Oz Is Burning: A Cover Reveal!

ConZealand is over, though I will be catching up with panels I missed and wanted to see, but now I have had some good news to follow on. The anthology Oz Is Burning, in which I have a story, is about to emerge from its cocoon as a full-fledged butterfly. It was meant to be published on time for ConZealand, but it just couldn’t happen, for obvious reasons. 

At this stage, all I can offer you is the cover reveal. Here it is - great, isn’t it? And there are some amazing authors in it - who knew I’d be included among them? I am starting to understand the term “Imposter Syndrome”! 

There will be more later, and I’m going to promote it as much as I can. Although we are being paid, the further proceeds are going to a chosen charity. 

Here is how it happened. In January, when the major issue was the bushfires around Australia, when we were buying masks to protect ourselves from the smoke, instead of protect others from the virus, my friend Gillian Polack, historian and fantasy novelist, was visiting from Canberra, staying with her mother. She had left Canberra to escape the smoke, which was much worse than in Melbourne, and she has some physical issues that meant even in Melbourne she barely left the house while the air was not safe.

I went to visit her at her mother’s home, was treated to afternoon tea and told about this special anthology, which was in the US, but taking submissions only from writers in Australia and New Zealand. Gillian printed out the details for me. 

On my way home I thought about how I could write something and what it might be about. It had to be speculative fiction, of course, but I was not interested in making the bushfires about fire sprites or whatever. It was our fault that they happened, and nobody else’s. (And we had a Prime Minister who was on holiday in Hawaii, drinking cocktails on the beach while Oz burned and only returned when shamed into it, whining all the way. Worse than Nero, who rushed back to Rome from his holiday when he heard about the fire. No, he didn’t start it)

Thinking about my story, I was caught in a storm which began just before I reached my favourite restaurant on the route. I went in and ordered dinner and chatted with the young lady at the next table, who showed me photos of the small coastal town where her mother lived. It had escaped the fire, but the roads were blocked and there were no tourists, their regular income source. 

And there was a sky of red on New Year’s Eve.

“Looks like Mars, doesn’t it?” the lady said. 

It did. I wrote the story. There was a small town with a red sky on New Year’s Eve, and a lot of journalists covering the bushfires. 

Some of them were aliens. 

 

Because YA is what I do, I wrote it as a YA story, with a teenage heroine. And they bought it! 

It took about four drafts before I got it right. I removed the heroine’s two best friends, who had nothing to add to the story, though I did mention that she missed them, as they were both stuck in Melbourne. All three kids had the names of my former students and book club members. I chopped it down to 2000 words, figuring I had a better chance of selling it if it was shorter. 

There will be more information for you when I get it.