500 words

12/09/2004 08:18:00 p.m.

in For Queen and Country...

Because this is the kind of thing blogging is meant for...

12/06/2004 03:20:00 p.m.

...stumbled across not one but two reviews of my short story "Resurrection Radio".

The first:
"'Resurrection Radio' from Patrick Johanneson is another quality piece. Thought-provoking and original, it's a fresh look at spirituality from a very down to earth position, written with real empathy. Its ending is particularly intelligent, the sort of thing to send you back to the beginning hunting for clues. Suddenly, it's staring you in the face, but you'd never suspect. Foreshadowing at its best."
—Martin Jenner, in SF Crowsnest

And the second:
"Patrick [Johanneson]'s Resurrection Radio is a chiller blended with the narrative trickery of someone like Bret Easton Ellis or Chuck Palahnuik, less meditative than some of the other stories in the issue but brilliant for all that, stirring a road-trip and psychopomps, hitchhikers and peyote into a deft, mesmerising whole."
—Nelson Stanley, in the British Fantasy Society's website

I've been stoked all day because of these two reviews...

up to 2900 words now

12/02/2004 10:58:00 p.m.

Another excerpt from "Andy's Party":

Sherritt came in next, and while he was setting his six-pack of O'Meara down in the kitchen, Nia and her sister Jessa were ringing the bell. The pair of them were a study in opposites, Nia tall and dark-haired, her eyes a liquid, expressive brown, and Jessa small and blonde, with blue eyes that shone with a flat light, masking whatever went on within.

Sherritt, ever the gentleman, carried the ladies' coats down to the bedroom, and met up with them again in the kitchen.

"What you drinking, Coke?" said Jessa as he poured from the bottle into one of Phil's drinking jars.

"No," he said, "stout." And had to explain what stout was, and give her a sip from his glass, at which she made a crinkly face and said, "Well, I won't be stealing your beer tonight."

"More for me," he said.

"You got that right."