Blog Posts on Tall And True

My first attempt at the Australian Writers' Centre's Furious Fiction writing challenge was in April 2020. Since then, I've submitted entries to every challenge except two when I was away from home on holiday. I wrote my forty-third (official and unofficial) Furious Fiction this month, my fifth April story.

Episode 90 (1 April 2024): My first "published" writing was an Enid Blyton-Famous Five-style adventure story, Sand Island, in 1972. I wrote the story and illustrated it with coloured Texta markers. My aunt, the only one in our family with a typewriter, typed up the manuscript. And my father helped bind and cover the book. I was ten.

Episode 89 (14 March 2024): Eighteen-year-old Hugo glanced up at the train station clock. It seemed time had stood still, with the minute hand barely moved since he'd last checked. He confirmed the time on his watch and then looked at the departure board, breathing a sigh of relief. His train was running on schedule.

I once wrote a short story titled The Lost Hour that opens: "You know what it's like when you lose something. It's always in the last place you look. But how do you find a lost hour? It's not like it can slip down the back of a sofa like coins or keys!" I've lost a few things but never imagined losing a story!

Episode 88 (29 February 2024): While sorting through storage boxes at home, I found an old notebook belonging to my son. It wasn't a school exercise book but something he'd jotted and doodled in as a twelve-year-old. Among its random pages was a short story he'd written in 2014 about a father who doesn't have "great ideas".

Episode 87 (15 February 2024): If you ask me, the Moon is the best object in the night sky. And you don't need an expensive telescope to observe it. A pair of binoculars does the trick. I'm looking at the Moon now, leaning against a wall to steady my hands, and it's a beautiful sight. No wonder it inspires poets and lovers.

On Monday, 11 December 2023, my twenty-one-year-old son and I set off in his van on a 10-day, 4600-kilometre dad-and-son road trip from Sydney to Margaret River. We had planned the trip for over six months to spend Xmas/New Year with our WA family. And yet, I only had a vague idea of our route.

Episode 86 (18 January 2024): "In space no one can hear you scream. But what if you're deep in the backwoods, in an isolated cabin on a dead-end trail?" Karen set aside the book. A horror story was not ideal reading for the off-grid log cabin Peter had booked for their thirtieth wedding anniversary weekend, especially as she was alone in bed, listening to wind from a storm whistle through cracks in the doors and windows.

Episode 85 (22 December 2023): I'm taking a short break from podcasting because I'm going on a long road trip with my son from Sydney to Western Australia to spend Xmas and New Year with our WA family. But as I did in 2022, I've put together a Kris Kringle collection featuring three episodes from the Tall And True Short Reads archive: Too Late, Lenny, Stuck in Time and Family Reflections.

Since 2018, I've posted an annual review of books I've read. 2023 was a busy year for me: writing and podcasting, helping my son fit out his van, and supporting the Indigenous Voice to Parliament campaign. I don't know how many books I read, listened to, or started and set aside on my to-be-read pile.

Episode 84 (9 December 2023): Cassie lay perfectly still in bed, staring at the shadowy shape on the ceiling overhead. A bulky body and eight legs, a spider, but this wasn't Incy Wincy. It was a huntsman with long hairy legs, needle-sharp fangs, and a jump so powerful that if human, it could win gold at the pole vault without a pole.

This anthology, drawn from Tall And True and other sources, features 70 examples of my microfiction. Some are Hemingway-esque six-word stories, others one to a few sentences, and there are longer pieces, like the 460-word Her. I hope readers enjoy Tall And True Microfiction as much as I enjoyed creating it.

Episode 82 (13 November 2023): "Roses are red, violets are blue, I spend my day, thinking of you." Davey reviewed the poem in his exercise book. "Thinking" is what you did at school. It wasn't romantic enough to attempt Mission Impossible with the girl of his dreams. That's it! "I spend my day, dreaming of you."

When I launched Tall And True Short Reads in 2020, I called it an "audio fiction podcast". But in my introduction to Season Three in September 2022, I observed how I'd realised I was producing storytelling episodes, whether based on short stories or blog posts, fiction or nonfiction, or tall and true tales.

In May 2023, I joined a local group campaigning for an Indigenous Voice to Parliament. We had high hopes. But as the Referendum result proved, in Australia, while some things change, some stay the same. And voters rejected the proposal to recognise Indigenous Australians in the Constitution.

After two seasons of Tall And True Short Reads, I realised I was producing a storytelling podcast, whether the episodes were short stories and blog posts, fiction and nonfiction, or tall and true tales. So, in Season Three, I included further examples of my writing on dogs, travel, memoir pieces and other topics.