Diptera Downs, and Other Stories

Diptera Downs, and Other Stories is a mixed-genre collection of short stories; all are fiction and untrue but nevertheless speak of truth. Settings and characters are dominated by the Australian outback.

A few generic themes plait the stories together: death and dying, love, mateship/friendship, searching, loss, and of course, flies! Watch for other connectors, such as lightning, flamingos, cigarette smoking, music, science, bush life, and bush characters.

Meet characters like the Bastard, Second-Hand Sam, Lilly-from-Lilliput, Zzz, Xanthus, Barnardius the circus midget on stilts, Ben-Lee (an Aboriginal spirit boy), the female Brokeback Mountain duo, Ernie the Emu, the erratic Bedouin Jabar, and the serial killer Freddy Fenris. Travel to the Holy Land and Old Jerusalem, to the 2024 Taipei Olympics, to the 1914 gold fields, to the Flamingos Nest, to Diptera Downs, to remote central Australia, and more.

The story Virus tells the sometimes-comedic and sometimes-tragic saga of a bush preschool teacher from an Aboriginal community; in The Boy from Arltunga, a boy from one hundred years ago in a remote central Australian gold-mining town meets a 2014 teenager; The Bastard tells of an interview for the 2024 Taipei Olympics between a young Aboriginal female journalist and an Australian kick-boxing champion with family connections to Persian royalty and blues music.

And therere always the persistent and pesky flies!