I have had another story accepted for publication and I’m delighted. I put a lot of effort into it and it has paid off. It’s my second story that has been published. At one stage I was thinking that perhaps ‘Some Girls’ might be the only story that would be published. I’m glad to have…
Another Nice Dream
It is approaching 7.30am and I have been up for a few hours. I went to bed early and expected to wake early. I had a good sleep which was complimented by an extraordinary dream. I dreamt I was living with my ex and that we had gone out for the night. There was nothing…
Writing in Autumn
It’s autumn, my favourite season, but it feels like summer. The sun is shining and the skies are blue. It makes me want to go out and enjoy the sunshine. Which I might do but I would much prefer to write something. Perhaps a new short story even though I already have a story in…
Only Chasing Rainbows
I haven’t written anything in the last two weeks. Not because I have run out of ideas, on the contrary, I have a lot of ideas but haven’t seen any kind of rush to write them down. Though this is not necessarily the best policy. That I know because some of the ideas have left…
A Trigger And a Little Effort
I appear to have a clear run at the moment. Helped I feel by writing. Long may it last though it probably won’t but at least I got most of a story complete in the last week. I didn’t intend to do any writing, my mood being so low for so long, however with a…
Tom and Charlie
When I was a kid I had two friends, Tom and Charlie. We did everything together until one day Tom and Charlie fell out. Forty years later I still don’t know what caused the argument but I do remember that both of them told me that I had to choose one of them as my…
Silence is Golden
When I write the only sound I like to hear is the sound of my fingers tapping away on the keyboard. I might have the TV on but it will be muted and occasionally I might look at it for a minute or two if anything interesting is happening. In reality I cannot write when…
The Tree
Isobel couldn’t start the morning without having a cigarette and cup of coffee. Before she got herself ready for work she would sit at the kitchen table, a cup of coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Her husband, Barry, didn’t like her smoking but he knew better than trying to tell…
Writing Is a Mountain
When I write a short story I like to have as few characters as possible. If they play no part in the plot, they’re not in the story. I also like to add a foil character if I can. Pitting them against the protagonist. Sometimes it works well, other times I have to do rewrites…
One Small Step Forward
I may have been writing (on and off) for a long time but I only made my first submission in February and to my astonishment Leon Literary Review accepted my story Some Girls for publication. It is an old story that I wrote about seven years ago but it was too long and chronologically it…
Telling Mom
There wasn’t much Martin could do about it but the news still saddened him. He knew that Pauline’s pregnancy meant that her life was going to change forever and that she would have to pull out of college. He had such high hopes for her. She was the first of her cousins to make it…
Mr Kelly’s Job
When I was a kid there was an old man called Mr Kelly who used to live at the top of the street. He spent most of his time in his garage cutting large reams of paper into smaller pieces of paper, mostly A3, A4 and A5 sizes. We never knew what he did with…
As Simple as Possible
When it comes to my writing I like to write as simply as possible. There is nothing worse than having to look up a word in a dictionary (several times) when you are reading a story. I really don’t think a dictionary is the ideal companion to reading. I like readers to be able to…
Remembering Phoenix
We were driving to San Diego when we got the call. Molly’s Uncle Stan had died and her mother was ringing to let us know. We were supposed to be spending the week in a nice hotel, just relaxing. I’d taken the time off work, booked it two months earlier. I really didn’t want to…
Playing in the Rain
Trevor liked playing in his garden. There was a long green patch of grass, which had bushes on each side, where he had two little buckets ten feet apart from each other that acted as his goal. He would put his red teddy bear in the goal, in the middle, and then when everything was…
