A J Lattimer & Co. - Michael Reidy

It's always a surprise when June arrives. The world is light at 0430 and it seems ungrateful not to get up. This week I finished Phill Featherstone's Aftershocks and am currently reading the companion volume, Paradise Girl . While probably aimed at the YA market, this OAP thought they are very good stories. The characters are credible and refrain from doing too many stupid things. The dialogue of the young people rings true as do their attitudes. Featherstone is a teacher and he knows how to keep young people interested without indulging them too much as he tells the story he wants to tell. I am hoping that my collection of stories Undivulged Crimes will appear later this month. Today, I began writing a story without an idea of where it will go. It was stimulated by a mysterious occurrence my father told me about. Unfortunately, its the sort of front-ended story where all the impact is at the beginning and everything that comes after is an anti-climax. A good example o...

A while back, I said I would read Fennimore Woolson's novel For the Major . All I can say is, I tried. It is virtually unreadable today - and its sales when published suggest it was then, too. Recognising bad writing is problematic, and it can be seen as very subjective. The reality is that it is only subjective for those who have little concept of what good writing is. Writing words is like writing music: there are rules to follow. Just as a song with 33 bars is going to have a hard time making it into the charts, so are stories that violate the principles of fiction.  Yet, as is clear, this is not a matter of ticking the boxes. There are more subtle aspects to be addressed: rhythm, syntax, and diction that is suited to the situation, time and character. Edgar Allan Poe's "formula short story" is remarkably durable. However, Poe did not invent it any more than Aristotle formulated the "rules" for tragedies: they observed and recognised common ch...

    Angela knew there might be a problem when she announced that she intended to marry her cat. There would be the expected fuss from the usual quarters, but this was the 21 st century, and after all, she was living in California. It wasn’t as though she wanted to marry a dangerous or wild animal or a close family member. Boots was just an ordinary cat. What she hadn’t expected was the explosion of outrage because Boots was a bitch. Somehow, a “Women Against Lesbian Bestiality” group had materialized within 48 hours of the announcement being posted on LookAtMe. What Angela had thought would be a few dozen friends meeting for the ceremony and picnic in Golden Gate Park now looked like attracting a hundred thousand people. Her page was already covered with messages from city officials regarding permits, applications and fees required for policing, traffic management, parking, portable restrooms, and barriers for crowd control and management, along with indemnity polic...

The draft of The Lost Lady is complete.  Having done two major fixes (shifting from third person to first, and rewriting six chapters to accommodate a mistake in historical dates) I have put the book away and will look at it in a few months. Julie is proofing a collection of short stories, Undivulged Crimes , which I hope will appear in time for the summer rush. (Great train, plane and beach reading!) Next project? I will publish a very short story on this site soon. It's an homage to Stephen Leacock, the master of the very short story. The Rock Pool is also being proofed and, with luck, will also make a 2019 appearance.  I now will have time to catch up on reading: Church of Spies , by Mark Reibling, and Carlos Ruiz Zafon's The Labyrinth of Spirits .

It’s almost impossible to write about Humphrey and Jack without giving spoiler alerts every two sentences, so closely are plot, character and theme woven. So, after this, there are no further alerts. The plot is deceptively simple: an embittered retired lecturer befriends a semi-delinquent youth and both are redeemed. However, the character and social shading of the book are remarkable, and readers are treated to 300+ pages of Thomson’s elegant writing. And here lies part of the skill of the novel: the characters reveal themselves and evolve through action and dialogue, not through the author’s narrative and commentary on the psychological aspects of what is going on. This makes the reader think about what he is reading, which many readers will find too great an effort – but then, they don’t deserve the rewards. Readers are seduced into cosy cynicism with the early encounters with “the Evangelists” a group of grumpy old men who meet in a pub and have ritual rants abou...

Our Roots Remain as One by David G Muller, Jr, Deborah Muller Kemp, Kristina Muller Wells, Janice Muller Hollinger The value of family histories and recollections is that they show us just how much the world has changed within living memory. The memories of the Mullers from the 1950s and 60s (as well as later) give an honest picture of life through the eyes of four siblings (one boy, three girls). Organising four family members to take the time to write down their recollections is a serious challenge, and the fact that the four Muller children, now nearly all at retirement age, have been able to do this is a major accomplishment. The format is elegantly simple. Each of the four wrote short pieces on key stages of their lives: earliest memories, various stages of school, lives outside school, college years, and making life decisions. Through those brief essays, history and growth are recorded. Sections where they give accounts of the same events of their youth are part...

https://bit.ly/2BumIdb My thanks to Pauline and the judges!