BOOK RELEASE: TALES OF THE ZEITGEIST

A collection of ten short stories, exploring life in the modern world.

Fast-paced, and full of unexpected twists and turns, these are the tales of the zeitgeist.

Often quirky, sometimes thought-provoking, but always laced with humour...

Do you remember the first story you ever wrote, completely of your own volition?

That moment when something suddenly clicked, and it finally became impossible to resist the desire to commit to paper all the words that were bursting to come out of you?

Do you remember the day you first became a writer?

For me, it all started with a single paragraph of narration, and a few lines of dialogue, which I called, ‘The Tea Party’.

I’d aways been a voracious reader from a very early age, but it wasn’t until I was about seven or eight that it began occurring to me how exciting it might be to create something similar to the things I’d been reading about, full of my own characters and ideas.

Like most children, I loved animals, so it was very easy to decide that my new fictional world should be built around that, and I quickly established that my main protagonist would be a mouse, and his best friend would be a bunny.

In their first adventure, they had tea and played Snap together.

It was as simple as that.

But it awakened something in me that I knew I wanted to explore more.

Soon, I’d come up with a whole cast of little pets and animals who could interact with each other, until eventually, I was putting on little plays with my friends, where we would regularly act out a scene or two featuring these characters, drawing inspiration from our own lives, and fictionalising funny things that had happened to us.

They were special times.

And without even realising it, I was already beginning to hone my craft, and lay the foundations for what would become a lifelong passion.

That discovery we made back then, that real experiences could be used as a springboard to not only inspire Fiction, but also add authenticity to it, is something that has always remained a core component of my writing.

Somewhere within most of the things I’ve created over the years, there are fragments of events that have actually happened, or of people I’ve known, or echoes of what might have been, whether I’ve spoken about the incidents and people involved directly, or in a more metaphorical way.

In that sense, as much as being an exercise in exploring the depths of the imagination, Fiction has always been a constant tool I’ve used to keep memories alive, and to gradually compile a scrapbook full of words instead of pictures.

And that’s definitely the case with many of the stories featured in this ‘Tales of the Zeitgeist’ collection.

My Grandfather was a huge lover of horses, for example, and he had a model of a black stallion just like the one mentioned in ‘The Horse’. And I really did sleep through The Great Storm of 1987, just like the narrator sleeps through a similar weather event in ‘The Storm’.

It’s a book full of recurring themes of friendship and family, farcical misunderstandings, and faded dreams and missed opportunities. But most of all, it’s a book about modern life.

There’s even a couple of stories about animals, which in a way, brings things back full circle to where they started.

All those years ago, when a mouse and a bunny had tea and played cards, and I began a journey that has been one of the most magical parts of my life ever since…  

‘Tales of the Zeitgeist’ is available now on Amazon Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.

Find it here: Amazon UK / Amazon US