Tag Archives: Jane Percival

Writing

Around the Block

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pomegranate
An Autumn pomegranate, spilling seeds.

Around the Block, a flash fiction piece I wrote for Flash Frontier, has been published in their April edition.

Flash Frontier’s theme for April is ‘slow’ and as with other stories I’ve written, Around the Block is a fictional piece with its origins in my own experience. (In December 2015 I wrote about the mix of fact and fiction for Headland magazine, when they posed the question, “Do we write what we know?” in Seeds of a Story.)

I really enjoy reading flash fiction and I’m especially fond of the New Zealand variety – I like to read our own narratives. And reading a complete story restricted to a mere 250 words reminds me of the surprising burst of flavour you get when you bite into a tiny pomegranate seed.

I hope you’ll take the time to visit Slow. I think it’s fascinating to discover how other writers interpret a simple theme. And the stories pack plenty of punch!

A good piece of flash fiction should leave you thinking.

Or satisfied.

Or… well, I think you should find out for yourself.

 

South Head, Writing

Northeasterly

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leaves

Northeasterly

The windows rattle.

Outside, the lawn is mottled with smashed leaves
from the cottonwood.
Flax pods heavy with rain thud against each other.
A tui clings for dear life, and is whisked away.

The Northeasterly is not kind to my garden.
Branches snap, flowers shred,
hens scatter.

It passes through the mosquito mesh.
Invisible fingers lift the tapa cloth off the wall
then let if fall.
I’m reminded of Nalauaki.

Torrential rain is its companion.
Waves break against the stainless steel flue.
A million tiny coral flecks rattling with shells.

It’s been so long since it’s been windy.
I’d almost forgotten.

Jane Percival, March 2016

 

Writing

Spooky Time of Year

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spookybookshop

The Bookshop

This year, Halloween coincided with NZ Bookshop Day.

To celebrate this fortuitous collision, Speculative Fiction NZ challenged its members to write a short story that combined the two. Imagine my delight when I heard that my submission, The Bookshop, had been placed second!

Three Spooky SpecFicNz Stories for NZ Bookshop Day

The Bookshop is about a woman, Charlotte, who returns to the home of her earliest memories, to try and make sense of her past. Once there, she must overcome her fears and fulfill her destiny.

When I started writing this story, I had a very clear picture of the bookshop itself. I knew that it was old and no longer occupied – it was spooky, after all. I pictured it as a smallish, stand-alone, two-storey, weatherboard building – run down and neglected. It had been empty for decades, and yet, there were still stacks of old books inside, along with the memories.

I tried to think about why the bookshop had been vacant for so many years… What (if anything) had happened, and when? It was a fun challenge!

The process of writing can be very much like a jigsaw puzzle. The pieces are all the ideas battling for favour inside my head, waiting to be selected and placed within the frame that is the story itself.

Writing

The Mysterious Mr Montague

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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.