May 2014 sees my sweetly frayed patch of Bulgaria looking more tropical than I’ve seen it in all six of my previous springtimes here. Unseasonal rain is partly the cause but I’ve also left the land to its own devices this year because I like to see what pops up when we leave fertile wildernesses alone. And because I’ve been busy working on a new book – Cherries and other stories.http://potholepress.co.uk/our-authors/lucy-irvine
This is my first bash at short stories and I find myself hoping it won’t be the last. I’ve enjoyed writing mostly non-fiction in the past but stories, in a sense, allow me to say more and with fewer words.
When writing my early autobiographical books, Castaway and Runaway, I more or less described life as it was, felt or looked to me. In Faraway, (about the year I spent with my two youngest children on a 5 acre atoll in the Solomon Islands) I stepped back when looking at the lives of those around me, as well as discussing what was happening in my own. I step further back in Cherries and other stories, inviting the reader to engage his or her imagination in a series of small, lightly sketched, worlds.
Will those who’ve read my full length books recognise the writing style? Yes and no. Castaway leapt out of me and onto a typewriter in just six months. I did nothing but fish, bake, and stride about on hills while writing it. That book is full of youthful spontaneity and I’ll always feel affection for it. The new stories took longer to write and more thought went on in the process. I like to think that, over the years since, I’ve learned much, if not ‘matured’.
Cherries and other stories is, as might be expected, a mixed bag – or bowl. Something for everyone? Well, if that’s happened, it was less in the plan than what fell under my eyes or into my mind. Yet there is variety – perhaps reflecting the somewhat varied life I’ve led.
There’s a tale about a gypsy Sisyphus in Bulgaria (gypsies rarely call themselves Roma here) and one about a boy who believes equally in Christianity and the influential presence of Ancestors, in the Torres Strait. I recount the trials of a Trader on a remote Solomon Islands Outlier, facing little local difficulties as well as cabin fever.
There’s a (by choice) single mother on a Scottish island, playing dangerous games with a lover who might be her last chance for a nesting partner. And a young Bulgarian couple battling through the changes in their country since communism ended and influences from outside crowded in.
Cat lovers, and those who’ve experienced grief, may relate to issues raised in a story called Catman. For those interested in the phenomenon of ‘otherness’ in human relationships, there’s Cherries. The Solomon Islands features again in a story about how women are treated differently as they age, in different cultures.
My hope is that you enjoy this odd collection and, if you do, spread the word.
Meantime I might get out a bit more into my local jungle.
I’ll post again when the book is published and out there for you on e-readers.
No print publishers have seen the collection yet.
More News will be posted on my facebook page, Lucy Irvine Author.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Lucy-Irvine/387523681385725?fref=ts
Lucy Irvine's Island Online 