Final Day For ONE DOLLAR SHINY DEAL

Today is the last day you can get Shiny Issue 2 for $1 all this week in celebration of Trent Jamieson's Aurealis Award win for Best Young Adult short story for "Cracks"!

It's ONE DOLLAR!! What better value??? Here's a sneak peek at Trent Jamieson's award winning story:


Cracks

The dark is the dark. The song is the song.


The shadows were boiling to midday when Lolly Robson found me by the river, my feet dangling over the bank, not touching earth so I could get some peace. He grinned, that crooked stunning smile, and spat a wasteful spit on the ground like it was a challenge, like everything for Lolly was a challenge to be spat out. “Jean. I got need of you.”

“Yes I see that,” I said in my old voice. The voice that isn’t mine, but that’s all me, which you’d understand if you had what I had, and maybe you do. “And don’t be all spitting and short with me, boy. Just because I was raised peculiar, don’t mean you have the right.”

Lolly looked almost abashed, but he didn’t say sorry. Robson boys don’t. They’re haughty. Pretty too.
“I like your dress,” he said, kind of charming.

I fixed him with a black stare. “Flattery, boy. Too hot for flattery.” Though I liked it. He was a Robson after all. Not that I’d show my pleasure. “What’s your need?”

We’d done our dance. Lolly understood, and took the direct path, and snatched back a bit of the old voice’s respect.

“Snake’s bit my mum.” He touched his bicep, then a point above his wrist, near where he would be cut when he came of age, like all the Robson boys were cut. "Here and here. She's dying."