There, that’s a blunt factual title!

My story, The Big Reveal, did NOT win the 2017 Australian Shadows Award for short fiction. Congratulations to the winner, Matthew J Morrison for his story The Banksia Boys (Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine #66).

Nonetheless, feel free to click on the link to read my story which appeared in the Winter 2017 edition of Kaleidotrope, edited and published by Fred Coppersmith. I still like the opening (self-praise is no recommendation, as Mrs Carver used to say, the teacher who told me there was no Santa):

When he heard the cracking before the lights had even been doused — a noise he would later realize was the sound of small facial bones breaking — when he looked up and saw the man’s face turning into someone else’s, the boy stopped paying attention to the stuffed horse he had been pulling hair from all afternoon.

Or of course, you can read something else … like The gods of the gaps, in the latest 3LBE

(So many links. Somehow, I think there would have been less shameless self-promotion here if I had won… 🙂 )

It was excellent to have been nominated.

Sorry Fred …. Kaleidotrope … Mum … I let you all down … 😦

I think I am not getting the tone right, too many inconsistencies. Well, here is something that always cheers me up: