Where We’re Going

We’ve been speaking to writers from interstate this March, as they drop in to the KYD Podcast to tell us about places we haven’t been. With Dyschronia, Jennifer Mills shows us a near future we’d prefer to avoid, and a story we’ll stay in a bit longer if it’s all the same to you. Meanwhile Michael Mohammed Ahmad walks us through writing, rewriting, publishing and promoting his second novel, The Lebs.

Don’t forget to join us for our next KYD First Book Club event on 29 March at Readings Carlton.

Further reading:

Read an extract from The Lebs.

Read Justine Hyde’s review of Dyschronia.

You can stream the podcast above, or subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, or through your favourite podcasting app. Let us know what you think by rating and reviewing in your app of choice!

TRANSCRIPT

Meaghan Dew: Welcome back to the Kill Your Darlings Podcast. We’ve been catching up with interstate guests this episode, so you can enjoy the fruits of their labour and ours from the comfort of your own, well, wherever you happen to be. I asked Michael Mohammed Ahmad a few questions about his new book The Lebs. Meanwhile, our jet-setting editor, Alan, heard Jennifer Mills read from her novel Dyschronia, out now from Piccador. 

Jennifer Mills: It’s a hot morning, strange for the season. There’s a smell in the air we don’t recognise, and it wakes us in our beds.

Initially it’s almost pleasant, ammoniac and slightly sweet, a bit like a hospital after the cleaner’s been. We get up and peer out windows, merely intrigued. But when we open those windows and inhale the full force of it, we know something’s not right. Under the bleach there’s another, deeper smell, seething like an infection. We pull on our clothes, sniffing the fabric; we check the kitchen, look in on pets, gaze down at our own suspect bodies. It’s not us. It’s coming from outside.

We get in our cars and go down to the water. We don’t know why we go that way, only that everybody else has made the same dreamy decision. We drive slowly, looking from car to car and into mirrors at each other, smiling odd still-waking smiles, trying to keep a calm camaraderie, but soon enough we have to wind up the windows and concentrate. Our children in the backseat still half asleep; the dog’s snout pressed urgently against the window we won’t open. The land spreads out on either side, flat and sandy and unaltered. The dull hills watchful in the rear-view mirror.

When we get down to the shore, to the car park on it’s just of rock, we pull our hand brakes, open our doors and cover our mouths with our sleeves. Someone retches. We blink against a burning in our eyes. Some of us are briefly blinded. We close car doors, we stand at the edge, we try to look out over the beach. We all hear how quiet it is, but some of the think the quiet is weird and some of us don’t think anything at all.

We squint at the sand, expecting the usual shallows, seagulls, weeds. There’s a strange, painterly quality in the light. There are birds down there, but they aren’t right