"Why are those people in a cage?" Isla asked.

She pointed at a colour photograph on page 3 of Friday's The Age newspaper. It showed a forlorn Tamil mother behind bars while her two sons climbed them like a jungle gym. The mother said their door was locked and it felt like a prison.

How do you explain to a three-year old about refugees and the Australian government's detention centres? So I tried.

"But they can't live in a cage, Daddy," said Isla.

If basic human rights are fairly obvious to a three year old, what the hell happened to the Australian government?

Tags: isla lucia, the goat
Current Music: Freur "Get Us Out Of Here" (1985)

I might be dead in one or two year's time.

It's hard for me to imagine this. My brain, intellect, spirit feels that this cannot happen. Technically there is less cancer in my body than there has been for at least three years. My body feels, for the first time in ages, good.

My wife is on the verge of breakdown, my daughter oblivious. She thinks Daddy is better. She can slap my scarred abdomen and we'll laugh. I can carry her on my shoulders whenever we walk. Though Daddy often falls asleep in the afternoon when he's playing with her. That, she thinks, is a problem.

There are brinks worse than this and people have pulled back from them.

Tags: cancer, the road forward
Current Music: The Sisters Of Mercy "Vision Thing" (1990)

To prove to myself that I am not obsessing over cancer or death or anything really, I decided to weigh myself for the first time in a couple of weeks.

First, I ate two slices of bread with organic berry jam. Then two slices of bread with marmite, avocado, tomato and pepper.

I clocked in at 68.4 kgs, about 1.5 kgs lighter than I thought I was. I had hoped that perhaps I'd put on a kilo as I think that I've been eating a lot more in the last couple of weeks than I have previously.

But no.

I then decided to have a quick shit. In the name of science. Popped out a 5 inch piece of work of average girth with a good squirt of urine.

Back onto the scales.

68.4 kgs.

Well, to me that makes perfect sense. The scales are fucked.

...(where am I hiding, folks? where am I hiding)...

Tags: cancer, the road forward
Current Music: Nash The Slash "And You Thought You Were Normal" (1982)

I'm pleased to announce my much-nominated story "Her Collection Of Intimacy" has been selected for Australian Dark Fantasy & Horror 4 from Brimstone Press.

Also pleased to see fellow SuperNovarians Kirstyn McDermott and Miranda Siemienowicz in what is a very strong line-up.

See Horrorscope for more details on the forthcoming anthology.

Tags: writing
Current Music: Pseudo Echo "Autumnal Park" (1984)

The results from the PET scan are another mixed bag.

News not so good - the hotspots are still there, same place, with slightly more glucose uptake occurring, plus one of the corresponding lymph nodes is marginally larger. Also one new hotspot in the abdomen that corresponds to another lymph node. At this point we have to assume it is a recurrence of the original cancer from the bowel.

News that is good - the tumours in the liver continue to shrink, now down to 4cm and 3cm respectively.

Most likely I'll start a clinical trial in the next month or two where they will be comparing two drugs (cetuximab vs panitumamab) for effectiveness. To get onto this trial I need to have a biospy taken to see if the cancer is of a certain mutation (60% chance that it is) and if it is then I can go on the trial. Not sure which drug I will go on, and each drug is 50% effective, though one requires a weekly IV injection, the other a fortnightly IV injection. These drugs are normally about $2000 per week to take, and with the trial I'll get it for free. Even better it that the trial is happening at the hospital five minutes drive from our home.

So, I hope I get onto the trial first and foremost, and then that I'm lucky enough to get the fortnightly jab.

Long term? If it works, then I stay on the drug indefinitely (tied to the fucking hospital for the rest of my life, may it be long!) and side effects are generally a rash that might occur on the face and chest. Man, where's that Roaccutane I was on as a teen? I might need it again. I don't care about being bald, oh no, but to lose my good looks? No, vanity, no!

Seriously, I don't give a fuck what I look like as long as I live long enough to watch my daughter grow up. Unless I metamorph into the monster Isla is too embarrassed to introduce to her friends, but there was always a 90% chance that would be the case anyway.

And then I wonder what long-term side-effects these drugs will have on my body. They all do.

Tags: cancer, the road forward
Current Music: Nash The Slash "Children Of The Night" (1980)

I'm getting scared and nervous. I can usually keep it at bay at least until the day of the appointment, but I've felt it creeping up on me these last couple of days.

I've tried not to think about cancer, about a bloom in the body, a two-year mark flowering in the lymph nodes. I'm getting slight pains in my chest and neck, where I 'think' the hotspots may be. Phantom pains, most likely. Lots of cancer patients get these leading up to the results of their latest scans.

I hope like hell they are phantoms, because six weeks ago you couldn't see any structural change in my cells, and if they're hurting now then they're growing faster than a teenage boy's prick in a porn theatre.

Tags: cancer, the road forward
Current Music: The Black Ryder "Buy The Ticket, Take The Ride" (2009)

The Mayne Press is now online.

You can buy copies of my marvellous, wonderful, twisted and disturbing collection Slice of Life from them, as well as from my website.

HAINES' SLICE OF LIFE - seventeen glistening stories, sweating with twenty first century paranoia and anxiety from the decaying mind of the winner of the 2005 Ditmar for New Talent.

Reviews:

Exuberant, profane, and totally whacked out - Ellen Datlow

The anxiety in these stories is palpable. Love the paranoia! Love the self loathing. Love the psychosis - Aurealis

It's a great, nasty read. Recommended - Jenny Blackford, World Fantasy Awards judge

Tags: slice of life, writing
Current Music: Love & Rockets "Earth, Sun, Moon" (1987)

The ANZ (my bank, incidentally) have spent a lot of time and money on changing their logo recently.

This does not change the fact, in any way whatsoever, that they are still a pack of useless fucking cunts.

Tags: anz, finance
Current Music: Bressa Creeting Cake (1997)

X6 Official Launch

X6 will be officially launched at:

Berkelouw Books,
70 Norton Street,
Leichhardt NSW
7pm, Thursday 12th November.

Award winning author Richard Harland will be launching the ship. All the X6 authors will be in attendance - Margo Lanagan, Terry Dowling, Paul Haines, Louise Katz, Cat Sparks and Trent Jamieson.

X6 contains my 38,000 word novella Wives, a tender love story set in the near-future rural Australia. It'll make you cry.

Come along!

Tags: wives, writing, x6
Current Music: Spacemen 3 "Playing With Fire" (1989)

Tags: isla lucia
Current Music: The Beatles "Beatles For Sale" (1964)