Josh
|
 This
story was inspired by the first person I fell in love with.
He
was surfer and a rugby player, and had a perfect body and an even
better face. He left me "to go straight". It
happens.
I'm glad now.
He would never as made me as happy as my lady has.
She's everything he wasn't.
Although the story is based on real events, I made lots of changes,
including making Josh a nicer person than the real "Josh"
was..
The whale bones are still there, at the southern end of
Kommetjie
beach, and as far as I know, the old Victorian house we lived
in
in Gardens is still there. I'm sure our old landlord
is long
dead. "Josh's" old Morris 1100 really did exist.
The
pic on the left is what his car looked like. Only his was rustier!
On our surfing trips, he would listen to Lay, Lady,
Lay by Bob Dylan, and whenever I listen to it, it brings
back memories.
This is a view of Kommetjie. Lovely
empty beach, far from the city.
|
Redhead
|
 My lady and
I were having dinner in the Café Università in
Lygon St, an Italian endroit
of cafés trottoirs
close to the University of Melbourne, and only a couple of
kilometers from downtown Melbourne. A handsome
slightly overweight student gave me the eye (hey, it happens,
even
to old blokes like me!) I'd been thinking about what would
happen
if someone from Cappor (see my novels set in the corrupt city on the
eastern edge of the inner sea) somehow got here. What would
he
think of our pollution, our collective unhappiness, our brisk and
energetic destruction of our world? The encounter and the
thought
about a visitor from somewhere else eventually led to this story about
a lonely outsider who finds his soulmate in the unlikeliest
circumstances.
Somebody whose opinion I much admire called it
depressing,
but I disagree. It says older men can find happiness, that
just
because you're over thirty and gay doesn't mean you've suddenly become
invisible. I suppose I need to write a happy-ending story for
Patti. Hey, what can I say? I'm working on it.
She
appears peripherally in my novel Footy. |
| Johnny |
Written as hommage or pastiche,
whatever, to J G Hayes Map
of The Harbor Isles. You can read a review of Map here.
|
| Sarie Marais |
I
wanted to write a ghost story, and I had the thought of setting it in
the Western Cape, where I grew up. There are a lot of
footnotes,
because some of it's written in Afrikaans. But you'll be able to cope,
I'm sure. Be sure to look at the pics. The Western
Cape is
stunning. |
| Wolf |
A short
story set in Cappor. Things are seldom what they seem.
And you may find kindness in unexpected places. |
| Fathers |
I
started thinking about this story when one day I saw an incredibly
tough, hard-eyed man at Highpoint kiss his small son on the top of his
head, so sweetly, so filled with love. I'm a father myself,
and
it's quite impossible to describe just how much I love my children.
And it struck me that men are civilised by families, of all
kinds, not just the wife and 2.3 children and labrador kind.
And
I thought, what if you're a single father, and the most important
person in your life comes to be a man?
This story is for Sam and Mark, who are both single fathers, one
straight and the other bi. It must have been hard to bring
your
kids up as well as you have, guys. Good on you.
(BTW, just
because these guys inspired the story doesn't mean it's based on them.
The Italian is based (in looks) on a guy who used to work at
the
printing company who did the printing of the place I used to work at,
and the other on a guy who is a conductor on the train. And
their
characters grew out of their situation, as so often happens.
The
ppl I create take control and drive the story in the directions they
want to go! I am a mere lackey transcribing what they tell me) |
|
More Links are coming soon! I have lots
of
short stories, some of them published. I'll be loading them
over
the next few weeks. |
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Writing
short stories is hard. You have to convey character and plot,
and
engage your readers' hearts, all in the space of a few thousand words.
You have to explain enough about your characters to make the
reader care, but you have so few words, so little time to do it.
And then, during the story, you have to twist your reader's heart,
make them think, so that as they put the book down (or
close their laptop) they'll go away changed, just a little.