I’ve always been a reader, the longer the book the better. I like disappearing into vast tomes or, better still, series. If I’d been asked, as a child, if I’d like a collection of short stories, my answer would have been an emphatic no. It would never have occurred to me to read something that might only take minutes to complete, instead of hiding under the bedclothes into the dark hours, with a torch, desperate to read just one more page – or chapter – or volume.

I did O level (GCSE in new money) English Lit at school. Not a great success. It wasn’t the books we had to study so much as being told what we supposed to think about them and how we should interpret them. I must say it did force me to read one Dickens novel from start to finish (Hard Times), which was an achievement because I like nearly all Victorian novelist, but can’t abide Mr Popular Sentiment. I’d much sooner read Mrs Gaskell’s North and South that Dickens’ Hard Times, both about the industrial north, trade unions etc. I resented the book of poetry we had to study, even though I loved most of the poems, because we were required to learn them by heart and chant them in unison. No poem, even a bad one, deserves being chanted in unison by a bunch of bored 16-year-olds. Utter blasphemy when it comes to Gerard Manley Hopkins.

I didn’t think I would enjoy the book of short stories on the menu either, and I don’t think I did at the time, because of the same requirement to accept received opinions of whatever I was reading. It would have been the volume I would most readily have surrendered. But oddly, 45 years later, it’s the little images from those short stories, by assorted authors, that have stuck in my mind.

This might be why I have always enjoyed writing short stories – not as abbreviated novels but as complete things in their own right (write?).

I published Moments of Consequence, a collection of my short stories, some years ago, and I’ve now weeded, added and updated it. A bit of history, a bit of tragedy, a fair bit of comedy, and quite a lot of Justice, some of it with a touch of the supernatural, and a few tributes to other writers (who probably wouldn’t thank me for it.

It’s available now on
Kindle and free on Kindle Unlimited.




https://tinyurl.com/3fuk4wfb

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