On a whim, just before Christmas 2020, I wrote a very short story, originally called A Strain in Time it was a Xmas Gothic. The name wasn’t really working so I changed it to The Teastrainer. However, my friend Barbara referred to it as The Tea Lady in her messaged critique and I reckon that works better.
I then wrote another two and so had a trilogy. A fourth made it a four-part trilogy in the Rushian sense and a fifth alluded to Douglas Adams. A sixth microfiction makes it more properly a double trilogy or perhaps more properly a hexalogy.
Goin’ Grey(hound) and Off-roading are both true autobiographical/anecdotal, at least initially until the plot twists and what you thought you knew is blown away with a flick of a mouse.
The three four five six “Xmas Gothic” short stories by David Bradley are now available in PDF format for your Kindle or other device:
The Tea Lady – There’s no future in her tea leaves
After Death – A rare cremation
The Tide is High – A pastoral or post-apocalyptic world?
Goin’ Grey(hound) – Travels with a Sony Fakeman
Last Christmas – Joy to the World
Off-roading – Travels in America
The third of the stories – The Tide is High is now something of a prologue to a book Wave Markers. Chapter 1 came to me in a dream, but remains a standalone short story for now – Remediators of the Anthropocene.