Story Calendar

October 2018

A story for October: Small birds, like painted chickens

Small birds, like painted chickens first appeared in the Good Housekeeping magazine. From the very beginning it had been an ideal arrangement. After Anne had the baby—eight months afterwards—she had been able to go back to work again with complete confidence that everything would run smoothly. She was a doctor and did not want to stop […]

September 2018

A Story for September: A Wartime Romance

An extract from The Good Pilot, Peter Woodhouse.

August 2018

A Story for August: A Most Satisfactory Weekend

Most satisfactory… George Leary waved good-bye to his wife at St Pancras Station. There’s the train to Paris, he thought, and there’s my wife boarding it. Good riddance … No, no, no! He stopped himself. It was a terrible thing to think even if she would never know that the thought had crossed his mind. Bon […]

July 2018

A Story for July: The Sound of… Austria

This ‘tongue in cheek’ story set in Austria first appeared in The Lady magazine. The Sound of … Mary had been christened Maria, but had changed her name when she was eighteen. “It’s not that I’ve got anything against the name Maria,” she said to friends. “It’s just that I don’t see myself as a Maria. I just […]

June 2018

A story for June: Rain

Rain 1. If there is one rule that authors should observe above all others it is this: keep out of the story. Of course everybody now understands that is impossible—indeed naïve—and so the rule has been recast. Pretend to keep of the story is the modern version of the injunction. It is, in general, […]

May 2018

A Story for May: A Fine Performance

‘A Fine Performance’ originally appeared in the Good Housekeeping magazine “Freedom,” said Anna, looking out of the window. From behind her, half buried behind a newspaper, her husband, Tom, made a non-committal sound. It was difficult to know what to say when, quite out of the blue, your wife says Freedom. “Two weeks of freedom,” […]

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