If you want to avoid spoilers, please read the original story – Xeme – before reading this post.
First off, apologies for this post being a day late. That’s really been a bit unavoidable as a great deal of my evenings this week have been spent moving to new web hosting. The new design was chosen by Rebeca, and she also took most of the photographs that are shown in the banner (none of them are stock photos, incidentally, I took at least one of them, I think. Unless I didn’t, in which case she took all of them.)
This week’s letter pulled out of the bag was, of course, “X”. I remembered the word “xeme” not from my researches for Xenon a few weeks ago, but actually from trying to find “x” words to play against Scrabble on the Commodore 64 many years ago. (Computers have a nasty habit of never forgetting anything, and being totally emotionless. Not only does this make them good sports when they lose, but there’s something callous about them when they win. But I digress). I knew that a xeme was a type of gull, so for this story, I decided to use a stuffed one.
The main question – of how much of this is real – I decided to leave open. You probably already noticed that he didn’t actually get the money from the lottery, but was talking on the mobile phone to somebody (even if the voice was in his own head). If I was developing this idea into a full-length novel I’d have to work out whether he actually won the lottery, or whether that was self-deception; the beauty of this idea in short story format is that I don’t have to – you can decide for yourself how much of this is Frank’s own twisted mind, how much is drink, and how much is mind control wide open. I’ve no beef with you however you want to interpret it.
The post “Behind The Scenes: Xeme” first appeared on simoncollis.com and is Copyright © Simon Collis 2018. All rights reserved.