ABOUT

Everything has a beginning, somewhere to start from. But that beginning wasn’t a big bang when everything started. No, it was probably midway through something else. It’s just that’s the point you jumped in. That was the beginning for you.

It’s the same with this collection, they started on buses, on trains, at bus stops. As I stood waiting to start my journey or continue my journey back home or to work. I would be sat, in silence. Listening, not to be nosey, but to hear the start of something. Usually, it would be the middle of someone else’s conversation. As they nattered about their lives and the lives of others. These are the things I was listening for. Somewhere to begin a story from. These very stories in this collection.

As I sat there, headphones on so as not to feel like I’m prying on another’s world, I would sit there quietly, phone open on Microsoft word, ready to tap out any interesting overheard conversations. Fishing for that perfect line that would give me my beginning. Or at least, the beginning of an idea to jump off from. I wasn’t really interested in the whole conversations, but just the odd thrown away line.

Then, I hear it. ‘So there I was, running around this place I had never heard of, I was pretty drunk and had completely lost my bearings.’ From that line, ‘Fight or Flight’ was born. A story about a man, lost in a place he doesn’t know, caught in a fight or flight scenario after witnessing an attack on a young woman by two men. You just don’t get involved. Or do you? A strange surreal twisting story about how we react to situations.

The Concept
Each one of the stories in this collection started in the same way, listening in for that one situation that I could pluck from their lives and then splice it into a brand new one. As with all my creative endeavours I like to push an idea as far into the absurd and slowly drag it back to somewhere in between normal and surreal, or surreal and funny, or dark and funny or surreal. You get the picture.

For instance. At an art gallery premiere I dropped into whilst waiting for a bus home, (it was raining, they had free wine) I overheard an artist talking about how he loved to paint but feared to talk about his work, he always said the wrong thing. Or sounded stupid.

‘Goodbye Armadillo’ was born from this little conversational snippet, a story about a successful artist, wracked with fear and doubt over reviews, sat in his kitchen, after way too much alcohol and discussing the benefits of self-inflicted brain surgery.

This is a surreal, humourous tale that deals with a fear we all have. Fear of not being accepted for who we are, so we try to hide so we don’t worry so much. Some use drugs, some use clothes, most use alcohol. He decided upon brain surgery. It’s a simple leap.

Not all the stories are surreal, for instance, ‘The Earlies’ started from a sad story I was listening about a relative of an old lady who sat behind me on the number 40 bus in Leeds. She talked about a man who, laying in a hospital bed with inoperable cancer, was so filled with drugs that he had no idea what was going on around him, he was just slowly dying. She felt this was immoral, she added, ‘We treat a dying dog with more humanity than we do a dying human.’ It stuck with me and slowly the line grew into the story of Jim, a man dying of cancer. In a time where people were not just left to die in a hospital bed but were allowed to die on their terms.

We join Jim on his last day on earth, he is on his way to his party, to celebrate his life, the day haunts him with memories of the past. An incident that many years ago. Should he tell Linda the truth about that day at the shop? Should he let it die with him? This story also is a gentle nod to a play by Brian Clark, ‘Whose Life is it anyway?’ I never saw it, it was before my time, but I read the play whilst at school and it left a mark on me ever since.

Although each tale is different, seemingly unrelated, they all share that same connection, they began from something someone once said. A common thread. Maybe it was you I overheard, or a friend of yours, maybe it was you they were discussing?

Fourteen short stories that will touch your heart, play with your funny bone, jangle your nerves and hopefully leave you a little bit different to where you began. This collection would interest those who enjoy the works of Michael Faber or Robert Shearman.