William Brakes

Catalysts William Brakes

This author's third collection of short stories provides a further assortment of tales covering a broad spectrum of literary genres, including speculative fiction, drama, crime, romance and comedy. Although each story is self-contained, there are several recurrent themes that the assiduous reader will enjoy uncovering. There are also links to some of the stories in the previous collections ('fragments: naked & bright' and 'connections: ragged & precious'), including the re-appearance of some characters, the revisiting of some locations and themes and the progression of some storylines. However, knowledge of those earlier stories is in no way a pre-requisite for appreciating the stories in this volume: they all stand alone. Several of these stories have caught the judges' eyes in national competitions. 'I never Go to the Seaside' was placed third in the Norwich Writers' competition, 'Hokeham St Thomas' achieved scond place in the HE Bates short story competition run by the Northampton writing group, and 'Office Party' was a runner-up in the Nottingham short story competition. 'The In-between Time' also made it onto the short list at Nottingham. It is hard to sum up a collection such as this in a few words, but perhaps the dominant aspect is the variety and strength of the characterisations. There are many significant female characters here. some evil, some passive, some well-meaning and others less so. Amongst the male characters there are those who are exploitative, those who are inadequte in relationships, those with various weaknesses: the ones who deserve to suffer are generally held to account! And then there are a few 'others', including a unicorn, a witch, and an alien!Happy Reading!