Poetry, Science, SFF, Uncategorized

Chemical Letters

OJ

CoverMy first poetry collection is out! Chemical Letters has just been published by Popcorn Press, and – unsurprisingly, given the title – is about the periodic table of elements.

But as anyone who’s read The August Birds or The Ghost of Matter knows, I like mixing speculative fiction in with my science and this is no different. Chemical Letters is about more than just atomic weights…

A scientist wakes in the periodic table come to life: an apartment block built by Mendeleev, who squats in the basement as superintendent. Behind each door is an element, and as Caroline explores the chemical letters of her professional life, she finds other scientists, other visitors. Van Gogh is painting sunflowers with chromium yellow; the hydrogen of Hindenburg is burning at Lakehurst; Marie Curie is playing catch with radium—and Caroline is stepping through science, opening doors one after the other, searching for a place she can call home.…

You can buy a copy direct from Popcorn Press, or find an e-copy or a print copy at Amazon.

Poetry, SFF

Mary Shelley Makes a Monster

OJ

shelleyThis week I’ve got a long poem out at Strange Horizons! “Mary Shelley Makes a Monster” is inspired by Shelley’s life. I read a biography of hers recently – picked it up from the library almost at random, because it was on display and reminded me that I loved Frankenstein and didn’t know much about the author.

If you’ve come across my novella The Life in Papers of Sofie K., you’ll know that I’ve an interest in women and monstrosity – particularly historical, looking at women who bucked the expectations of their time and were often punished for it. Sofia Kovalevskaya, with her monstrous mathematical brain, was the first of my experiments on this theme.

Then along came Mary Shelley: most famous for a story of a constructed monster, and I thought What if it were you all along? What if the monster were truly your creation, not Frankenstein’s? What if  you were the monster, Mary?

Hence the poem. It’s really a thinly veiled allegory of the events of her life. It reads speculative enough, to be sure, but some years back now I studied English at university and this is probably the only chance I’ll ever get to show it off.

Novellas, Short stories

Pre-order SHORTCUTS and win!

OJ

shortcuts-track-1At the beginning of the month, Paper Road Press published my novella The Ghost of Matter. This was the last of their 2015 Shortcuts series: six titles by Kiwi authors, themed around strange tales of Aotearoa New Zealand.

All the Shortcuts stories were sold separately as ebooks. But that’s about to change! There’s a print collection on the way, just in time for Christmas. That’s six novellas in one book: Mika by Lee Murray and Piper Mejia; The Last by Grant Stone; Bree’s Dinosaur by A.C. Buchanan; Pocket Wife by I.K. Paterson-Harkness; Landfall by Tim Jones; and The Ghost of Matter.

You can pre-order Shortcuts now, and if you do, you go in the draw for free book vouchers! So check it out.

SFF, Short stories

“The Tree of Life in Lisbon”

OJ

lsqMy latest short story is out! “The Tree of Life in Lisbon” is free to read over at Luna Station Quarterly. It’s a fantasy story about what happens after the Garden of Eden – more gardening, basically, and golems and apples and earthquakes. So much of my recent writing has been science-based that it feels almost strange to dip back into fantasy for a while.

“You are turning into a shut-in,” said the Golem. “It is unbecoming.”

“It’s not a flaw to appreciate the comforts of home,” said Eve. “And travelling is so tiresome. It’s barely been two centuries since the last move. You cannot be bored yet.”

“I could never be bored with you,” said the Golem, honey-tongued and reproachful at once. “I lack the capacity.”

“I know,” said Eve, who had carved lack of imagination into his tongue, who would not see the same mistake made twice. “You should be grateful for that.”

“I am not grateful,” said the Golem. “And I am not bored. You have not left this garden for decades. I am disturbed.”

“I’ve no reason to leave,” said Eve. “I like it here.”

“I am disturbed,” said the Golem again. Eve heaved a sigh, and with her little carving knife sliced silence into the skin of a sweet, plump little grape and fed it to him, letting herself bask in the quiet. And the Golem did not speak and he did not nag, did not try to convince her to go out to market or to the hairdressers, to the puppet shows or the street musicians. The Golem was used to silence, had been fed it with olives and rose-water and seed pods, the muddy taste of mangroves, and he held the grape carefully on his tongue, carefully between jaws of clay, and waited to be told to spit it out.

He was not capable of boredom, but Eve was.

Read more here!

Novellas, Science, SFF

“The Ghost of Matter”

OJ

ghost-of-matter_cover_medMy new novella’s out! It came out just yesterday, from Paper Road Press, as part of their Shortcuts series of New Zealand based speculative fiction. The other five stories in the series are fantastic, I’m so pleased to be part of it with all those fantastic authors!

1886. Two young boys disappear in the Sounds. Their mother grieves, all the music cut out of her heart; their father wanders the coast for a year, wanting and not wanting to find any part of them left behind. And their brother Ern, faced with a problem to which no solution can be found, returns to his laboratory – and to the smell of salt, soft voices in his ear, wet footprints welling seawater in the darkness.

The Ghost of Matter weaves together time and memory, physics and mystery, in this story inspired by Ernest Rutherford’s life and research.

I seem to have a real thing about Ernest Rutherford! He turned up in The August Birds last month, and now this. I’ve also got another idea for a novella involving him, and a short story. He just really fires my imagination, especially as he grew up in the same part of New Zealand as I did.

Anyway, there’s an excerpt that’s free to read over at Paper Road, so if this sounds like something you’d like go check it out!