klward

The B-Cubed Press anthology Oz Is Burning is now available! Speculative tales of disaster, provoked by last Summer's continent-wide conflagration, by the likes of Jack Dann, Gillian Polack, Jason Nahrung, Narrelle Harris, Lucy Sussex and Silvia Montserrat Joana, together with many more! Including my own contribution, "Should Fire Remember The Fuel?"

This strange little piece is based on the thought of how many things have previously occupied those parts of the country which have burned. For all the horror and suffering, we are truly, merely part of a chain... I may also have lived in a small, country town as a child. Read into that what you will.

"A little past sixteen hundred hours, the wind changed, and Mark saw it happen. He saw old Alfie Pozzoli burn.

Alfie was on the dozer, reinforcing the existing fire break between the bush reserve and the paddocks surrounding Fairlie town. He’d gouged a fresh, brown scar across the mouth of the shallow valley that was the fire’s potential approach. A bad day at the end of a bad Summer: the grass here was like yellowed paper and the wind like standing in front of an open kiln..."