Friday, October 16th, 2009
|
|
10:20 pm - Short story "I Like the Day" published
|
|
|
Sunday, September 13th, 2009
|
|
6:25 pm - Short story "Man With the Masonic Girdle" published
|
Issue #7 (Яevolution) of Ruthless Peoples Magazine contains my short story "Man With the Masonic Girdle". Click to Download Issue #7 as a PDF.
According to the editor's Reader Guidance:
Sexual and scatological content. Strong stuff all round, really. I'm not sure what either of those words mean, but consider yourself warned.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
|
|
6:07 pm - "Always Take a Survival Kit" published
|
|
|
Friday, July 18th, 2008
|
|
8:24 pm - Couple of Kaleidotrope #4 reviews
|
A couple of reviews of the Kaleidotrope issue that included my story "Word Count: Negative 1":
From Rich Horton at SF Site:
Stories I enjoyed in particular include Ashley Arnold's clever and surrealistic short-short "Word Count: Negative 1" (there are a few more words than that in the story, but not too many more!) And Sam Tomaino at SF Revu:
...This is followed by Ashley Arnold's "Word Count: Negative 1," which really defies any description. This one did not work for me.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
|
Wednesday, May 28th, 2008
|
|
8:09 pm - Who wouldn't want their lollies to relax the bowels?
|
Outside the train station this morning some dudes were handing out Ricola lollies. I took a couple and looked over the ingredients list. Not only is there aspartame and several other unpronouncable but wholesome sounding compounds, what I found to be the kicker was:
Excessive consumption: may induce laxative effects
Yum!
|
|
(comment on this)
|
|
Saturday, May 3rd, 2008
|
|
10:59 pm - Can you say "Buy Shares in Home Brewery Companies"?
|
|
|
Monday, April 21st, 2008
|
|
9:48 pm - Word Count -1 published in Kaleidotrope
|
|
|
Sunday, April 13th, 2008
|
|
2:34 pm - Classic Said-Bookism — Almost Missed It
|
|
I bought a cheap copy of The Complete Sherlock Holmes from a seconds bookshop a while back, and started reading it a couple of nights ago. Halfway through A Study in Scarlet I almost missed this gem: “Wonderful!” I ejaculated.
It’s a classic example of a said-bookism — the act of using any and every verb other than “he said” to describe speech. Since the eyes tend to pass over and ignore speech attributions (as I proved to myself while reading this story), I almost missed Watson ejaculating in front of Holmes.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
|
Wednesday, April 9th, 2008
|
|
8:20 pm - The Fix reviews the End of Time anthology
|
Nicole McClain has reviewed Triangulation: End of Time at The Fix.
Regarding my story, once again it's the titles that demand comment:
The title and its significance of Ashley Arnold’s “Time’s Arrow is Not Your Enemy” shifts as the reader progresses through the story. If I were a typesetter or an editor, I would probably find this quite distracting. As I’m neither, I thought it added to the fun.
Summing up the anthology as a whole:
The best thing about Triangulation: End of Time is its breadth. With 20 authors offering up their personal takes on “the end,” each story is distinctive, and the whole is well worth a read, especially on a rainy or snowy winter afternoon.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
|
|
8:03 pm - Free postage for Shadow Plays
|
|
|
Monday, April 7th, 2008
|
|
8:40 pm - Eppie nomination
|
|
|
Sunday, March 16th, 2008
|
|
2:57 pm - Submission systems
|
I tried to register at Wrong World to submit a story. Unfortunately, despite registering a couple of times, I couldn't get their website to let me log in. Since the only way to submit is via the website, I guess I won't be submitting. Oh well — one of the dangers of rolling your own submission system I suppose, rather than using email or an online form.
I've noticed that a few markets for short fiction use the "log in to submit" mechanism now, which I'm still not sold on. It seems to be a general trend across all websites though. An increasing percentage of sites (in all domains) want you to register and log in before you can do anything, a trivial task if you only have to do it once, but annoying when you've got dozens (hundreds?) of username/password combinations to manage.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
|
Friday, February 29th, 2008
|
|
11:09 pm - An Oral Biography
|
|
Reading "Rant" by Chuck Palahniuk. The book is subtitled "An Oral Biography of Buster Casey". As I'm reading, I'm wondering why for an "oral" book people aren't going down on each other at all...and then all of a sudden, they are.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
|
Saturday, February 23rd, 2008
|
|
4:00 pm - Forgotten Worlds is no more
|
|
UK magazine Forgotten Worlds has ceased publication. Unfortunate for me personally since they had accepted my story Choice Mama for publication (a long, long time ago now, an indication I suppose that all was not well).
|
|
(comment on this)
|
|
Monday, February 18th, 2008
|
|
8:54 pm - Score one point for "faith in humanity"
|
I was out riding yesterday and got a flat. I asked a random guy on the street if he knew where a phone box might be, so I could ring home to get a ride. He offered his mobile phone for me to use.
I owe a random stranger one mobile phone call, in carmic terms.
Now all I have to do is get a phone...
|
|
(comment on this)
|
|
Friday, February 8th, 2008
|
|
10:01 pm - Penalty clauses in bank loans
|
From an article in The Australian today:
The Government would soon announce a "range of tools" that would force [the banks] to cut exit fees
That's weird. I thought the vigorous and efficient "competition" between the banks is all consumers need to get the best possible deal. Our banks would never stoop to anti-competitive behaviour purely to make a quick buck at the expense of their valued customers. They would not, I tell you.
Let's not mention that 30-40% of the cost in changing loans is due to government stamp duty.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
|
Wednesday, February 6th, 2008
|
|
10:09 pm - The Coil has been released
|
|
|
Sunday, February 3rd, 2008
|
|
9:54 pm - Workers' Paradise review
|
There was a review of the Workers' Paradise anthology posted in October 2007 on the Australian Specfic in focus website. Forgot to put a link to it.
My story in the anthology is called Milk Across the Nation. It has cows. Simon Petrie writes:
In “Milk Across the Nation”, by Ashley Arnold, Daisy the cow proves herself quite the agricultural troublemaker, reminiscent of Monty Python’s Harold the clever sheep. Jim, the farmer whose misfortune it is to have Daisy on his dairy farm, struggles in the face of bovine industrial action. A nice comic-tinged story, although the ending seemed a little too pat.
Do I detect a cow poo pun in there?
|
|
(comment on this)
|
|
Saturday, January 26th, 2008
|
|
6:57 pm - The monkeys are roaming
|
Someone (other than my mum, who has to like me due to genetics [1]) has enjoyed one of my stories:
I haven't read any Leiber, but this plot description reminded me of a
funny short I recently read:
Gernsback's Monkeys by Ashley Arnold
<http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/10063/20080119-0000/www.antisf.com/stories/story08.html>
Only, it's genetically modified monkeys employed to write interesting sf
stories, & cannot, until...
This is from a post by Dorothy J Heydt on the rec.arts.sf.written newsgroup. Even though Dorothy hasn't read anything by Fritz Leiber, my name has been associated with his in a public forum. I will humbly accept that as some kind of affirmation.
[1] For reference, my mum's official opinion of my writing is: "Why do you write all that rot [2]?"
[2] Any other synonym for rot, such as "rubbish", "nonsense" or "applesauce" [3] could be used here.
[3] For reference, my mum has never used the word "applesauce" in relation to my writing. Applesauce came from thesaurus.com.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
|
Wednesday, January 16th, 2008
|
|
8:50 pm - The monkey gets a gleam in his eye...
|
Short story "Gernsback's Monkeys" published in Issue 116 of AntipodeanSF.
Interesting side note to this story: A different publication rejected it, one the reasons being "suggest using something other than a genetically enhanced fruit as boss". For a while I couldn't work out how anyone could confuse the boss with a piece of fruit. I've worked it out now, since it's all in how you interpret "work for" (as "work for pay" or "work for an employer"). Have a read and see what you think.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
aarnold's journal
