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!