The Morning Bell Issue #1

By The Morning Bell

Until its unfortunate demise last year, the Box Hill TAFE professional writing and editing course annually released Avant (previously Inkshed), a student-made anthology, for 30 years. Avant gave local writers a chance to get their work published and kick off careers, or at least have something nice on their resume.

When those wonderful TAFE cuts kicked in and kicked the course's arse, two of the students from the final year, decided that they liked working on Avant so much that they wanted to keep it going.

But, they couldn't get the rights to the name, so they thought of a new name and started anew.

The journal is new, but the idea is the same. At The Morning Bell, we want to give emerging writers a platform to publish their work, promote themselves and launch their writing careers.

Welcome to The Morning Bell - new writers, great stories, no budget.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Morning Bell
• Release date: Apr 14, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311231147

The Morning Bell

Until its unfortunate demise last year, the Box Hill TAFE professional writing and editing course annually released Avant (previously Inkshed), a student-made anthology, for 30 years. Avant gave local writers a chance to get their work published and kick off careers, or at least have something nice on their resume. When those wonderful TAFE cuts kicked in and kicked the course's arse, two of the students from the final year, decided that they liked working on Avant so much that they wanted to keep it going. But, they couldn't get the rights to the name, so they thought of a new name and started anew. The journal is new, but the idea is the same. At The Morning Bell, we want to give emerging writers a platform to publish their work, promote themselves and launch their writing careers. Welcome to The Morning Bell - new writers, great stories, no budget.

Book preview

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Published by The Morning Bell.

© 2014 Copyright of each work resides with its respective creator.

© 2014 Copyright of this anthology resides with The Morning Bell.

All rights reserved. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of study, research, criticism or review, as submitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this anthology may be reproduced or stored by any process without prior written permission of the publisher.

Cover artwork by Aaron FitzSimons

Typeset in Helvetica 11.5/15

The Morning Bell team is: Lucas Di Quinzio, Kezia Lubanszky and Melissa Madigan.

Acknowledgments

The Morning Bell would like to sincerely thank Dr Euan Mitchell, Joel Martin, Dr Earl Livings, Elly Varrenti, Nadine Creswell-Myatt, and our former Box Hill TAFE classmates, friends, family and cats.

Disclaimer

The views and values expressed by the creators within are their own and do not necessarily represent the views or values of the The Morning Bell.

National Library of Australia Card Number and ISSN is:

2203-8639

Contents

Foreword

Short Stories

Unmoored - Shelagh Grieveson

Dana - Lily Britcher

To Fill An Economic Need - Cassandra L

Picking Up The Pieces - Andy Goss

Dark Paradise - Stephanie Walden

Escape From Suburbia - Sadaf Zekaria

Self-Reliant - Miranda Parsons

T Y P E W R I T E R - Jennifer Truong

Non-Fiction

Someone Is Stealing Our Panties - Pauline Csuba

The Yellow Wallpaper/Madwoman in the Attic Essay

Erin Peacock

Poetry

Into The Woods - Tyler Grieve

Game Face - Charlie Weeks

Whoopi - Melissah Comber

Voyant - Taylor Gibbs

Observational Science - Glenn Fang

Thirsty? - Tarik Mowatt

Windows - Michael Dennis

Solar Flares - Evan Olsz

Hopeful Gallop - Cassandra Page

Lucid Nights - Amy Smolcic

24 Rosal Street - Patricia Peralta

The Earthen Mother - Jessica Schloss

The Vinyard of Dreams - Akshay Chougoankar

Lost Limbs Almost Always - Mia McAuslan

The Last Lullaby - Amira Saouri

Author Bios

Foreword

Lucas Di Quinzio

Most of my life happens in a fairly small part of the world. I was born and raised in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, and that is where I continue to live, work and socialise. I’ve been interstate a few times and I once went to Fiji for a cousin’s wedding, but otherwise I’m stationed eastside (cue shit gangsta gestures). When I was a student at Box Hill TAFE putting together Avant (The Morning Bell’s predecessor, if you forgot), the whole project revolved around Box Hill, which is in the eastern suburbs, for those playing along at home.

So when we started accepted submissions for The Morning Bell, I thought that most of the submissions would come from my part of the world. Imagine my surprise when submissions from writers all around the world started popping up in my inbox. Go on, imagine it. No, more subdued than that, I don’t display much emotion.

It was a nice surprise, like getting too much change back or getting off with a suspended sentence, but a surprise nevertheless.

First entry was from Sydney. Then a couple from the US. England, Singapore, US some more. Sydney, Canada, hey look, a Box Hill alum, US, India? What? Cool. And so on. Needless to say, I was impressed by how far our little magazine-to-be had spread already. Isn’t the internet wonderful?

It seems that fledgling writers around the world want a starting block to launch their careers, and we at The Morning Bell are more than happy to provide it. So, from the eastern suburbs of Melbourne to the world, here are some exciting new talents, the first batch of many we hope to publish.

Kezia Lubanszky

I never really wanted to be a writer. It was something that just happened, not a long-running dream like it was for a lot of people I know. In fact, the only reason I started to write was because my mum pressured me into it. And it seems that she knows me better than I do, as it was one of the best decisions I ever made.

Fresh-faced and excited, I started my writing career. I wrote short stories, articles and creative non-fiction, always ecstatic with the praise I received from teachers, friends and family. Easy, I thought. There’s nothing to it. And so I opened the door to sending off my work to websites and magazines.

This is where things started to suck. Really suck. I’d been so caught up in the positive reactions people had to my writing that I didn’t believe anyone could actually dislike it. And then it came. My first rejection. Let’s just say, I spent the day eating chocolate in bed in a Bridget Jones-like state. And unlike Mark and Bridget’s tear-worthy union, my writing career hasn’t had the same happy ending. But that’s one of the things about the industry, it never really does.

Rejections are hard. But after a while, you begin to brush them off and take them as motivation to try again. I’m not massively published, nor have I been writing for more than a couple of years. But just as I’ve received many of those dreaded emails, I’ve had wonderful successes as well.

And that’s why we’ve created The Morning Bell. After being on the publishing team for Box Hill TAFE’s Avant, we realized how important it was for emerging writers to have a platform to publish their work. It’s hard out there for a beginner. But the raw talent that we’ve seen from all of our contributors prove that you don’t need to be a veteran to get published. You just have to give it a go.

Melissa Madigan

I like The Morning Bell, I mean I really like it. The kind of like where I want to take it out for a couple of ciders, and I’m not just saying that out of bias opinion.

Deciding that