{"id":249,"date":"2024-11-11T16:19:26","date_gmt":"2024-11-11T16:19:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/munchkinstein.co.uk\/?p=249"},"modified":"2024-11-11T16:19:27","modified_gmt":"2024-11-11T16:19:27","slug":"the-return-of-the-jannie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.munchkinstein.co.uk\/index.php\/2024\/11\/11\/the-return-of-the-jannie\/","title":{"rendered":"The Return of the Jannie"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

You know how I spent all summer wanging on about how great other writers were in the Glasgow Speculative Fiction Writer’s Circle anthology Gallus<\/a>? Well now it’s my turn to go on about myself for, yes, I have a new story coming out in an anthology called Portals, Gateways, and Doors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Can you guess what’s in it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my case, it is a return to a happy place, writing about Mr. Bhansal, a janitor in a university who has to clean up after other people make a mess of using magic. He first appeared in Cleaning Up<\/a> as published in Fireside Fiction and then in The Advantages of Unofficial Consultation<\/a> in an anthology of magical police stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you enjoyed these then, hopefully, you will find this new tale worth a look. It is called Sterilising Fluid and emphasises the benefits of good hygiene. You may also learn something more about Mr. Bhansal’s cat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The anthology can be found here<\/a> and I am, as always, very grateful to the editors at Farthest Star for picking it up and the wonderful people in the GSFWC for critiquing the story and helping to make it better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Now, where did this story come from and why did I give it the title “Sterilising Fluid”?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, in this instance, the title came first. A small part of my brain has sometimes wondered if I could ever spin this short story writing lark into producing a collection. An actual, honest to goodness, physical book filled with words by me. How wonderful, yet fantastic that would be. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what would I call it? As a collection you probably want something of the “So and so and other stories” type, referencing one of the stories in the collection. But what would be a good one to use? One that could give you a decent cover image? An intriguing title juxtaposition? Or one that could be confused for a cleaning product?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You see, there is a cleaning product called Milton Sterilising Fluid. (No, really<\/a>) and our family has always had a standing joke that they owe us money for using our name. Not that I’m related to that Milton but it occurred to me that it might be rather silly to have a collection with a cover that looked like a bottle of Sterilising Fluid. Of course, this would require a story called that, and so this tale came to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While I do not expect any of this to ever come to pass, the fact I’ve achieved step one makes me very happy. Also, it illustrates why I am terrible at finding titles for stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyhoo, all of that aside, I hope you pick up the anthology, enjoy what Mr. Bhansal is up to this time, and find the rest of the book to be well worth it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You know how I spent all summer wanging on about how great other writers were in the Glasgow Speculative Fiction Writer’s Circle anthology Gallus? Well now it’s my turn to go on about myself for, yes, I have a new story coming out in an anthology called Portals, Gateways, and Doors. Can you guess what’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"federate","footnotes":""},"categories":[14,8,2,3,7,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-goals","category-hurrah","category-huzzah","category-publication","category-published","category-sillyness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.munchkinstein.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.munchkinstein.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.munchkinstein.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.munchkinstein.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.munchkinstein.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.munchkinstein.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":257,"href":"https:\/\/www.munchkinstein.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249\/revisions\/257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.munchkinstein.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.munchkinstein.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.munchkinstein.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}