To Hear an Angel Sing

It's Christmas.  It's the season of all things fun and jolly, bells ring, there's wassail bowls and turkey and pudding, and loads of shopping, tree, presents, bells ringing, choirs singing......

But not for everyone.  I've personally been pretty lucky not too have too many tough Christmases, but I have spent time with those who have.  This story is for those who have nothing, nowhere to go, no-one to turn to.  Winter is always harsh, and midwinter is always dark, and only after the darkest night comes the light of a new day.

To Hear an Angel Sing    

 "It’s one of those nights, and here I am, leaning on a gravestone, squinting up at the church and struggling to breathe.  The cold is the kind that slices into your lungs and so you hold it in a little, just enough for your head to stop reeling and to delay the pain of its nails as it rasps its way out of your throat.

     I pull my scarf up to cover the tip of my nose and exhale into it.  That way its warmth stays with me a little longer. 

      It’s pink and fluffy.  The scarf, I mean.  I didn’t choose it.  It’s not really my colour; clashes terribly with my red curls.  Not that anyone can see them.  It’s the longest it’s ever been, my hair.  Mum always kept it cropped close to my scalp.  Saved hassles with lice as she dragged me from school to school, always one step ahead of the man that fathered me.  Kept its real colour hidden too.  Life’s not always easy for a skinny Scots boy with red hair and freckles.  God knows how much fighting my knuckles could have taken if those Geordie lads had seen ginger curls.  They’re tucked neatly under the matching hat now. 

     I’m not complaining.  To be honest, I would have cried with delight when the woman clipped past me and dropped them into my lap - if I hadn’t been too dozy for tears.  That’s the problem out here.  You need the daylight for scavenging in bins or looking out for a better spot to spend the night.  Or, if you’ve got the energy, to look out for a handy coffee morning where you can warm up and fill your belly with Garibaldis. 

     But at night you  have to watch out for yourself and you sleep as deep in whatever bits of rag you can gather together.  You sleep with one eye open and look out for Old Bill, or dogs or drunks, so during the day you sleep.  You can’t help it." 

Click here to find "To Hear an Angel Sing" on Amazon

The rest can be read by downloading the story from Amazon.  I'm still startled at how easy it was to upload it and have my friends and family across on both sides of the Atlantic purchase and read it.  I got  feedback within minutes - all of it positive so far, glad to see, my sensitive ego can only cope with "constructive" criticism.

The Smallest of Things

The glories of new technology, that a simple photograph can be turned into the cover of a short story, and that a short story can be turned into a marketable ebook in under an hour.

Short story now on Kindle!

Having been a writer for some years but never really venturing into putting my scribbling out there into the big wide world, I have arrived at the frontiers of my first half-century determined to be able to see myself as a published writer.  And to do so, I figured I would experiment with the whole Kindle thing and signed up with Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing.

"The Smallest of Things" is a short story, a romance, that lets the reader into Sam's thoughts as they ponder over the three most significant women in his life, and how it was a simple kiss that made such a difference to him.

I had written it years ago, and while recovering from gall bladder surgery over the past couple of weeks, I decided to look into what you have to do to get your manuscript onto a kindle.  I'm not great with technology.  I get impatient with the jargon and have a tendency to need instructions written in monosyllables, with short sentences and preferably an illustrated flow-chart.  But once I got going on  it - my current mantra is "To do is to learn" - it was not that hard at all.

One of the most important things I have learnt is about editing - I checked, revised, redrafted and checked again numerous times - but, and here I raise my hat with reverence to all editors out there - it is tough, you get blinded by the words, spellcheck programmes aren't totally reliable, you have to know your grammar and your spellings, and how you best use language.  And yes, I will probably find an error and need to update the story.  Next time I will be even more careful.  Editing is a tremendous skill, and one I have yet to acquire.

But the whole process was very rewarding.  On the heels of having won the first prize for my poetry at Gibraltar's Autumn Festival last year, I am beginning to feel that I can genuinely call myself a writer now.

I put another short story on Kindle too.  "The Promise" which speaks of the simplicity and the complexity of love also in a short story.  Find them on Kindle and let me know what you think!