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Short Stories
I began my writing career with short stories and I've published a handful and have won prizes with a few others. Here is a selection of my stories. All are in the PDF format. You'll need Acrobat Reader to view them. You can get a free download of the reader from Adobe.
This was the short story that kick-started my career. It made me believe I could work as a professional writer. This was because it won the 1994 Fellowship of Australian Writers Short Story Competition. The competition rules stipluated no more than a thousand words. This story was five words over the limit so I chopped off one sentence.
Published in 1995 in FIRST, the literary journal of the University of Canberra. FIRST was a literary journal for first time writers. The editors were final year students of UC and to my delight, they picked two of my stories to be included in the first edition of the journal. "Honest" tells the tale of man who deludes himself into thinking that he's being honest with the woman he loves. It was written based on inspiration that struck after listening to Level 42 a little too much. Much of my early work was acutally inspired by music lyrics.
Published in 1995 in FIRST, the literary journal of the University of Canberra. This was the second story accepted into FIRST. The acronym title was a riddle for the reader to solve. Half the readers figured it out, half didn't. It's fun to watch them try and find the answer. This story was inpsired by one of my house mates when I was living in Canberra. As I watched her eat her strange breakfasts in the morning, this story grew in my mind.
This story is written in a voice that I haven't tried before. It has a whimsical, fairytale tone to it. In its light-hearted manner, it examines my generation's name change plight. You see, when I was in school, I went by my Hanyu Pinyin name and then I was allowed to switch back to my dialect name, and then in the army they changed my name again... That's Singapore for you.
I believe this was my first short story written when I was at the University of Canberra. I was into medieval literature at the time and wrote this story about a young boy in the middle ages who was trying to prove he was brave. The POV is of the young boy.
This was another Level 42-inspired story. But this one was written in a stream of consciousness. It was exciting to be free of grammar rules and punctuation and simply write. I think I was reading James Joyce and Samuel Beckett at the time and that influenced me.
This was a dark, dark story and readers have found this disturbing. It deals with a baby that doesn't stop crying and how his presence destroys the fragile marriage of his parents. I did a public reading of this and the mood turned very sombre after it. I was inspired to write the first draft in one night after seeing an ad on TV about shaken baby syndrome.
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