I recently submitted a short story to the leading Ezine Forbidden Fruit.   It's called L'Atelier du Temps and is about a Canadian history professor who takes refuge in Northern France from a scandal at home which has driven him to a breakdown.   In the lovely medieval town of Dinan, he enters an antique shop -- and finds much more than he bargained for.

 Torquere Press are putting together an anthology of stories called 'Animal Attraction'.  It will include a story of mine called 'Bungalow Bill' but you'll have to wait till it comes out to find out what sort of animal I wrote about!

Last year I entered the 'Flights of Fancy' competition run by Torquere.   They supplied the picture on the right, and  competitors were asked to come up with a story which summed it up;  to write about a boy and his dog.

I don't usually write short stories, as I find the discipline very hard.   And I'm never very lucky in competitions.   But something about this appealed to me (probably the dog) so I thought I'd have a go.

To my genuine astonishment, I was awarded first prize for this.   You can see the resulting story, 'Finding Fiona' , if you click on the link. 

The dog in the story was named after a friend and fellow writer, Fiona Glass , who, for some strange reason, wasn't entirely delighted by this compliment!

I must say, it was really enjoyable to write, although I found it difficult to cut it down to under 2000 words.   The finished article actually contained 1,999 words, and that was only after an agonising few days of slicing out phrases here and there.   And even then I had to be restrained from going back and putting the last one back in!

A good discipline for a writer though.

(Thanks to Torquere Press for use of the image.)