Short Stories

In these pages, I will e-publish my already published short stories so that more people can read them. I called it “Journeys” because I noticed that all of the short stories are just that: something happens on the road to somewhere else.

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“On the Way to Jerusalem” was published in 2005 in Confluence, a publication of Grant Macewan University in Edmonton, Alberta. It is set in the Middle Ages and describes a past-life experience in bleak and vivid detail.

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“A Letter From India” is a Victorian gothic tale, published in 2007 in The Storyteller, a magazine from Arkansas. In this story, an Irish maid murders her English mistress’s beloved husband. A hidden letter from India reveals the motive.

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“Come Out to Play” was published in Island Writer in 2008. It’s almost all dialogue between two old friends. The editor told me she couldn’t sleep after she’d read it, so beware.

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“‘Ladysmith and the Black Firebird’ is a clever story in that its close proximity to the narrator’s point of view invites the reader to make the same wrong assumptions about the unnamed girl as the waitress does. This skilled use of omniscience (sic) serves to create an ending that is both surprising and completely plausible.” That is the comment that Terence Young made about my story when he awarded it second prize in the Victoria Writers’ Society short fiction contest in 2009. It was published in that year in Island Writer.

When the founder of the Malahat Review, poet Robin Skelton, died, this idea for a story was found among his papers: “‘On the Ferry’, Brindisi ferry. Begin to see doubles of people. Very close indeed. Has happened before. Almost everyone is someone else. Recall Styx. Sailing Between Islands motif. He was Joe’s double, no doubt about it, but he was only the first.” “The Ferry from Brindisi” is my own take on Robin’s idea. It was published in The Island Writer in 2010. 

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My latest published short story “On Fernwood Hill” appeared in The Village Vibe, a newsletter published by the Fernwood Neighbourhood Resource Group in Victoria. It won second prize in their first ever fiction competition. It tells the tale of a little girl who goes up the hill with her friend and comes down a changed person.

Enjoy!