A book of short stories
I Don’t Want To Be Famous
Seven short stories that explore the essence of things. The landscapes and memories that inspire a 16th century Italian painter. What a scientist feels as he dissolves into nothing, lashed to a bonfire. How a mantra is born in a dark Tibetan temple. Why snow and love have the power to steal sound.
I try to imagine, sometimes, what it would be like to be another person. A famous painter, a Literature professor with a flamboyant older brother, or even a young girl, on the day she leaves her family for a new life in America. I’m not sure how I come up with these people. But I do like to explore what goes on in their lives.
What thoughts would cross the mind of a scientist being burned at the stake by the neighbours in his small village? What would it be like to wake up to a morning of fresh snow in a mountain valley in Japan? To find your soul in a Tibetan temple in Lhasa? Or dream of dandelions as a six-year-old boy?
These are themes and ideas I explore in my first book of short stories, I Don’t Want To Be Famous. There are seven stories, all under 700 words, and all were conceived during a year I participated in a monthly writing contest through a LinkedIn group, called Aspiring Writers. While I wrote about a dozen stories, these are my favourites.
You can purchase the book from Amazon as a Kindle edition, an iBooks edition from Apple’s iBookstore, or from Kobo Books.
I hope you enjoy the stories. I’d love to hear what you think. In fact, it would be great if you could post a quick review of the book on Amazon.