The Cellist and the Wolves is published!

Great news, my story ‘The Cellist and the Wolves’ is going to be published  online and print.  It is a story about a woman protecting her life and her child from the predatory world.

I am thrilled that The Lampeter Review has taken one of my stores. They publish some marvellous work as can be seen here:

I am particularly pleased that they have taken this story because it is one I feel passionately about and I have been working on it for some time.  The published version is the result of some serious cutting. I ditched around 1000 words of the previous version and possibly 2000 words of the first version. It was mostly plotted elements that I got rid of rather than descriptive writing. I eliminated a whole relationship with the main protagonist’s boyfriend and a magical comet. As a result, the story is now more straightforward although not necessarily simpler and more open-ended. I took someone’s advice and replaced my original hyenas with wolves. It is a cliché but the wolf at the door is a more obvious metaphor than the hyena at the door. The hyena is, I think, more snidely evil than the wolf, but never mind. I expect my subconscious was thinking of wolves but my conscious mind interpreted it as hyenas when I first began to write. I guess that’s what happens when you write without controlling what happens. It’s all in the editing, and that doesn’t always happen quickly; it was something of a battle between the two minds in this case, I think.

I will post a link when the story is published. Here it is  And here’s a screenshot of the start of the story to give you an idea. It is also in a beautiful print edition.