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in particular for their help and support: Simon Spanton of Gollancz for championing Black Juice in the UK; Jonathan Strahan for his efficiency and straight dealing as an editor; Patty Campbell for her input during the editing of ‘Heads’; Sharyn November for accepting ‘Ferryman’ almost before I sent it; Nancy Siscoe for putting forward the possibility of adding some lovingkindness to the collection, in response to which I wrote ‘Into the Clouds on High’, which is published here for the first time; Kathy Gollan for the conversation that gave ‘Into the Clouds on High’ its final form.

‘The Point of Roses’, Black Juice, Gollancz, London, 2006.

‘The Golden Shroud’, Picture This: 2, edited by Annabel Smith and Helen Chamberlin, Pearson Education, Melbourne, 2009.

‘A Fine Magic’, Eidolon I, edited by Jonathan Strahan and Jeremy G. Byrne, Eidolon Books, Perth, Western Australia, 2006.

‘An Honest Day’s Work’, The Starry Rift, edited by Jonathan Strahan, Firebird, New York, 2008.

‘Night of the Firstlings’, Eclipse Two, edited by Jonathan Strahan, Night Shade Books, San Francisco, 2008.

‘Ferryman’, Firebirds Soaring, edited by Sharyn November, Firebird, New York, 2009.

‘Heads’, War Is... Soldiers, Survivors and Storytellers Talk about War, edited by Marc Aronson and Patty Campbell, Candlewick Press, Somerville MA, 2008.

‘Living Curiosities’, Sideshow: Ten Original Tales of Freaks, Illusionists, and Other Matters Odd and Magical, edited by Deborah Noyes, Candlewick Press, Somerville MA, 2009.

‘Eyelids of the Dawn’, New Australian Stories, edited by Aviva Tuffield, Scribe, Melbourne, 2009.

The Literature Board of the Australia Council for the Arts, the Australian Government’s arts funding and advisory body, funded my writing with a Fellowship in 2006–2007, during which time many of these stories were written.

Where the stories started

These stories were inspired, as far as I can recall, in the following ways.

‘The Point of Roses’ started when two things came together in my head: a BBC documentary, ‘Gypsy Wars’, about the community response to gypsies in Cottenham, Cambridgeshire; and my nephew Finn inventing the verb ‘to pumft’, and naming a soft-toy dog he owned ‘Pumfter von Schnitzel’.

The whole point of Pearson Education’s Picture This anthologies was to show school students how stories could grow from visual images. The picture they sent me to work from was of a stone stairway in what I took to be a castle interior. I’m not sure how Rapunzel’s hair managed to animate itself, but as soon as I saw it unlocking the door of the prince’s cell, I had ‘The Golden Shroud’.

‘A Fine Magic’ started off with a note to myself: a carousel made of ice. Also with my attraction to the word ‘fascinator’, used in the sense of a person who fascinates or bewitches people.

‘An Honest Day’s Work’ was inspired by a documentary about shipbreaking in Bangladesh—there’ve been several of these, and I couldn’t tell you which it was. When I did some follow-up research, I found Edward Burtynsky’s photographs of the Chittagong shipbreaking yards to be a further spur to the writing. These can be found at www.edwardburtynsky.com (follow the links works SHIPS SHIPBREAKING).

‘Night of the Firstlings’ happened when I first heard Paul Kelly’s song ‘Passed Over’ on his album Foggy Highway.

‘Ferryman’ sprang fully formed from my reading a little article called ‘The River Ferry’ written by the eight-year-old son of a ferryman, Harrison Fridd, of Waikerie, South Australia, and published in Living Landscapes: Writing and art by children of the Murray–Darling Basin (Primary English Teaching Association/Murray–Darling Basin Commission, Marrickville and Canberra, 2005).

I’m not quite sure where ‘Heads’ came from, but news coverage of the effects of war on the citizens of the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s was probably responsible.

‘Living Curiosities’ came from the same source as my junior novel Walking Through Albert (Allen & Unwin). I can’t remember where I read or heard about the idea that ghostly events play themselves out over and over again,