Feelings in Staccato: The book of stories
How and Why?
Some years ago, I realised it was time to fulfil my lifelong dream of publishing a book. In my usual way, I went for it with all my heart. I started working on a historical novel, and hit a snag: there were so many other stories I wanted to tell first, stories which wouldn’t take me as long to develop.
So, Feelings in Staccato, my first literary ‘baby’, was born.
I dusted off memories of past travels, my childhood, ideas vaguely developed and vaguely remembered from decades ago. With all those stories and a bunch of new ones, I wound up with a collection of 21 stories. But, of course, in the publishing world the number of stories is less important than the word count, which in the end was about 40,000 words.
Before this, I had never thought that it would be quite so difficult to write that many words, then reshape, trim, reshape and trim again until each story matched my vision for it. I also learned a lot about self-publishing, and all the hoops I had to jump through in order to do just that.
In the end, my debut collection of short stories, Feelings in Staccato: The book of stories was self-published on 27 July 2021, a commemoration of 15 years – to the day! – of the date I arrived in Australia with my children.
One year later, a second edition of the collection was published; now each story has an accompanying photograph.
What's inside?
The title of the book comes from one particular story from this collection, which was initially titled Feelings in Staccato, and is now titled Under the Cross.
In music, ‘staccato’ is about sharply detached notes. My hope was that the collection could be picked up and read like a newspaper. There is no set narrative or start point: you can just pick up the book, flip through it, and read any story at random, sharply detached from all the others.
The stories will take you to various places, from Romania to Australia, and to various periods, from 40 AD to nowadays. The topics all revolve around intimate thoughts and feelings triggered by fantasy or real-life events.
There are snippets of life with ration cards and the black market, living from one day to the next, bribery and false elections during communism; family stories showing parents and children at their best or worst; a student who discovers a supernatural secret in the mountains; a school playground that loses its innocence when tared with a gruesome discovery; the journal of an immigrant and all about what it means to accept new ways in a new country; and the story of a war prisoner…and more!
Adventurous tales, woven through the landscapes of Australia to Transylvania, Ancient Dacia to Perth, telling the personal tales of characters from Romans to math teachers, this is a collection that will take the reader on a journey that spans across all ages and is sure to delight at every turn of the page.
Whatever your heart likes, you will find at least in a few of the twenty-one stories that will resonate with you.
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