The Siren launched — newsletter

The Siren Rosa Mira Books is delighted to announce the release of its second 10k edition, a novella, The Siren. Author Aaron Blaker is a Dunedin writer and a new voice to be reckoned with. I first read The Siren aloud in the car. Reaching the end, my travelling companion and I were quietly stunned and I knew it had to be published. Summer. A relentless rain falls — on the houses, on the cemetery, on the rotting boards of the pier. Hector arrives in a small East Coast town along with the millennial rains. He is captivated by the elemental beauty of the swimmer Marama, the community's own Pania of the reef. Alongside his obsession grows disgust at the squalid violence of daily life around him. Ten years later, Eric and his daughter wash up in the township. Eric needs to know what happened to his brother, but the community, unnerved by his resemblance to that other stranger, wants to leave the past submerged.  A finely calibrated story — deeply humane, and darkly uneasy. In his introduction to Best NZ Fiction, Owen Marshall recognises Aaron Blaker's  'individual voice' and names him 'an emerging talent'. The Siren can be bought here for 3 USD.	Image by Lara Liesbeth Aaron writes, "the physical setting and the lives of the characters in The Siren are loosely based on my experiences living in a small township on the East Coast of the North Island, a few years ago. The outlandish beauty of the place was quite unsettling, as was the isolation and the socio-economic reality. The fictional events of The Siren arose from my combined sense of discomfort and euphoria." Aaron Blaker comes from the East Coast of the North Island of Aotearoa New Zealand, but currently lives and writes in Dunedin. His fiction has been published in Takahē and Best New Zealand Fiction and online by the Goethe-Institut New Zealand.                                            ••• In other Rosa Mira news, our first 10k author Sue Wootton (The Happiest Music on Earth) has been (very) short-listed for the 5000-pound international Hippocrates Prize for her poem 'Wild'.                                          The Glass Harmonica received a good notice here. Amigas received a mildly perplexing one here. Final adjustments are being made to US poet Melissa Green's memoir The Linen Way, which it's intended will be published late in May. The next 10k ebook will be an essay by Martin Edmond. For a winter warmth we'll be putting together a story-rich cookbook by New Zealander in Montpelier, Rachel Panckhurst. The PR Rat has fathered another litter of Ratadilloes. The Siren can be bought here for 3 USD.
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