A Fighting Stance

By Mark David Stallard

The first Jeremy Pratt adventure.
What else could Jeremy Pratt do? It was all he could do to keep his mouth shut. Well, it would be, if he could keep his mouth shut. But mouth-shutting was not a skill Jeremy Pratt ever learned. He had wanted to stay in England. But he was kidnapped by his both of his parents and taken to Canada to live in a prison in Manitoba. That's how Jeremy tells it. "Kidnapped and emigrated are synonyms, surely. It stands to reason," he says. Now he has one or two really good friends in Canada. But there's a gang of bullies after him. It just goes from bad to worse. First being kidnapped, then bullied. Jeremy has had enough of being pushed around. And they dare go after his friends too?
It's time to push back.
It's time to take A Fighting Stance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: M.D. Stallard
• Release date: Nov 7, 2018
• ISBN: 9781999514525

Book preview

A Fighting Stance

A Fighting Stance

Mark David Stallard

Copyright © 2018 by Mark David Stallard

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

First Printing: 2018

ISBN 978-1-9995145-2-5

M.D.Stallard

Winnipeg, Manitoba

www.mdstallard.com

Dedication

For Kathleen, Luke, and Celeste. Three children who needed to know what their father was up to when he was their age.

Preface

When my children were young, we would sit on the deck, enjoying the summer evening. All three of my kids would beg me to tell them the stories of when I was child. I'd tell the stories, and we all laughed. We laughed at the fun. We laughed at the danger. We laughed at the stupidity. We laughed at me being chased by a vicious wolf dog, a donkey, bullies, and the old man whose glass strawberry cloches I threw stones at.

It was an adventure, all right. In fact, it was dozens of adventures. Millions perhaps. I don't remember how many, but there were lots. Even now, when I go back to England and see my old friends, we talk about our adventures. Someone always seems to remember something I'd forgotten about. And unsurprisingly enough, they sometimes remember it differently.

And it is out of these memories, that Jeremy Pratt and his friends emerged. Not as mirror images of their real-world counterparts, but rather as caricatures of my memory of them. And of course, Jeremy Pratt doesn't mirror me either. In fact, Jeremy is far bolder and more confident than I ever was. I suppose, he is who I might have liked to have been when I was his age.

And so, this is not so much based on a true story, as it is inspired by some adventures I had with my friends. Make no mistake, the characters are fictional. Of course, legally, they have to be. But I must admit, the essence of my real childhood friends is in there somewhere.

I changed all the names, except one. Stephen. I just couldn't bring myself round to giving him another name. It didn't seem right.

And so, the time came to compile the stories into one coherent narrative, while attempting to keep the spirit of the stories I told my children. I chose to set it in present day Manitoba partially because it is what I'm most recently familiar with, having lived this side of the pond for so long. Also, the fish out of water element doesn't hurt either.

If you're wondering what parts of this story are based on the real adventures, I'm not going to tell you. At least, not in this preface, anyway.

I will however, reveal a little of the true to you now. Chapters one and two contains my earliest memory of Stephen.

A fox really did get his rabbit.

Mark David Stallard

1. A Fox

Jeremy sat on the front step of his house with chin in hand. The Manitoban prairie field stretched out before him. Beautiful, his mother had said, but the view looked awful to him.

His family had just immigrated to Canada from