Keep Safe & Read On (Shortly)!

Short stories don’t sell but so what? I love ‘em. Especially when COVID-19 is banging at my door and I barely have time to read a few dozen pages before heaping more furniture behind the door to keep the @#!&! out.

Just published and begging for your attention!

Or when I want a quick escape into another galaxy far, far away from the latest bad news on the telly. Or when I just want to write something to help me get through a bad case of quarantine PIM (that’s Pandemic-Induced Malaise).

That’s how my latest short story collection – Fire, She Said and Other Stories – came to be (and to be published yesterday on Amazon for its StorytellerUK2020 competition).

By “latest” I mean the latest to see publication. I am a slooow writer. Decades slow sometimes (well, many times). The lead story – “Fire, She Said” – I began in notes thir(mumblemumble)ty years ago. Had it just about right ten years later. Fiddled with it another ten years. Finally got it in shape four-five years ago.

Then had to think about it some more. Decided last year it was ready. Yesterday, momentarily shaking off my PIM, I figured I’d better publish before I found myself sliding back into zombie mode before Netflix.

The other stories in the collection have somewhat less old pedigrees, though the incidents that sparked some of them go back to my childhood (yes, that was in the Stone Age) and my war (in the Late Stone Age).

Writing, unlike wine, doesn’t necessarily improve by being aged in a cool, dry place, like the bottom drawer of my desk. But slooow is how I work, and I hope that works for you, too.

I hope that this collection of shorts helps you through your own PIM and your own worries about that beast banging on your door.

Keep safe and read on!