March 2018 - SpecFicNZ

Te Kōrero Ahi Kā and the Spec Fic Community in New Zealand

30 March 201817 April 2018 Lee Murraycommunity building, genre, sally McLennan, speculative, Te Korero Ahi Ka0 comment

Te Kōrero Ahi Kā and the Spec Fic Community in New Zealand

By Sally McLennan

Te Kōrero Ahi Kā is a book born from a group. That group is more than our legion of writers, editors, fans and publishers. We are supported by families, film-makers who love our genres by association, and hoteliers who host our conferences. We are supported by those who work to make those conferences happen. I’ve been supported by a friend who came and did housework for me, and walked my dog, so I could write. We are supported by people in every trade and every part of the world: the poor souls who we email with random questions when formulating our work. What is the effect of two moons on a habitable planet? What do you consider the worst way to die? How would you get different coloured sky? These are questions I’ve asked total strangers. Though the work is utterly Kiwi in flavour, notice how gleefully we rope people from other nations into our work even while we invite them into our world. | Read More...

Anthologies Kiwi Writers SpecFicNZ

Te Kōrero Ahi Kā – Grant Stone

29 March 201817 April 2018 Lee Murrayghost, Grant Stone, inspiration, Short Story, Te Korero Ahi Ka0 comment

By Grant Stone

When you spend a good number of years mowing an Auckland lawn you learn a thing or two. Like how quickly things grow. Grass, sure, but the weeds too. Skip a week or two and you have a jungle on your hands. Wait a month and you might want to skip the lawnmower and drive straight down to Hiretown for a chainsaw.

But you can’t complain. Drive an hour or so out of town and get out of your car. Walk for just a few minutes and you can really feel nature pressing in on you. You might think about friends and loved ones. The scar tissue of old arguments you lost, or worse, won for the wrong reasons. | Read More...

Featured Work Kiwi Writers Publication News

The Island

28 March 201826 March 2018 Nathan Rogers0 comment

The Island by Nathan Rogers

“The Island” is a fun fantasy adventure for children set in a world of magic populated by goblins, trolls, fire-breathing drakes, and more.

The Island soars through the clouds keeping everyone safe, and the Lords and Ladies use its power to strike terror across the world. Their hounds also patrol the city, but Sky and the other imps chase and play in the narrow streets anyway, magnets for trouble.

Bored by her job helping to maintain the engine that keeps the Island flying, Sky longs for adventure and daydreams about the mysterious lands that lie below. But when an act of mischief goes terribly wrong, Sky is thrown from the Island into a strange new world. Hunted for reasons she doesn’t understand, Sky is forced to use every bit of her wit and cunning to survive. But even that might not be enough as the Island’s murderous hounds close in. | Read More...

Anthologies Kiwi Writers SpecFicNZ

Te Kōrero Ahi Kā – Piper Mejia

28 March 201817 April 2018 Lee Murrayinspiration, Piper Mejia, quiet horror, suspense, Te Korero Ahi Ka0 comment

Room Enough for Two

By Piper Mejia

Room Enough for Two explores the balance in relationships; where each person feels that they contribute the most to their shared life. As the protagonist actively improves their first home her hidden resentment towards the man she married grows. But what happiness doesn’t come with a little sacrifice? In a way, this story is a symbol of my own frustrations at the feeling I have too much to do, but never get anything done. My house is always needing repairs, yet I’m too tied to do them myself and economically unable to pay someone else to do them for me. At times, I think that perhaps the key to a happy life is to simplify, starting with the people I live with. | Read More...

Anthologies Kiwi Writers SpecFicNZ

Te Kōrero Ahi Kā – Dan Rabarts

27 March 201817 April 2018 Lee MurrayDan Rabarts, dark fiction, inspiration, Short Story, speculative, Te Korero Ahi Ka0 comment

Story Origin: Mother’s Milk.

By Dan Rabarts

Long ago, in an old house on a hill, I remember a tree. It was vast, and full of shadows, and when the wind blew it moaned and creaked and spoke. When I tried to sleep, it was there outside the window, and when I dreamed, it knew. One Guy Fawkes night, there was a bonfire on the front drive, and the flames threw snarling lights among the branches and convinced me the tree really was alive. It loomed over the house, it whispered its hungers.

Below this tree, there was a hole, a former mine shaft, so deep the bottom was lost in shadow, even during the day. Here was a memory of a thing, a place, that scarred the sky and earth alike. A memory which three decades of living in other places and leading other lives had never erased. | Read More...

Featured Work Short Story

Knock On

26 March 201826 March 2018 Mark English0 comment

“Knock On,” by Mark English in Stupefying Stories Showcase, Sep 2016

I am swimming against the current of time. This is a language we brought back from the fractal sea within which we move—it is how our brains interpret the complex machine-filtered universe.

Many Worlds. Many Causes. One Path.

Anthologies Kiwi Writers SpecFicNZ

Te Kōrero Ahi Kā – I.K. Paterson-Harkness

26 March 201817 April 2018 Lee MurrayFlash Fiction, IK Paterson Harkness, magnetic, poet, speculative, Te Korero Ahi Ka0 comment

By I.K. Paterson-Harkness

Both of my poems in Te Korero Ahi Ka began their lives as flash fiction. My stories have a habit of changing form in that way – from poem to song, from song to prose, from prose to poem – until they finally stick. I suppose the essence of a story can live on in any medium. I wrote Magnetic North for a flash fiction competition, with a “north” theme (didn’t win, obviously!). I remember being fascinated with the idea of magnets always aligning themselves with the Earth’s magnetic field. An uncontrollable tug, part of nature itself. So naturally I wanted to investigate the idea of a person being drawn the same way – how would it happen, and what would the consequences be? The other poem What you wish for was, in comparison, is just a silly idea I had about someone whose mind sometimes conjured what they desired at that moment. Poetry, I find, often shows just a snippet of a life, just a tiny window to look through into a particular moment or situation (as opposed to a full story, with a beginning, middle, end), and this poem is definitely that.

Amazon Paperback and Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079QHH1F7
Other ebook sites including Apple and Kobo: https://www.books2read.com/u/mgrdz6 | Read More...

Featured Work

Wish Upon a Southern Star

25 March 2018 Shelley Chappell0 comment

Wish Upon a Southern Star, edited by Shelley Chappell

The Southern Cross shines high above a fairy tale wood. Come step inside. Drink dew from the leaves with tiny Tommelise. Eat egg sandwiches with a toothy young troll. Escape with Rapunzel. Trick Rumpelstiltskin. Shiver in the snow. Climb the beanstalk. Pray to the Piper. Be a cat. In and out of the wood, whether in this world or another, these stories will take you to new places. Explore how far you can go in this anthology of twenty-one fairy tale retellings by New Zealand and Australian authors. | Read More...

Anthologies Kiwi Writers SpecFicNZ

Te Kōrero Ahi Kā – Mike Reeves McMillan

25 March 201817 April 2018 Lee MurrayAnthology, fantasy, Mike Reeves-McMillan, Short Story, speculative, Te Korero Ahi Ka0 comment

by Mike Reeves McMillan

Gatekeeper, What Toll? is my attempt to write a six-volume epic fantasy in a thousandth of the wordcount, by only writing the scenes that are from the point of view of a key minor character, and implying the remaining 99.9%. After all, we know how these stories go, don’t we? It’s also a tribute to one of my favourite authors, Roger Zelazny, in that it’s set in a sprawling and varied multiverse and centres on characters who can travel between the worlds. Much as New Zealanders learn to travel between cultures, perhaps? | Read More...

Anthologies SpecFicNZ

Te Kōrero Ahi Kā – Robinne Weiss

23 March 201817 April 2018 Lee MurrayAnthology, Robinne Weiss, speculative, Te Korero Ahi Ka0 comment

by Robinne Weiss I’m pleased to have two of my stories appear in Te Kōrero Ahi Kā. It’s always a pleasure to work with the folks at SpecFic NZ! I wrote Breach specifically for this anthology, but it was influenced by many ideas. Canterbury has experienced drought and higher than normal temperatures over the past two years—a pattern predicted in climate change models. My own struggles to raise vegetables and livestock under those conditions inspired me to write about a future Canterbury in which the worst-case-scenario climate predictions have come true. I wanted to show the complex and often ambivalent nature of our relationships with the future and the past. I wanted to show a grim future, but one in which people had adjusted and adapted to harsh realities, because that’s what humans do. Breach has since become the first in a series of short stories I’ve written looking at possible futures, and what the big changes (in climate, technology, society, etc.) might mean on a personal level. To the Centre of the Earth was a lark, written originally for a themed issue of a magazine (for which it was rejected with helpful comments that inspired revision). The scientific community was abuzz at the time with the start of a new project to drill to the earth’s mantle, and I couldn’t help but wonder, what if… I live and write from from my lovely office at Crazy Corner Farm. In addition to short stories, I write middle-grade novels, poetry, and non-fiction. Find out more about my books and stories, and check out my rural life blog at robinneweiss.com.

Amazon Paperback and Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079QHH1F7

Other ebook sites including Apple and Kobo: https://www.books2read.com/u/mgrdz6

Anthologies SpecFicNZ

Te Kōrero Ahi Kā – Serena Dawson

22 March 201817 April 2018 Lee Murrayinspiration, interior art, Serena Dawson, speculative, Te Korero Ahi Ka0 comment

by Serena Dawson While creating the fantasy world of my novels, it seemed natural to imagine trees that have been grown into buildings, including, of course, Inns. I based these living buildings on my favorite tree, the Pohutukawa. The dragon’s friend Inn was grown long ago, in a time before the Burning Wars, when dragons were allies, rather than enemies. But the exiled dragons are returning… Thanks again for including my art in the anthology, and the hard work of everyone involved. Amazon Paperback and Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079QHH1F7 Other ebook sites including Apple and Kobo: https://www.books2read.com/u/mgrdz6

Te Kōrero Ahi Kā – Matt and Debbie Cowens

21 March 20186 April 2018 Lee Murray0 comment

Kapiti News, 15 Mar, 2018

By Rosalie Willis

Teachers by day, writers by night.

That is the reality two Paraparaumu College teachers find themselves living.

Husband and wife, Matt and Debbie Cowens, both part of the English department at Paraparaumu College have had their latest work published in Te Korero Ahi Ka: To Speak of the Home Fires Burning, a New Zealand speculative fiction anthology.

The book is the work of Speculative Fiction New Zealand (SpecFicNZ), an organisation formed in 2009 and is the brain child of editors Grace Bridges and Lee Murray with the help of Aaron Compton. | Read More...

Te Kōrero Ahi Kā – Aaron Compton

21 March 2018 Lee MurrayAaron Compton, Anthology, editor, moa, speculative, Te Korero Ahi Ka0 comment

By Aaron Compton It was an honour to help edit this collection. As mentee-editor it was an eye-opener on how the real pros do it– Lee and Grace were so great, being part of their team and the process was a joy. My motivation to apply for the position was simply to get some experience within the literature scene of Aotearoa, to learn about editing and to read some cool stories. Amazing stories. The whole experience has heightened my desire to gain more editing experience.

I remember, as a child, being fascinated by a kuia who spoke to a carved ancestor on the marae and seemed to get answers from it. For years the idea of a carving talking to me rattled around in my head, until it fell out, in this story. Moa Love, occurs in an alternate history world that I began creating a couple of years ago when I decided to take fiction writing seriously. I had grand ambitions to write a couple of series of novels in this world, but after about sixty thousand words I realised that I didn’t quite have the skills to do the story justice– it just wasn’t working. I pulled back from that story and began writing short fiction in an attempt to build my skills. I listened to a lot of writing podcasts, and in one of them (The Story Grid Podcast) Shawn Coyne talked about the obligatory scenes readers expect to see in a love story. I decided to write a story that hit as many of those scenes as I could, within my created world. And somehow… it worked. It’s weird, but it works, I reckon. It might seem as if it is set in a future Aotearoa, but in fact the events of Moa Love occur in the 1950s. This isn’t explicitly stated in the text but if you think about what Boy says about the clothes the other characters are wearing, and the decades they come from, and when TripleG died… yeah, 1950s. This is because of reasons that are not part of this story– I’ll have to get back to those novels, someday. Amazon Paperback and Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079QHH1F7 Other ebook sites including Apple and Kobo: https://www.books2read.com/u/mgrdz6

Te Kōrero Ahi Kā – Jane Percival

20 March 2018 Lee MurrayAnthology, community, Jane Percival, speculative, Te Korero Ahi Ka0 comment

The Mysterious of Mysterious Mr Montague

By Jane Percival

It’s funny how the senses can enhance memories. The addition of a taste, a smell, or a touch, makes the memory more stable, somehow, transforming it into an easy-to-access snapshot of a place and a time that you visited; able to be examined whenever you wish.

A butcher’s shop has a particular smell. And the smell of such a shop in the 1970s is nothing like the odour of the meat section of a supermarket. It smelled of blood and sawdust. Rattling plastic strips kept out most of the flies, and in Summer, a lazy ceiling fan would push the air around, just a little. | Read More...

Te Kōrero Ahi Kā – A Community Project

20 March 2018 Lee MurrayAnthology, community, Lee Murray, speculative, Te Korero Ahi Ka0 comment

By Lee Murray

Te Kōrero Ahi Kā is a community building project instigated by SpecFicNZ as a key activity for 2018. Over recent years, initiatives such as writing competitions and one-off publishing grants had seen dwindling entries, so, in a bid to increase member engagement and awareness of our work at SpecFicNZ, the committee proposed a non-themed speculative showcase anthology where members could submit prose, poetry and artwork, including cover art, in return for a small fee. The project was intended as a learning tool, the committee calling for applications for a mentee editor to work on the anthology with experienced editor and assessor President Grace Bridges, and myself. Member Aaron Compton won the bid and although he had never done any editing before, Aaron’s keen eye and quirky taste meant he quickly became a great asset to our editing line-up. | Read More...