Can I tell you a story?

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Can I tell you a story? Story time for the dreamers and those who like life to be a bit weird - new story every two weeks.

Can I tell you a story? is taking a break! I may be back with ad hoc stories here and there... but for now, it's time to...
10/10/2024

Can I tell you a story? is taking a break! I may be back with ad hoc stories here and there... but for now, it's time to rest and spend some quality time with my head in the clouds.

Thanks for listening, and until next time... keep dreaming weird and wonder filled dreams.

There were twin cities, once.Because of the stone they could quarry, one city was black and the other was white. They we...
30/08/2024

There were twin cities, once.

Because of the stone they could quarry, one city was black and the other was white. They were called by those that lived there The City of Shadows and the City of Light, though their official names had far less poetry in them. They sat on either side of a great tidal river that was so wide it was hard to see one bank from the other. It could only be forded when the tide was low; if you were too slow or set out too late the water would rise again and you’d be gone, belonging now to the ocean.

Unless you had a boat.

✨🛶✨

New story out now: City of Shadows, City of Light. Go listen.

New story out now - Be Careful What You Wish For, wherever you like to listen. I've already had one request for more sto...
21/08/2024

New story out now - Be Careful What You Wish For, wherever you like to listen. I've already had one request for more stories with this character - I do like knowing which ones are your favourites, because that usually inspires me to write more of them!

I had an uncle who often said to me: be careful what you wish for. Like wishes were a finite resource, like I should rat...
19/08/2024

I had an uncle who often said to me: be careful what you wish for. Like wishes were a finite resource, like I should ration them, like I should be absolutely sure, like once wished, I could never change my mind or take it back.

Good thing I didn’t listen to him, or at least, not for long. If I had, I’d be living a small, cramped life in a small, cramped flat with no view, in a suburb that smelled of congealed cooking oil and longing gone flat through disuse. Imagine rationing wishes. It’s absurd – the secret, my secret, is to wish more, wish for everything, wish wildly, with abandon. That’s how you get to the good bits.

✨😁

New story, ready now wherever you like to listen - you might have guessed already, but it's called Be Careful What You Wish For.

Go listen!

Yay! I won a thing!The Queensland Writers Centre has a monthly flash fiction competition and this month the theme was Ma...
14/08/2024

Yay! I won a thing!

The Queensland Writers Centre has a monthly flash fiction competition and this month the theme was Magical Realism which, as you might know, is my happy place - and they picked my story 😁

Not surprisingly, this is making me grin many grins.

If you're a patron, stay tuned - I will be reading it to you as your September secret squirrel bonus story, so keep an eye (ear) out for that.

And if you'd like to read it, you can find it here:
https://queenslandwriters.org.au/rightleftwritewinners/july-24

Have a read of the past winners, too - there are many great stories there.

✨🖊🖊🖊✨

Taking a breather, waiting for the call to come, the everybody out shout, for the lights to come up and ruin the mood, s...
12/08/2024

Taking a breather, waiting for the call to come, the everybody out shout, for the lights to come up and ruin the mood, show the sticky floor, the stained walls, the lines in the faces of the staff behind the bar, tired and wanting to go home.

✨😁

This week's story is just for patrons, but here's a snippet for you :) Become a patron and hear the rest through the link in the usual place!

This week's story is just for patrons, but I'll tell you how it begins:She’s dressed in green and she dances like no one...
11/08/2024

This week's story is just for patrons, but I'll tell you how it begins:

She’s dressed in green and she dances like no one is watching. Feet planted, there at the no service end of the bar, swaying to the sounds of bodies clamouring for bourbon, whisky, it’s been a long week, the longest. She has her eyes closed, doesn’t see the gazes turned her way, the glances, the questions; who’s she, why is she dancing.

Nothing to dance about, is there. No one to dance about it with. The people in this bar are alone with themselves, alone together, pouring amber coloured liquid into the throats of their loneliness, trying to feel something else for a while. Trying to catch the tail of a time when they were more than this, when they knew what happiness was. Does it work? Not for long. They’re back again, night after night.

😁✨

Become a patron and hear the rest through the link in the usual place!

I went back to the doctor and told him yoga wasn’t helping. He looked at me like he knew I’d never been to a class and h...
04/08/2024

I went back to the doctor and told him yoga wasn’t helping. He looked at me like he knew I’d never been to a class and he referred me to a therapist who sat there and looked at me for a while, and then told me the story of Pandora's box. That tired white moth that’s supposed to be hope, squashed in there underneath all the rest of the mess until it’s suffocated and can barely move its wings to fly. I told him that my white moth was already dead, and he said was I sure about that and perhaps we should check in case it wasn’t.

I humoured him and he made noises in appropriate places like ‘hmm’, and ‘I see’, and I wondered if he’d been taught that at therapist school or if he’d come up with it on his own. You need closure, he said. I just shrugged. You’re the professional, I said.

It felt like another chore on the list; find sister, buy milk. Pick up the Sunday paper – God knows why that was on the list, or maybe God didn’t know – the paper never brought me any hope. I was staring at it anyway, the train wreck that was page three, when my phone rang and the voice at the other end said hello, and then it said I have some information for you.

I sat in a brown vinyl chair on the other side of a desk that looked older than I was and tried to pay attention to the person I’d employed to find another person, and none of it felt real as he read to me from a screen. The venetian blinds over the windows in his office were bent and broken at one end and I saw a red car drive down the road outside. He wrote down an email address on a green post-it note and charged me a few hundred pounds for the privilege and I thanked him and paid with credit and went to buy some bananas.

My therapist kept asking me if I’d emailed and I kept saying no. The post-it note remained stuck to my fridge getting more curled and faded with every month that passed. What would I say? Hello, it’s your sister, what’ve you been doing for the last several hundred years? Me, yeah I’m good, I’m a black hole, you’d be proud.

✨😁

Hear the rest wherever you get your stories: The White Moth, out now.

The White Moth, wherever you like to listen to stories..."I kicked around town in the rain and the fog, the high white s...
04/08/2024

The White Moth, wherever you like to listen to stories...

"I kicked around town in the rain and the fog, the high white sky like a lid, pressure building beneath. I felt hardened; the coals of any kind of feeling compressing into diamonds, sharp enough to shred my insides. The doctor said it was ulcers from stress and gave me some tablets and instructions to take up yoga but I took up an addiction to painkillers instead."

I sit on the shore with a photograph I've never seen before, remembering another photograph that, long ago, tore my fami...
02/08/2024

I sit on the shore with a photograph I've never seen before, remembering another photograph that, long ago, tore my family apart. My therapist says I need closure but I'm pretty sure that hope is dead. Pandora's white moth, crushed underneath the rest of the mess when she finally opens the box...

Today is new story day. It's called The White Moth, and it's ready for you on Can I tell you a story? wherever you like to listen...

The raft grinds into the stones at the edge of the lake. On the rocky shore, he sits and builds a fire as though the dar...
23/07/2024

The raft grinds into the stones at the edge of the lake. On the rocky shore, he sits and builds a fire as though the dark doesn’t wait for him in the caves above. He spears a fish and cooks it in the coals, looking up at the stars like he could sit there all night.

There is no moon, but the stars turn the lake silver.

He doesn’t sleep, but he feels like he is dreaming.

He’s not afraid of the stars, but he is afraid of the waiting dark.

He spent the first years of his life there, in Tin Hat with the lightless. Of course they didn’t call it Tin Hat, but his refusal to call it by its own name is another small form of the rebellion that started the day that he left – or was taken. Which it was depends on whim or his audience or the phase of the moon; he has told so many different versions of the tale he no longer knows the truth. One thing was true though; he was never going back.

And here he is, going back. Except, of course, no one can ever truly go back to where they began. He’s a different man now, living a different life. Telling different lies to himself, different lies to the world. He can feel the memories waiting. True memories or more lies? Doesn’t really matter, he supposes, all of them are ghosts.

✨

Hear the rest now: Tin Hat, on Can I tell you a story - wherever you like to listen.

A strange new story about a man who doesn't know what kind of man he wants to be.Tin Hat - listen wherever makes your ea...
22/07/2024

A strange new story about a man who doesn't know what kind of man he wants to be.

Tin Hat - listen wherever makes your ears the happiest.

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