CHANGE ANTHOLOGY

Greetings friends. I hope this correspondence finds you well.

My writing group has released an anthology entitled CHANGE. It features two short stories by my good (and bad) self, albeit under my mortal name of Rhydderch Wilson.

Here’s an excerpt from one of them…

***

When Luke woke up his first thought was that it was Saturday. Happy and relieved, he allowed himself the luxury of drifting back off to sleep. As he did so, he felt the warm body of his wife Daphne snuggle in behind him.

            When he awoke for the second time that morning his bladder felt ready to burst, so he got up. After he had finished in the bathroom he went downstairs and put the kettle on. Deciding that the house could do with some waking up too, he switched on the radio and opened the conservatory windows. Already the sun was up. It was going to be a nice day.

            He drifted back upstairs and stood in the bedroom doorway for a moment. Hazy sunbeams were bleeding in through the gap in the curtains. Daphne blinked awake.

            “Kettle’s on,” said Luke.

            Daphne stretched lazily and serenely. “What time is it?” she asked.

            “Gone nine.”

            “Does that officially qualify as a lie in?”

            “It does.”

            Daphne sat up. The duvet fell from her body to reveal that her arms were no longer there. Luke’s blood turned to ice.

            “Chilly up here,” she said, her blond hair glowing in the morning sunlight. “Could you pass me my dressing gown?”

            Frozen, all Luke could do was stare. He tried to speak but no words were forthcoming. His extremities tingled with pins and needles.

            “Darling? Dressing gown?” Daphne repeated.             Feeling as if his body were moving through warm water, Luke retrieved the fluffy pastel blue dressing gown from the hanger on the back of the bedroom door. Every muscle turned to jelly as he watched his wife, now armless, slip from the bed as if it were the most normal thing in the world. Then she approached, turned and stood waiting with her back to him. Luke just stood there, his mind as arid as a desert, his mouth tinderbox dry, his thoughts drowned out by a chorus of vultures.

***

The collection is the third of a successful series of anthologies and is partly inspired by the events of the 2020 pandemic. It distils the best of the creative thought from that year on change of all kinds.

It includes everything from a man changing in the sea, to the planting of seeds and watching them grow; the change of growing up, to career change and homelessness through poetry, prose, humour and serious thought.

It’s available from Amazon in ebook and paperback formats.

Swansea and District Writers Circle is a group of dedicated amateur and professional authors from south Wales who meet regularly to exchange ideas and learn from their peers.