Short Stories

Once upon a time, I founded an online writer’s collective called ‘The Final Carrot’. Here are just a few of the short stories that I wrote then, often as entries to the writing assignments.

The Last Temptation of Christmas - Over the last few years, I’ve found myself writing more poetry than short stories. That wasn’t always the case, but increasingly, I find that when I put fingers to keyboard, it’s poetry that comes out. When I used to run The Final Carrot (an online writer’s collective that I cofounded around 20 years ago), there was one technique I’d sometimes use to overcome writer’s block, and that was to open up a favorite novel at a random page, and take the last sentence as a starting point for something new. The following short story was seeded with a random sentence...

Uncertain Smile - “A howling wind that blows the litter as the rain flows As street lamps pour orange colored shapes through your windows A broken soul, stares from a pair of watering eyes Uncertain emotions force an uncertain smile” Uncertain Smile, The The Each day, he was there. If it wasn’t in the morning when she pulled back her drapes, it was later in the evening; either when she checked that all of the doors were securely locked, or as she closed the drapes before finally getting into bed. It had been almost a week since Carol had first learned of his...

Lucky - The little girl looked to her father and then looked back at the treasures spread out in front of her; the well-thumbed storybooks... each battered and well-worn item held its own story and its own place as part of the bond that held the girl and her father together.

Nobody’s Fool - The sudden noise of a weighty package hitting the linoleum brought Mavis Butterworth rushing out of the kitchen into the hallway... Ever since she'd read that newspaper advertisement which she'd hastily completed, clipped and mailed before she could change her mind.