Pack of Lies (Lügenspiele)
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unheard dreams
Catrina was attacked; Catrina fell. Catrina knows who did it; Catrina can't remember. Catrina has a best friend; Catrina is in love. Catrina is helping the police; Catrina is in hiding. Catrina is in crisis; Catrina is fine. This is Catrina's story. This is not what happened.
Pack of Lies is a novella, and was written with the definition of a novella in mind. Goethe wrote: "What else is a [novella] about but an event which is unheard of but has taken place?" Many of the events which the narrator describes are urban legends: famous events that never occurred.
e-book version out now
Set in Auckland and sunny RotoVegas, Pack of Lies is the 2011 digital re-issue of the original 1993 novella, newly revised and available now on Kindle.
A 2005 edition of Pack of Lies was published in New Zealand in Nine New Zealand Novellas, edited by Peter Simpson (Reed). I corrected the text in a few places – grammaticals and line edits, mainly – but held off on making any changes to the story. The collection was officially launched at the 2005 Auckland Readers & Writers Festival.