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And there’s a super-hot Christmas special on the Sex & Death Mook Pack - only $20. (Until 25 Dec.)

To celebrate releasing issue #020 of Mini Shots, Vignette Press is having a Mini Shots May Madness Sale.

All single issues of Mini Shots are now $2.

Or collect them all and grab 20 Mini Shots for $20!

Browse the Mini Shots Archive or run directly to our Store. Prices include postage to anywhere.

‘I found something while I was out driving, down near the fault scarp,’ she said.
Cad, upon seeing what Vica had returned with, immediately stood up in the bath, his skin gleaming wet…

Mini Shots are a steal at $2 each for single issues.

Shane Jesse Christmass is a short story writer who in 2006 came runner-up in The Age Short Story Competition with his story Remaking the Image of this World. His work has previously appeared in anthologies for Adelaide’s Paroxysm Press, namely Waste (2005), Shotgun (2006), and Ten Years Of Things That Didn’t Kill Us (2008), which Shane also co-edited. In 2007 an anthology of Hop Dac and Shane’s stories, entitled Croak & Grist, was also published by Paroxysm Press. In late 2008 Shane established Lupara Publishing. He’s currently completing his first screenplay, as well as his second collection of short stories that has the working title Slick & Other Stories.

In a culture both death-denying and death-obsessed, The Death Mook creates a space for writers and artists to talk about death in creative and unorthodox ways. Thus, this collection of essays, stories, vignettes and illustrations contains some provocative, engaging, beautiful and downright crackpot perspectives. It’s broad-ranging, because death happens in so many different ways, and it’s unconventional…

Download! A special The Death Mook Sampler…

The Death Mook: Paperback | ISBN 978-1-876110-99-4 | RRP: AU$18 | 180 pages (A5) | Dion Kagan (Ed.)

Order for $18 now!

Contributors:

Richard Adams, Alice Allan, Jon Bauer, JC Borrelle, Sam Bowron, Lyndel Caffrey, Catherine Campbell, Kelly Chandler, Emily Clark, David Cohen, Kim Dawson, Suzan Dlouhy, Tom Doig, Beth Driscoll, The Duke, Amy Espeseth, Michael Farrell, Julian Fleetwood, Chris Flynn, Emma Fraser, Caroline Hamilton, Justin Heazlewood, Emmanuel Hernaez, Julian Hobba, Raewyn Haughton, Bronwen Hyde, Andrea Innocent, Amy Jackson, Dion Kagan, David Kassan, Rachael Kendrick, Nom Kinnear King, Krissy Kneen, Anna Krien, Antony Kraus, Shelly Krycer, Jason Levesque, Sudeep Lingamneni, Jason Lingard, Rhys McDonald, Kirk A.C. Marshall, Carly-Jay Metcalfe, Angela Meyer, Peter Mountford, George Mouratidis, Meg Mundell, Ann Myers, Danny Neece, Dr Pain, Candace Petrik, Ben Pobjie, Jessica Raschke, Christine Rogers, Sara Saab, Alana Scott, Ronnie Scott, Spit & Polish, Laurie Steed, J.J. Steinfeld, Yasemin Sumner, Elizabeth Switaj, David L Tamarin, Eveline Tarunadjaja, Philip Thiel, Mia Timpano, Kelly Towles, Toby Verey, Sam Wallman, Daniel Watson, Trudy White, Anthony Woodward

Edited by Dion Kagan

To be released February 2009… it’s worth the wait. More info coming soon.

I work in Smoke Zone. I sell cigarettes and cigars and myriad tobacco related products. My friends tell people that I’m a drug dealer, which I am, in a sense…

Mini Shots are a steal at $2 each for single issues.

In 2004, Bernadette Rafferty completed a Bachelor of Arts at Deakin University Melbourne, majoring in Professional Writing and Indonesian Language. She has been broadcast on three Melbourne radio stations and has had fiction, non-fiction and poetry published in Melbourne, Sydney, New Zealand and America.

Bernadette was born with itchy feet. Before studying writing she was a world traveller and hitchhiker, visiting 28 countries over a three year period, living out of a backpack. She went to seven different schools and has lived at 38 different addresses. The night before the Beijing Olympics, Bernadette arrived home after six months travelling 13 000 kilometres across Australia in a 30 year old yellow school bus. She is currently working on several travel stories.

Her favourite indulgence is a cup of Earl Grey tea while in the shower, followed by a candlelight breakfast. She in one of those weird morning people who wake up very early, very happy.

Note: Cigarette Vignette was the winner of the 2008 Vignette Press Short Story Competition. Paddy O’Reilly’s judge’s report can be viewed here.

Upstairs, through the short hallway, shock has set in like the flurry an ambulance makes: lights and sirens to the fore, everything else atrophied. It’s the stretch of rope I’ve just seen…

Mini Shots are a steal at $2 each for single issues.

SJ Finn has been scratching words onto paper since she can remember. At the age of eight her peom ‘Winter’ was published in a school magazine and, despite myriad jobs and other distractions, writing has both tethered and allowed her to fly - often at the same moment - ever since. Her short stories have been broadcast on radio and her poetry published in The Age, Cordite and Snorkel. After winning IP Picks, her novel Fine Salt, was published in 2004. She is currently studying a Master of Creative Writing at Melbourne Uni. Finding the Dead was particularly fun to write despite the subject matter, which just goes to show, viewpoint is everything.

She’d caught a glimpse of what looked like a bundle of blue towels. It was carried off the boat by more hands than it needed and news people, onlookers and nearby boaties swarmed the bundle…

Mini Shots are a steal at $4 each ($6 for international) for single issues.

Sian swapped Aussie Rules and milk bars for travel overseas before finally settling with her husband in south east Queensland. She has been writing since 1999 and has won several literary short story competitions and had stories published in various journals and magazines over the years. What motivates this 39 year old is the human story. Even the most ordinary can be moving and interesting to someone. The arrival of a baby in 2006 meant less headspace for words, but now that bottles and night waking are over, it’s time for more fictional adventure!

Sian works supporting people with intellectual disabilities, but she spends most of her time wiping rice puffs off the floor at home and dreaming about being an author.

Thanks for all who entered the annual Vignette Press Short Story Competition. The level of entries was very high and I know Paddy O’Reilly had a tough time choosing the winners.

First place goes to Bernadette Rafferty for her unique story, Cigarette Vignettes.
Second place goes to Tania Hershman for her lyrical Drinking Vodka in the Afternoon.

Judge’s Report

Cigarette Vignettes

While not a traditional story in that it does not have a cause and effect plot, the vignettes in this sharply written, wry piece form a narrative picture of a small world in which people confide in strangers or unknowingly reveal themselves by a gesture or a phrase. The narrator avoids being judgmental and draws the disparate characters and events into a small cosmos of humanity that is charming and funny and real. 

Drinking Vodka in the Afternoon

In another time and place, a young woman finds herself taking the first step toward freedom and passion when her Russian tutor offers her a glimpse into the wider world. A gentle, beautifully formed story.  

The quality of the stories in the competition was amazing, with a lollyshop variety of styles, genres and concepts. Many of the wonderful stories were one good rewrite or edit short of winning, so I hope their authors will stay with them and go on to win a different competition.  

One of the great things about reading such a variety of stories is when you see so many that break the so-called rules of short story writing and prove that there are no rules. Like Angus’s Playground, which has two dramatic deaths and yet carries this heavy load with a vigorous, challenging voice. Or a bit more special, which uses the voice of a child and yet gets away with language and phrasing the child would not be likely to know, let alone use. In Wristwatch, the narrator is an unlikeable character that nevertheless drives the story along, and in Juggling and Serena the narrators’ motivations wobble a little like real ones. Hero and Thunder and Lightning follow a more traditional story structure but carry it off with aplomb. 

There’s great talent out there, and it’s fantastic to be reading so many stories of this quality.

Paddy O’Reilly

The winning story, Cigarette Vignettes, will be available to purchase as a Mini Shots magazine later in the year.