THE NEW YEAR IS HERE!

Welcome everyone to the New Year!

Can you smell that? Smells like promise and opportunity to me!

Just like a ream of fresh paper: a blank canvas ready to fill with wonderful and exciting things.

Lots to report.  Will tell you all about it as soon as I get over my New Year's Eve hangover.

Cheers,

Eugene Gramelis
Sydney, January 2015

"KING OF TIDES" SERIES BY EUGENE GRAMELIS

                                                       
                                                    PART 5: “THE ELLENOR”

When they ventured out of the trench, they were confronted with a setting that had gone from resembling a scene from the 1969 moon landing to looking like something beamed back by the Mars Rover. Craters of all different shapes and sizes pockmarked the desert plain; the ash-drizzle had thinned to a grey-amber fog.

Renaldo looked at Luke, his eyes dull with hopelessness. "Where to?"

Luke motioned toward the curl of dark smoke, which had become a constant feature in an otherwise featureless backdrop. It was still the only real option. Amie sat high on Luke's shoulders, like an exotic princes seated atop her litter. Given that Renaldo had carried her last, it was now Luke’s turn to do the honours. She held him firmly around the ears with clammy fingers.

The trio set off, leaving the safetey of the shelter behind them, and weaved their way between the basins of each impact zone. Renaldo wore Luke’s backpack, using it as a shield, much as Luke had done the previous day, against the gusts of icy wind that battered them from all directions.

A few hundred feet into their journey, Renaldo bent down to pick up what looked like a hefty lump of blackened rock, which stood out against the dirty but lighter sand. Smaller pieces of the same dark-coloured stone peppered the whole area.

“Chunks of meteorite,” Luke confirmed. He thought back to the documentary he had watched with his dad. “I think this is what geologists would call a strewnfield.”

“Cool! It's still warm.” Renaldo hefted the stone up and down in one hand. “A piece of rock from outer space. These might be worth something.”

“Sure,” Luke said, “if there were people around to sell them to.”

Renaldo surveyed the barren plain surrounding them. Point made. He allowed the rock to fall to the ground.

They continued their march in the direction of the column of smoke, like the three wise men (well, technically in this case it was two wise men and one not very talkative girl with spooky eyes) following the star over Bethlehem. There was no sense of time or distance; they could have been walking in circles for all they knew. The hunger in Luke’s belly was now superseded by his thirst.

Finally, the spiral of black smoke grew fat before them and they could see large tendrils of flame just beyond the crest of the next sandbank.

The opaque, ginger-coloured drape that hung over the sky was starting to ripen back to crimson. They would need to find shelter again soon.

Luke paused for a moment to catch his breath. His tongue felt gritty and pasty in his mouth. He put Amie down and she quickly found a new home on Renaldo's back. The muscles in Luke's neck were knotted and tense.

A strange object caught the corner of his eye. It lay on the ground about five feet in front of him. At first he thought that his mind was playing tricks on him, a mirage brought on by a hunger-induced delirium.

It was a fish.

A stinky dead one, but a fish just the same.

Renaldo noticed it also. “What the...”

Luke picked it up by the tail and held it in wonder. There was simply no explanation for this. A fish! Here, in the middle of nowhere!

Luke sniffed at it. Pew! It was at least a couple of days dead, but the lack of sun had slowed the decomposition process.

"What are you thinking?" Renaldo asked.

“I'm thinking we're going to eat it.” Luke waved the fish in front of the pitcher's nose.

"Ergh!.” Renaldo pushed it away. "Not me." 

“Do you see any Seven Eleven stores around?”

“Fishy,” Amie said, lifting her head up listlessly from Renaldo's back and then resting it again, as though finding a fish in the middle of what looked like the Sahara desert was the most normal thing in the world. Renaldo smiled. Luke had told him about his conversation with Amie during the morning, and while Renaldo had not indicated any doubt, seeing (or in this case, hearing) is believing.

Luke opened the backpack, took out his math book, and tore a number of pages from it. He wrapped these around the fish. He’d always dreamed about shredding his school books, but not like this. He tucked both the fish and what was left of his math book into his bag.

Once their luch was safely tucked away, they set off again, scalling the tall crest in front of them. When they got to the top the first thing Luke felt was a blast of heat, and what he saw on the other side made his jaw drop.

It was a huge ship -- a freighter judging by the size of it -- slumped on its side like a fallen giant and engulfed in flames, a juggernaut, roughly a football field in length. The ship lay in a massive pool of oil that seemed to be seeping from a gash in its hull. And it was encircled by sand on all sides as far as the eye could see.

Another object lay half-buried in the sand. Luke pulled it loose. This time it was a red and white life saver, with the words THE ELLENOR printed on it. What was this colossus doing here?

So much for the plume of smoke. Luke turned and looked back in the direction they had come from. Thick cords of fog twisted and boiled on the horizon, limiting visibility to a few hundred feet. But for a brief second he thought he had caught a glimpse of something before the clouds quickly swallowed it. There it was again! A tall obelisk in the far distance: the unmistakable silhouette of a skyscraper.

Huge drops of water began splattering at their feat (not ash-drizzle this time, but real rain).

The city was in the opposite direction, Luke realised. They had been walking away from it ever since they had escaped from the tunnel. All this could only mean one thing...

That they were standing in the middle of what was once Boston Harbour.
                                                        

                                              (c) Copyright Eugene Gramelis, 2012

"KING OF TIDES" SERIES BY EUGENE GRAMELIS

PART 4: "WELCOME TO MY NIGHTMARE"

From their shelter, the trio watched as the fireball grew larger and larger until it lit up their surroundings, turning night into day. Then it seemed to splinter into small fragments, which one after the other slammed into the earth with ground-shaking velocity.

The girl buried her face in Luke's chest. Her tiny body quivered in fear. The drop in temperature couldn't be helping, either. Luke squeezed her tightly, shielding her from the cold and the mushroom cloud of dust coming their way. He lifted the tip of his shirt collar so that it covered his mouth and nose, and motioned to Renaldo to do the same. Renaldo happily complied.

More lights detached themselves from the heavens and plummeted toward them. Most of these seemed to fizzle out before making landfall, but a few thudded into the ground beyond the dune, strafing the corrugated roofing of their refuge with shrapnel and debris from the impact zone.

"I'm telling you," Renaldo insisted through his makeshift ski-mask, "those are nukes. I bet China's behind it... No, wait, North Korea!"

"If those were nukes, we wouldn't be having this conversation," Luke pointed out.

"What do you make of it then?"

Luke still wasn't sure. Part of him wanted to hold on to the belief that this was all some horrible nightmare, but the gurgling in his empty stomach felt pretty real. As for Renaldo's theory that they were under attack from a rogue nation, well, Luke guessed that was a possibility that couldn't be ruled out just yet; but he had a feeling those fireballs weren't man-made. "I think we might be experiencing a meteor shower," he finally ventured. At least he hoped that was all it was. "I saw something similar to this on the Discovery Channel once. In a documentary I watched with my dad." Again, the grief threatened to engulf him; once more he thrust it back into the shadows.

The extraterrestrial bombardment continued throughout the long hours that followed, with wave after wave of these fireballs lighting up the sky and either burning out in the atmosphere or crashing into the nearby terrain. All he could do was pray that none scored a direct hit on their little hideout.

At some point Luke must have dozed off because he was startled awake by something soft poking at his nose. It was a tiny finger. It belonged to the girl. She pointed outside. Luke stuck his head past the edge of the corrugated sheet to take a look. Visibility was still low and there was no sun in the sky as far as he could make out, but much of the dust had settled and the horizon had gone from blood-purple to a milky ginger, which probably meant that it was no longer night. He listened, and heard nothing. This was a good sign. It meant that the aerial offensive had also come to an end.

Luke returned to the girl and sat beside her. Renaldo was still snoozing, and could, no doubt, sleep through World War III if Luke chose not to wake him. What he found almost amusing was the thought that Renaldo might indeed be sleeping through World War III.

The girl rubbed her tummy and gestured with her hand to her mouth, her lilac eyes wide and moist.

"I'm sorry," Luke said, "I don't have any more food. We ate all the mints last night."

The girl pouted her lips and looked away.

"Hey, you don't get out of it that easy," Luke said, gently. He figured she couldn't be more than three or four years of age. "I know you can talk. Forjooleye, remember?"

She looked at him but said nothing.

"My name is Luke. What's your name?" Luke and Renaldo had tried this line a number of times and had received only a curious, lavender stare in response. And it seemed he was being given the same treatment now.

He nestled against his bag and closed his eyes.

The same soft finger poked him in the nose. "Ay me."

"Huh?" Luke sat up.

"Ay me," the girl said again.

"Amie." Luke mouthed her name, trying it on for size. It was a good fit. She definitely looked like an Amie.

Amie smiled, timidly at first, but it soon erupted into a big grin.

Luke held out his arms, and she came to him. He leaned back against his bag with the girl resting her warm cheek on his torso.

Nice to meet you, Amie, he thought. Welcome to my nightmare.

(c) Copyright Eugene Gramelis, 2012

SHAKE HANDS WITH THE NEW YEAR

It's always around this time that I'm reminded of a quaint little poem by William Cullen Bryant called A Song for New Year's Eve, which he penned in the mid-ninteenth century. The first stanza reads: "Stay yet, my friends, a moment stay, -- Stay till the good old year, So long companion of our way. Shakes hands, and leaves us here. Oh stay, oh stay, One little hour, and then away."

As I hand the Old Year its well-worn coat and see it to the door, I'm struggling with mixed emotions. My definition of a good year is one in which nobody close to me died and in which, despite the setbacks randomly strewn by life across our path, we finish the year with an overall sense of having made progress in our goals. I'm happy to announce that I can tick both of those boxes for 2011.

We tend to cling to "good years" until the final chime of the clock. We do this, I believe, because the last days, hours, minutes of the departing year represent a port of safety; they are the edge of the diving board before the inertia of time forces its hand against our backs, plunging us forward into the dark waters of the uncharted year ahead.

I wish I could say that I've written consistently all year round, but that would be a fib. As is usual for me, my creativity has come in fits and bursts -- scaled-down versions of the Big Bang, you might say. But these chronic bursts have given birth to some great stories, like rare life-bearing planets scattered and glimmering in an otherwise cold, dark and barren universe.

Three of my pieces (Dirty Laundry, Jacob's Ladder and Things that Grow) have been selected by Stephen Studach for publication in his forthcoming "100 Lightnings" anthology to be published by Paroxysm Press in the new year, which I am absolutely stoked about. Below is the link to Paroxysm Press's home page, for those of you sticky beaks who want to look around: http://www.paroxysmpress.com Jacob's ladder was also published in issue 160 of "Antipodan SF" in October this year. The story featured both in print on AntiSF's e-zine and in its on-line radio program (narrated by yours truley). This was the first time that any of my stories have been beemed from a radio (even if of the internet variety). I must say, that, alone, pretty much made my year! There really is something special about radio; it adds dimension to a story, bringing it to life. I'd love to have a story fully dramatised for radio one day. Something to chew on for now. Here is the link to the story for those of you wishing to read it: http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/10063/20111005-0029/www.antisf.com.au/the-stories/jacobs-ladder.html

And for those of you too lazy to hold your eyes to a computer screen long enough to read a 500 word piece of flash fiction, here is the podcast from the AntiSF Radio show (my story starts at about 22 minutes and 45 seconds into the broadcast): http://antisf.libsyn.com/webpage/the-anti-sf-radio-show-160-alpha

Two of my most favourite creations, Thirty Seconds and Digging for Dandelions, have been published by Black House Comics in issues 3 and 4 of its "After the World" series. These are available now from any good Newsagency, so if you're into zombies and post-apocalyptic mayhem, go grab a copy. This is a really fun universe, and I hope that the opportunity arises for me to romp about in this world in future issues. You can purchase hard copies on-line from Black Boox at: http://www.blackboox.net

Another milestone of 2011 is the acceptance of three more of my stories (Fair's Fair, 2109 and The Milepost Motel) in Shelley Halima's "Night Gypsy: Journey into Darkness" anthology scheduled for release by Indie Gypsy Press in September 2012, just before Halloween. I'm really excited about this one. Here is a link to the promo video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvDc3SMudW4

A peppering of my micro fiction, which I penned between larger works throughout the year, has found its way into "Flashshot". These spicy pieces include Babe in the Woods, What Ails Her, The Kraken's Hand, Dutiful Desolation, The Ties that Blind, Faith Lift, A Trip to the Zoo and You Crack Me Up. I like micro fiction. I think of it as poetry in prose. I'm hoping that one day I'll have enough of these tidbits to put together a collection. If you're after quality daily micro-fiction, then you really should sneak a peek at the "Flashshot" webpage: http://www.gwthomas.org/flashshotindex.htm

This year also saw me return to grass roots with my contribution of Forever and a Day and The Devil You Know to "MicroHorror", an awesome e-zine which was responsible for (or perhaps "guilty of" might be a better phrase) publishing my first story The Chanting in July 2008. It's a cool site full of great stories (all 666 words or less). It's worth visiting and taking a poke around: http://www.microhorror.com/microhorror/category/author/eugene-gramelis

Neighbourhood Watch made its debut in "Apollo's Lyre Magazine" in September of 2011. You can read that story here: http://apollos-lyre.tripod.com/id316.html

Last but not least, Live Girls is slated for publication in "Night to Dawn Magazine" in April 2012. Can't wait. You can keep an eye out for it at: http://bloodredshadow.com/about/night-to-dawn-magazine-and-books/night-to-dawn-magazine-reviews-2

Regrets: one or two ("but then again too few to mention", as the song My Way goes). I would have liked to have had more episodes of "King of Tides" up on the blog, but as you can see from the above, I've had my hands full with other projects. Still, no excuses. I'm hoping to have the next instalment up in early January. So hang loose, it's coming.

In bidding farewell a year that's been kind to us there is always that tiny twang of performance anxiety lingering in the pit of our stomachs, the unspoken thought being, Will we acomplish as much in the New Year? Well here's the sweet truth: the New Year is a blank canvas, yours to fill with sketches or paintings (pick your own metaphoric artist's tool) of epic lanscapes and flights of fancy to your heart's desire. The Old Year has given us all that it can give; the New Year knocks at our door, full of hope and promise ("brand new and still in its wrapper" to swipe a line from one of my own stories).

Let's not keep it waiting in the dark any longer; afterall, it has been waiting our whole lives to greet us. Open the door, shake hands with the New Year, and welcome your new friend into the warm light.

Wishing you and yours a safe festive season and best wishes for what lays ahead (whatever that might be!)

"KING OF TIDES" SERIES BY EUGENE GRAMELIS

PART 3: "FORJOOLEYE"

Luke scrambled to his knees.

Finally, he thought. Help has arrived!

But what Luke saw as he crawled out from beneath their make-shift shelter was not the floodlights of a helicopter or a search-and-rescue plane.

Tendrils of green light erupted in the heavens and streaked silently across the starless night sky, fading to nothing.

He gazed up at this display for a long time, mouth open, wondering what the hell was going on.

"Do you think they're nukes?" a male voice asked.

Startled, Luke turned to find Ronaldo and the girl standing beside him.

"Not sure," Luke admitted. But he doubted that they were. There were hundreds of them, if not thousands; they blazed across the atmosphere, darting randomly in all directions, burning in and out of existence.

Despite the flying grit, the girl's lilac eyes were wide with wonder. Emerald shadows radiated across her upturned face, and her mouth was creased by a smile. She pointed with a tiny finger: "Forjooleye."

Both Luke and Ronaldo turned to each other, surprised. At first they had no idea what she had just said. Then it dawned on Luke that she must think the lights are fireworks and that today is the Fourth of July. If only it really was Forjooleye. This was the first time either of them had heard her speak. She looked up at them and giggled. Her laugh was sweet, melodic and so out of place in their current surrounds.

Then one of the lights grew large, and a strange whistling sound trailed in its wake. It seemed to be headed straight for them.

That's definitely not fireworks, Luke thought. "Run!"

"What?"

"Just run!" Luke repeated. He shoved Ronaldo in the direction of their rusty refuge.

As the wistling sound turned into a supersonic roar, Luke scooped up the girl and dived for cover.

(c) Copyright Eugene Gramelis, 2011

Well, there it is folks: Part 3. The plot thickens. Hope you enjoyed.

WHAT AILS HER?

Hi guys.

Thought I'd let you all know that Flashshot will be featuring my micro-fiction piece"What Ails Her" around the 6th of this month, so if you get the chance please check it out and tell me what you think. Back with more later.

In the meantime, here's the link to today's flashot:

http://www.gwthomas.org/flashshotindex.htm

"100 LIGHTNINGS" UPDATE

Stephen Studach has asked me to spread the word: he is now looking for previously unpublished flash pieces for his 100 Lightnings anthology (Paroxysm Press). He will be accepting submissions until the end of June. Any collection of stories bearing Stephen's stamp of approval is bound to be full of nasty things. So get typing because this is the last call!

For those who'd like further details, here is a link to Paroxysm Press's webpage: http://www.paroxysmpress.com/