My Greenland Halibut in LossLit Issue 8

It’s such brilliant news that this story has found a publisher, and extra great that it should be LossLit. ‘My Greenland Halibut‘ is about a door-to-door fish seller. He really does love his stock. On his rounds he comes across Terry, a poorly man and they establish a relationship of a kind. The fish seller’s travels take him up into the mountains to Salty’s Seafood Restaurant where he meets the frightening Dora.

It’s funny about the mountains. And yes, ok, you don’t expect to find a seafood restaurant in the mountains. I have set this story in some sort of Norway (hence the Hardanger fiddle reference).

Although desolation can be found anywhere, I think desolation at altitude is of a kind where it is possible to lose your mind without realising, and where also it is possible to focus with greater intensity. Our experience of loss and memory and our expectations, those we have of life and of ourselves and others, are often confused, tied up with other things. Time forms a very small part of that equation, if any.

LossLit describe their mission:

LossLit is an attempt by its co-creators, Kit Caless and Aki Schilz, to explore the various influences of loss in literature. Collating original fiction, poetry and essays by contributing writers as well as building a canon of important existing LossLit titles, the LossLit project will produce a body of work that will look at Loss from all angles, alongside its online micro-project, the #LossLit hashtag on Twitter. The hashtag can be used any time to tag tweet-length creative responses to Loss, and a Twitter writeclub is hosted every first Wednesday of the month between 9 and 11pm UK time. The writeclub is online and open to all, with updates and RTs on @LossLit.

I’m pleased it has found a good home.