I’m a sick man

That was the message that accompanied a recent acceptance letter for a story that will appear in an anthology in a few months.

Considering the source, it was high praise! I’m not at liberty to reveal more about the anthology at present, but will do so when the official announcement has been made.

The odd thing about the story in question, which is called The Deer of St. Bart’s, is that it took me a long time to finish, even though I knew the beginning, middle and end before I started. The inspiration was a “shaggy dog” story a fellow told me in 1984 when I was visiting Oxford University for a couple of months while I was working on my doctoral degree. The story stayed with me over the years, and I’ve retold it a number of times as a joke, but I decided it could also be a creepy story and last year I sat down and wrote the first part of it. I printed out what I had written and it sat on the pull-out tray on my desk among a stack of other works-in-progress. Every now and then I’d go back to it and write the next part of the story, print it out again and return it to the stack. I have no idea why I stopped when I did each time, but it took me a long time to get to the end. Six months at least. Never for failure of inspiration. Maybe because I was busy with other things. Who knows? I’m very happy that the Deer have found a home.

I’ve had another short story nagging at me to be told, so I did some location research on it today and wrote the first two paragraphs to set it in motion. Unlike many of my stories, this is one where location is important to the story. Crucial in fact. Can’t say why that is, but I think the success or failure of the story will rest on my ability to conjure up the setting. It’s a little bit daunting, because I think one of the things I still have to develop as a writer is an eye for detail. Thus far, I’ve tended to paint in broad strokes and allow readers to create their own mental image for how characters look or what a room looks like, following the Elmore Leonard school of description. I think there’s something to be said, though, for painting with a smaller brush in certain circumstances.

The story in progress has neither a title nor an ending. No, that’s not true — it does have an ending. I’m just not sure yet how to pull it off. Hopefully that will come to me. I put a lot of faith in divine inspiration when it comes to writing, which is unusual for an areligious person.