John Bolland

Short Stories

 

Over the past 5 years I have have produced a body of short fiction.

The listing below catalogues a sample of these pieces. Some are available elsewhere on the internet whilst others are only available on this site.

 

Short Fiction
Title Publication
Pulp.net
The Celebrant and the Celebrated
The Glasgow Seeker
Monster Dressed as Monster
Snacks After Swimming, Freight Press
The Truth about Harry
The Tide Breathes Out, Lemon Tree Writers
A Good Place to Get
Runner up in the V.S. Pritchett Memorial Prize 2007 - Royal Society for Literature - London Magazine June-July 2007
The New Ploughed Field
Pushing Out The Boat Issue 6
Available only on this site
Going On
Sometimes a man must turn back to be saved.
The Death of Connla
A modern tale of war and fatherhood based on the Cuchulain legend
The Grafitti Lady
A story about class and anthroplogy
Magwitch & Willard
An unequal confrontation
Historical Necessity
The locked and sealed world of emerging nations.
The Scunner
What happens when the past confronts us - with an appropriate nod to MacCaig's Basking Shark.
Like Labrador
A thaw in the depth of an eternal winter,,,

 

Featured Short Story

The Man who never came.

“Good job!” she said and, slipping from the rail, tugged the hem of her summer-dress back down towards her knees.

Tom tried to catch his breath. He couldn’t really say the earth had moved. 200,000 tonnes of Canadian Pacific rolling stock had intervened, stomping across the swing-bridge above them like a peg-leg pirate. Somewhere about truck 34, that lonesome whistle blew and Nellie came. Tom couldn’t keep it up past 68.

“You’d best put that away,” she shouted above the din. “No point in getting busted.”

Tom tucked himself back out of sight, feeling somewhat short-changed by the Canadian railway system. The last ore truck clunked east towards the Great Divide. The moon shone on the lake.

She took his sticky left-hand, switched it for his right- “Well, here we are,” she said.

“Yes, here we are.”

“Your accent’s cute,” she said.

“You said.”

“Yes. Didn’t I. Your place or mine?”

“There’s more?”

“Of course there’s more. This is Canada.”

“I’ve got a camper van,” Tom said.

“How big?” Nellie asked

To read more of this text follow the link to The man who never came

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