Reading this story seems to have puzzled and delighted Leila in equal measure. Good fiction can do that to a person – She left it by the bottom of the Dungeon steps along with a note saying she was off to split some skulls!!
n.b. the year she refers to here is the abomination that was 2020 – Leila keeps us well supplied with Reruns and at one per week we are often just a bit behind.
A lot of work has gone into making me a pariah. I dislike jazz, tennis, peanut butter, euphemisms, celebrities who point out the good they do instead of just doing it, saying linoleum and those shitty little bumper sticker philosophies sent my way via Facebook. It’s enough to make an atheist turn to God if it means there’s a hell for me to go to. And I get worse: I utterly and irrevocably disdain any story that contains wizards, elves, dragons, a talisman (is the plural talismen?) and size zero chicks who can murder an entire room with whatever medieval object best splits skulls in the name of feminism.
I am a lost cause.
And yet I have come across a story that I should hate on general principle but instead find to be one of this year’s best, Oliver Lavery’s The World Leapers. My overwhelming positive reaction to it proved that I don’t know everything, which pisses me off to learn, but remains impossible to deny.
Q: Did it take long to write this? It flows effortlessly, which is usually indicative of endless drafts.
Q: The ending is beautifully designed. Was the whole piece in your head already, or just a general idea?
Leila Allison
***
Olly’s responses:
Q: Did it take long to write this? It flows effortlessly, which is usually indicative of endless drafts.
Actually, I wrote the first draft in just a few manic hours as this was initially an entry for a competition that had a strict deadline and a limited time frame. I had to cram it in under 1000 words too so had to mercilessly gut it. I liked the result though, so I kept polishing the piece, still keeping it under 1000 words, which meant weighing up every single word. I think that’s what’s given it it’s sense of concision and flow.
Q: The ending is beautifully designed. Was the whole piece in your head already, or just a general idea?
Ha! Thanks. As I remember I did start from the end and work back from there. I love cliff-hanger endings. I knew I wanted these hapless interdimensional heroes to use stone circles for their world leaping antics, so the idea of getting the wrong stone circle in the wrong universe just seemed like a comedic no-brainer. I don’t know where the bouncy castle came from though. The universe of the surreal, I guess.
literally stories 
I extend my appreciation to Mr. Lavery for his excellent answers. Just reread the piece and I enjoyed it as much as ever. It is funny and original unlike those meatheads who currently insist on flooding social media with those stupid-ass images of Bernie Sanders in mittens. For the love of God, stop it. It was mildly amusing the first three times but now I regard the insertion of the image into every possible nook and cranny open on the web as an affront on civility. It’s getting to be as irritating as that douchenozzle on the skateboard listing to the Fleetwood Mac song. Yes, go ahead, go on and say it. Leila Allison is Karen D. Troll. Call me whatever you want, but at least read something creative like Mr. L’s story (and the other items in the LS vault) once in a while before your imagination shrivels up and blows away like a mummy’s penis!
Rantingly yours (and stop with the goddam Sanders’ images)
Karen D. Troll
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Hi Leila,
Brilliant as usual!
I like the contradiction in terms of your phrase of a mummy’s penis – But in the madness of this day and age maybe certain phrases such as this will eventually be made into an issue to be censored!!!
We are getting dangerously close to overthinking every sodding thing that we write.
-We are in very sad times where freedom of expression is only for the easily outraged.
Oliver – It’s great to see this get another day in the sun.
I was very interested to read your comment that this sort of started backwards. I think more stories than most are ‘planned’ this way. The ones that are written forwards are the ones that probably go off on their own. When you write you simply embrace which one and work with what you have.
All the very best folks.
Hugh
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