Spineless Wonders asks Sam Cooney
1. Who are the short fiction authors you admire (Australian or otherwise, alive or dead)?
Ryan O’Neill, Eva Hornung, Peter Carey, Jessica Au, A.G. McNeil, Amanda Lohrey, Frank Moorhouse Gerard Murnane, Denis Johnson, David Foster Wallace, Doris Lessing, Donald Barthelme, Jorge Luis Barthes, Miranda July, Michael Cunningham, Raymond Carver.
2. What is the most memorable short story you have read? And why does it stand out for you?
Borges’s ‘The Garden of Forking Paths’. Like, hypertext magic alert! So many layers/tangents/literary recourses. A maze-like story about an infinite maze. Jesus Jumping Beans, did this guy sort of invent the internet or something?
The story is kind-of epistolary (a style which I really dig) and it melds philosophy with storytelling (which is why I open books). Affecting and clever!
The first time you read this (or many other of Borges’s short fictions) your brain sizzles itself a thick new synapse, one that can never be unsizzled.
Also, “Jorge Luis Borges” is fun to say in a faux-Spanish accent.
3. What do you like about the short story form?
With tongue entirely in cheek but also in utter earnestness: the shortness. A short story is by name and definition succinct/brief/fleeting. When a short story is no longer short — say over 15,000 words, to pick a number — it loses the lustre of immediacy. This is true for both reading and writing short fiction. As a reader, to step into a short story is like having a shower (opposed to lolling in a bath). You know as you enter either a short story or a shower that it’s going to be quick and warm, and that it will charge your energy levels so that chores or creative toils or making that difficult phone call are suddenly not as unfeasible as they were before. As a writer, short fiction is graspable. An idea filters down through the top of your head like coffee into a cup, and you can seize it and jot down a few seconds of notes and then punch away at the keyboard, and a day or two later, you have the chassis of a story ready to be tricked out. Even if the end result is just crap, that 48 hour period of writing writing writing is better than [insert hedonistic pursuit here].
4. How would you describe your own writing?
Try-hard. Fuelled. Noisy. Optimistically cynical. Like hugging a cactus.
5. Which of your stories are you most fond of right at this moment and why?
One that I haven’t written yet; pick any of the hodgepodge ‘story idea’ Word docs that stare out at me from my desktop.
6. Where do the ideas for your stories come from? (Take us through an example)
I’m not sure where ideas come from. I can’t even go as far as calling them ‘my’ ideas. Does anyone really have an answer for this question that isn’t just horseshit? An idea appears. Sure, it’s an electrochemical process in the brain, as far as our current thinking goes. And sure, it’s also explainable through personality and character and private history. But none of this is ever going to be satisfactory. Try explaining to a five-year-old the physical reasons why a group of whales kill themselves by drowning in air on a lonely beach. How much can you persuade this five-year-old with an explanation?
7. What is your writing process – from idea to publication? (Do you go it alone or are others involved?)
Alone alone alone, until the very end, when I reach out for friends. I don’t reckon there’s any other way to do it.
8. Do you feel the short story form is valued in Australia? What makes you say this?
Yeah, sure it’s valued. I value the shit out of it, and I know many other Australian citizens who do also. That’s enough for me, for the moment anyhow.
9. How do you feel about your work being published in non-print forms such as digital and audio?
No wuckers is how I feel. Do with it what you will, it’s not mine anymore.
10. What advice would you like to offer Spineless Wonders?
Um, read? No matter what else, for me everything always comes back to reading. (By ‘reading’ I mean ‘experiencing art’, like books, films, fine art, music, public transport, people, walking, sex.)
Sam Cooney has published fiction, creative nonfiction and journalism in a variety of places, both in Australia and overseas. He has also commissioned and edited writing for a few major Australian journals and magazines, and is currently the fiction editor at the Lifted Brow. His story, ‘From on high’ is published in Escape, an anthology of short Australian stories (Spineless Wonders, 2011).
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This entertaining collection includes a romp of a novella called The Rattler, as well as short stories and micro fictions all set in and around contemporary Melbourne. Sometimes serious, sometimes seriously playful –always written in breathtakingly beautiful prose – these stories uncover the heartbreaking tragedies, slow-burning emotions and serendipity of ordinary lives.
Cover image by Miles Allinson, illustrated by Miles Allinson & Maxine Beneba Clarke
Praise for The Rattler & other stories:
“Spare and taut, sometimes tricky, sometimes shocking, yet always deeply and satisfyingly tender. A great collection.”
Paddy O’Reilly.
“An explosive mix of muscular prose and sharp originality. In this collection, A. S. Patric proves himself to be a writer who must be taken very seriously.” Vanessa Gebbie, author of Short Circuit, A Guide to the Art of the Short Story.
“A.S. Patric is that rarest of writers- he is absolutely fearless. His stories take risks, his characters soar and his prose sings. Be careful. These stories might cut you.” Ryan O’Neill.
In Permission to Lie, Julie Chevalier casts a curious eye into many different worlds. Her characters ride the citybound bus route, spend the night in a nudist colony and wait tables. Quirky and beautifully-written, these stories provide insights that ring with integrity and compassion.
‘A new voice in Australian fiction, wry, gritty, knowing and true.’
Fiona McGregor, Indelible Ink
Read an interview with the author, here.
What makes a man?
In this collection of short stories, Pierz Newton John moves through the full range of masculine experience, with an openness not afraid to show men at their most lonely, sexual, loving, sometimes vulnerable, sometimes abusive. First touch of a woman’s body in a cold and foreign land, tender moments between father and son, the deep love of a father separated from his child, treachery and opportunism mixed up with loneliness and internet dating, the casual violence of young boys exploring the world, rites of passage from young rebels to comfortable suburbanites, and what men feel and think about women. In Pierz Newton John’s stories it always come back to emotion?tenderness with children, warmth with wives after dreams of alienation, the pain of treacherous girlfriends, the loneliness of men. Plus ça change plus c’est la même chose…….the reader is lulled by the seamless prose, undercurrents of contemporary music, the urbane writing, the suburban settings, but it is all happening behind closed doors.
Read an interview with the author, here
Purchase a copy, here.
In these seventeen stories, Melbourne writer, Mary Manning, looks at the ways people are shaped, or damaged, by their circumstances. The results may sometimes be humorous, sometimes tragic. Whether set on a tram, along a highway or on an outback road?it is the journey, the characters and the telling of the tale that will capture your attention.
Cover and illustrations by Paden Hunter
‘Mary Manning takes her stories to places few writers would dare to go. She ranges across different styles with ease in a unique voice that is tart, tight and compulsively readable.’ PADDY O’REILLY
Read our interview with the author, Mary Manning here
To purchase, click here
If you like your genres with a bit of edge, you’ll love this diverse collection of stories from Spineless Wonders.
Features award-winning writers such as Ryan O’Neill, Jen Mills, Andy Kissane, Louise Swinn, Julie Chevalier, A.S. Patric and Kim Westwood as well as stories chosen by Sophie Cunningham in the inaugural Carmel Bird Short Fiction Award.
Contains illustrations by talented young artist, Paden Hunter.
‘Quality short fiction, packed with surprises. Prepare to be transported.’ Marion Halligan
Purchase here
Read interviews with our contributors, here.
Listen to audio samples here.
An anthology of prose poems and microfiction from 30 Australian writers.
- Includes award-winning writers Michael Farrell, Keri Glastonbury, Judith Beveridge and Peter Boyle.
- Features prose poems and microfiction selected by competition judge, joanne burns.
- Cover and evocative sketches by talented artist, Paden Hunter.
- Read interviews with our contributors here
- Click here to here audio
To purchase, click here
Escape audio stories Vol. 2
Playlist
Those Gauls Must Be Crazy – Claire Aman 14:36
The End of the Beginning – Meredyth Cilento 25:50
Poioumenon – John Steiner 8:22
The Gardener – Susan McCreery 21:50
For more details about these stories and their authors and to hear audio samples from this CD click here. Also available as mp3.
Escape – audio stories Vol. 1
Playlist
Paper Anniversary – SJ Finn/JR Davidson 19:35
Under the Skin – Sue Booker 21:39
Unnameable – M. Giacometti 20:14
Home – Yin Lin 13:36
For more details about these stories and their authors and to hear audio samples from this CD, click here. Also available as mp3.
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