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Tag: short stories
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 – 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 2024 | 2861 | Your Own Luck: A man with a past stows away on a cruise ship to Brisbane. |
| February 2024 | 1498 | An Afternoon Under the Paperbark: A hidden observer witnesses a family drama on a hot afternoon in Sydney. |
| March 2024 | 3753 | The Unmasking of Mr French: A new neighbour in a luxury apartment block is not what he seems. |
| April 2024 | 2220 | Ninety-nine Names for Rain: A nineteenth century scholar discovers a deadly Shangri-La. |
| May 2024 | 2508 | The Afternoon of the Jackal: Uncle Christopher’s Boxing Day BBQ doesn’t go to plan. |
| June 2024 | 1941 | Birdbrain: A lonely woman prefers to be a bird. |
| July 2024 | 2801 | Thanks Dad: The Vice Chancellor of a university struggles with Imposter Syndrome. |
| August 2024 | 2010 | Belfast: When an Australian searches for his roots in Belfast, things get complicated. |
| September 2024 | 3690 | Fireworks: A man loses his memory in an accident, so his wife tries to redesign him. |
| October 2024 | 2879 | Lawrence of Arabia’s Box: An update on the fate of the lost manuscript of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. |
| November 2024 | 2987 | Happy Days: History is rewritten at a school reunion. |
| December 2024 | 2048 | Balti Lamb: A dinner date at a Heathrow Airport restaurant goes pear-shaped. |
John MW Smith – a born story teller
After six months of reading and re-reading British and American classic works*, I packed some carefully selected independent writers onto my battered Kindle for the summer break.
Englishman John MW Smith was a quirky surprise: A writer hard to categorise, he has a ripe sense of the bizarre and the storytelling knack of a barroom raconteur. He reminds me somewhat of my fellow Australian writer Robert Salisbury, whose work I describe as ‘Spike Milligan meets Don Quixote’.
My five-star review of Smith’s An Unlawful Act in Libya can be found here. Strongly recommended.
*The three standouts were Hardy’s Jude the Obscure, Faulkner’s Soldier’s Pay, and Katherine Anne Porter’s Ship of Fools. I’m thinking of writing a novel that places the basic plot of Jude the Obscure in a future dystopia when western societies have largely forgotten how to do mathematics. Mad? Maybe.
And here’s a request: I saw the movie of Ship of Fools some time in the last century, around the time that Cuban heels were in fashion. Does anyone know where I can find a copy or a streaming source?
Buy Stuart Campbell’s books in paperback and ebook on Amazon by clicking on these title links:
An Englishman’s Guide to Infidelity
Stuart Campbell’s covers are designed by Rachel Ainge .
“Sydney authors conned me” – editor’s final words
by Lesley Latte*
In his final interview, the late Raymond Saucisson, editor of Charcuterie Monthly, made the shock allegation that a group of Sydney authors tricked him into writing an introduction to the book With Gusto!.
“I was informed that the book was about the joy of food,” said the former cold cut supremo. “Most of the stories depict revolting meals, some with no meat at all.”
Asked why he had provided an introduction to the book, Saucisson said, “I am a man of honour, a knight among meat lovers. I would not renege on a promise”.
It is understood that Saucisson made a similar complaint about an introduction that he agreed to write for Stuart Campbell’s On Becoming a Butcher in Paris. Campbell was not available for comment
With Gusto! is an anthology of food stories by members of the Write On! writers group in Sydney. It is available in paperback here.
The cover design is by TribeCreative.
*Lesley Latte reserves the right not to disclose h** gender.
Buy Stuart Campbell’s books in paperback and ebook on Amazon by clicking on these title links:
An Englishman’s Guide to Infidelity
Shock passing of editor one week after book publication
By Lesley Latte*
Raymond Saucisson, the noted gourmand and long-time editor of Charcuterie Monthly, passed away unexpectedly yesterday. His close friend Stuart Campbell said that Saucisson’s death comes just a week after the publication of the anthology With Gusto!, for which the charcuterie supremo wrote an introduction. “I’m devastated,” said Campbell. “He was always at the cutting edge, as an editor and as a small goods expert; he was a man who took on life one huge slice at a time”.
Saucisson was born into poverty in Marseilles in 1945. He learned the art of sausage making from his mother, who sold her wares in the alleyways off Le Canebière. As a child Saucisson listened to the stories of the sailors who haunted the area, and in 1960 took a job as a ship’s cook.
After ten years at sea he jumped ship at London, eventually obtaining residence papers and gaining employment as a bus conductor with London Transport. Stuart Campbell remarks on the formidable standard of his English, considering he had virtually no formal education. “During his fifteen years on the buses he read voraciously: Georgette Heyer, The Times, Charles Dickens, The Beano, Thomas Hardy. He consumed everything that was left behind on a bus seat. The 142 to Watford Junction was his university, he once told me.”
In 1985 he was offered the editorship of Charcuterie Monthly. In a recent article he reflected on the magazine’s success: “A piece of writing is like a sausage. It has form, content, texture. And in the same fashion, what turns a quotidian article into an exceptional article is that inexpressible je ne sais quoi, the literary counterpart of a bead of glistening pork fat or a perfect balance of herbs.” His nephew Gilbert Saucisson will take over Raymond’s duties at Charcuterie Monthly.
With his trademark cravat, four-day stubble and haughty stare, Raymond Saucisson will be missed around the French markets that have become de rigueur among Sunday bruncheurs (a neologism of his own invention) from Aylesbury to Auckland.
Raymond Saucisson is survived by his wife Solange, an author of vegan cookbooks. “While our dietary tastes differed, we complemented one other perfectly like ham and peas. If he was my bubble, I was his squeak,” she said yesterday.
*Lesley Latte reserves the right not to disclose h** gender.
With Gusto! by the Write On! writers group is available in paperback here.
Buy Stuart Campbell’s books in paperback and ebook on Amazon by clicking on these title links:
Stuart Campbell author 