Shout

This piece has just been published on StereoStories . Marysville Hotel, Victoria. 1977 By the time I met the Australian rock legend Johnny O’Keefe in 1977, I was working as a roadie for a middle-of-the-road pub band. They played the classic hits that suburban and country audiences wanted to hear. Hardly rock and roll heaven but …

Remnants from remnants

This piece was written for the Six Sentence story challenge , with the prompt word of 'remnant'. The Oldie Curiosity Shop differed from the other antique, bric-a-brac and charity stores that lined the seafront in the rapidly fading village of Underconstumple in the designated tourist zone known as the Fossil Coast, in that it rented …

Occasional Ravings: Never mind the jabberwocky, there are worse critters out there.

Recently I experimented with two mutual feedback writing sites: Scribophile and Critique Circle. My main motivation was to receive feedback from other writers without having to pay for it, which is what you have to do on most publishing and competition sites. The principles for each are similar i.e. critique a lot of other people's …

The rescued quarter pig

This piece was written for the weekly Six Sentence challenge, with the prompt word of 'quarter'. Every evening I'd see my neighbours out walking their dogs and I decided I should get one as well, so one Saturday I went for a country drive to see if there were any signs out advertising new litters. …

Christmas presence

This piece was re-worked from an earlier version for the Six Sentence challenge, with the prompt word 'presence'. Who knows how long this will last but whatever each generation brings, there will be totems of the past fixed firmly insistent in each of our minds, totems with faces carved in the hard woods that only …

Jim Webster – Decolonise your diet

I am a long time fan of UK farmer Jim Webster and I am reposting his latest blog entry. It's a gem. Decolonise your diet! | Jim Webster (wordpress.com)

The Powerful Jab

This piece was written for the Six Sentence challenge, with the prompt word of 'powerful'. Morgan’s sententious diatribe, elucidating to the assembled dinner party his unsolicited views on a divisive issue, had lasted through the better part of two bottles of wine, the latter of which was the bottle that Morgan had brought to the …

The contractual proposal

This version of an earlier story is for the monthly Blog Battle Challenge, with the prompt word of 'proposal'. Flynn had inherited the family farm and it had never occurred to him to do anything else. His father had been a hard and harsh taskmaster and he found it difficult to recall any words of …

The J curves

This piece was written for the weekly Six Sentence Challenge with the prompt word of 'rivalry'. All of her sons (Jebediah, Jared, Jehosophat, James, Japheth and Jonah) stood at the open grave of Judith Johannson (nee Jericho), where she would finally rest adjacent to her late husband, Joshua. The rivalry between the sons was legendary …

The extraordinary abstract … thing.

When it first appeared at the Spendthrift Mall, few people paid any attention to it. Most assumed it was some sort of promotional gimmick and continued their beeline for the supermarket or the specialty shop they came to visit. The sitters were the first to notice. The older folk just wanting to get out of …