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New Short Story Collection by Stuart Campbell

These twelve stories, set mostly in Australia and Britain, lead the reader through irony, black comedy and the weirdly unexpected towards truths at the very heart of humanity.

You may know me as an author of novels like The Siranoush Trilogy and An Englishman’s Guide to Infidelity . With this new book, I’ve now turned to the short story genre:
A defeated man stows away on a cruise ship. A woman prefers to be a bird than a human. A nineteenth century scholar discovers a deadly Nirvana. A wife decides to redesign her brain damaged husband. A school reunion revives an unlikely friendship.

The story behind the stories

In 2023, I challenged myself to unbung the writer’s block that struck me during COVID: I would learn to write short stories. I spent much of 2023 reading short story authors in order to crack the code. As I drafted stories, I emailed one a month to a group of about thirty readers and friends during 2024. I called this the Free Shorts project. I used reader feedback to fine-tune the twelve stories, which are now published as this collection. Along the way, three of the stories were recognised in writing competitions in Australia and the UK.

I hope you enjoy these stories, which you can find in ebook and paperback on Amazon here.

And don’t forget to check out my other books here. Happy reading!

Free Shorts project – a year of stories and friendships

I’ve almost made it – just one more story to send out in December. My aim was to email a free short story each month to a select group of my readers during 2024.

I want to send a huge thank you to all those who sent me comments and told me how they’d enjoyed my work.

Also a big thank you to my readers for renewing old friendships and making some new ones during our email exchanges. Two weeks ago I had a wonderful surprise when I got an email from a friend I hadn’t seen for decades. She’d read some of my books and contacted me via the QR code in the back of my paperbacks. Naturally, I put her on the Free Shorts list, and we’re having lunch in a few weeks to catch up on several decades of news!

I’m working on the book of the twelve stories, which will be in ebook and paperback. I thought a lot about the title. Should I use the Free Shorts theme? Nah – I was sick of looking at those droopy shorts. Instead I followed the lead of Hilary Mantel, who used the title of one of her stories – The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher – as the title of the collection.

So let me unveil the title and draft cover of the Free Shorts book*, which will be out early 2025:

One of my aims was to get some recognition through entering short story competitions. I’m delighted to say that three of the twelve were recognised:

My short story Happy Days was longlisted in Creative Writing Ink (UK) competition, 2023. Read more here.

My short story Birdbrain was  Highly Commended in Stories Unlimited Rural Themed Competition, 2023. Read more here.

My short story I Thought I Knew Something about This Place was shortlisted for the 2024 EM Fletcher Writing Award. Read more here.

*swimmer image licensed by Shutterstock

Next steps: Well, I’m cutting back my literary output over the next year or so while I dive into a new and completely unrelated project that is already consuming a lot of my time and brainpower (a few of you know what this nutty plan is). I haven’t got the time or mental energy to commit to writing another novel, but I do plan to write four short stories this year and send them out to the Free Shorts gang. I won’t be entering any for competitions because I’m not crazy about writing to prescribed word limits and weird themes.

I’ll also be publishing each the Free Shorts stories monthly through 2025 on my blog (and reposted on FB, LinkedIn and Bluesky) to help promote my novels. I’m too busy to do marketing, so I sell just a dribble of books each month. If I can slightly increase the dribble to a steady drip I’ll be happy!

http://www.stuartcampbellauthor.com

My story about Belfast shortlisted for the EM Fletcher Writing Award

I was delighted to learn that my short story about Belfast I Thought I Knew Something About This Place was shortlisted for the EM Fletcher Writing Award. It will appear in the December 2024 issue of The Ancestral Searcher.

Warm congratulations to the winners and the other shortlisted entrants.

Here’s what the judges said about the story:

“An introspective and heartfelt exploration of personal identity and family roots, this story captures the author’s journey to Belfast in search of connection with their late father’s heritage. It thoughtfully blends historical reflection with modern discovery, offering a poignant narrative of belonging and self-understanding.”

Stuart Campbell in Belfast pub
The author at the Crown Liquor Saloon, Belfast

The story was written as part of my Free Shorts project, in which I have been sending one short story per month to a selected group of my readers for critique during 2024. The twelve stories will be published at the end of the year.

I am thrilled that three of the twelve stories have now been recognised in competitions.

You can find details of my novels here.

Free Shorts – March update, plans for the next anthology

I’m about to send out the March story in my Free Shorts project – a free short story sent to a selected list of my readers each month in 2024. The March story is rather experimental in form, so let’s see what the readers think.

I’ve had terrific feedback from the January and February stories, along with comments on how I might fine tune them – although when the advice is contradictory, it’s hard to know what to do! Just to remind you, I’ve copied the year’s story titles below.

I’m starting to plan the book of the stories, to be published at the end of 2024. I’ll certainly use the shorts image somewhere in the cover, but I guess that ‘Free’ shorts will be somewhat redundant when the book goes up for sale. I’ve set myself a dilemma here with the ‘shorts’ pun, but I’ve got ten months to figure it out.

The project has had great side benefits: One is that it has forced me to keep in touch with old friends, some of whom I’ve neglected over the years. Another great bonus is that people have latched onto my other work. It’s really pleasing to glowing feedback in the last few weeks for The True History of Jude (fantastic!) and The Sunset Assassin (couldn’t put it down!). Those who know me would be aware that I’m too lazy to go out looking for an agent and publisher (I once had both). But I get a huge sense of validation (yes, that’s what insecure fiction authors crave) from somebody I respect enjoying my work. And lastly, the project has unbunged the massive creative blockage I suffered during COVID.

As I’ve mentioned in other posts, I’m entering stories in competitions this year, with a couple of successes in the UK and Australia so far. Right now I have a few awaiting results, and several more cooking. One of the Free Shorts stories is being expanded for a prestigious Australian competition, with the characters modified to meet the competition criteria. And I’m working on a brand new story for a local comp. This one falls into what I’ve realised is a consistent theme in my work – men constrained by their innate flaws. Maybe I need help! And lastly, I’ve been working on a story in the style of Doris Lessing, a British writer who I admire enormously. It’s a dark story with what I hope is an uplifting ending, starring – guess what – a man constrained by his innate flaws!

Looking further ahead, I’m musing over a collection of stories based on a cruise ship. I recently took the Queen Elizabeth from Sydney to Tasmania, confirming my suspicion that a cruise ship is an incredibly rich environment for a writer: Thousands of people crammed into a floating hotel marooned from their daily routines of work and shopping and cooking; guests stiff in gala outfits fresh out of mothballs; the curious relationship between the holidaymakers and the toiling staff. I spent the time between vast silver service meals alternating between reading Keith Thomas’s monumental Religion and The Decline of Magic and making notes on the micro-dramas (as I imagined them) being enacted in every corner of the ship.

Writer at work on the high seas.

I have the vague outline of a circular collection, with each story linked through a character from the previous story, and an overall plot arc that links the end back to the beginning. (My writing buddy Sarah Bourne used this structure very elegantly in The Train.) For more inspiration I should find out who’s streaming Ship of Fools, an almost flawless 1965 film I’ve seen many times (its only flaw is that Vladek Sheybal wasn’t in it). I could drone on and on about Ship of Fools, but I’ll finish by mentioning a dismal building that I photographed in Burnie, Tasmania that will definitely be a setting for one of the stories.

The Hotel Regent, Burnie, Tasmania.

If you want to join the Free Shorts project, email me at stuartcampbellauthor@gmail.com . You’ll get a personal email each month with your story, not the packet rubbish from an automated email list.

January 20242861Your Own Luck: A man with a past stows away on a cruise ship to Brisbane.
February 20241498An Afternoon Under the Paperbark: A hidden observer witnesses a family drama on a hot afternoon in Sydney.
March 20243753The Unmasking of Mr French: A new neighbour in a luxury apartment block is not what he seems.
April 20242220Ninety-nine Names for Rain: A nineteenth century scholar discovers a deadly Shangri-La.
May 20242508The Afternoon of the Jackal: Uncle Christopher’s Boxing Day BBQ doesn’t go to plan.
June 20241941Birdbrain: A lonely woman prefers to be a bird.
July 20242801Thanks Dad: The Vice Chancellor of a university struggles with Imposter Syndrome.
August 20242010Belfast: When an Australian searches for his roots in Belfast, things get complicated.
September 20243690Fireworks: A man loses his memory in an accident, so his wife tries to redesign him.
October 20242879Lawrence of Arabia’s Box: An update on the fate of the lost manuscript of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.
November 20242987Happy Days: History is rewritten at a school reunion.
December 20242048Balti Lamb: A dinner date at a Heathrow Airport restaurant goes pear-shaped.