The street is much like any other. Narrow. Scrawny dogs sleep on the sun-baked cobbles, and people cling to the cool of the shadows. History hangs heavy in the humid air. The rattle of Sennacherib’s chariots and the tramp of Caesar’s legionaries echo faintly, along with the brutal jeers of Allenby’s Tommies. The toll of ancient bells carries screams.
I cannot love you here. The blood drowns my tenderness.
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Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here
The press launch for The Tears of Boabdil, coinciding with the opening of hearings in the Under Cover Policing Inquiry, has gone better than I could ever have expected. My publicists, Palamedes, excelled themselves in getting national news coverage in the Telegraph and the Express.
They also arranged a radio interview on BBC Scotland’s Lunchtime Live which has 850,000 listeners.
The children are hiding. Again. Perhaps they think if they can’t see us, we can’t see them.
Lily can’t crouch. Her rigid spine forbids it. And so, she will be taken first. The art of concealment is less about being invisible than about blending-in.
Kids like to stand out. But not in ways that make them different. Lily is too different to survive.
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Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here
He stared at me for a moment in silence. Then, “Why would anyone do something that wasn’t to their advantage?”
I felt stupid, and scuffed my toes on the linoleum.
“Love?” I muttered, feigning interest in the cruet set.
He laughed. “Love is what we feel when another person satisfies our emotional needs.”
The killer move–I’d die for you. But I left it unvoiced. He’d only say I had a need to win the argument.
Friday Fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can fiend other stories here.
Afternoon lay, humid and heavy, on the harbour. Dogs slept in the quayside shadows, and even the air seemed to pant moistly.
I wanted to escape and, suddenly, buying a boat seemed like a good idea. I dialled the number on the “For Sale” sign.
“Oui?”
“Je voudrais.” I began fluently, “um … vendre”. No, that was sell, not buy. Already, events had taken the wrong path.
Cutting the line, I collapsed into the wobbly metal chair.
“Café, s’il vous plait,” I instructed the waiter, one of the few fluent phrases I commanded.
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Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here
My book, The Tears of Boabdil, was published on 28 September, 2020. A few days later, its Buy button for the paperback disappeared on Amazon and was replaced by an Out-of-Stock notice. A week later, it was available through re-sellers but not direct from Amazon.
Even more bizarre, fluctuations in the Amazon sales rank for the book indicate that orders were still being placed.
But friends who had placed orders received e-mails from Amazon offering to refund the money. Estimated delivery dates for orders placed at the end of September range from November to the beginning of December. The good news is that some people, who pre-ordered in September, have now been told the order is being fulfilled.
I asked my publisher what was going on. They replied
“We have seen reduced ordering from Amazon since they have re-launched their catalogue of ’non-essential’ items after prioritising stock orders for household and medical essentials at the peak of the pandemic. As such, their goods in service has been put under pressure and they appear to be struggling to keep up with the demand for orders. We can expect to see continued reduced stock ordering from Amazon for the short term – which has affected the order times being reflected on Amazon’s website. All other UK book distributors and wholesalers – who supply bookshops – are also functioning as usual, if slowly, and we are running uninterrupted supply for all orders we receive.”
A more conspiracy-theory-oriented explanation, having nothing to do with Covid, was offered by Writers Weekly. This article, dated March 16, 2017, alleges that the company has been pressuring print-on-demand publishers to use Amazon’s own print service by removing the Buy button from non-compliant titles. This doesn’t apply to my book which is not P-o-D, but the article notes in passing that “Amazon’s latest shenanigans have been affecting a variety of print on demand (and other) books for quite awhile now.”
I checked the situation of twelve other sample paperbacks. They comprised a mix of large publishers, small houses and self-published books. Four (one third of the total) were listed as out of stock or only available through resellers. Three more showed low stock. The unavailable books included Robert and published by Sphere. Two of the four unavailable titles were self-published books, one was from a small press, and one was published by Sphere—Robert Galbraith’s (pen name of JK Rowling) Troubled Blood, released in September 2020 So, there seems to be no correlation between the absence of the buy button and independent publishing, nor with lesser-known authors.
I’m persuaded that it is, indeed. a problem of stock management.
If you have books in print or have tried to buy a book recently, have you seen this problem?
Seaweed draped the foreshore like a bad comb-over. I could see this wasn’t pretty, but it skewered Anton’s brain. Once, when we’d taken up kitchen floor, and he glimpsed the terrible truth of soil beneath the house, he’d bawled that way.
“Just storm waves,” I explained.
But we had to labour all morning, returning every strand to its home in the water before he’d calm.
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Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here
The kiss was overpowering in its intensity, its delicious wrongness. That much she remembers. She lifts her fingers to swollen lips, feeling the bruise left by the urgency.
Her husband continues to read his newspaper. Will he notice the wound? Does he at already know?
What happened after the kiss, she’s not sure. There were drinks, many drinks. Perhaps the story playing in her head is only something she’d read.
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Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here
When you have caught your bear, let her be sequestered in a cave. It is important she see no sunlight. Also, that she eat only garlic and mugwort. After twenty one days and nights, the bear will transform into a woman.
Take heed—she will be sad and lonely as the sole human. You will likely have to take her to wife, and, in this way, you will father a people. The tending of nations is a topic beyond the scope of this spell.
This story is based on a Korean creation myth. Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here
My literary thriller, The Tears of Boabdil, is in the final weeks before publication, and my focus now is on publicity. With bookshop distribution successfully underway, thanks to my publisher, I’m concentrating on reviews, as described in a previous post.
Here’s a flavour of the reviews so far, by which I’m delighted.
“Neil MacDonald has skilfully fitted a complex plot and a diverse ensemble of characters, likeable and otherwise, into a space from which they almost, but don’t quite, burst out. The Tears of Boabdil is an ambitious, assured, and gripping debut novel.”
Mandy Macdonald (no relation)
“Having been given its time to breathe as recommended in the book, a story needs a satisfying and convincing conclusion. Neil MacDonald has achieved this, not by magic, but by enviably able writing.”
Jilly Funnell
In other wonderful news, one of my stories was longlisted for the BBC Short Story Award.
The book is out on 28 September and has its press launch on 2 November. You can get it here
Neil MacDonald Author 