Devour

Book excerpt: ‘I absolutely devoured Devour. Adept, assured, and artistically diverse, this anthology has something for everyone.’ —Jodi McAlister, Senior Lecturer in Writing and Literature at Deakin University and author of the Valentine and Marry Me, Juliet series Devour is an engrossing selection of longer form short stories, all of which were recently submitted as part of an Honours or Master’s thesis within Deakin University's School of Communication and Creative Arts (SCCA). Although uniquely inspired and conceived independently from one another, each of the four stories are tethered by an underlying premise – a mysterious force that envelopes, infiltrates, infects and destroys... *** Unspeakable loss awakens a hunger within Alba that no manner of sustenance can sate. As she moves into womanhood, she comes to question the ties that bind, and in her search for meaning, asks the most important question of all: What comes after nothing? Three degrees of separation, and the Swarm descended. When civilisation is in ruins, how can we ensure the certainty of our survival? As humanity struggles and big corporations close in, only one thing is certain: Everything is connected. When the full moon rises, shadows of the past tangle with whispers of the unknown, weaving together a hauntingly beautiful narrative that transcends time and space. A bushfire rages in the Ashlands, threatening the lives of many. Only the hearthbloods can arrest the flames, but their burden is one complicated by the sceptical rhetoric of the Steel Church who bleed the earth dry in the name of industry.