Scotfree2 Tales From Scotland

By Gordon M Burns

Following the success of Scotfree Tales From Scotland, Scotfree2 is now available for downloading. However, instead of nine tales, this time only six. How mean is that?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gordon M Burns
• Release date: Apr 4, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310837951

Gordon M Burns

Writer living in Abernethy Perth Scotland. see my website for more details.

Book preview

SCOTFREE2

GORDON M BURNS

©April 2016

Pictish Tower, Abernethy, Scotland

SCOTFREE2

GORDON M BURNS

Dear reader, thank you for downloading Scotfree2. Perhaps you were one of the many who downloaded Scotfree and which case, welcome back. Like Scotfree, this wee book of short stories is inspired by Scotland and the lives of its folk which means, universal themes albeit imbued by half a year of half darkness, half of all-day light, nine months of winter and three months that, once in a decade, might be termed a summer. It is what comes of living at the same latitude as the Hudson Bay and Moscow at the tip of a small island. When writing this forward it was March the thirty-first, Spring, and from a clear blue sky, rain fell. The next day it rained, no fooling, and incase it went unnoticed, decided to resemble sleet with a driving wind flinging it into your face.

Scotfree and Scotfree2 are intended as free introduction to my writing - a brief guide later - and all part of a low-cost, worldwide campaign to promote my novels by using short story freebees. Perhaps not too wise a decision because short stories once had more standing than they do now. The novel, along with the multi-series, reigns today because nothing is worth reading if it is not as thick as a brick, for how’s that going to exercise your arm let alone your mind or leave you wondering why you bothered at the end? Yes, the place of the short story is a bit cloudy today, the reason to write one somewhat foggier. Writers’ groups, as I have found, still value them so long as the stipulation in regards to number of words constituting a short story is adhered to, along with New Times Roman, no indented first paragraph or the editor will stop right there and read no further. Remember to keep the story linear with no more than three characters and absolutely no temporal shifting about with the reader conception of how a story should tick. Also, a jokey narrative in a straightforward structure with a feel good factor kicked into the last line is much appreciated and so, with that in mind, read on and find out how much of that went right over my head.

Like a daily sketchpad, I use the short story format as a way of sketching out characters, themes and plots for possible use in my novels. From Scotfree, the story Childhood Petrichor, initially written for a local competition in which it gained second place (but I suspect there were only two entries) gave rise to the novel Waitress - more on that book later. The short story with a long title, Reading Couplets of Iambic Pentameter, has provided an outline of the characters and themes for my present working project, a novel entitled All in a Minute Seen - a bit of a nasty going-ons in St Andrews. Some stories evolve from a desire to match the monthly theme of a Perthshire’s Writers Club evening where, limited to seven hundred and fifty words, truncated tales trundle out as an exercise. An example is One Amongst Us. A reader having read Scotfree will find the story has a striking resemblance to Nick-Nacks on the Washing line. The latter tale, written for a club night, fitted into the required word count but required development beyond the word limit. This I did it for the club’s annual show event, A Pocketful of Perthshire, only to have it knocked back as being too long and lacking in feel-good factor for a family event and so, that red-facer gave rise to the story included in this book, Fran Delanzo’s Model. Some stories I write for fun, as was The Striker.

All that, dear reader, is as maybe but you are meant to enjoy the tales I write and through them reflect upon the nature of humanity; themes developed in my novels. Covering various genres, these novels reflect