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Author Q&A with Carmel Bird – Thurs 14 Dec, 8pm AEDT

We'll be chatting with award-winning Australian author Carmel Bird on from 8pm AEDT on Thursday 14 December to celebrate a new award for digital short stories and the launch of Bird's new digital collection, The dead aviatrix: eight short stories.

Is there anything you'd like to know about writing short stories or publishing online? Don't miss this chance to put your questions to an experienced and talented writer. No need to wait until 14 December either – post them as they come to you.

If you'd like a bit of inspiration, have a read of some of Carmel's work:

The Dead Aviatrix, a story from her new collection: https://tablo.io/carmel-bird/the-dead-aviatrix-and-the-stratemeyer-syndicate
An essay on her new collection: https://tablo.io/carmel-bird/the-dead-aviatrix-the-story-of-the-stories

Carmel Bird has written novels, short stories, essays and books on the art of writing, in addition to editing anthologies of essays and stories. She was awarded the Patrick White Award in 2016.

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As i was saying this evening at the launch, The Dead Aviatrix is the first in Spineless Wonders’ new digital series, The Capsule Collections. What, I hear you ask, is good about the Capsule Collections for readers? For writers?

This is fun, i can answer my own question. Last weekend at a Christmas party I met a librarian who told me something I didn’t know – there are lots of things I don’t know, but this one mattered to your question – he said that in the regional library where he works it is possible for members of the public to borrow from a big collection of ebooks. Now I meet a lot of people who are rather contemptuous of ebooks, and I had for some reason imagined that libraries might be the same. But apparently I was wrong. Instead of saying - Oh, The Dead Aviatrix is ONLY an ebook then – and turning away to spit into the fish-pond – the librarian at the party seemed to be thrilled by the idea.

So there’s one thing that’s good about the Capsule Collections – they might get into libraries, and readers will access them and enjoy them, and the writers will be heard. Writers like that.
The Dead Aviatrix is a straightforward collection of the text of eight stories, but writers for the Capsule Collections will also be able to do experimental and adventurous things with the technology, putting in images and links and videos and whatever.
Readers will have lovely little bundles of stories they can read on public transport. Other readers might be stopped by the traffic police for driving cars while using phones to read fiction. And think of how great avenues of trees, huge forests of redgum will clap their branches and praise Bill Gates to the heavens for sparing them from the pulp mills. Bamboos will sing! You see I have a rather fanciful idea about the sort of wood that goes into paper pulp. I do know that hemlock trees are a good source of paper pulp – and that the hemlock tree is not toxic, unlike the flowering hemlock from the carrot family that is used in murder mysteries. Think of the miles and miles of bookshelves that will not need to be built to house the Capsule Collections. So much for readers.
Writers will be able, when they meet strangers on trains, to whip out their phones and say – Let me read you my latest short story!
With a careless wave of the phone they will be able to say – Check it out at Amazon!
And keen members of the reading public will be able to read their stories for the price of a cup of cheap coffee.
Commerce has entered the conversation. Alas, writers are probably not going to make much money from the little ebooks, but instead of making money, they will have fun. Unless they write a Fifty Shades of Grey story which began as an ebook, and then they will be able to buy a bank.
Unlike the manuscript in the first story in The Dead Aviatrix, the manuscript of the ebook can not be lost in the post. It will be at the mercy of the electronic media of course, but that’s another story. Writers won’t have to wait for weeks for a red and white card in the mailbox, won’t have to drive to the post office and stand in a queue to sign for the heavy parcel of books and carry the parcel to the car in the rain. No – they can just update their system and voila! – the capsule is delivered, ready to be tossed down with a nice cold glass of sparkling mineral water (Note – some writers have been known to favour champagne).

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