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    Aurealis #89
    Aurealis #89
    Aurealis #89
    Ebook139 pages1 hour

    Aurealis #89

    By Dirk Strasser (Editor)

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    About this ebook

    Aurealis #89 opens with a haunting image of ghosts reburying their dead at low tide from David Versace ‘The Lighthouse at Cape Defeat’, then moves through the gentle organic world-building of Adrik Kemp’s ‘Blossom Fall’ and finally onto Heidi Kneale’s intriguing steampunkish ‘How He Wound Up’. This issue also features two bonus stories: the winners of the Contact2016 short story competition, ‘The Ants Go Marching’ by Jeffrey Paul and ‘Synthetic Corruption’ by Sam Johnson. Dirk Strasser looks at the uncomfortable truth about how much fiction writers earn. Chris Large interviews John Flanagan, the Australian author of the New York Times bestselling Ranger’s Apprentice and Brotherband books. Lachlan Walter dissects postcolonial science fiction and Peter Docker’s The Waterboys set in an apocalyptic drought-stricken future Australia. The Secret History of Australia continues with the story of Adeline Strife’s strident pursuit of greatness, and the issue closes with the usual reviews of the latest speculative fiction releases.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherChimaera Publications
    Release dateApr 2, 2016
    ISBN9781922031457
    Aurealis #89
    Author

    Dirk Strasser (Editor)

    Dirk Strasser has written over 30 books for major publishers in Australia and has been editing magazines and anthologies since 1990. He won a Ditmar for Best Professional Achievement and has been short-listed for the Aurealis and Ditmar Awards a number of times. His fantasy novels – including Zenith and Equinox – were originally published by Pan Macmillan in Australia and Heyne Verlag in Germany. His children’s horror/fantasy novel, Graffiti, was published by Scholastic. His short fiction has been translated into a number of languages, and his most recent publications are “The Jesus Particle” in Cosmos magazine, “Stories of the Sand” in Realms of Fantasy and “The Vigilant” in Fantasy magazine. He founded the Aurealis Awards and has co-published Aurealis magazine for over 20 years.

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      Book preview

      Aurealis #89 - Dirk Strasser (Editor)

      AUREALIS #89

      Edited by Dirk Strasser

      Published by Chimaera Publications at Smashwords

      Copyright of this compilation Chimaera Publications 2016

      Copyright on each story remains with the contributor.

      EPUB version ISBN 978-1-922031-45-7

      ISSN 2200-307X (electronic)

      CHIMAERA PUBLICATIONS

      Smashwords Edition License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the authors, editors and artists.

      Hard copy back issues of Aurealis can be obtained from the Aurealis website:

      www.aurealis.com.au

      Contents

      From the Cloud—Dirk Strasser

      The Lighthouse at Cape Defeat—David Versace

      Blossom Fall—Adrik Kemp

      How He Wound up—Heidi Kneale

      The Ants Go Marching—Jeffrey Paul (Contact2016 winner – Open)

      Synthetic Corruption—Sam Johnson (Contact2016 winner – Junior)

      Sage Advice from John Flanagan—Chris Large

      Dissecting SF—Postcolonial Science Fiction and Peter Docker’s The Waterboys—Lachlan Walter

      Secret History of Australia—Adeline Strife—Researched by Michael Pryor

      Reviews

      Next Issue

      Credits

      From the Cloud

      Dirk Strasser

      What's the difference between a writer and a pizza?

      A pizza can feed a family of four.

      It’s an unfortunate truth that the number of writers who make a decent living purely from writing fiction is a small club. Most people outside the publishing industry are usually shocked when they hear the statistics on writers’ earnings.

      The reason why most people think writers make more money than they actually do is that we are blinded by the headliners, the mega-bestsellers that make the mainstream media. We are told, for example, that J K Rowling, the world's richest author, has a net worth of $1 billion. Forbes published a list of the world's top-earning authors by compiling estimates of their incomes between June 2014 and June 2015 based on their print, ebook and audiobook sales from Nielsen BookScan. The results were:

      1. James Patterson—$89 million

      2. John Green—$26 million

      3. Veronica Roth & Danielle Steel—$25 million

      4. Jeff Kinney—$23 million

      5. Janet Evanovich—$21 million

      6. J K Rowling & Stephen King—$19 million

      7. Nora Roberts—$18 million

      8. John Grisham—$14 million

      9. Dan Brown, Suzanne Collins, Gillian Flynn & Rick Riordan—$13 million

      10. E.L. James & George R R Martin—$12 million

      There’s quite a different story if we look at average writers rather than outliers. Let’s shift our gaze back down to ground level rather than the stratosphere. A Macquarie University survey of Australian authors released in October 2015 was based on a detailed questionnaire of more than 1000 Australian authors. The 1000 were people who considered themselves professional writers, not hobbyists or hopefuls. It also included authors who used the non-traditional ways of publishing that new technologies now offer and self-published. Based on their responses, the survey found that the average annual income for authors from their creative practice was A$12,900 (US$9900). That’s right: A$12,900.

      The reality is that this obviously isn’t enough to make a living. So how does the average writer make ends meet? The survey asked that question, and the result was that 47.3 per cent of writers relied on a job unrelated to writing and 37.3 per cent of writers relied on the income of their partner.

      Why is it that an overwhelming number of writers can’t make any sort of living out of their writing? This, of course, is the $12,900 question. It comes down to deeply embedded assumptions within the system.

      A number of years ago a large multi-national publisher asked me for permission to republish a children's story of mine, ‘It never rains on the Nullarbor,’ in an anthology aimed at the schools market. I was sent a form to sign. There was no mention whatever of payment. They just wanted me to sign it to give them the rights to publish it.

      Needless to say, I wasn't overjoyed with the automatic assumption that a multi-billion dollar company wasn't going to pay anything for it. The story had been republished a number of times before and I had always been paid. I contacted them to ask why they were assuming they could have permission to reprint the story for free. The answer I got back from the editor was that she thought I would give them the story to ‘support literacy among school children.’ That’s when I really started to get stroppy with the editor. I asked her whether she worked for free in order to ‘support literacy among school children?’

      Obviously the system has been built in a way that means everyone along the publishing chain in medium to large publishing companies is making a living out what they do, except the large majority of authors.

      The bright side of the Macquarie University survey is that genre authors are at the upper end of fiction writers in terms of income. They have also been the ones who have benefitted most from the changes in technology within the publishing industry in recent times. According to the survey, nearly one-third of genre fiction authors have self-published a book during their career—the highest proportion of all authors—and the proportion of income from self-published books was higher for genre authors than for any other category.

      So where does it leave the poor family of four feeding on a single pizza? You speculative fiction writers out there may never reach the J K Rowling stratosphere, but at least by writing genre fiction you’re better off than your literary cousins. Just don’t forget to thank your partner.

      All the best from the cloud.

      Dirk Strasser

      www.dirkstrasser.com

      Back to Contents

      The Lighthouse at Cape Defeat

      David Versace

      As the first pink hints of dawn cracked the sea’s darkness, Brega looked down from the lighthouse at the sailors reburying their dead. They had left it almost too late this morning. In a few more minutes the nocturnal burial party would boil away in the sun’s breaking rays. For months now, she had greeted each morning watching the funereal scene dissolve.

      Green incandescence flared at her back as the main lamp rotated past, casting its beam across the ghosts’ longboat, moored on the choppy waters off the Cape Defeat headland. The respite from the storms would be brief; already thunderheads were regrouping in the north, flaring and snorting, gathering themselves for the stampede. The air tingled, cold and alive, awash with salt and a distant rot.

      She adjusted the timing mechanism to shutter the lamps in three hours; the illumination chemicals were expensive, and few storms were so ferocious as to obscure the craggy promontory by day. Even the least attentive ship’s watchman should not fail to spot the hazard and steer a path clear of the coast. Brega’s was a nocturnal duty. The days belonged to her.

      Or they once had. She stomped down four storeys of cramped spiral stairs to the kitchen. Assent was pouring himself a mug of tea from her brew pot. ‘Are you still here?’ The question’s acidity was more than usually concentrated today.

      Assent’s raised eyebrow disappeared into the steam rising from his mug. He was no more than thirty, with an academic’s pallor restless eyes and a vulture’s beak of a face. He never stopped moving or muttering, dictating notes to an absent assistant, only to scrawl them later on whatever surface presented itself. Brega had rescued her diaries and relocated them to her personal chamber the moment she had recognised the trait.

      ‘Really, Keeper?’ he said. ‘Must we do this every morning?’

      Brega took the brew pot from him and raised it to her nose with a frown. They did not steep tea long enough in the city. ‘I am a creature of my routines, Professor. How long do I have to endure their interruption?’

      With an exaggerated sense of ritual, Assent plucked a crinkled sheaf of papers from beneath his vest and handed them over. ‘Need I remind you again? I have complete authority to conduct my research, Keeper Brega, however long it may take.’

      Brega snorted and folded the papers open on the timeworn slab table. She resisted the temptation to hold them open with the brew pot; defacing Ministry documentation was an offense, even with tea stains. ‘I see you are authorised to requisition all necessary resources. Dare I hope you’ll make good on your promises to restore my provisions? My supply ration does not stretch far beyond my own needs.’

      Despite several layers of woollens under an outer shell of oilskin and the charcoal stove’s radiant warmth,

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