by Nick Earls
If he fell now—if he got out of the car and fell and broke into pieces of famous size—I wonder if my arms would reach around his thumb. Twenty-eight years since we last met, I am taller than most people, and perhaps just tall enough for that.
I don’t know how long we talked under our house all those years ago. Hours each time, I’m sure. That’s how it felt. Till dark on all but the longest days. My mother upstairs, dinner in the oven. My father in his study, planning, dreaming. Then at night Knut in the room below me, his light on, writing till all hours, typewriter keys clicking, the murmur of lines being tested before he committed them to the page. I fell asleep to that, Helios over the harbour, all ships safe in port.
In my bed at his house in the dark early hours of this morning, I remembered those nights. I imagined him downstairs in his office, alert and writing, his lamp the last light showing on Lost Fork Lane.
He’ll be back there in an hour and a half, less with a good border crossing. I have New York ahead of me, and it’s still on re.
Acknowledgments
In late 2013, I worked out that my five best and most compelling story ideas would need padding or some other kind of fakery to become novels and would lose something if I tried to trim them to short-story size. I had to write them and they had to be novellas.
Any author can do with a team of like-minded people on their side, and the author of a novella series needs them more than most. I needed people whose response was ‘Yes! Novellas!’ with the exclamation mark audible after each word—people who saw 20,000 words as a great size for the times and had great ideas about what to do with it. So, a big thank you to:
— Meredith Curnow and Chris Flynn for backing me from the start
— Pippa Masson at Curtis Brown for talking me into the idea rather than out, and making the idea even more ambitious
— Kim Wilkins and Bronwyn Lea, in their UQ roles, for their regular wise navigational advice for a new world
— Jane Stadler for the crash course in how to survive there upon landing and Isobelle Carmody for being the ideal fellow traveller
— the Griffith Review Novella Project III judges and editorial team for backing novellas in general and mine in particular
— Donna Ward and her team at Inkerman & Blunt for embracing a new approach to novellas with passion, imagination and editorial vigour
— Georgia Knox and the team at Audible for adding new dimensions to the project from their first email
— Will Entrekin at Exciting Press for being the ideal partner in the ebook world
And a particularly big thank you to Sarah and Patrick for tolerating me all those times when my brain stayed in the story rather than in our lives.
About the Author
Nick Earls is the author of more than twenty books for adults, teenagers and children, including novels such as Zigzag Street, Bachelor Kisses and Analogue Men. His work has won awards in the UK and Australia, among them a Betty Trask Award for Zigzag Street and a Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Award for 48 Shades of Brown. His books have appeared on bestseller lists in both those countries and in the Amazon Kindle Store. Two of his novels, Perfect Skin and 48 Shades of Brown, have been adapted into feature films and five have been adapted into stage plays.
@nickearls
About the Publisher
Exciting Press is an independent publisher of digital fiction, non-fiction, and poetry.
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Copyright © 2016 by Nick Earls
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No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Except under Fair Use, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner withot prior written permission from both the author and publisher.
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Published by Exciting Press, a division of Exciting Endeavors, LLC.
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