Drabble a day-ish...

Hmm, a wonderful weekend of skiing (only slightly marred by the mountain being closed and no actual skiing taking place) got in the way of my drabble a day for Spec Fic NZ's blogging week. Plenty of others more than made up for my missing blogs (the link takes you to them), including a couple of very kind words about my story "Miramar is Possum Free" in the "A Foreign Country" anthology.

One of the blogs from the anthology editor, Anna Caro, has a link to an interview she did with Radio New Zealand about "A Foreign Country" which has a reading from my story - click on this link and find "A Foreign Country" in the list to download.

And today's drabble - slightly inspired by Frank Herbert's Dune, but quite a bit shorter...

Helah sat on the dune. His bionic eye spotted the rider long before his organic eye did. He scanned the rider’s bio-signature and lowered his gun.

Dura shouted as she rode up. “The messiah is with us.”

Helah looked back to the oasis. Ten thousand cyborg warriors awaited his command.

“New messiah, guys,” he shouted, “Let’s kick some ass!” There was a thundering of hooves and whine of motors. Within two weeks the heretics had been destroyed. Helah led his people back to the desert.

He sat on the dune. Dura was approaching. Another messiah would be with them soon.

I've been working my way through the anthology - and loving some terrific stories - I'll post some comments on some tomorrow (along with a hundred words of something...)

Au Contraire - NZ Sci-Fi convention

Two weeks ago saw the New Zealand Science Fiction convention come to Wellington. I attended mainly for the writing workshops but also to attend the launch of "A Foreign Country - New Zealand Speculative Fiction" which contains my own story "Miramar is Possum Free".

I was very impressed by the writing workshops - particularly Sean Williams' Collaboration workshop where we imagined what Anakin Skywalker's lost twin sister would have been like. Between me and Susan Kornfield (who got 2nd place in the Au Contraire short story comp, and who's excellent story "Dreams of a Salamander Nation" is in the Foreign Country book) dreamed up a fiesty character called Pan.

Pan turned up later during the Flash Fiction session, taken by Riply Patton (who's fascinating story "Fear of the sky" won 1st prize, and is also in the book) - the task was to write a drabble - being a story in exactly 100 words. By this stage, Pan had stopped being a Star Wars character, but was already on her way to prison:

“Go on,” said Pan.
Phil wasn’t sure. It was a long way down and the melon would make a lot of mess when it hit.
“Quick, do it now,” urged Pan, “there’s a cop coming.” She gave him that saucy look; Phil let the melon go.
The cop twisted in mid-air, fired its laser and vapourised the melon. It floated up to Pan and Phil.
“She did it,” shouted Phil.
The cop swivelled. “Vandalism, 5 years,” it grated. It fired a catch-net at Pan and flew off with her cursing and spitting.
Damn, thought Phil, I’ll never get laid now. '

Anyway - count the words - 100 exactly....

Other great writing sessions included World building with NZ author Russell Kirkpatrick, How to get published in New Zealand with Tim Jones, Nicole Murphy on characterisation and Jeena Murphy on finishing that final draft....

All in all, it was a great weekend (including the Saurday evening non-sci-fi diversion of the Beervana NZ Festival).

Now, I am inspired to get my butt in gear, finish my latest short story and send it somewhere to get published - thanks to a couple of great weblinks I discovered at the con.

And that Pan girl - she just won't get out of my head. Could I do, say, 100 drabbles charting her life and times - 100 stories, 100 pages, 10,000 words... how hard could it be?