Forgot to mention it last week, but the 23rd has been and gone and passed us by, which means another short story is up on my Patreon page 🙂 This may or may not be directly relevant to #FoxBook, which I am currently working on… O:)
On my Patreon page, you can also join the fun with weekly writing updates from me (what I’ve achieved each week, any issues I had to deal with, and plans for the upcoming week usually), plus higher tiers get ebooks and/or signed print books as well!
And probably, knowing me, I’ll sketch in at least some of your print books, because that’s just How I Roll.
AT THE HOME OF THE WINTER KING
Imagine, if you will, a young boy—about eight, say—who thinks he’s the cleverest thing in the whole damn world. Sadly for him, he’s not far wrong—but clever doesn’t also mean wise.
This kid, this boy—this genius—has played in the bush behind the house forever, and he knows every gum tree, knows the curve of white eucalypt limbs, the smell of leaves baking in the sun, the feel of a sneeze coming when the wattle-puff pollen dances in the aid. He knows the needle-sharp sedge grass and the tiny, smiling faces of the billy buttons, miniature suns waving in the breeze; he knows the smell of the snow wind as it rushes off the mountains in the winter, and the taste of the crystal-bright water from the stream, all iced mineral and sweetness.
He wanders through the bush at his leisure, sometimes wandering all the way down to the edges of the pine plantation lining the highway that’s the artery of this little two-bit town called Jilamatang. Regional Victoria, back of the Snowy Mountains, over an hour to the nearest thing they’ve got to a city: he’s outgrown the place and he isn’t even in double digits. Good thing they have the internet, even though the connection’s slower than the post from Melbourne.
He scouts far and wide, spends the whole day exploring while his parents think he’s a good lad in school—an easy ruse because school’s also easy—and one day, he discovers something worthwhile. Not far from town, a couple of kilometres or so, there’s an old train line, rusted iron, smells almost like blood. Barely anyone remembers it, and even the real old timers hardly know it’s there.
But he knows.Â
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