Lockdown Reading

[Adam Carlton writes.]

Paris, like the rest of Europe, is in lockdown. Les flics will not be gentle if you walk out in groups of more than two ... or attempt a bit of recreational biking. There are no more manifestations! The press, meanwhile is obsessed with relationships: spousal abuse in quarantined homes (up); couples rediscovering themselves - and each other.

What else to do these languid spring days? You could read my collected short stories as a PDF.

PDF link

I have not fared well in my attempts to get published. This is what I say in the introduction to the book:

"These are the 49 stories (113,000 words) I wrote in 2019. They were first published on the Booksie writers’ site. Sadly, only a few have been published by a curated magazine (Time Warrior at the Aphelion Webzine; various stories at The Ronin Express).

I have concluded that I’m really not a very good writer, rather linear and plodding; I’m not sufficiently interested in people to bring their emotional lives into salience - the stuff of gripping fiction.

So this is a record of heroic failure: perhaps the most interesting kind.

Adam Carlton.
March 2020."

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Feel free to download the PDF and see for yourself.