Two Hundred Very Short Stories
by
Helen Keeling-Marston
Two Hundred Very Short Stories is a collection of stories each so short that the reader can start … and finish … a whole one in one night – some even in a minute!
Recognising that many people don’t have enough time for regular reading – and thus can easily lose the thread of a novel – Helen Keeling-Marston set about writing a collection of short stories.
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Two Hundred Very Short Stories – Helen’s first book – features an eclectic mix of short stories and flash fiction: flash fiction being works of extreme brevity. Similar to a musical mix tape, the collection of stories aims to elicit a range of different emotions from the reader: joy, sadness, amusement, befuddlement, intrigue and fear.
Be warned, however, that you’ll need to have your wits about you when reading this book, as Two Hundred Very Short Stories isn’t always a passive experience!
~
A story from Two Hundred Very Short Stories to whet the appetite.
Cynicism kills magic
and so, whilst the children all knew that I existed, their parents didn’t. And
so the parents would pretend to be me. But they never did it very well.
Nine-year-old Flora
carefully placed the molar underneath her pillow and then quickly fell asleep.
A couple of hours later, her father crept into her room, lifted her pillow and
exchanged the tooth for a pound coin. As he left her room and closed her door,
I flew in, took the pound coin and swapped it for a piece of enchanted plastic
that would glow for a good few hours.
When Flora woke up the
next morning, she peeled back her pillow and gasped when she saw the glowing
disc. She took it to her money box and posted it through the slit.
“Did the tooth fairy
leave you anything?” asked Flora’s mum, as they all sat down to breakfast that
morning.
“She did,” said Flora,
her eyes glowing like the disc. “She left me a coin that sparkled with fairy
dust.”
As Flora’s parents
exchanged bemused, cynical glances, I counted how much money I’d made that
evening.
I never said that magic
had to be used for good.
~
About the author:
By day, Helen Keeling-Marston plays with numbers and, by night, she likes to like to flex her creative muscle and write stories and make music. When not having fun with numbers, words and musical notes, she is the voluntary founder and director of a sports charity; sport being the other big passion in her life.
Check her out!
