Dear Gerry
Flash non-fiction (500 words) about a beloved book + ANNOUNCEMENTS
UPDATES & ANNOUNCEMENTS
Luna Asli Kolku’s 30 Days of Fantasy Writing Challenge wrapped up on the 30th. It was so much fun! My apologies for the initial volley of emails—it took me until Day 11 to figure out I could post ONLY to the app and not irritate the Hades out of all my subscribers! (I owe it to Leanne Shawler for sharing that little secret with me. In addition to knowing how to work Substack, she also writes great fantasy - I am totally immersed in Obsidian & Flame RN!) You can find an index of the flash fiction I produced for the challenge at the bottom of this post. I had so much fun writing and connecting with other fantasy writers, and I found myself some great new reads. It was wonderful to be a part of this!
I’ll be on the island during August, soaking up the sun, playing in the sea and researching my next project: medieval monks and Northmen (and magic, of course). So, I’ll be laying off the flash fiction/short story posts this month (and all internet-related things). Having said that, I’ve decided to double up on ‘Underworld’ posts, and they’re scheduled to be released every Tuesday and Friday throughout August. I hope it’s not too much, but I’m just so excited for you guys to meet the god of the dead!
Come September, I’ve got some more fiction coming at you: a two-part crossworlds fantasy set in Morocco in the 1960s, and the start of my Collectible Souls series. We begin with Terpsichore / Τερψιχόρη - the Muse of dance.
Now, for today’s piece, which I wrote for the London Writers’ Salon prompt: First Read: Write about a book you wish you could read again for the first time. Revisit that first encounter. How did it shape you?
Here is the winning entry: First Read by Martin Lake.
The book I chose was ‘The Corfu Trilogy’ by Gerald Durrell (obviously three books in one—was that cheating…?)
Dear Gerry
Long ago, your words pulled me from a pink-carpeted bedroom to a looking-glass world. Together, we crouched in olive groves and swam in crystal-clear waters, befriending animals and islanders alike. Their names were an incantation, calling forth golden summer on chilly winter evenings. Was it your words or the island itself that cast the spell, reaching out to bewitch me across the miles, over the decades?
It was a deep magic, one that couldn't be broken by time or common sense. As I grew, it held me—an undercurrent of longing always tugging at my heart. I knew I had to follow that whisper, or I would spend my whole life wondering what would have happened if I had.
The island emerged for me, as it had for you, out of the hazy blue of the Mediterranean. That first glimpse of a town buffeted by history, swept up in changing tides, invaded now, not by Venetians or Axis Powers, but by hordes of tourists.
I disentangled myself from the winding alleyways, the cafeterias and souvenir shops, and made for the sun-scorched fields and rugged coastline of your childhood. I knew it was waiting for me, because it was written.
The olive forest welcomed me with a cacophony of cicadas—the distant descendants of the ones that deafened you at noon. I gazed up at Mitera, the great olive tree, and wondered if you, too, had marvelled at her twisted limbs, her gargantuan trunk, older than Offa's Dyke, older than Canterbury Cathedral.
I saw phosphorescence on the sea at night, porpoises leaping, tortoises lumbering along and geckos scuttling up walls.
It was everything you promised: lethargic heat, stinging salt water, storms, and balmy nights.
Now, as I listen to the soughing of the sea in the inky dark, a blizzard of silver stars overhead, I wonder whether my coming here was fate, or serendipity, or whether your words really pulled me here—across a continent, against reason.
Or was it the island’s own siren song that caused me to exchange riches for rags, and hang a life on the magic of someone else's words?
You are gone now, although your words remain in the pages of well-loved books, dog-eared, their covers peeling.
And yet, there are still echoes, here on the island.
That is part of its enchantment.
It holds all the people that ever walked here in the bone-dry whispering grasses, in the shadows of the olive trees—in the very stones.
One day the island will hold me too.
A piece of me, at any rate, for I am a child of the world, blessed and cursed to never belong to any one place.
Years hence, when all that remains of me are my own words, there will still be echoes in the wild wind that blows the purple storm-clouds in off the sea, in the rasp and sigh of the waves washing the pebble beach.
That is part of the enchantment too.
The island, once it has you, never lets you go.
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this, you can read other non-fiction musings about place such as Forests I Have Walked, Delphi: Dropping out of time or The Edge of Autumn.
HAVE A WONDERFUL SUMMER!
30 DAYS OF FANTASY INDEX
These were almost all imagined, written, edited and published on the day the prompt was given, mostly on days I was working full-time at my IRL job too. They’re not polished, but they have heart!
Prompt 1: Piper’s Grief - Crossworlds fantasy
Prompt 2: Drystan’s Folly - Humorous1 fantasy
Prompt 3: Tower of Bones - Crossworlds fantasy
Prompt 4: The Sirens Speak - Eco / dark fantasy
Prompt 5: Damsels and Divination - Humorous fantasy - and a song!
Prompt 6: Dragon-born - High fantasy
Prompt 7: Unstable Magick - High fantasy (a prequel to Dragon-born)
Prompt 8: Myrtle’s Tea Shoppe - Cosy fantasy
Prompt 9: Sock Therapy - A play script
Prompt 10: Curiosity and Calculus - Possibly humorous fantasy
Prompt 11: Written in Wood - Eco / dark fantasy
Prompt 12: Of Spells and Spelling - High fantasy (a sequel to Dragon-born and Unstable Magick)
Prompt 16: The Daily Tumbleweed - A high fantasy newspaper article
Prompts 15 & 17: The Rekindling of the Stars (Part 1) - Mythology-inspired sword and sorcery for tweenagers
Prompt 20: The Quill that Bleeds - Crossworlds / dark fantasy
Prompt 22: Postcards from the Celestial Apocalypse - High fantasy
Prompt 25: The Rekindling of the Stars (Part 2) - Mythology-inspired sword and sorcery for tweenagers
Prompt 29: The Rekindling of the Stars (Part 3) - Mythology-inspired sword and sorcery for tweenagers
Prompt 30: The Craft - IDK … Let’s call it a love note to the fantasy genre starring my fellow writers
ALL STORIES FROM PART 1 ARE AVAILABLE HERE (complied by The Verdant Butterfly). There are some proper gems, so if you have time, check them out.
At least, it tries to be …
Thank you for the shout out! And happy to help any time!