A great few days in this beautiful spot last week. I was fortunate to be in the top ten for the Fish Publishing International Short Story Competition, judged by Sarah Hall, author of ‘Burntcoat’.
I had to read from my chosen story ‘The Gypsy Gambler’ to a crowd of about 100 people, the biggest audience I’ve ever had. Encouraged by that I also read a couple of nights later at the ‘Open mic’ session at Ma Murphy’s pub. I chose ‘Launchpad’, which was published in the ‘100 Words of Solitude’ anthology.
But the weirdest part of the weekend for a couple of us was seeing the main suspect from the Netflix series ‘Sophie‘, a documentary about the unsolved murder in Schull, West Cork, in December 1996. The chap was larger than life and seemed to be everywhere, including sitting beside my new pal just before she was to read (and she was staying alone in an AirBnB in Schull). Watch the Netflix series, or even better listen to ‘West Cork’ the podcast (10 episodes), which is very detailed and balanced investigation by two young journalists.