Helen Rhodes – Writer. Stranger. Wierdo.
So, remember all that time ago when I decided to write a story a week for a year? The 52 Stories thingywhassit? Well, do you know what? I only actually went and did it! You can still read a couple of samples on here, Garrison Hodge and Cheesemass, but if you want to read all of them you’ll have to go buy my book! I got a book, me! Book! Book! Book! Did I mention…
Anyway…you can buy it HERE
Eight pints later, the only thing he wanted was food. On his walk home he’d hazily remembered the block of mature cheddar sitting in the fridge and the last of the bread in the cupboard. Cheese on toast. Like a beer sponge, it would soak everything up nicely.
After fumbling with the wrong key for ten minutes, tripping over the same doorstep he’d tripped through for the past five years, he made straight for the kitchen, to the fridge, and wrestled the door open. The bright light glared. His gloopy eyes took a while to adjust. He searched with them. Both of them. He searched some more. His brain told him that even though it wasn’t functioning at full capacity it still couldn’t see the cheese it had been promised.
In front of fridges across the land people sat staring, looking, eager to satiate the late night craving with the reliable foodstuff of decades before. But they all agreed, it wasn’t there. No cheese. Continue reading “Cheesemass”
Garrison Hodge sat in the doctor’s waiting room wearing his best suit – a used teabag colour with various historic holes and stains – and a nicotine coloured shirt, mostly tucked in, with an unnoticed tomato sauce spot accompanying the second button down. This was okay though, because he was wearing a matching tie, which would have covered the tomato blob up, had it been straight, and had the last three buttons of his shirt not been left undone so that the bulging neck of Garrison Hodge could expand fully. The amalgamating neck-a-chin, thick with unbothered stubble of differing lengths, met his huge wobbly mouth within which sat remnants of last weeks’ meals. This was overseen by a substantial nose and bulging eyes with lids eager to get that bit closer to the sagging under-face, consistent in its gravitational pull. His rhythmic heavy breathing and unusual odour had detracted a small child’s attention away from the sticky wooden train he was once so enamoured with. The child’s curious concentration abruptly snapped into a wailing cry, and his mother lifted him to her comfortable jumper.
I heard Ray Bradbury used to aim to write a story a week. He’d ponder an idea over the weekend with a view to writing an outline on Monday. He’d allow himself a couple of days to flesh out that outline, and then by Friday expected a finished product of around three to four thousand words. Great if you’ve got nothing else to do with your time. And I’m certainly no Ray Bradbury. So with the limited time I do have to write I’m starting my first ever writing challenge: to write 52 stories, one a week, during 2017, (preferably with some kind of illustration to go with it)
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