99 Words: Uncrossed

I look up, into the sky. But no learned finger joins celestial dot-to-dots. I look through (what I think is) Orion’s arms. There are hundreds, thousands:

all visible to the naked eye on a clear night.

We used to live in London: clarity is novelty. But here, just me: adrift, lost, since our paths and our stars uncrossed. Staring at the moon –

the etymological root of lunatic is moon-sick

– a vague, solemn emptiness stares back; uncaring, forever reflecting. And the stars tonight are dead light; energy burnt, spent years before. But now, still: I’ll love you, miss you, despairingly.

NEWS! Step Into My Office, Baby.

“We need to talk.”

The first line of this blog post is the first line in each short story in the Summer 2011 edition of The First Line, a literary journal based in the USA.

I’ve read several copies of said journal. It’s a very good journal.

The first issue of any magazine that I submitted a piece for was The First Line, Vol 12. Issue 2, in which the first line was Paul and Miriam Kaufman met the old-fashioned way.

The first journal that rejected a piece of my writing was The First Line, when I submitted a piece with the first line was Paul and Miriam Kaufman met the old-fashioned way.

Having recently re-read it, I can’t blame them. But that was last year.

In the meantime I’ve spent another year at University studying Literature and Creative Writing.

In the meantime, The First Line has had several editions published, all with different first lines.

And then, while trying to write something, anything, as I had a really big Uni assignment due in and I had the old writers block malarkey, I started writing, as a distraction, a story with the first line “We need to talk.”

And now, the Summer 2011 Edition of The First Line, Vol. 13, Issue 2, has a story in it titled ‘Already’ with the first line “We need to talk.” And it’s by me.

If you’d like to read by short story ‘Already’ please pop over to The First Line shop, where you can purchase a PDF for US$2 or order one in the excitingly revolutionary new ‘Paper’ format for US$4. Bargain.

You can also pick up copies at all of these amazing bookshops (in the USA).

Anyway, while it’s fantastic to be ‘in print’ and ‘published’ and ‘a writer’, it’s all a bit surreal and the first step on a long journey and a great impetus and all that.

And I’m a massive Belle & Sebastian fan, and I had this wonderful song in my head the entire time that I tried to write ‘Already’.