Editor: Robert Stephenson
Published in "Altair" -- March 2000
| excerpt: A voice breaks the silence, followed by weak strains of a gut-stringed guitar. The voice is ragged and husky, but compelling. Female. It pulls me toward it. As I move closer, her shape seems to form itself from the mist. She stands at a corner, her denim jacket hugging her shoulders, and her brown suede boots clinging to the sidewalk. Her hair is black with the slightest hint of red, and it falls in loose curls around her face. Her guitar hangs from a woven strap over her shoulder and she holds it like a soldier holds an M-16, defiant and steady. Her head is tilted back, her breath lingering in the mist as she sings. I can almost feel the strong pulse beneath her delicate white skin.
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On Writing "Colors of Pain"
This was supposed to be a funny story. Lyn and I were chatting online one night over in the now dead GEnie service, trading stories about our caffeine addictions.
"A vampire bit me," I said "and he was up all day."
Lyn replied. "LOL. That would make a great story."
So we agreed to write it. I would go first, she would follow. The problem was that when I sat down to start, nothing funny would come out. Instead, I got darkness and pain. So rather than fight it, I just kind of followed it along. "It's not funny," I said to Lyn when I gave it to her. "But I kind of like it."
I should say here, that this collaboration (in my mind) went about as well as any collaboration can go. When I got her version back I looked at every change she made, every addition she brought up, and went "Wow ... that's really good." I hope she can say the same for me. We sent it to an anthology, and it was immeditately snapped up. We rejoiced.
But the publication industry turns oddly sometimes, and it was killed a short while later when it was discovered that the editor bought too many words (or when the publisher cut the word count ... whichever). So, off it went to Altair, who picked it up and ran with it. Overall, I was pleased with this to no end as it now represents my first Australian publication.