Received another dozen refills for the 207 today.
Let's see if I can beat my record of 35 months.
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A year ago, Vanessa won a door prize at a conference. It was a bottle of Veuve Clicquot Brut. Now, I doubt Roger Federer would even wash his dog with this champagne, but to us it was the fanciest champagne bottle we'd ever owned. We stored it in the cupboard, next to the potatoes.
Then the waiting began. Waiting for the right opportunity to pop that special cork and pour that sparkling wine into the $1 IKEA champagne glasses we had left over from our self-catered wedding. What occasion would we deem worthy of these luxury bubbles? Summer came and went, as did our six year anniversary - not significant enough? I thought maybe we'd celebrate when I cracked the semi-pro spec-fic market, which I optimistically hoped would come last year. It did happen this year - out of the blue, but not for lack of trying. Sometimes you work so hard to achieve something that when it happens, you kind of don't feel anything at all.
By last weekend a year had passed. Birthdays, half-marathons, promotions all unacknowledged by Veuve Clicquot. So we decided to pop it. Not for any specific occasion. Sure, it was father's day, and it was the first weekend of spring, and the world premiere of my Winter 18 movie, but none of those reasons were why we drank. We sipped a glass of champagne for no reason. We celebrated just the fact that we could choose to spend free time on a cold yet sunny day with family and do whatever we wanted. Celebrated that we could have hope, always, that something worth celebrating might be on the horizon.
Sometimes it feels like there's pressure for events in life to linearly lead up to one shareable, social media moment. It felt better just to drink champagne with no one else watching.
It tasted nice.
Yes, obviously.
This week my short time-travel noir Wormholes and the Woman with the Fake Tan was published in Aurealis Magazine, Australia's longest running small-press science-fiction and fantasy magazine! This was super exciting! I have been wondering for a long time if anyone other than me (and Vanessa) liked the idea of a detective who could smell the future after a time machine fell on them.
If you'd like to read the story, you can buy a copy of Aurealis #113 here: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/888305
Yes, I know what you're going to say. Brad, $3 for an ebook!? I could buy a can of Fanta at the airport for that much! But think about it, how many of those bingeworthy TV shows that you love were inspired by books? Game of Thrones, OITNB, Dexter, the whole Marvel universe (and DC too I guess). How will we have TV shows in ten years if no one supports writing? Don't you want to see what a Bradism.com Mini-series has in store in 2031?
If $3 is too much, you can also buy my Novellete Chase on Amazon for less than a buck. (Or, if you sign up below to the bradism.com mailing list, you can get it for free. Or you could do both.)
Like my words? Want to buy one of my books? I think you'll like this one:
If you met yourself from the future, what would you ask your future self?
What if they wont tell you anything?
Chase: A Tomorrow Technologies Novella. Available Now for Less than a dollar!
Speculate was the inaugural Speculative Fiction Writers festival, held in South Melbourne on a clear, chilly autumn Saturday.
A great assortment of authors, scholars and others from the writing community shared their wisdom and experiences, too much for me to summarise in a review. Instead, I thought I'd share a single takeaway and challenge from each of the sessions:
Did I mention that Melbourne was chilly?
Coffee, Writing... Family...
Using a phrase on a t-shirt is a really lazy method of characterization when writing. But in real life, sometimes it happens. At lunch today I saw a middle aged woman in mum-jeans wearing a t-shirt that said "I just want to rescue dogs and drink wine." I know you can picture exactly what she looked like.
Today was casual Friday. I mean, I work at a university, every day is causal Friday. But I'm a manager now, so wearing a t-shirt and jeans feels frisky. I thought I'd only have one meeting today, and it should have been okay. Then some consultants asked me to meet and discuss the integration architecture. So there I was, New Balance 624s on my feet, the most elegant, glorious high-level technical overview spilling from my lips like a 2012 Shiraz. I felt, physically, indescribable. I mean, why would you even bother trying?
On my way to my train home, beneath distinctively overcast autumn skies the same shade as my shirt, I was waiting at the crossing. A woman started across the road well ahead of the lights actually changing. She had a wrinkly tan that said she'd never spent an hour in an office during the daylight. Her backpack was on her chest; she puffed from her cigarette as she blocked the lanes. She had a black baseball cap on, emblazoned with the word, "Whatevs."
"Wow," I thought.
Once I was home, I did Tai Chi and drank a 2012 Shiraz.
In 2008, The Nail was a superhero, keeping Londoners safe from chavs on mopeds, and saving the world. Now, retired and gimpy, he has a chance to fix his leg, if he can outsmart his old enemy The Botanist.
My short story The Powder can be found in the The Worlds of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Volume III Anthology beside a bunch of other great stories. You can get it free (or pay what you like) for it by clicking the image below.
