Publication news: Merciless - NWW

 

Hello again all

The battle continues in locked-down Melbourne, half-through the six week term. Night curfew, 5km travel & one hour outside the house for exercise and essential shopping.

Hope you are all keeping safe and very well in yr corners.

Another piece posted at New World Writing by Frederick Barthelme. “Merciless” is a longer sequence of shorts, running to 3.5k words. “Plenty terrifying,” commented FB. 

See what you think. Here is the link—

https://newworldwriting.net/pavle-radonic-merciless/

Pavle Radonic ~ Merciless - New World Writing Nonfiction. The Real Thing. A few days ago the Chinese con­vert, cab­bie Cha, more than a lit­tle tedious with his long drawn-out sto­ries from one of the less rep­utable hadiths it may have been involv­ing talk­ing she-camels what­not.Totally igno­rant of pace and prop­er unfold­ing the man; lame mat­ter of that kind com­ing from an old cab­bie sur­pris­ing. newworldwriting.net

All best

Pavle

Publication news: “Threesome” - New World Writing

 Hello again all

Hoping this finds everyone very well in all the far flung corners.

Another three pieces pulled from the Reject pile at New World Writing by Frederick Barthelme. It should be said, these three had been revised since first being submitted there.

“Pistol,” “Curve Ball” & “Siren,” collectively titled “Threesome."

Here is the open link—

https://newworldwriting.net/pavle-radonic-threesome/

Pavle Radonic ~ Threesome - New World Writing Pistol. Guy usu­al­ly gave the big “Nigerian” Tamil pra­ta-mak­er at Har Yasin a lit­tle rab­bit-chop­ping mas­sage when he came in for take-out. Two-three minute vig­or­ous ham­mer made the fel­low gri­mace, but easy to tell he was the bet­ter for it. newworldwriting.net

Hope you like them

P

Fireworks Display

That was interesting. Firstly the sad news of Mr Toh’s passing back in Carpmael Road. Fine old guy on his tall handle-bar bicycle living in the middle of the block. It had been Mr Toh’s father who had built the units just after the war, all sold off later apart from the upper middle where Mr T. camped with his wife, son, daughter-in-law and pretty granddaughter. Sad to hear and sudden it must have been. Helen had seen the ambulance in the morning, but didn’t know for whom it had come. Mid-afternoon Singaporean time Helen messaged. A one liner with just the news initially; in the following message shortly after the mention of the ambulance; another one liner. When the phone pinged again for the third time a couple of minutes later the expectation had been a little homily giving reminder of proper focus and attention during this short span granted us on the earth by Jehovah; &etc. The kind of thing a tough old JW might deliver in the circumstances. There had been similar from Helen over the years in Carpmael in an informal kind of witnessing, usually over breakfast preparation in the kitchen. Instead of which, however, on the contrary, something else entirely. An item from Tokyo offered the fireworks show recently put on by the city in place of the intended for the opening of the Olympic Games. The materials couldn’t be warehoused until the deferred staging, so the city had put on the display for its own citizens. Please see, the appended note encouraged, a forward from somebody arriving for Helen between times it must have been.

Blue

Delectable enough to make you gasp going by drinking it in. Rarely was a stretch of water ever sighted as fulsome as that standing like an offering on a saucer. (In Sing adults sometimes slurped from saucers.) Years ago an art teacher friend had memorably characterised blue as a cold colour, when you had thought the beach, sky and even pictorial representation as warm and inviting. Baby blue. Egg shell. The soft pastels in the Derwent standup box. Certainly not cold. Further along grades of navy began seeping in. There was only light overcast. By the time the beach was reached a spattering of rain had begun to lash briefly, angled from clouds that stood away from the path. Further along again another couple of kilometres near the mangroves snot in the tone and all the lusciousness gone. After days of shirt-sleeves—or single layer thermal sleeves at least, with tee & sleeveless hoodie on top—the chill of the morning had come with a wallop. Sitting up in bed after brekkie the second doona had needed to be fetched. Five degrees it had been at departure mid-afternoon. Last week on two consecutive days blowies had buzzed through the window behind the bed, though certainly they had quickly disappeared. Last week a YouTube interview from the 80s had featured a novelist and writing teacher whose one and only rule for students had been no weather in the compositions. Understandably, especially in the US, the earlier generation had no call for that kind of thing. You had to take big salty gulps wheeling by, as usual recalling Knut Hamsun after his TB diagnosis on the train going back to Europe refusing to accept the fate the doctors had tried to hang on him. Brilliant heroic old fascist. State of disaster officially declared. Last week Georgina in Darwin, originally a Melbourne gal herself, who had also cared for an aged parent to the end, remarked in a mail that the oldies in the homes would now confuse their periods with the presence of the fatigues. In the pic of the middle-aged blonde Greek wife of the nursing home mogul the dame sits in her leathers on the bonnet of a Lamborghini, turned aside as the wind blows her hair.

NB. Since published by Sunspot Lit., (US) March 2021