Podcasts

Some of my stories have been podcast on YouTube.

They’re read by Chris Herron at Tall Tale TV. This is the playlist.

Link to YouTube

Snow Business

My local writing group posted a prompt for a writing exercise. The prompt was ‘Snow Mystery’.

I came up with a rapidly written piece of flash fiction. And here it is:

 

Snow Business

The glimmering blue-white caul of snow swathed the branches of the tree and all below. A frosted menace incarcerating the smallest beasts in their burrows. It had been a sharp and sudden change in temperature, catching humans as well as animals unawares. There had been cold days before; bitterly cold days. But this was different: it had snowed. Generations had never experienced snow before. At first it had been a novelty. A phenomenon only heard of from foreign lands; in tales told by travellers. An aspect of the natural world that could be both beautiful and brutal. The first few days that it had snowed had been beautiful. The hard freeze that people endured in the following weeks presented an altogether different prospect. Water supplies had frozen solid. Wood for the fires had become scarce and nothing grew.

This was the village of Al Kamjilla, three hundred miles south of Tripoli, and about the same distance north of the Tropic of Cancer. A freak of nature? Maybe. But freaks do not last for interminable days. The people of Al Kamjilla sought answers but none came. They sought help but none came. And in the months to come the village froze into history, its legacy to future generations was its ‘success’ in demonstrating the scientists’ ability to control weather and to produce precipitation in dry regions. Phase two of the experiment would be to control the temperature correctly.