Thumbnails was published by Vagabond Voices in May 2013.
Thumbnails consists of forty-eight stories short enough to fit into the nooks and crannies of our distracted lifestyles. Taken as a whole, the collection is an exercise in storytelling, proving that narrative can be found in the most unlikely packages.
A fatwa is declared against the heretical Dante; sexual love flourishes briefly in a retirement home; British soldiers in 18th Century America give a very dubious gift to the natives; a Portuguese naturalist loses his life’s work to Napoleon; a grief-stricken father searches the Australian outback for signs of an extinct lizard; Mephistopheles answers his critics and explains the real origins of Shakespeare’s Hamlet; a roguish life is reduced to endnotes in a biography; an Anglo-Saxon bard despairs of his vocation…
These are just a few of the premises that run through the book. Myth, social comedy, tragedy and speculative fiction follow one another in tales that vary widely in form and content – united by the task of conveying a complete narrative with the greatest possible economy.
Buy Thumbnails in paperback here.
Buy Thumbnails on Kindle.