Category Archives: Edition
Edition 15: Book Review: Curtsies & Conspiracies by Gail Carriger
Reviewed by Mysti Parker
Ever since I reviewed Etiquette & Espionage in the first of the Finishing School series, I have been waiting anxiously for the second book to release in this young adult steampunk adventure. Finally, I got my wish and decided to review Curtsies & Conspiracies for this edition of SQ Mag.
Edition 15: Serial Fiction: The Morland Basking Plain (Book I of III) by Arthur Davis
Logan Drewry begins his escape into the desolate Morland Basking Plain in a desperate bid to outrace the troops of the Grand Satrap. His foolhardy decision may not only cost him is life, but the cause of the people he is trying to flee. Old enemies and new will attempt to take their shot at the famous warrior, but will it be the desert that finally claims victory over him? SY
Edition 15: Exponential Growth by Justin Short
Justin Short’s story is not for the squeamish or arachnophobic. Just how many bites are too many? What will it take to be accepted into a new world? Finalist in the 2013 Story Quest competition, this story gets under your skin. SY
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When I first came to the valley, the elders gave me a tick. I didn’t think too much of the gift, especially since there was nowhere to return it. The place, as you know, is fairly inaccessible. A big, greenish space surrounded by acres of nearly vertical hayfields, natural silt traps, and the thorniest woods imaginable. No realistic possibility of escape. No company except that lone chair in the exact center of said valley.
The gray-haired bug-bearers arrived shortly after I took my seat. Their tick was a gray one, small and unthreatening. His tiny feet circumnavigated my torso a couple times before he injected his teeth into my shoulder. It hurt at first, but I gradually got used to the tight discomfort there.
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Within the hour, one of the old men brought me my second one. This time it was a seed tick. Almost microscopic. When he released it on my skin and wished it luck, I could scarcely distinguish it from my freckles.
Edition 15: Book Review: Sub Rosa by Amber Dawn
Reviewed by Sophie Yorkston
This is story of Little, a wayward girl scraping by. At the crux of her desperation, when she offers her virginity for a new opportunity, Arsen arrives and whisks her away. She’s offered a home, and kindness, and maybe love, but the offer itself is enough. When Arsen has won her mind, he says he wants to take her to his home on Sub Rosa, but to be accepted there she has to survive the ordeal of the Dark.
Edition 15: Metempsychosis by Jason Franks
When problem solver and amateur cryptographer Layne becomes involved with translating an ancient druidic diary, it looks like a hopeless case. But when the cadences start to create rhythm, Layne starts to connect with the work in a way he couldn’t have predicted. SY
Layne had spent the entire morning hunched over the pinned-out vellum leaves and all he had to show for it was a crick in his neck.
He’d filled two pages of his notebook with beautiful cursive, but that was entirely because he enjoyed exercising his fountain pen. He had produced little more than a continuous ink line. There was no greater meaning in it than there was in the old manuscript.
Layne put the pen down and let out a long breath. “This isn’t prose.” The insight surprised him as he said it.
“What?” Trimby looked up from his workstation, across the lab and near to the window.
“It’s not prose.”
“Of course it’s prose,” said Trimby, pushing at the cuffs of his tweed jacket as if ready to engage in fisticuffs. Layne wanted to laugh almost as much as he wanted to punch him. “The wallet clearly states that it’s a diary.”
Edition 14: Notes From the Editor
Welcome to SQ Mag’s 2014 Special Edition!
When I originally envisioned this theme for this year’s edition, I was hoping to celebrate the opportunities that being a writer and publisher in Australia offered. I have to confess that I didn’t imagine the scope and breadth that this edition would take on; though I should have.
It’s an exciting time to be an Australian publisher and writer in the first major strides of the digital publishing industry. We were thrilled to take SQ Mag into an online platform, and it is so fitting that it had to be reinvented to accommodate what is our best effort to date. And that is hard to top, given the reception for our 2013 Special Edition, Women in Writing.
Now that we have time to step back and admire this edition, I am humbled by the contributions we have received. Three pre-eminent writers—Alan Baxter, Kaaron Warren and Sean Williams—are featured as our headliners, each of them with different and fantastic stories and perspectives. Alan’s story, The Darkness in Clara, is the inspiration for our cover and a beautiful story of love and family in the face of darkness of the soul. Kaaron has written an intensely atmospheric, disturbing piece, Eleanor Atkins is Dead and Her House is Boarded Up, exploring Eleanor’s strange relationship with her confined world throughout her adult life. Sean’s story, Tyranny of Distance from his Twinmaker series, is a testament to loss and the search for understanding of nonsensical existence.
Edition 14: The Bush Bride of Badgery Hollow by Angela Rega
Only at home in the bush, the bush brides are not meant to be owned, yet Midge has a yearning. But conquerers never understand that the Australian wilds are not meant to be tamed. SY
Where you see the skeletal remains of a wattle and daub cottage set against the low dry hills of Badgery Hollow, you know this is where an old colonial tried, but failed to keep, a sugar glider bush bride.
The wind whistles here; it is a desolating lament for early settlers. It sings between the branches of brittle trees, across this yellowed land. There is movement in the burnt out tree stump and inside is the remnant of her story: the sugar glider bush bride.
The changeling woman stretches out two webbed wingfolds and glides from arbor to arbor; she is a native of this Australian landscape. She is fresh like the morning dew glistening between her long eyelashes, her hair is a memory of sugar glider markings; silken and silver, except for the ebony streaks on either side that reach the tips of the hair that fall to her waist.
Edition 14: The Darkness in Clara by Alan Baxter
When Michelle loses the love of her life, she struggles to understand what could have brought her to that dark place. As she starts to dig back into Clara’s past, Michelle discovers that there were secrets of her tormented adolescence that Clara kept from her. SY
Michelle saw Clara’s feet first, absurdly suspended a metre above the ground, toes pointing to the carpet, ghostly pale and twisting in a lazy spiral. The rest of the scene burst into her mind in one electric shock a fraction of a second later; Clara’s wiry nakedness, limp arms, head tilted chaotically to one side. Her tattoos seemed faded against ashen skin. Her so familiar face grotesque and wrong, tongue swelling from her mouth like an escaping slug. And her bulging eyes, staring glassy and cold as Michelle began to scream. Light from the bedside lamp cast Clara’s shadow across the wall like a puppet play, glinted off the metal legs of the upturned chair beneath.
I bought her that belt, Michelle thought, as she stared at the worn black leather biting deep into the blue-tinged flesh of Clara’s neck, and she drew breath to scream again.
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SQ Mag 