Short fiction. To buy the anthology, please click on the book name below the cover.
| Sisters | ||
| Sally and Louise are sisters - well, half-sisters because they have the same dad but different mothers, one white and one black. When Louise wants to change her name, Sally is devastated. This is a story about the happiness and self-identity of children in today's complicated families. |  |
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| Sisters appears in An Advent Calendar of Stories, published by Bridge House Publications, ISBN 9781907335013. | ||
| Brothers | ||
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Damien always wants to help, but his brother Shane would much rather he didn't. When Damien brings a pet ferret to school the fur really begins to fly! A story about the ups and downs of brotherly love. |
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| Brothers appears in A Suitcase Full of Stories published by Bridge House Publications, ISBN 9780955791079. | ||
| Song of the Rain | ||
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The Music Man plays the rain from his house to the sea and back again. The story is written in lyrical form, but actually follows the hydrological cycle very closely. Just right for teaching in primary schools! The collection is a special for the National Year of Reading, and part of the price goes to the charity ChildLine. Now included in the Booked Up scheme for Year 7 school children. |
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| Song of the Rain is in Wow! 366, published by Scholastic Children's Books, ISBN 9781407107981. | ||
| Part-timer | ||
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In 2005 I was writer in residence at Helmshore Textile Mill and Museum in |
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| Part-timer appears in Kicking Leaves, published by Mid Pennine Arts, Yorke Street, Burnley, BB11 1HD. | ||
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I was commissioned to write a short story as an opening piece. Part-timer was the result. It is about the children who in the nineteenth century worked long and hard all morning in the mills, and then went to school in the afternoons. It is about the horrible accidents that happened at work to those who were tired and careless. It is about the value of education and the possibility of self-improvement. In Part-timer young Tom tells how he lost his fingers to the terrible deviler - a spinning drum with teeth of steel that ripped apart cotton and human flesh with equal speed. His teacher tells him the story of Becky, a young girl injured in a situation not too different to his own, and who is perhaps closer than he knows. To read Part-timer, click on its title in the sub-menu.
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| Ugly Me | ||
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Stories about football are a whole industry in themselves. My story Ugly Me has a lot of football in it, but it is not about football. It is about fitting in amongst your mates, and the problems of first romance. I was particularly pleased that Wendy Cooling chose Ugly Me for this pocket-money edition, because the other contributors are giants of the genre - and four of the five are called Alan!
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| Ugly Me is in Go for Goal, edited by Wendy Cooling and published by Orion Children's Books, ISBN 1858814553. |
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| Ugly Me is also in Football Shorts, edited by Wendy Cooling and published by Orion Children's Books, ISBN 1858817501. |
Wendy doubled the number of stories and published Football Shorts. Ugly Me then became the only piece of mine to be translated into French. To read Ugly Me, click on the link of that name.
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