I sometimes think of my short story collection like I’d consider a tribe of my children. You’re not meant to have favourites. You’re meant to love them all equally.
But the truth is — I have a soft spot for several of the stories in the collection, and Graceville is one of them.
Graceville was first written back in August 2008, making it the oldest story in the collection. It was also the final story I worked on for the collection. Hitting THE END and SAVE less than an hour before my Summer Year began in September last year.
For one reason or another, Graceville never ended up properly out on submission. I think it (like the title story of the collection, which was originally published as “Blinded” in a suicide awareness anthology) it had all the bones of a really good story — I just didn’t have the writelry chops to do them justice.
Graceville is experimental. It’s told from three different perspectives, utilising first, second and third POV (point of view).
The story opens in the first person POV, with our teenage protagonist, Sarah-Jane. I kept true to the brief and didn’t give you the first page of each of the other perspectives. (It was tempting though!)
If you’d like to read ahead you can hit the button below to take you to all the online options, including my favourite, Kobo, and Apple’s darling, iBooks.
Thanks for reading (and hopefully listening).
I hope this week is treating you very well. (I’m quite in love with this week!)