The inspiration behind the setting.

Hello hello, I’ve got a piece of short fiction in this years edition of Turbine | Kapohau, a New Zealand literary journal published by the International Institute of Modern Letters.

You can read my short story “Omens and Amends” here, or just check out some of the other great work in the journal.

 

The setting of the story was inspired by a real day, the first day of 2020. Smoke from the Australian bushfires had turned the sky a sickly dirty-orange colour, and it was so unnatural, so alien, that I fully expected the sunset to be extraordinary. Instead it was the opposite.

That sunset germinated in the back of my mind for over a year before finally finding its home in this short story. It was written and fine-tuned during an IIML Creative Writing Workshop at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington (what a mouthful), and owes a big debt of thanks to all the comments and feedback from everyone in the workshop, without whom the story would have been far inferior.