Bibliophilia - Short Stories

July 27, 2008

Latest Articles

A Gambian Experience
By orangedream - Published: July 23, 2008

The Knights desire!
By Gerry. - Published: July 23, 2008

The Narrow Way
By Griffon - Published: July 21, 2008

RIP--John Hoggs
By Gerry. - Published: July 20, 2008

Judas
By Peter Tomlinson - Published: July 19, 2008

When Mates Get Domesticated.
By sunken - Published: July 17, 2008

Sparrows Can't Sing
By orangedream - Published: July 17, 2008

Beaujolais Days
By orangedream - Published: July 15, 2008

Winning Tessie
By HarryB - Published: July 14, 2008

Breaking Point
By orangedream - Published: July 12, 2008

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Latest Comments

orangedream - July 25, 2008
A Gambian Experience
Gerry - I know exact...

Gerry. - July 24, 2008
A Gambian Experience
Sorry Tina--forgot t...

Gerry. - July 24, 2008
A Gambian Experience
Lady Orange, I have ...

Gerry. - July 24, 2008
RIP--John Hoggs
Thanks Sunk---The co...

orangedream - July 24, 2008
A Gambian Experience
I appreciate your ki...

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poetry & short comp due 26 Oct
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Contest due 1 Sept 08
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Mighty River Short Story
Contest due 1 Sep 08
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Purple Haze

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RIP--John Hoggs

By Gerry.
Published: July 20, 2008
Updated: July 20, 2008

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After the farce of hanging the corpse, it would have been buried in the prison grounds'

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	Gerry. - July 24, 2008 Thanks Sunk---The comments were quite helpful :-)
	sunken - July 23, 2008 Hello Gerry. I enjoyed this too. I read it over a toffee crisp bar and a cup of coffee. I realise that this has little to do with your piece, but I am hopeful that it will give you some idea of an average reader's habits. A very interesting write and no mistake. The authorities can be quite despicable at times. I blame their parents. s u n k e n he now gets the harry potter thing
	Gerry. - July 21, 2008 Hi Lady Orange. All I can say is many strange things happened in the two decades after the war. Many people were invented to account for crimes, and many bodies interned is prison grounds who had no connection to the incidents. All victims were mixed up in the war as traitors and most were quietly eliminated. Some things are truly stranger than fiction. Gerry xxx.
	orangedream - July 21, 2008 Drew me in right from the start, kept me guessing until the end ... and then, still guessing ... An emotive subject, hanging - most certainly. An entertaining read, Gerry, written, of course, in your inimitable style. Tina xxxx

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Winning Tessie

By HarryB
Published: July 14, 2008
Updated: July 14, 2008

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If I knew what love is, this would be a love story.

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	howard - July 16, 2008 A quiet touching authentic story, Harry. Perfect. Thanks. Howard
	Gerry. - July 15, 2008 Harry, I couldn't understand at first why you would be writing about a British 'ukelele playing music hall star and actress Tessie O'Shea'. See Google ;-) A great story Harry and I am sure many could relate to a similar experience... Regards Gerry.

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The Man Who Married Lily Bart

By HarryB
Published: June 14, 2008
Updated: June 15, 2008

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A ghost story.

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Immortal Midnight

By Johnny Nys
Published: May 14, 2008
Updated: May 14, 2008

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Being a vampire seems something of a lark to new boy Carl ... until he recognises the girl he targets as his next victim one "Immortal Midnight". Belgian Johnny Nys balances humour and menace in a 1500-word story with a subtle twist.

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Purple Haze

By bryan hemming
Published: April 28, 2008
Updated: April 28, 2008

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A tale of a student from the Midlands of England hitching his way to Portugal, Purple Haze first appeared on the BeWrite site in 2003. The following year it appeared in print under the title �Creature in the Rose� as part of an anthology of 22 short stones by 21 authors including Jos Bhuiyan, Barry Ireland and Sally Quilford. El Levante, another �tale from the dark side of love� by Bryan Hemming, is also featured in �Creature in the Rose�.

Edited by Neil Marr and published by BeWrite, Creature in the Rose can be ordered over the Internet directly from BeWrite and from most other web based distributors.

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bryan hemming - April 29, 2008
Thanks Johnny, you�re right, the acid scene is intended to be disturbing.

For those interested in the background to short stories, and what inspires them, I got the idea for Purple Haze while on a trip to Portugal in 2002.

My first trip to the Iberian peninsula had been in 1970 on a journey with a Canadian friend. It was a very different place back then.

Though I never start any story intending to convey a political message, nevertheless, I soon realised there was an underlying theme to Purple Haze. In some ways it reflected the contrast between the so-called 1960�s hippy revolutions of Northern Europe and the USA with the stark reality of life under the fascist dictatorships of southern Europe and Latin America. While it was easy to be a revolutionary in the relatively safe environments of Haight Ashbury and Notting Hill Gate, in places like Portugal, Spain and Chile dissent of any sort usually led to joining the ranks of the disappeared.

Though I was, and still am, a firm believer in the idealism that brought the breath of fresh air to a tired world in the 1960�s, there are always cynics who seek to undermine and exploit idealism for their own purposes. John, the hedonistic protagonist of Purple Haze, is one such person.

From rebels to riches, many became rock �n roll super stars, record company executives, porn barons, international drug traffickers and politicians. They went on to run airlines, wreck music, and ruin nations. They sold a revolution to rub shoulders with the same corrupt institutions, self-serving governments, and vain royals that have always been there. Where are their anti-war sentiments today? All sold for trinkets, treasures and titles: knighthoods, diamond- studded teeth and Carribean idylls.

No matter how successful, the minority of musicians, journalists, writers and filmmakers who still hold firm their beliefs, and do actually care, are portrayed as hopeless dreamers or embittered radicals, who have lost touch with reality. But who has really lost touch reality in a world where war, famine, poverty and oppression constitute day-to-day life for so many? (That�s quite enough Bryan, time to step down from the soap box).

At the same time I was preparing Purple Haze for publication I saw that I had enough material to begin a sequel. In Purple Haze Revisited John returns to Porto. Almost forty years later he is a broken man following an unsuccessful career on the commercial fringes of the music business. Disillusioned, cynical, alcoholic and divorced, he harbours the desire to recapture the days of his youth. But the passage of time has coloured his memories more pink than purple, and he learns a different end to the story he always imagined he would find. I hope to have Purple Haze Revisited ready for publication some time next year.

Johnny Nys - April 28, 2008
That's the Bryan Hemming I remember. The tripping scene (the figurative one) was a bit too much for me, but that's the whole point I guess.

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Birth of Fate

By Johnny Nys
Published: April 27, 2008
Updated: April 28, 2008

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A 19th century girl�s life can be hard. A wealthy but ignorant father, a business partner pursuing her hand and marriage and an unwelcome nightly visitor upset the existence of Annabelle Duffling in "Birth of Fate", the 2,000 word third part of Johnny Nys� vampire series.

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Leaving Wichita

By HarryB
Published: April 22, 2008
Updated: April 23, 2008

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That sinking feeling when you know this place is not going to be any better than that place.

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The Visitation

By Johnny Nys
Published: April 17, 2008
Updated: April 17, 2008

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When business mogul Frederick Richter leaves his homeland Germany to meet his young England bride, Johnny Nys from Belgium catches him off-guard and lets loose the vampires in his 1,200 word "The Visitation".

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Knight's Move

By HarryB
Published: April 9, 2008
Updated: April 9, 2008

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Life doesn't play by the rules.

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The Way Things Work

By Johnny Nys
Published: April 8, 2008
Updated: April 8, 2008

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Fred was the last customer in the bar - just a hopeless old drunk. Or was he something more? Johnny Nys from Belgium delivers a 1400-word dialogue-driven story with a sinister twist in "The Way Things Work".

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bintarab - April 9, 2008
Yeah, I never imagined Fred was either selfless or purely malicious. This part is short, but I already have a sense of both characters as having more to them than superficial traits -- it makes me want to read more. Fred's backstory comes out awkward; injecting the moment with more atmosphere would only draw out the awkwardness, I think. I feel his story coming out as a monologue. Where is Carl during all this? Is he too stunned to speak or think? Shouldn't he be quickly assessing Fred to figure out how much of a threat the vampire is or how Carl can handle him? Isn't that how bartenders think? Is Carl focused on himself right now -- his regrets, his life, his lost chance to see his ex's reaction when she discovers his horrible fate -- or is he thinking that this is an extraordinary situation that he can handle? Is he just not thinking? Since it's all from his PoV, that also puts me in a passive, unthinking position at this point in the story. That aspect is not engaging, but fixable, I think.
~bint

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