RealThing

Short story, 17 pages. When Charles Lawson (aka God) is forty and enjoying a career as a troubleshooter for coin fraud, he goes to Maralinga in South Australia to determine the authenticity of a mysterious coin found there after the British atomic explosions of 1960. Here he meets twenty-five-year old Jamie Stanborough, chief archeologist on the coin dig. Jamie sets out to seduce Lawson for his own ends. 5,885 words.

Danielle de Valera is best known for her short stories, which have appeared in such diverse publications as Penthouse, Aurealis, and the Australian Women’s Weekly. She started writing poetry at thirteen (she was a moony child), and got her first taste of publication (albeit self-) when she and three other Year 11 students founded a high school magazine called By the Way, where she had a full page, 2-column spread of school gossip, which she wrote in the manner of the Hollywood columnists of the day, Hopper Hopper and Louella Parsons, complete with her own byline. Heady stuff in those days for a 16-year-old.

MagnifiCat, her first venture into indie publishing, is the result of her ongoing love affair with the far north coast of New South Wales, Australia, where she has lived since 1977. See Smashwords interview at: http://bit.ly/tigerbk

Location: Australia