Little Disturbances

I am reading my story, "Indigo in Absentia", at the launch of Southerly – Little Disturbances in Sydney in a couple of weeks. It was lovely to have this piece accepted for Southerly‘s special short story issue, and even nicer to be asked to read it at the launch. I like reading my work aloud in public. (Preferably by invitation – I’m not one of those weirdos standing on the steps of Flinders Street Station with a portable PA system, although I’ve sometimes considered it. Someone needs to balance out the ill being done by the fundamentalist Christians who set up shop Friday and Saturday nights. I’ve often thought that an hour or two of reading Neil Gaiman stories aloud to the public would be a step in the right direction.)

But I digress. I like doing readings, mostly because it’s about the only situation in which writers – splendidly isolated creatures that we are – get to approach the sort of immediate feedback that rock stars enjoy. Unless you’re Neil Gaiman doing a reading, in which case you pretty much are a rock star.

Anyway, I’m reading a story. The launch is at the UTS main campus, in the Gallery Courtyard, which is somewhere near the co-op bookshop on corner of Harris & Broadway, apparently. Friday 28th November, 5.30pm – 700pm. If you’re in Sydney, come along and watch me pretend to be a rock star, sans the actual sex, drugs and rock’n’roll type stuff. I probably won’t get to sign any tits either. Sigh. Writers never have any fun.