Professional Services

I have about fifty short stories sitting on my computer which are 'finished'. Not all of them are very good but some are - though I say it myself - because they won competitions in which the name of the writer was not available to the judges, so they were judged 'blind'.

Most of my good stories start off with a place. This picture is of Palisados, the long shingle spit which separates Kingston Jamaica's harbour from the open sea.  This is the sea side, with the waves of the blue Caribbean beating against it. I used to go down there often, usually in the very early morning, to fish for jackfish and snook, and was often warned that there were nasty Rastas there who might attack and kill me: the ones I met were fine.

One short story I wrote was set there. I have no idea where the story itself came from, which is true of almost all of my better stories. They simple appeared on the computer screen. It's a creativity which used to both alarm and fascinate me, and it's a creativity which, with advancing age, I am losing: and I mourn its loss.

I don't know what to do with these stories as, although many were published in a magazine because they were prize-winners, no-one is likely to publish them now. So it seems sensible to make them available to you, the readers of this blog. This one is called 'Professional Services', and you can download it here