LIFE AND OTHER FAIRYTALES
Life and Other Fairytales is the working title of what I hope will be my first short story collection. The stories are all entries for various competitions I've entered over the years. Some such as Life is What You Make It and Got You! were shortlisted in Writers' News and at the Brit Writers Award.
Themes include things not always being what they appear to be, the importance of justice and there being more to life than just the merely physical. I particularly like stories of help coming from Godly sources beyond this life to help the grieving in their hour of need. I also like older heroines (something that also crops up in my novels), the greedy getting their comeuppance (how to tell my stories are fantasy I suspect!) and tales that shed light on how the magical world works (or at least the one I write about).
I'm also writing a brief introduction and conclusion to each of my stories, showing a little of how/why I wrote the tale and what I think worked well. For example, this is my introduction to my story, Now There's A Surprise.
This is a story about giving out help being more difficult than it can at first appear. I like fleshing out characters and Rose comes across as a kindly soul, the type I root for to do well (but usually ends up dying early in the films, yes the slightly naïve idiot in other words). I also like Becky in this, a girl definitely with her own mind and agenda and for whom the proverb “still waters run deep” could have been written.
What I've tried to do is give a flavour of the story to come without giving too much away of the plot. I'd really like Life and Other Fairytales to come out as a paperback and online.
I hope to get editorial feedback on Life and Other Fairytales once I've done what I can on it before approaching certain publishers directly. Some of my stories included are:-
Got You! Back Where She Belongs A Matter of Trust Luck of the Leprechauns Bugs
Once A Salesman Revenge Can Wait The Criminal's Reward Death Did Us Part The Scarlet Case
In just these few selected titles, I have humourous fairy tales, darker revenge tales and help beyond this life stories. I have a special soft spot for The Scarlet Case which has two older heroines, Mary and Betty. Betty is convinced she's a witch and Mary, an ex-con, is sceptical about this but they team up to put Betty's grasping children in their place with humour and panache. I do like older heroines and I suspect as I go deeper into middle age I will probably become even fonder of them!
Got You! is about a witch who gets caught for speeding on a world where she definitely doesn't belong and Once A Salesman is about a dwarf who is desperate to stay out of the mines, the traditional dwarf employment, and tries to make a career of his own by being the salesman's salesman. However his father, the dwarf king, is determined to make his son follow the traditional career path and sends someone out after him.
Death Did Us Part shows the heroine, Veronica, trying to shake off someone following her but when that follower catches her up, he tells her he knows who she is, that her child was recently killed by a drunk driver and offers to help her get revenge. Veronica, usually a stoic soul, has to decide whether to go ahead with this "offer" especially since the courts let the drunk driver off. And Veronica is increasingly thinking that the drunk driver should not get away with it. And maybe, just maybe, she is the one to take a stand.
There are many other stories in the collection and I hope they represent the issues I find important.
Themes include things not always being what they appear to be, the importance of justice and there being more to life than just the merely physical. I particularly like stories of help coming from Godly sources beyond this life to help the grieving in their hour of need. I also like older heroines (something that also crops up in my novels), the greedy getting their comeuppance (how to tell my stories are fantasy I suspect!) and tales that shed light on how the magical world works (or at least the one I write about).
I'm also writing a brief introduction and conclusion to each of my stories, showing a little of how/why I wrote the tale and what I think worked well. For example, this is my introduction to my story, Now There's A Surprise.
This is a story about giving out help being more difficult than it can at first appear. I like fleshing out characters and Rose comes across as a kindly soul, the type I root for to do well (but usually ends up dying early in the films, yes the slightly naïve idiot in other words). I also like Becky in this, a girl definitely with her own mind and agenda and for whom the proverb “still waters run deep” could have been written.
What I've tried to do is give a flavour of the story to come without giving too much away of the plot. I'd really like Life and Other Fairytales to come out as a paperback and online.
I hope to get editorial feedback on Life and Other Fairytales once I've done what I can on it before approaching certain publishers directly. Some of my stories included are:-
Got You! Back Where She Belongs A Matter of Trust Luck of the Leprechauns Bugs
Once A Salesman Revenge Can Wait The Criminal's Reward Death Did Us Part The Scarlet Case
In just these few selected titles, I have humourous fairy tales, darker revenge tales and help beyond this life stories. I have a special soft spot for The Scarlet Case which has two older heroines, Mary and Betty. Betty is convinced she's a witch and Mary, an ex-con, is sceptical about this but they team up to put Betty's grasping children in their place with humour and panache. I do like older heroines and I suspect as I go deeper into middle age I will probably become even fonder of them!
Got You! is about a witch who gets caught for speeding on a world where she definitely doesn't belong and Once A Salesman is about a dwarf who is desperate to stay out of the mines, the traditional dwarf employment, and tries to make a career of his own by being the salesman's salesman. However his father, the dwarf king, is determined to make his son follow the traditional career path and sends someone out after him.
Death Did Us Part shows the heroine, Veronica, trying to shake off someone following her but when that follower catches her up, he tells her he knows who she is, that her child was recently killed by a drunk driver and offers to help her get revenge. Veronica, usually a stoic soul, has to decide whether to go ahead with this "offer" especially since the courts let the drunk driver off. And Veronica is increasingly thinking that the drunk driver should not get away with it. And maybe, just maybe, she is the one to take a stand.
There are many other stories in the collection and I hope they represent the issues I find important.