"My favourite short story collection of the year...utterly brilliant."
Simon Savidge |
"My favourite short story collection of the year...utterly brilliant."
Simon Savidge |
Paragraph Planet is a UK site that publishes one piece of micro fiction every day. The piece must be exactly 75 words long. It's surprisingly hard, and a great way to hone writing skills.
My latest piece for Paragraph Planet, my fourth published with them, is called Drive. It appeared today, and will soon be listed in their archives for March 28th, 2017. DRIVE You hear yourself. Your voice rising around you, rain outside. Your words have faces you don’t want to meet. There are secrets that make you afraid. But in the rear-vision mirror, kind eyes. And the way he put your bag down gently at your feet. Take me anywhere, you thought - perhaps you said it? - anywhere that is not here. You have no idea why you told him. Taxi drivers have ears like caves.
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Graham's Swift's novella, Mothering Sunday, is a magnificent read. "Swift's small fiction feels like a masterpiece" (The Guardian). And how's this for an opening sentence - one of the longest I've seen in a while. "Once upon a time, before the boys were killed and when there were more horses than cars, before the male servants disappeared and they made do, at Upleigh and at Beechwood, with just a cook and a maid, the Sheringhams had owned not just four horses in their own stable, but what might be called a 'real horse', a racehorse, a thoroughbred." You will be relieved to learn that this is immediately followed by three extremely short sentences. It works. The book is beautifully written.
(Swift's recent book of short stories, England and Other Stories, is also well worth a read, although I did not connect with it as much as I did with Mothering Sunday.) |
AuthorAmanda O'Callaghan is an award-winning writer of short stories and flash fiction. She has been published and won awards in Australia, Ireland and the UK. Archives
July 2020
Queensland Literary FellowshipI am honoured to have been one of three recipients of a Queensland Writers Fellowship (2016). Congratulations to my fellow awardees: Trent Jamieson and Pamela Rushby
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