‘One o’Clock Special’ published + online bonus story

My short story ‘One o’Clock Special’ has been published in the Roads Ahead anthology from Tindal Street Press, which is available to buy here.

The story is set at many one o’clocks, telling the tale of a flourishing relationship between single mother Elizabeth and disenchanted married man Paul.

Roads Ahead is billed as a ‘10p mix-up’ edited by Catherine O’Flynn, author of What Was Lost, which won lots and lots and lots of plaudits in 2007. The collection includes stories by Chris Smith, Kathryn Simmonds, Chris Killen, Nick Walker and Luke Brown, alongside sixteen others and me. It is reviewed here and here.

It is also a statement of intent from Tindal Street Press – a small independent publisher based in Birmingham that has made a habit of placing books on the Man Booker Prize longlist and shortlist, including Astonishing Splashes of Colour by Clare Morrall and Girl in a Blue Dress by Gaynor Arnold.

Bonus online-only story

To accompany the publication of Roads Ahead, and as a hello-and-thank-you to anyone who’s got this far, I’m offering an extra, related story.

‘Ten o’Clock’ can be downloaded by clicking here and entering a password. The password is the first word the waitress says in ‘One o’Clock Special’, all in lower-case.

If you don’t yet have Roads Ahead, of course, you won’t yet have a password. Perhaps instead you’d like to read the top-three of my ‘Dear J’ letters from this website. These are:

1. Famous first words — An overheard conversation from an obvious first date.
2. What makes a first memory? — I think people click on this to read a blog from 1977.
3. Songwrongs (or education’s end) — A letter about grammatical errors in music.

So, hello. And thank you.

j