Diamonds Series

One look was all it took for Neal. One look before she was gone and he was too. Then one day he follows her home and that is only the beginning of the journey that makes him question everything about the nature of his love, life and even reality. Bewilder is the first in a series of interweaving Short Stories called 'Diamonds'. A mosaic of ideas and themes dealing with fantasy, reality, love, death, redemption and joy.

‘Sarah was completely different to the women he'd known since his records started selling. She was real and that made her an exception to the boho posing and tragic gracelessness of everyone else. That was also what made missing her even more terrible. So, most of the time, he avoided thinking about her. It was much easier to silently destroy all the women who could never compare to her...’ Scott Drake is alone in a hotel room and there is no escape. He can walk out at any time but there is no getting away from the past, from his guilt, from himself and the fear of losing someone that he loves all over again. ‘Fading Polaroids in Reverse’ is a series of snapshots of moments and memories in Scott’s life, and is the sixth short story in the ‘Diamonds’ Collection that also includes ‘Bewilder’, ‘Heart over Head over Heels’, ‘Bonfire Blues’, ‘Lily Green’, and ‘The Devil eats Coleslaw’.

Joseph Holly knows the truth: Work is rarely as dull as when you are eighteen years old and in love. ‘The Devil eats Coleslaw’ is a working day in Joe's life, which sees him trapped in a supermarket with strange customers, ex-teachers, daydreams, bad ideas, Sonic Youth, The Replacements, and an overwhelming need to see his girlfriend,Diane. It is a story about a young man's private battle with boredom and with keeping his head together, as he tries to get to the end of his shift.

“Thoughts and feelings, hinted at before, were suddenly blossoming. He knew then that he'd been waiting for his life to begin...” For years Colin Abbott has put his life on hold, living only for his elderly mother. With her gone he is alone, adrift in a world he doesn’t fully understand. On one sunny summer day he sets off from his mother’s grave, and attempts to take control, to learn to enjoy his life and maybe even learn to love again. ‘The Graveyard’ is where Colin takes his first steps away from his old life and towards something completely new and unknown and is the seventh short story in the ‘Diamonds’ Collection that also includes ‘Bewilder’, ‘Heart over Head over Heels’, ‘Bonfire Blues’, ‘Lily Green’, ‘The Devil eats Coleslaw’, and ‘Fading Polaroids in Reverse’.

The sound of breaking glass wakes Colin and brings him downstairs. But what he finds in his living room is not a burglar. It's just a boy called Joe who is really much too sad to be any kind of danger. Joe is also much too drunk and talkative to be a comfortable companion for Colin. And that's when the boy begins telling the story of what brought him to the Colin's house; describing the events of the days and weeks before and the significance of the heart-shaped locket that he holds in his hands. It is only then that Colin realises just how much he has in common with the painfully lost young man he is talking to. The eighth part of the Diamonds collection of short stories and a sequel of sorts to both ‘The Devil eats Coleslaw’ and ‘The Graveyard’, 'Hello Emptiness' is a story of grief and hope, and how sometimes we can find help from the least likely person in the least likely of circumstances.

‘There was no laughing and joking that morning. There could be no relief, no celebration of a fruitful life lived to a natural conclusion. That had never been an option.’ It begins at a funeral, where the truth is hidden away inside the pages of a book no one was ever meant to read. But these words were never destined to stay silent. They are words with the power to make some sense of a girl’s life and death and reveal secrets that are terrible and beautiful enough to condemn and redeem both the guilty and the innocent. Part nine of the Diamonds collection of short stories and a sequel to Lily Green and Hello, Emptiness, Revelations is a story about grief, revenge, and the power of words and love.

‘There are other places to go; places I shouldn’t have put off visiting for as long as I have. This’ll be the last of my sudden disappearances. The last time I’ll be a summer breeze, gone too soon...’ From an empty hotel room in London, Scott Drake takes a freewheeling trip across the East of England and back again. On trains, in cars, and on foot, the journey lets him say goodbye to the people he has loved and lost; finally allowing him to let go of the pain of the past and find peace in the present. The tenth and final short story in the ‘Diamonds’ collection is about love, survival, and finding ways to appreciate the beautiful things that make life worth living.