Narrator Magazine Blue Mountains Spring 2011

Narrator Magazine

Blue Mountains

Spring 2011

Smashwords Edition

narrator MAGAZINE is published by MoshPit Publishing

Shop 1, 197 Great Western Highway, Hazelbrook NSW 2779

MoshPit Publishing is an imprint of Mosher’s Business Support Pty Ltd

P: 1300 644 680 ABN 48 126 885 309

www.moshpitpublishing.com.au/

http://www.narratormagazine.com.au/

Copyright Notice

The copyright for each item in this publication rests with the author of that piece. Please contact us at Narrator Magazine if you wish to contact any contributor featured herein.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this free ebook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This ebook may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. If you enjoyed this book, please return to Smashwords.com to discover other books by this publisher. Thank you for your support.

Cover: ‘Three Sisters’ by Michaela Kyzyszton

‘This work was created for my Higher School Certificate and was featured in ‘ART EXPRESS 2008" at the NSW Newington Armoury at Sydney Olympic Park. It relates to a poem that my father wrote about my sisters and I, shown through the imagery and surrealistic qualities of the piece.’

If you would like to purchase prints please contact us at MoshPit Publishing narrator@moshpitpublishing.com.au

A few words from the publisher ...

Well here we are again with a Spring edition of Narrator Blue Mountains—our first anniversary edition!

And to coincide with that, we are also releasing our first Central Tablelands edition this month, to encourage our writing friends from Bathurst to Orange, Mudgee to Oberon, to join the fun. If you know anyone out there who likes to write, please let them know they now have an outlet for their work!

Thanks to David Berger, our Guest Judge for last month’s issue, for some timely advice about how to make the best of your submission. As Narrator is free online, we can’t afford to edit stories, so it’s in your best interest to have the spelling, grammar and punctuation as polished as possible.

If you haven’t already joined our Facebook page, we’d love you to do so—it makes keeping you updated so much easier, especially when we had a little domain name hiccup a couple of weeks ago! Log onto www,facebook.com/narratormagazine and click ‘Like’ today!

The other good news is that we’ve started uploading our back issues in plain text format to Smashwords in America (at www.smashwords.com) which allows us much wider coverage than before. Smashwords takes our raw files and then, using their proprietary Meatgrinder technology, spits out a whole pile of digital files in different formats. This lets people with Kindles and Nooks and iPads and other types of ereader to download Narrator in the format of their choice for hand held reading. As at the time of writing (mid August) the Winter issue of Narrator Blue Mountains had been downloaded 116 times, and the Autumn issue an incredible 142 times!

Our next step is to refine the files according to the Smashwords Style Guide so that they get accepted into the Smashwords Premium Catalogue—this will then see Narrator distributed to Barnes and Noble, Sony, Kobo, Apple, Diesel and Scrollmotion—broadening your audience even more! Amazon is also on the list, but there are technical issues between Amazon and Smashwords that are still being sorted.

So it’s all happening, folks! Thanks again for your support, and now, read on ...

Jenny Mosher

September 2011

Caricature: Jenny Mosher’s caricature (above) by local artist Todd Sharp. For more info, visit http://www.toddasharp.com/

Winning Entries for Winter 2011

Our fourth issue, Winter 2011, was judged by former English teacher and author David Berger. David’s final choices were:

First prize—$200 to Aristidis, Katoomba, for his story Henrietta de Chook and her Totally Awesome Adventure—‘because apart from being very funny, witty and entertaining, it is reminiscent of Plato’s Cave and the awful burden of having secret knowledge that you can’t share with anybody even though that knowledge would bring joy to others’

Second prize—$100 to Cathy Tanaka, Blackheath, for her poem Spin Me Round Sky—‘this is a lovely celebration of being at one with the universe, a timeless embrace between humanity and Nature, and the recognition of the intertwining of all life’

Third prize—$50 to Michael Burge, Leura, for his story A Quick Fix—‘something entirely different .. which .. structured like a long email from a girl to her parents, it analyses prejudice with the biting logic of an unprejudiced teenager’

David also made special mention of:

Ode to Tony—‘for its light-hearted fun and its range of emotions’

The Stranger—‘a haunting story as well as being a nice piece of prose, but sadder and more ethereal’

From a Window—‘a poem which uses a clever use of homophones and rhymes to produce an interesting word scape of Europe’

Where is the Female Tolstoy—‘a thoughtful analysis of the place of women’s writing today’

Wedding—‘an interesting post-modernist fascinating and clever use of language to tell a story’

A few suggestions for better writing, from our Guest Judge ...

Writers should use ‘spell-check’ and ‘grammar-check’ and also get a friend to proofread the final draft. Many writers use it’s (short for it is) rather than its (for possession: its fur), or who’s (short for who is) instead of whose (and vice versa). Also, there is no of in an English sentence such as ‘I could of seen it’. It should be ‘have’ and the error arises from speech when we say ‘I could’ve seen it’.

Many articles are reminiscences and, although interesting, do not convey any story or something to make the reader go away and think about things. It’s important that your story or poem has a purpose.

However, we have some great writers in the Mountains and I really enjoyed the privilege of having ‘first view’ of the Winter 2011 submissions.

David Berger

David Berger is a former English teacher and is also the author of Letters from Paris which explores the City of Light through the stories of ordinary people living there, by meeting these people on their own terms, and viewing their city through their eyes.

This is not your usual tourist guide, but an insightful and thought-provoking book about what makes Parisiennes who they are and Paris what it is.

Letters from Paris is available from Written for Women at http://www.writtenforwomen.com/ for $24.95 plus $5 p&h.

Congratulations to our People’s Choice Award winner Stephen Studach for his piece The Sea Dog’s Last.

Poetry

A Moment

Another Day

Between the Lines

Candle in the Wind

Celestial Femme

Faustus

First Mother-in-Law

Gloria Davidson

Memories

Quiet

Taste of Beauty

The Leaping for Joy Girl

The Prickly Tree

What Cannot be Contained

Stories

Anniversary

Devil Bone

Endings

Falling Over in Longlowe

Golden Eyed

Love in the Suburbs

Selling Green

Spectacle

Suburbia

The Facility

The Golden Statue of Lord Carnarvon

The Man Who Talked to Animals

The Tragic End of Anne Lid

Vide Grenier

What is River?

Golden Eyed – John Ross

‘Dark they were and golden eyed’, is the topic for this week at our creative writing group. Try as I might I could not get any inspiration and so turned to GOOGLE.

‘Dark They Were and Golden Eyed’ was the title of a science fiction short story written by Ray Bradbury and was originally published in the magazine ‘Thrilling Wonder Stories’ in August 1949. For some reason this information coupled with the words ‘Dark’ and ‘Golden Eyed’ jogged my memory about some news articles I had read about a real, or mythical, Blue Mountains Panther. Sometimes I worry about how my mind works, but usually just go with the flow. You surely remember the stories of people sighting these large black animals that resemble panthers. They have been sighted from Penrith to Bathurst.

Anyway last night, still lacking inspiration, I took myself off to bed. As usual when something is bugging me I could not sleep. Thoughts of things with ‘Golden Eyes’ and stories of wild animals ran like an annoying TV advertisement, round and round in my mind. Finally, exhausted, I rolled on my side and expelled all thoughts of such things and drifted off to sleep. ‘Drifted off to sleep.’ What a strange expression. Why don’t we ‘float off’ or even ‘undulate off.’ See I told you that I worry about the strange sidetracks that my mind sometimes takes.

Well, I must have been asleep for hours when I suddenly became aware of a presence. It did not frighten me. In fact it excited me, with a feeling of tremendous power and energy. I was aware that my body was still lying asleep in my bed but my mind was telling me that I was outside the house. It was so real that I could feel the cold on my skin and the rough grass beneath my feet. I was hungry, with a deep, sickening, empty feeling that told me that I needed to eat very soon.

I felt young again. My body was tensed and I could feel my muscles flexing beneath my skin. Adrenalin was pulsing through me like small electric shocks. Danger was all around and the smell of my most feared enemy was strong in my nostrils. Normally I would not venture this close to where he slept but hunger had driven me out of the dense bush where I usually hunted.

The full moon escaped from behind a cloud and I froze fearing that I might be seen. The light was so bright that I could see the steam of my breath on the cold night air. I waited, poised for instant flight, but no shout of alarm came or any dog started barking. Slowly, carefully, I inched my way forward. Just in front of me was the strange den of some of the enemy. Carefully I looked inside. With a jolt that made my whole body spasm and paralysed my mind I saw myself asleep in my bed.

A noise outside the window disturbed me and for an instant my mind was in turmoil. Where was I? I sat up and looked outside. Bright moonlight, a dark shape and two burning golden eyes.

I tried to scream, to warn my wife but my vocal chords were frozen. I could not move. Invisible forces were holding me down, constricting my arms and legs.

A voice intruded. My wife’s. Wake up! Wake up! You’re yelling out in your sleep. It must be a nightmare. Wake up!

It had been so real; but it was just a dream.

As I was having my cereal this morning my wife who had been out picking some camellias for the house came inside and said, ‘Come out and look at this.’ Still munching on my toast I followed her out to the front path.

There were huge muddy paw prints everywhere ...

This section brought to you by

Sunergy Design

Custom solar house design across New South Wales

John Basden 0449 611 076

http://www.facebook.com/sunergydesign/

Celestial Femme – Albany Dighton

An elliptical ray of light elicits the contours of quintessential beauty;

Shrouded in darkness and mystery, the seductive femme is a vision to behold.

A dominant force of eroticism and pleasure,

She’ll snake and lure, destroy and conquer;

This body and soul exudes no mercy.

The danger unfolds beneath her slender expose,

As shadows lick between the thighs.

The wrists are coupled with passionate friction,

And her pneumatic breasts emanate soulful esteem,

Upon a spine that curves with a transgressional demeanour.

Waves of desire suffocate the voyeur,

Possessing the thoughts of innocent bystanders.

Sensual, sexual, the empress engulfs her captives with such finesse;

Her lovers witness to her subtlety,

She is but