Behind The Scenes – Doctor Fog

Posted on in Year of Short Stories

This was a hard one to write. It’s actually the third attempt I’ve made to write it over the last twenty years when I first came up with the idea. The idea that appearances can be deceptive is always a fascinating one for me, and the notion that there really is a monster in the cupboard and that’s a good thing was too much of an idea to miss.

That said, the actual scene was hard to do. I didn’t want to go too far, and make something that was too graphic, mainly because this is an area in which I have no personal experience (fortunately for me). The device of the boy watching the monster rather than the molester, then, seemed the best way of keeping the action flowing without stepping the wrong side of a line I wasn’t sure I could see properly.

Continue reading “Behind The Scenes – Doctor Fog”

Doctor Fog

Posted on in Year of Short Stories

DOCTOR FOG

WARNING: the following story contains subjects that some readers may find distressing.

“Do you remember, Kenneth?” they would ask. Therapists, police. “Do you remember what happened that night?”

I remember.

I was six. Six years old. How, at six years old, do you say that you remember so clearly – as clearly as if I could see it play in front of my eyes now – but that they wouldn’t believe me?

I had seen the monster before that night. He used to stand in my wardrobe, waiting. I assumed that it was he, and not her, in the way that you make these assumptions at the age of six, on little more than guesswork. I assumed also that the wide smile he gave me, revealing long, sharp teeth, was not a pleasant one.

I knew little of monsters then, and what monsters are. I know better now, of course.

Continue reading “Doctor Fog”

Behind The Scenes: Cards

Posted on in Year of Short Stories

For this one, I asked my other half to give me a key word beginning with C, and she chose “crime”. So that was the title of this story up until the very last minute.

I basically started writing this one and came up with the idea of them exposing a cheat by using exactly the same methods, losing and then explaining why they’d lost. I’m not too sure that that came over entirely, or that the poker scenes worked particularly well (especially as I’ve never really played the game), but the idea was to focus on the interactions between the players. The rest of it was basically winging it by remembering The Sting.

Continue reading “Behind The Scenes: Cards”

Cards

Posted on in Year of Short Stories

CARDS

The noise of the club made it difficult to hear. Johnny tapped Rex on the shoulder, and shouted in his ear. “You got everything?”

Rex took off his glasses, checked the plastic film on the back of the lenses, pointed to them, then replaced them on his face, and nodded.

“You seem nervous,” Rex shouted back in Johnny’s ear.

“Yeah,” he replied, leaning over. “Just a bit.”

“Come on,” Rex said, beckoning. “Now’s not the time.”

The walked the usual route to the back of the club, and stood waiting at the entrance of the VIP bar. The security guard was busy dealing with a drunken businessman in a smart suit. They stood there, waiting.

“Eight months planning,” Rex whispered to Johnny. “We can’t back out now.”

“Yeah but…” Johnny’s mouth went dry. “Now it’s, y’know, tonight’s the night. And de Luca’s here.”

“So what?” Rex replied. “If he’s here it’s our best chance, we agreed that.”

“But you know… what happened to Frankie.”

“Yes, he’s had men killed for less,” Rex said. “That’s about the third or fourth time you’ve said that tonight.”

Continue reading “Cards”

Bernice

Posted on in Year of Short Stories

Bernice sprinted out of the glass doors and pounded across the parking lot. She allowed herself the luxury of a glance at the glass-walled walkway between the two halves of the shopping mall, nodded, and started off again, running towards the crossing.

Officer Bostaph came out a few seconds later, following her trail carefully. As he ran, he watched her, concentrating on following where she went so as not to lose sight of her behind the bushes as she headed away from the mall.

What on earth is she doing going this way? he thought. What does she think she can gain from this?

And it occurred to him that he already had his answer in the shoes that she was wearing.

Continue reading “Bernice”

Behind The Scenes: Another Stack

Posted on in Year of Short Stories

OK, so this is basically going to be a post about how I wrote “Another Stack”. I’m not sure really why I’m doing this, or whether I’ll even do another one, but I thought someone might be interested in the writing process, so here goes…

Having set myself the challenge of writing a short story every week for a year, the first problem came with the writer’s age-old problem: what to write about? I had a few ideas spinning around, but it wasn’t until Friday evening that the idea for the story came about.

It really was about outsiders, and how outsiders don’t react in the same way as other people. Doctor X here is clearly an outsider to the group, in a way – he doesn’t dress the same way, he doesn’t seem to behave the same way, and he clearly doesn’t feel the same way about the rest of the group’s “end justifies the means” approach. (Interestingly, neither does Tom the Roadie, and perhaps I should have explored that a little bit more, but I didn’t want to detract from the main flow.)

The name “Another Stack”, associated with the band name “Chimney”, had come into my mind years ago, during a train journey to work. I noted it down in a little notebok of “ideas for stories” and left it. I have no idea where that notebook is right now, incidentally; the band popped back into my head some time Friday evening.

Having written the first draft, I rewrote it – twice – on Saturday. The beginning changed a lot, being re-ordered to make things more readable before the first interview. Once I hit the first interview, everything stayed more or less the same, minus a few tweaks, until the very last line, which didn’t get its final form until the very last moment. Once I’d got it, I knew it was right. A quick read through, spell and grammar check, and it went live.

I did want to touch on the manager a bit more, but again, there wasn’t space. Maybe I’ll write a story about him later in the year…

See you tomorrow for story number 2.

The post “Behind The Scenes: Another Stack” first appeared on simoncollis.com and is Copyright © Simon Collis 2017. All rights reserved.

Another Stack

Posted on in Year of Short Stories

So here’s the first in my year of short stories. It’s not as polished as I’d like, but I’ve set myself Saturday as a deadline, and so I had to do it. Here goes. Be gentle with me 🙂

ANOTHER STACK

I’m going to call him Doctor X. Not for any legal reasons, or because I’m trying to shield someone’s identity here – his real name is Julius Green, and you can look that up if you like, if you can work out how. No, the reason that I am calling him Doctor X is that it’s the name by which you’d be most likely to know him, if you’d heard of him at all.

I first heard of him after my uncle died of cancer a few years ago. Some time in the early seventies they played together in a progressive rock band called Chimney. My uncle never told me anything about them. In fact, I didn’t know they existed until I found the one vinyl LP among all this things.

Continue reading “Another Stack”

Year of Short Stories

Posted on in News, Year of Short Stories

New Year’s Resolutions are a wonderful thing, aren’t they? “Let’s lose weight”, is how it starts. Then it’s “we’ll go to the gym every day, save 20% of every pay cheque in a high interest account and learn to play the flute.” Then around halfway through New Year’s Day, reality sets in and you end up sitting on the sofa, surrounded by empty Quality Street wrappers. Not that I’m complaining, you understand. (And just for the sake of impartiality, other selections of chocolates are available.)

In fact, my resolution for this year came to me the night before New Year’s Eve, and it’s a doozy. I’m going to write a short story a week, and publish them, every Saturday, right here on my blog. If life or other technical stuff gets in the way, then I might have to break that. But I’ll try not to. (And there’s another resolution gone – I ended a sentence with a preposition. Allow me to go and punish myself before the Grammar Police arrive.)

Why?

Continue reading “Year of Short Stories”

Who Invented The Computer? – Alice Rowe Burks

Posted on in Reviews

CoverSo why does this book exist? Surely there’s no doubt who invented the computer, right? I mean it was Babbage. Well, technically he invented the difference engine, which was a forerunner of the computer I suppose. Hmm. Then was it Turing? Although his work was entirely theoretical. Moore? No, that was microprocessors. Ah wait, I know.

Stop there. Before you say it. The right answer is John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford E Berry, not – as I’m sure you were about to say – Eckert and Mauchly.

You see, back in the 1970s there was a court case over who actually invented the computer.

Continue reading “Who Invented The Computer? – Alice Rowe Burks”