Blood | Heni Irihapeti's Blog

Jane Percival — Would you eat this sausage?

SpecFicNZ has included one of my short stories, The Mysterious Mr Montague, in their latest anthology, Te Kōrero Ahi Kā: To Speak of the Home Fires Burning.

Te Korero Ahi Ka - Cover 600 — Te Kōrero Ahi Kā: To Speak of the Home Fires Burning.

Te Kōrero Ahi Kā is an anthology of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, showcasing work from award-winning and emerging members of SpecFicNZ (New Zealand authors, poets, artists of speculative fiction).

About The Mysterious Mr Montague

It’s funny how the senses can enhance memories. The addition of a taste, a smell, or a touch, makes the memory more stable, somehow, transforming it into an easy-to-access snapshot of a place and a time that you visited; able to be examined whenever you wish.

A butcher’s shop has a particular smell. And the smell of such a shop in the 1970s is nothing like the odour of the meat section of a supermarket. It smelled of blood and sawdust. Rattling plastic strips kept out most of the flies, and in Summer, a lazy ceiling fan would push the air around, just a little.

If I smell fresh blood today, I’m transported back to my uncles’ shop. It, too, was situated in Kilbirnie, Wellington; but there, the similarity ends.

How to purchase the book

Te Kōrero Ahi Kā is currently available from Amazon (for Kindle or Paperback) and The Book Depository. It may also soon be available in a bookshop near you.

Bloodlines, edited by Amanda Pillar — Bloodlines edited by Amanda Pillar

My short story, The Mysterious Mr Montague has been published in the Ticonderoga Press publication Bloodlines.

Bloodlines hasn’t yet been launched officially, but a pre-launch party was held at the recent Conflux 11 speculative fiction convention in Canberra, Australia. It would have been wonderful to have been able to attend in person!

The great news is that Bloodlines is now available for purchase either from Amazon or directly from Ticonderoga Press (the latter in either soft or hard cover). click here

Needless to say (but I’ll say it anyway!) I’m very excited to have my story published in an actual book (rather than an e-copy) and grateful to Ticonderoga Press for accepting The Mysterious Mr Montague for their anthology of stories about blood.

The tale itself is set in Kilbirnie (Wellington, NZ) in the 1970s. At various times back then I lived in the nearby suburbs of Hataitai and Lyall Bay. I walked the streets of Kilbirnie and Evans Bay, frequently. My identical twin uncles owned a butcher shop in Kilbirnie.

It was fun to write and I particularly liked adding reference to ‘The Larch’. Back in the 70s in Wellington, you would see ‘The Larch’ scrawled as graffiti on many walls and previously blank spaces. It was in reference to the Monty Python’s sketch of the same name. The Larch

My story, of course, is complete fiction, but I did enjoy drawing from my memories of the area and the time.

Last month, editor Amanda Pillar, invited the various authors to write a guest post on her blog site about their tales. Here’s a link to mine… Bloodlines Guest Post Jane Percival.