(Please read the story first)
First of all, thank you for subscribing, and thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed the story.
Author’s notes are not something I think I’ll regularly do, but for Seaside it was quite important to me because of something a friend said just after we’d started workshopping each other’s stories. We haven’t known each other long, and he mentioned that he and another person we know had issues with their families – it wasn’t literally with a nod and a wink, but close enough to make me realise he had assumed from reading my work that I didn’t have a happy childhood. Probably best to address that, then.
I had a great childhood. I have a wonderful relationship with both parents; my dad, even during work hours, was never more than a phone call away from dropping everything for me. (And not only because he resented every moment in the office.) He certainly didn’t trick me into going on a day trip so he could piss off out of my life without saying goodbye, haha. I know the story seems a little autobiographical, but apart from a five-second flash memory of a family friend asking if I wanted to go to the seaside and then the weather being a bit Yorkshire, it isn’t.
The inadequacy of language, on the other hand, is something that has always fascinated me. I won’t go too deep but I think a massive proportion of life’s difficulties and hurt come from exactly that. That’s why I wanted to give Seaside away as a short introduction to my writing – I don’t think it’s my best short story but it’s the one that means the most to me, and I chose it as the first one to put out into the world because the themes and the feel of it are the closest to what I want to express. On the topic of themes and feel, I got my artist friend Amy Brereton to do a cover illustration based on the story and then had to spend another 4 months reworking and editing because the picture was so much better than the writing. Damn you, Amy.
Anyway, for the most part, I really just wanted to say thank you for reading and my dad is amazing. Until next time!