Over the weekend, along with a stonking great migraine I got the news that a short story I wrote, Work and Income Gothic is a finalist for a Sir Julius Vogel Award, which is run by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Association of New Zealand. I’d known someone nominated me for a while, but I didn’t know that I’d actually made the short list. And while I may have asked some people to vote for me to help make it to that short list, at least one person who does not know me AT ALL thought I was funny enough to win a prize – which is all I really want out of life.
In other, slightly more dated news which got eaten by the lockdown and things, the second of my gothic series New Zealand Gothic is going to be published in an actual book, the Ko Aotearoa Tātou | We Are New Zealand anthology. Awesomely enough, I’m being published alongside two of my classmates, and two people who have taught me in my various stints at university.
It’s now about eight weeks until I have to hand in my masters and I hate almost everything about what I’m writing, so that suggests I’m about at around the right stage. I’m prepared to defend a couple of things which I think are funny even if no one else does, and to yeet any number of other pieces. I’m up to v3 or v4 of most pieces, and editing marches on, until either the due date arrives or I lose my mind, whichever comes first.
Image credit:
John-Mark Smith