I have received Highly Commended awards and publication in a collection of short stories for two of my stories. I’ve included a couple of excerpts from each of them.
One Week To Harvest
From the doorway of his shed Gus watched the motor bike – a Harley Davidson, its shiny black metal splattered with mud. His ears throbbed at each rev of the throttle; the pain was nothing compared with the agony gripping his heart . . .
Harry, his black coat dripping, wandered into the shed. Doggy eyes sought answers from his master. He had followed the bike, bearing Amy, as far as the gate. His tail normally wagged so fast it knocked cups off the coffee table. Now it drooped, leaving a wet trail on the floor . . .
Country Life
Waving the torch around, I noted a brick fireplace, pale brown stains on the ceiling, walls painted yellowish green, jarrah floor boards, no curtains on the window. Plonked in the middle of the living room were the boxes that we had packed several days earlier . . .
It was one in the morning when we fell into bed. Almost immediately, it started; thump, thump in the ceiling. Eyes staring into the dark, heart thumping as loudly as the intruders, I was wide awake and ready to defend my babies . . .
I hope you are dying to find out what happened next.
My stories are published in Timber, which is the latest of the Stringybark Stories, published by Smashwords (an Australian publisher, like Amazon) Use the code WK297 when downloading the collection in eBook format to get a 25% discount, making it about A$2.80 until 24 August 2018. Price can vary depending on $Aus/$USA exchange rate. Hard copies will be available around late July.
I have now read the full collection and was impressed. I hope you too, will enjoy them. If you have a problem, please let me know and I’ll contact the publisher.
I’d also like to thank all of you who responded to my last piece, ‘Getting To Know My Dad.’ I’m certainly encouraged to keep writing my memoir and it seems that more than just family will be interested in the story. I hope that at some point my children and grandchildren might take a look at what I’ve written. Finding that cousins, friends and even even passing acquaintances are sufficiently interested to comment, is very encouraging.
Of course I’m very interested to see what you think of my award winning short stories and if you feel like passing on the information to your friends, that’s even better. I love to hear what readers think of my writing, especially something like these stories.
Born at the beginning of the Second World War, I have memories that are unique to an Australian child of that era. Many of us didn’t know our fathers because they went off to England to help the British fend off the Germans, or to places like New Guinea to fight the Japanese. For several years I have been writing my memoir. Not having a father in my life for those first few years meant that when he did come home, I had great difficulty learning to relate to him. In this piece I have tried to portray something of that feeling.
Then in the late afternoon, with the sun accentuating the pale bark, my large gum tree (I didn’t plant it, don’t know the name) stood out like a sentinel, towering over everything.