Tag: kindle unlimited

Short Dates – My Book Extract

Today I wanted to give some new life to my original short stories from 2018. My very first story was about a guy stuck in a snow drift who came across a potential romance. From there I went on to build a book of short stories of varying length. This is an extract from my shortest story, about parenting.

Revisiting

My head still ached from two nights ago but I was happy to get up and spend the day with her. Sizzling bacon greeted me when I got downstairs and mum seemed attentive as she poured me a coffee and suggested I take a few paracetamol.

‘How does it feel to be an adult?’ she asked.

‘Same really,’ I replied honestly.

‘Two day hangover, haha. Well today we can just relax and see some wild animals up close.’

‘Yeh, I haven’t been to the zoo since I was little.’

‘I remember taking you when you were six.’

 

On the road, mum played my favourite music and I was able to chill out and let the world pass me by. The sun was striking through the wispy clouds in shards and mum seemed happy driving but slightly quieter than usual. It took me back to all those occasions when, as a child, she had ferried me around to cubs, from football matches and between friends’ houses. She had always been there for me and never let me down. We always had a day close to my birthday when it was just me and her, mother and son time. She had kindly funded a private party for me and 30 friends on Thursday to celebrate my 18th and now was my turn to hang out with her. We had always been close and I knew that soon I would be off to uni and leaving her on her own. She would be alright but I reckoned it would be hard at first for both of us.

 

We queued for tickets and were soon inside, wondering past monkeys, watching a tiger stride around its glass framed grassland and trying to spot chameleons which were camouflaged magnificently in a tiny jungle. After a while mum wanted us to get our lunch and we opened our picnic not far from the giraffe compound. From where we sat, we could see a tall, majestic giraffe looming over the other animals, munching on leaves which it had grabbed from overhanging trees.

 

‘It is great being here again, mum.’

‘ I love this giraffe,’ she said.

‘Apparently he was an orphan when they got him,’ I told her.

‘Well he has been well looked after by the zoo.’

‘Yes, he has been here since I was born, according to the sign.’

‘Hehe, that is why I chose here. He is as old as you…well…maybe just a little older,’ she said.

 

A group of tourists filtered past and we fell silent for a moment or two, munching on egg sandwiches and sipping Ribena. The whole thing was beginning to feel like a school trip now.

 

Suddenly the bench seemed remote. A drop in the crowd led to a more stilted conversation. Mum got a sudden burst of confidence. She lifted her head and looked into my eyes. I had never seen this side of mum since grandad died. Her hand seemed shaky as it lay on her lunch box. She gathered her words into some very composed sentences which would eventually change my entire outlook on life.

 

I gulped as she began slowly.

‘You know you mean the world to me, Matthew.’

Her using my full name indicated the level of importance that this conversation must bring.

‘Of course, mum. What has happened. Is it Nan?’ I felt like I knew that it wasn’t but needed to at least check.

‘Nan is fine. It is about me… and you’ her words lingered and her face flushed.

‘What is it? Are you unwell?’

‘That giraffe was brought here because it had no family. It has grown up into a formidable beast. Everyone comes to see it. It is incredibly popular.’

At this point, my mind still did not join the dots.

‘Eighteen years ago you came to me. The best thing that had ever happened to me. A single woman wanting desperately to bring a child into the world. Then there came you.’

She was being all dramatic now.

‘But I could never have children of my own. My uterus didn’t grow properly. You came to me as a gift.’

My head was whirling round. Had I been a miracle?

‘I love you very much indeed. Your real mother was dying when she gave birth to you. I had the honour of bringing you up for her.’

My heart stopped.

I was adopted.

AD – Thank you for reading my extract and please check out my book on Amazon. It is available at no extra cost using Kindle Unlimited or for 77p.

 

 

 

 

A Cafe Dilemma – Book Extract

AD – Below is an Amazon link to my book, which I receive a kickback for, if you choose to buy it.

Here is an extract from my book of short stories about dating, loss and love. These were the first stories that I self published and recently people have been asking me about them. I absolutely loved writing these and still treasure them as my first creations. I hope that you will enjoy and consider adding ‘Short Dates’ to your TBR, Goodreads or Kindle.

Scrubbing Up

 

It was a beautiful morning as I cycled past the River Cam with my hair blowing freely behind me and the  pedals spinning around frantically. I was hopefully going to make it in time for opening but I was cutting it short, without a doubt. Around me, hundreds of students were making their way to their lectures. I was not the only cyclist on the road. In fact, there seemed to be more of us pedal pushers than there were drivers. We all sped along like an army of buzzing bees, heading in the same direction, but breaking off now and again in swarms, in search of nectar. The students’ nectar was different to mine though. They longed for facts and figures. I, however, simply wanted to get through the day so that I could go home again and work on my song writing.

 

Making it to work just in time for opening, I slipped my apron on and tied back my hair, pulling poses in the mirror before edging into the café area and lifting the chairs off of the tables ready for the day. The cakes were there as usual, most of them freshly baked. Cream cakes, sponge cakes, slices of carrot, lemon and walnut cakes. Big cakes and small cakes, sugary cakes and sugar-free cakes. They smelled so delicious that it was always hard to resist them for long. Thankfully Mark, the baker, had left a few bits for me and I stuffed down some fractions of chocolate eclairs before meandering over  to the front door and opening the café, shoving a large A-frame into the street, advertising our latest tempting offers.

 

It was always a bit slow to start with but you could count on Vera, the eighty four year old lady from down the road, to always be the first one to come in every morning. She bought a cheesecake today and I took care to wrap it carefully as we had our regular chat. She asked me if Alex had texted me and I told her that he had written a few nasties last night as usual. We discussed how badly men had treated us and we laughed about how love wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be.

 

Vera had been married for thirty years when she discovered her husband had a child with another woman and had been seeing her behind Vera’s back for almost as long as they had been married. I had relayed to her my six months of dating Alex and how false he had turned out to be. After I got round to dumping him, he texted me daily, quite pathetically, begging me to take him back. But Vera and I both knew that he only wanted to regain the power as he couldn’t stand the idea of being the one who was dumped. We reckoned if I had taken him back he would have soon split with me to show me he was in charge after all.

 

My boss was in this morning and she was always fun to be around. She had been doing a stock check and when the café became quiet she told me to pull up a pew and sit with her for a while, drinking latte. Glynis always spoke about dreams and ambitions. She had a master plan which ended up with her buying a quaint riverside café in Paris, in which she would enjoy the champagne culture and soak up the general Parisian way of life. I could easily see her with a glass in one hand, reading an erotic novel in the other and hiding behind sunglasses while secretly checking out the passing men.

 

‘So what do you really want to do with your life?’ she said suddenly.

‘Well I want to explore what I can make with my music,’ I replied honestly.

‘How can we make that happen?’

‘If I knew that then I would have tried it by now,’ I answered rapidly.

‘We have to go for those things we dream about. I reckon I have found a way to help you there.’

 

She went on to tell me about a new friend of hers who worked at a music venue in town. I was excited to hear that she had asked her friend if I could go for an audition there, to see if I may be able to perform some songs one night. I was taken aback as she had never mentioned anything like this before. It was lovely that she had noticed my interest in music and thought to find a way for me to try out my singing skills with a real live audience. I crossed my fingers and toes and returned to work as the customers began to roll in again.

 

The counter soon became a mess and I decided I was going to clean the smudges from the inside of the glass which housed the cakes. Preparing a cloth, I leaned into the counter and began to scrub. It was fairly dirty and I had to use some elbow grease to make an impact on it. Most of it cleared quickly and I was ready to finish the job off and do something else.

 

To my annoyance, one small mark would not disappear on that flaming glass. It began to test me. The more I rubbed it with my cloth, the more stubborn it seemed to become. I pressed hard with plenty of soap, yet still it would not budge. Before long I was on my haunches, giving it everything I had, working up a sweat and determined to not be defeated by some crusted blob of curdled lemon.

 

Making circles of smudge as I carried on, I found myself staring hard at the mark, wishing it gone. I blinked and suddenly it seemed to vanish. In its place was a pair of blue, radiant eyes, looking back at me curiously. The eyes belonged to a hot looking guy who looked to be about my age. I had never seen him before, though he seemed recognisable. Maybe I had met him in my dreams. I kicked myself for thinking such rubbish.

Second Glance – A Book Extract

AFF – This contains a link which is an affiliate one and I will get a kickback if you decide to buy a suggested product.

A fast walk through the park can’t be that much trouble, can it?

As a bonus weekend post, I wanted to share a short extract from my story about a woman coming across an accident and jumping to conclusions. See what you think and maybe comment down below. This is one of my stories from ‘Second Glance’ available in the link here:

Race To Make A Decision

Celia was on her way to work. She took the same route that she always took. It was about 8 o’clock and the sun was bright over the horizon. As she crossed the road to enter the park, which was the shortcut she had followed every day for ten years, she suddenly had visions of forgetting to pick up her phone. Rummaging through her handbag, with the sun’s sharp rays causing her to shield her face, she kept walking across the path and was just about to enter the bit that led through the park when…Crash!

 

It had all happened so fast. Celia was spinning around, trying to take in what had happened. One minute she had been feeling around in her bag for her phone. The next minute she was in the centre of a huge drama unfolding. Just as she had crossed the path she had failed to notice a guy in the cycle lane who had had to suddenly turn to avoid her as she backtracked slightly, averting her eyes from the blinding sun. At the same time a cyclist had emerged from the park, rightfully travelling on the cycle track side of the path but not expecting a dithering pedestrian to divert another bike into his pathway.

 

Not for one moment did Celia assume that any of this was caused by her actions. Instead she screamed. Confirming that she hadn’t remembered her phone after all, she yelled at the top of her lungs to get some help. She then dropped the bag and stepped back to steady herself before trying to catch her breath and take everything in.

 

The first thing she did, as a young lad marched up to them – phone in hand, was to assess the situation. Who were these cyclists that had nearly killed her? Hunched next to her, just a foot away, was a pale looking man who must have been in his fifties, reminding her somewhat of the guy from the Bond movies that she could never remember the name of. She smiled to herself momentarily as she admired his physique before suddenly realising that his eyes were closed and he had blood coming out of his shoulder. Quite a lot of blood at that.

 

Turning her head, while she could hear the boy instructing an ambulance to head towards the north side of the park, she noticed a twenty-something slim asian guy tangled in his bike with his eyes half open, breathing so loudly that it alarmed her. He seemed to sigh on every troubled exhalation. He, just like the other guy, was sweating profusely and already had a large swelling around where his kneecap should have been. Blood spattered the pavement alongside him.

 

Still Celia could not decide if one was more guilty or the other. She was quickly brought back to life with a question from the boy.

 

“Did you see what happened?”

“No. It was all a blur. Typical cyclists, I say. Always dangerous.”

“Thank God they both wore hats!” announced a lady who had suddenly popped out from the park.

Another teenager ran up to the scene and started to take off his jumper. Celia was about to ask why when she saw him tuck it around the head of the first guy, keeping it protected. The original boy said that he was going to stand near the road to direct the ambulance to the scene while the lady knelt down next to the asian man and asked him if she could do anything. Celia heard him mumble something and the lady then took a clean handkerchief from her pocket and tied it around his knee. He swallowed hard as she did it and placed his right hand on the dressing, holding it as if to defend from any potential knocking. Celia felt his pain but she still didn’t know what she could do. She eventually decided she was the first one there and should take control.