Bedtime Stories

 I'd like to write a series of short stories about Cairndhu. I have the characters and a few incidents they would be involved in but I keep trying to make them into a novel. What I want is something like a story at bedtime, the kind of thing a person reads just before sleep, is not tempted to read another chapter but knows the characters will be there tomorrow night. I published a book of short stories, Bees in my Bonnet, and had several nice comments from people who wanted just something to relax with when they went to bed. It's a follow on from that I'd like but with the same people each time; a bit like Dr Findlay's Casebook, each little incident separate, but connected. I find that sort of thing fun to write and sometimes the wee stories can blend into a novel. Of course, some short stories can be expanded and be the lead into, or the final chapter of a much longer tale. What comes to mind is The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and The Lemon Drop Kid, both turned into movies. In a way, many of the TV drams series, The Bill and Colombo were, in their way, a collection of short stories, so the idea is not something original. 
It's something that would be relaxing while driving through a saga. A ray of sunshine in the storm. 



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Did the trees talk to me?

Image
  For Bees in my Bonnet, I wrote a short story about trees thinking. It’s called Have a Good Day because it purports to be a conversation between the President and two scientists, who wish each other ‘Have a good day.’ It was speculative, but then I came on Peter Wohlleben’s book, The Secret Network of Nature and read that when Roe Deer bite the bark off a tree, they leave saliva, the tree detects the saliva and produces bad tasting sap. If the scientists just broke a piece off leaving no saliva, the tree just produce healing fluid. I then realised I’d inadvertently been working on a really possible scenario. It seems the trees also communicate to other trees when they are running short of water, allowing the others to reduce their intake and conserve the resource. Wohlleben comments that unfortunately pests tune in to this communication and attack the trees in trouble. Harping back to my story, maybe trees do talk to me after all. http://sullatoberdalton.com/pen-sullatober/s...
Read more

Ghost writing

Image
 I’m moving along to do some non-fiction again because it opened up so many character sketches and short story lines as well as being enjoyable and getting me involved with other people. Let me do a bit of show don’t tell – I was researching the history of a wine farm and went to interview one of the past owners to get some colour. She told me it had been hard making the place pay and that the farmhouse was haunted. Someone had been sitting sewing in the front room when a young woman dressed in the style of the early 1800’s walked through. The person sewing had asked everyone in the house who it was, but no one else had seen the young woman. They realised it had been the ghost of the original occupant, who died as a young woman in the house. A spirit on a wine farm was too good a promotional gimmick to miss so the owner and her partner, glad of anything that would help bring in money, spread the news around. Unfortunately, at that time, the fashion was to pick the grapes at midnigh...
Read more

Muse Fuse.

Image
Dead or dying I’d have described my muse over the last year or so but my Writing Group triggered a remarkable recovery with a challenge to write a short story on the subject of photography. I struggled for a while but, as a last resort, used this mind mapping thing and found several story lines. There was a kind of James Stewart Rear Window, where the cameraman saw something that have a clue to some criminal activity; petty or otherwise according to choice. Then there was the bride who fancied the best man and as the cameraman, or woman, checked the focus, they saw them smile to each other – had the groom been set up for a scam? In this focus moment, there are other interrelationships that could be seen, jealousy between the bridesmaids maybe, even the in-laws. In the end I settled for a group all smiling until the lawn sprinkler at the reception venue came on and created a rainbow effect – beautiful picture but it makes the mascara run. I don’t know if it was having to dig for a s...
Read more