Week 258 – Sammy Being Low, Unintentional Confessions And Extradition For Privileged Bastards.

Before we start one mention about horror writing – we don’t need horror fiction when we watch the Auschwitz Liberation Anniversary.

We send our deepest respects.

I just found out this week that my favourite Queen song (Spread Your Wings) was written by John Deacon. I’ve no problem with that, I simply hadn’t noticed and had assumed that the legend that was Freddie Mercury had written it. In a past life I used to write a lot of poetry and whilst doing some research, I found out that Freddie had recorded under the name Larry Lurex. His brilliant extravagance was evident very early on!!

I knew that John Lennon was quoted as saying the one song that he wished he had written was George Harrison’s, ‘As My Guitar Gently Weeps.’

We have so many actors who mention roles that they wish they’d played. Personally I wish no-one had done ‘Forrest Gump’ I can’t even begin to express how insulting I found that film. And it was pish. And it picked up the Oscars that ‘Pulp Fiction’ should have won.

I think it’s the same with stories. There are some that we read and they totally resonate. Not only do we wish that we had thought of them, we don’t understand how we didn’t.

There is a difference of being in awe of a story that is beyond your ability or imagination to the ones that you could kick yourself for not coming up with.

If someone else publishes your diary with a follow up of ‘What I did On My Holidays’ that must be a real bummer.

That would never happen to me as my diary was very boring, I wrote nothing in it in case it was used in evidence. I was a very private person. Or secretive. I told nobody nothing! When I was a teenager, I had a book with all my friends phone numbers in it and I only wrote down their initials. That was fine until I wrote a girl called Vari Drysdale’s initials down. I came home from work and got hit on the back of the head with a bottle of bleach and what I was told was to be my own towel.

Not that long ago I worked helping people with literacies and there was one guy who was so interesting. His work was rough and he struggled with punctuation and spelling but by fuck could he write as he would have told it. Readers don’t realise what a talent that is. He read me out a story one day about him finding a body but because of who he was at the time, he couldn’t report it. I asked him if this was true and he told me not to ask. I told him not to sign it as it could have been considered a confession.

He was the guy that started all this for me. I thought he would get a kick out of sending his work to a site but I didn’t want him screwed by some sort of Vantage Publishing so I sent a story into a site called ‘Shortbread’. It was legit and that was where I ‘met’ Diane, Nik, Adam and Tobias. Unfortunately the fellow stopped attending and we never got to sending in any of his work.

Sorry, I was off on a tangent. There was one book that I read and I wondered about the ending all the way through. I just couldn’t grasp where it was going. It was all about some strange monks who throughout the dark ages wrote down a list of names, birthday’s and the date those folks died. I just wondered who would want this list and why. I’ll not spoil it in case anyone wants to read it but it was so obvious it was annoying and it was something I wish I’d thought of.

It was called ‘The Library Of The Dead’ by Glen Cooper. What I loved about that book was how inventive it was but it finally revealed itself to be something all of us have dealt with in some way or another. It was one of those where you slap your head and say ‘Fuck!’

Okay onto this weeks stories.

We had three established friends of the site and two new folks.

We welcome both writers, hope they have fun on the site and more importantly, we want to see more of their work.

Our topics this week include: Escape, laughter, self-loathing, a room and a quest.

As always our initial comments follow.

 

First up was Harrison Kim, who is a pure gent.

This writer is a well respected commentator and mores to the point, an excellent writer. He is steadily building up his back catalogue.

‘The Disappearance Of Kyle Amito‘ was his seventh story on the site and our first of the week.

‘Well written. A really good story that left me pondering a few questions.’

‘I never felt that I had it all worked out. I liked that.’

‘The hardest issues to understand are the ones that could be looked at one way or another.’

 

Next up we had Simon Bell for the third time.

His story, ‘Festival‘ was published on Tuesday.

‘Nice writing. It had a wistful dreamlike quality.’

‘There were a few touches in this that were exceptional. It was a bit surreal as there was a recognition in this that teased.’

‘Finding your own traditions is all about growing up. This can be very sad but fulfilling.’

 

Rachel Lynch was our first new writer.

‘Darby‘ was her story that broke the back of the week.

‘Nice and gory and gruesome.’

‘When you think on those you hate, you need to look at yourself first and this is what this does.’

‘The whole story was about the line, ‘You make me hideous.”

 

Rachel was followed by our next new writer, Oliver Lavery.

‘The World Leapers‘ was his debut story which was published on Thursday.

‘This made me smile.’

‘Not my usual reading preference but I thoroughly enjoyed this.’

‘Some really good touches.’

 

And we finished on Friday with an amazing writer who has had a ‘few’ stories published with us.

The week was brought to a close with Tom Sheehan’s 104^th story, ‘Just Plain Hard Work Of The Ages, Work Of Comets.’

‘Labour. Dream. Drink. Dream. Labour. That is all some had. Tom has lifted this into something exceptional.’

‘I hope he finds his buried treasure but I doubt it.’

‘Putting food on the table was all that mattered. Their only expectations were in their hopes.’

 

Well that’s us for another week.

Usual reminders…Please keep commenting, they really do lift the site.

And have a go at the Sunday Re-Run. Simply pick an older story that you have enjoyed, write a spiel or introduction and throw in a few questions for the author. We’ll print exactly what you send us.

Since I mentioned Queen, I reckon that I’ll go and listen to ‘The Works’ album.

Well you can’t go wrong with a bit of Queen.

Unless that bit of Queen is her son.

Why doesn’t the American and British government agree to swap that Andrew trafficking accepting freak with the murderer Anne Sacoolas and give their respective judicial processes a free hand??

Hugh

Image by klimkin from Pixabay