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    Sleight of Hand
    Sleight of Hand
    Sleight of Hand
    Ebook24 pages10 minutes

    Sleight of Hand

    By Simon Haynes

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    About this ebook

    After a cosy meal, the protagonist retires to his host's workshop for an after-dinner drink ... and becomes the unwitting subject of an experiment.

    Trivia: Sleight of Hand won the 2001 Aurealis Award for Horror.

    --

    'The other day I began to consider the practical benefits of sending matter as an attachment.'
    'Matter?'
    Ralph rapped his knuckles on the benchtop. 'Objects.'
    My eyebrows rose. 'You want to email a piece of wood?' We'd managed a bottle of wine between us over the apricot chicken, but I didn't think he was that far gone.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon Haynes
    Release dateNov 16, 2011
    ISBN9781465995865
    Sleight of Hand
    Author

    Simon Haynes

    Simon Haynes lives in Western Australia, where he divides his time between herding deadly spiders, dodging drop bears, and making up wildly inaccurate sentences like this one.By day he's an author. By night he's also an author.He loves wry, dry humour, and his hobbies include daringly inserting the letter U into words where -- in some parts of the world at least -- this simply isn't the done thing.As for his genre-spanning novels, they include epic fantasy (with robots), scifi comedy (also with robots), middle grade humour (featuring robots AND the wanton use of the letter U), as well as a series of historical mystery novels set in 1870's London. (No, of course there aren't robots in those. He's not completely out of his mind.)When he's not writing Simon is usually renovating his house, sim-racing online, using twitter (@spacejock), gardening, tweaking his book covers, pondering the meaning of the universe and reading, and if you think it's easy doing all that at the same time you should see what he can do with a mug of coffee, a banana and a large bag of salt.When he's not making outlandish claims he likes to count how many novels he's written, and how many genres he's written them in. (Lots and too many.)Finally, if you want to hear Simon reading one of his award-winning stories, you'll find an enticement to join his newsletter here: spacejock.com.au/ML.html

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      Book preview

      Sleight of Hand - Simon Haynes

      Sleight of Hand

      A Short Story

      Originally Published in Potato Monkey issue #1

      After a cosy meal, our protagonist retires to his host's workshop for a drink … and becomes the unwitting subject of an extraordinary experiment.

      © Simon Haynes 2011

      All Rights Reserved

      Bowman Press

      Bowman Press

      Stock images © depositphotos.com

      Sleight of Hand

      Ralph Swindon has always been a bit of a tinkerer. Whenever we went to his place for a meal, I would end up in his workshop while Jenny and Rachel enjoyed a glass of Baileys or two on the balcony overlooking the pool.

      Ralph confided once that his workshop was the only place he could really relax. He worked for one of those big, scientific firms which design hardware for spy agencies and the military. He often brought home bits and pieces of equipment, given free rein by a management eager to stimulate his brilliant, creative mind.

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