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Author Michael Botur

NZ short stories – fiction by Michael Botur – leading young NZ short story writer.

  • CONTACT
  • POETRY + FLASH
    • Helluva Good Cunt
    • City of Women (flash fiction)
    • Magic Mirror
    • One Sticker Kid
    • About Abe
    • We Eat Each Other
    • Coulda Said
    • Come Out Of Your House
    • Gangsta As
    • The World Needs A Plumber
    • Stephen King Sundays
    • Ain’t Goin Out Like That
    • DVD Day
    • Attaboy
    • One Day At Rainbow’s End
    • Sorry
    • Live For Today
    • Geronimo
    • City of Women
    • In Defence of Jack Torrance
    • Baggage
    • Joke Told To King Juan Carlos
    • Shame
    • Wet & Forget
    • Waiting For The Bell
    • Nineteen
    • Questions For Kass
    • Head MidWest
    • Ways To Die In The South Island
    • Historic Breakfasts
  • NEW WRITING
    • #100NZStories100Days
    • I Hope You Got Hit By A Truck
    • Best of Three – new short story
    • Skinned
    • Diner’s Club
    • Hiding
    • Better Than Jail
    • Don’t Tell Mum
    • Kiss You While You Sleep
    • Schrödinger’s Scoop
    • Bugchaser
    • Underground
    • Review and interview for True: short stories Feb 2019
    • The Coolest
    • Baader-Meinhof Boy
    • Diner’s Club
    • Serotonin
    • Casino Kids
    • Broken Windows
    • Silent Retreat
    • Overnight
  • Novels
  • My Animal Family – Children’s book
  • The Lockdownland Trilogy (2022)
  • The Devil Took Her (2022)
  • SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
    • Lowlife (2018)
    • Mean (2013)
      • You Get Played, I Get Paid
      • Home D
      • Buds
      • Mr Impatient
      • Take Care of Her
      • Body Without A Head
      • Excape From Mr Hate
      • Rubbernecker
      • Vandals
      • I Got A Plan
      • Inland Island
      • The End of the World
      • Stick It
      • The Love Virus
    • SPITSHINE (2016)
      • This Is God’s House
      • Princess Pristina
      • Urban Legend
      • The Tooth Fairy
      • Kidney Thief
      • Saturday 77
      • Manhood
      • Killers
      • McMurder
      • Live For Today
      • The Bigshot
      • My Secret Identity
      • Staycation
      • Better Than Jail
      • Summer School
      • Because I Love Him
      • Schrödinger’s Scoop
      • Don’t Tell Mum
      • Dumped After Decades
      • Cuffed As Fuck
      • The Sword of Damocles
      • Truth Or Dare
      • Kiss You While You Sleep
      • That Tingling Sensation
      • The People’s Choice
      • Cloud Nine
      • Mengistu
      • Underground
      • Cathedral With Tranny
      • Cut Throat
      • Dreamgirl
      • Fuckup Day
      • Granny Frankenstein
      • InsAngel
      • My Famous Friend
      • Guilty
      • Rock Or Bust
      • Survive September
      • The Explosive Truth
      • The Kurt Shirt
      • The Rich Bitch
      • Unfrozen
      • Wonder Woman
      • THE FAIL TALES
    • Hot Bible! (2012)
      • The Man Upstairs
      • Axe of God
      • Zero The Hero
      • Staycation
      • U R My Goddess
      • Dumped After Decades
      • Man’s Best Friend
      • Lepers
      • Pretend I’m Not Even Here
      • Little J
      • Joker
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Hell of a Thing – short stories by Michael Botur

Hell of a Thing

The powerful 2020 short story collection 

Michael Botur’s work grabs you by the throat and won’t let you go. His artful short stories throb with pain, hope, misunderstanding, reconciliation, remorse, and surprise. As one reviewer says, “The authenticity is so scary, you wonder where this man has been and what demons followed him home…. .”
With his sixth collection of stories, this leading young New Zealand author and journalist finds purchase for the first time with an American publisher. In Hell of a Thing, a cowardly father seeks a more exciting son; two lovers on a posh date dine on self-delusion, and an author turns his back on his past–until the past demands violent closure. We meet artistic terrorists, renegade daughters, an Uber driver from Waziristan, and a crew of casino kids up past their bedtime–everything with a distinctive Kiwi flavour that lends a counter-clockwise swirl to otherwise familiar settings.
There is a ring of authenticity to Botur’s dialogue and physical descriptions, an unvarnished street language punctuated with demotic vocabulary and agitated rhythms, combined in collages of invective, obscenity, and acute observation. Says reviewer Jeremy Roberts, “It’s as if Mr. Botur hung out at fast-food outlets after midnight–swilling bad coffee, listening to conversations, and jotting observational notes under the garish yellow lighting.”
Available from The Sager Group and Amazon.com including Kindle.

“Michael Botur’s writing is a breath of fresh air. Just read him. You’ll see what I mean. This dude can write.”
—Alan Duff, MBE, author of Once Were Warriors

Read the stories free online.

1. Hiding

A timid woman gets an opportunity to violently express herself after a traffic accident collides her with three men – a thug, a sleazebag, and her husband.

Read the story. 

2. D_OUCH_E

When their art is rejected and they are told they’ll never exhibit, a pair of artists plot revenge against their nemesis: Auckland Art Gallery.

Read the story.

3. Baader-Meinhof Boy

A dissatisfied father seeks a more exciting heir – and finds it in the kid who is bullying his son at school.

Read the story.

4. Diner’s Club

Two lower-class lovers on a dinner date dine on self-delusion as the breadwinner struggles to justify how he’ll pay for the meal and maintain his relationship.

Read the story.

5. The Coolest

A group of friends hold up a popular peer- until after graduation they’re forced ask if it’s justified that Matt Lamb was the coolest kid in school.

Read the story.

6. Serotonin

The chronicle of a doomed affair between a book store owner and an unhappy salesman desperate to keep his serotonin levels up.

Read the story.

7. Casino Kids

A troop of kids up way past their bed time in a casino club encounter their past, present, and disturbing future across three nights, years apart.

Read the story.

8. Broken Windows

An author needing peace and quiet finds out how far he’ll go to silence the noisy neighbour – even if it means destroying the man’s life.

Read the story.

9. Doc Be Down

The tale of the drug dealer and the depressed doctor who needs cheering up – even if it means popping pills and partying.

Read the story.

10. The Flemish Bond

A battered professional fighter is in for a hell of a ride when he finds out his Uber driver shared an ugly incident at the same boxing gym in the men’s youth.

Read the story.

11. Silent Retreat

I’m stuck inside my head, in an unhappy relationship, in a silent retreat in the mountains. Let me tell you why I need to scream.

Read the story.

12. Our Meesha Needs Money

A proud Persian family struggles to deal with its greatest embarassment – its selfish, fucked-up druggie of a daughter.

Read the story.

13. Overnight

The true-ish story of four dorks who fight a war of words against the poetry critic who disses their poetry zine in the hallowed pages of the University of Otago student magazine.

Read the story.

14. This Generation Needs a War

A young Maori man from an unfulfilling tiny town plunges headlong into European party life and finds himself overwhelmed by shenanigans which turn really serious, really quickly.

Read the story.

15. Go Home, Stay Home

A libertarian spends his last days of freedom living in the woods with his oblivious children as the cops close in.

Read the story.

16. Leap

An aspiring author gives up his literary dreams to feed his family, and all is well – until a violent confrontation with his younger self, who shows him how to take a leap of faith.

Read the story.

 

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TRUE (2018)
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