Sylvia Petter's Blog

Stories In Flo Do Books are by Sylvia Petter and have been published all over the place. Many have been published In collections by interalia IUMIX, UK (now defunct), Raging Aardvark, Australia (paused), IP Oz, Australia (oop*). These have been brought together in a Flo Do Books production, Collected Stories.(*oop=out of print – but a small stock remains.)

Since I´ll be discontinuing the FloDo Books website, I´m moving some entries over here. Austr(al)ia is a German-language limited edition anthology of short prose and short stories by five Australian writers and seven Austrian writers. Each contribution is accompanied by the respective author’s “take” on the short story form. The stories by the Australian writers were...

I haven´t blogged for a while, not since the end of my oldest Vienna friendship due to Covid. There was no death, thank goodness, just the end of a long friendship with an anti-vaxxer I was very worried about. So I´m back, and a lot has happened since my last post. I have given up...

A lot to report since April, so here goes. I was invited to participate in Vanessa Gebbie´s Grist Mill where I drafted two chapters of a cosy crime story. I had four micros accepted by Pure Slush: one in the anthology Cow, and one in Work and the other in Marriage, both books in the Lifespan series, as well as a fourth...

In 2013/14, I crowdfunded a collection of my stories in German. Eberhard Hain, my first colleague at the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (Geneva 1973/74), (see previous blogpost) had translated my stories and had given me his rendering thereof on a floppy disc after the Wall had come down.  I wanted to have...

…and we had a super launch at the Schmetterlinghaus in Vienna for the German translations of Ed´s  Wife and Other Creatures. Some pix and details are here. And the wonderful audio book of Winds of Change in German translation again by dan*ela beuren is impressively narrated in German by Michael Hain. You can listen to a...

All sorts of changes are in the air with the prospect of elections subverting science and sabre rattling to save the political status quo. On that note, I intend to keep testing and wearing my masks.  And today, Russia invaded Ukraine! It´s hard thinking about writing, but writing is all I can do, so here´s...

I heard them outside in Sydney. They were chanting and banging on drums. Free Dom! Free Dom! Who is Dom? What is he? (Don´t answer that or you´ll be sued.) Why do people commend him and want him to be free?  Is Dom a master? A mistress? A domestic dominant dominion? An honorific title like...

As we move towards the end of another year let me share with you the latest issue of WordCity Literary Journal with its call for submissions for the next issue with the theme Towards the Light. We´re just finalizing that issue now. I´d also like to share my home candles that were lit last Sunday...

We are currently in lockdown again but Buch Wien, the Vienna Book Fair, made it through just in time. I went twice thanks to a discounted ticket from the Fair and a complimentary one from Shakespeare & Company where I had just picked up my copy of The Stoning by Peter Papathanasiou. I was thrilled to see...