Prizes encourage them - the success of self-loathing

What's more stale than a continental-breakfast roll in a package-tour hotel, less original than a dollar bill, and most deserving of a rubber corndog up each arse as the comfits for the judges?

(in my op.)

However
"It's the best short story of the year by an Australian crime writer," says Nevada Public Radio, "that gives a noirish twist to our fair city - it's a dark tale of hookers and death in the desert". Listen to their interview of the author, A.C. Patric — about this rising star of the Australian lit scene, and his soon-to-be-published collection, Las Vegas for Vegans.

Of course, not everyone has literary/cinematic sensibilities, or can understand the art of creating imitations and of imitating imitators. And like, you know, you don't need to visit the future to write about it. Anyway, some old bat calling herself 'aunty palin' complained: "It really spoils it for me that the author has never visited Vegas.

---

Read an edited version of the story, Fear and self-loathing, in Australia's premier newspaper, the Cultural Cringe Sydney Morning Herald.

The prize this story won is the inaugural Ned Kelly SD Harvey Short Story Award, which might make dead-Ned laugh. His legend is more full of shit than a feedlot.