weight of my future, or the burden of my history, I've had to recoil and instead of smearing myself across time I am a small concentration of awareness. Here. Now.

Useless IV

The trials of living a lone are never so emphasised as when you are incapacitated.

They Won't Be Silent

When the sun is out, they come out. And sit in the court yards and cafés. And talk. And laugh. And talk. And talk. And talk. And their talk comes in my windows, and even here I can't escape the world.

Useless V

I need a doctor's certificate. I can't burn through my sick leave so fast, or I'll be forced to start taking leave without pay, and I can't afford that.

The medical clinic doesn't bulk bill. The money left in my account is needed for a train ticket.

The Best of the Horrible

Best of ASIM vol 2: Horror available for download as a PDF, and featuring Bitter Elsie Mae, a story I wrote about a vengeful ship. It made Ellen Datlow's Honourable Mentions. Not bad, little story, not bad.

Useless VI

I take these pills and sometimes they work and I can do my job, and sometimes they don't and I lose sick leave and time, and who knows what they're doing to my kidneys, and they constipate me and make me put on weight, and ultimately, they make no difference.

I still can't write.

Useless VII






Useless VIII

I can't bear the future or my past, and I can't say the present is easy to carry either.

Useless IX




Useless X

Is it self-pity if you can't-

Useless XI











Useless XII

I'm just lying here with a bucket for company, picking out these words a letter at a time.

Total Fire Ban Day

I think I think yes I think maybe possibly I think the story works now.

touchwoodtouchwoodtouchwood

Daylight may indicate otherwise. I've reached that point where I can honestly make no call as to the story's quality, but it no longer sets off my THIS PIECE IS UNBALANCED DANGER DANGER DANGER alarms. That, quite frankly, is enough for me.

My efforts at avoidance took me to such depths that I googled my name, and so came, you know, nearly a month later, upon Joanne Anderton hooraying as a story she selected for ASIM #34 - Bitter Elsie Mae - featured on the 2008 Dark Fiction Recommended Reading List from Horrorscope. Elsie's in fine company there. And some seriously disturbing and fucked up company. I've read some of those. Ewwwwww.

YOU HAVE WRITAAAR

I am an Editorial Assistant for Weird Tales.

No, really.

See, how it works is, well, just imagine that the slush pile is the fridge, right? Ann, being Fiction Editor and thus Head Chef, is rummaging through the fridge looking for amazing food. I am in the kitchen because, I dunno, I'm picking my nose or stealing biscuits or something. Every now and then, Ann pulls out something like milk, sniffs it, turns to me and asks, "does this seem alright to you?"

If sniffing the milk kills me, then Ann does not use it.

If I read your story, it means Ann, that most cunning and savy and sly editor, is undecided on the merit of your story. What that really means is that You Are Doing It Wrong. In order to avoid such a fate and thus keep your story as far from me as possible, WRITE OARSUM.

And if you don't believe me, my name is in the last two issues. It's okay to check. To be honest, I didn't really believe it till I saw it myself. I'm chuffed and more than a little humbled to be involved. Many, many thanks to Ann.



Issue #34 of Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine is currently available for download as PDF for $4.95AUD. The last story in it is mine, precious, mine! Bitter Elsie Mae is a story of a ship gone bad, as only ships can. It was spawned in week 3 of Clarion South 2005 and Ellen Datlow did not die upon reading it. This publication meets my very low standards of what is required in order to call myself a writer. Even if I am not, in fact, writing.

Also, Daikaiju 3, which contains my giant crab story (actually titled One Night On Tidal Rig #13), is now available in hardcover. So even if I am never ever published again, I can still say I've been published in hardcover.

IS THERE ANYTHING LEFT TO ACHIEVE IN LIFE?