TatTle – #14

A random newsletter from Tall and Tiny Tales

G’day!

I figured it was time for another one of these.

I’m aware that I ask a lot of my readers. Most of my stories are slow-burn serials of novelette, novella or even novel length, running to 20+ weeks. People jumping on board part of the way through a story may be baffled as to what the hell is going on here.

I probably would be.

So in TatTle, I step outside the story and tell you what’s going on, as I see it.

Current story roundup

With Lizzy May (Tuesday Tale, free) and Tales from the Wood (Friday Novella, paid), I’ve tried something new. Again.

The idea was to run two stories in tandem, the first of them told to the protagonist of the second, using contrasting narrative styles.

The intention is that they’ll eventually form the two halves of one novel.

After five months, we’re getting to the end of that experiment. Having ummed and ahhed about how long exactly they were going to be, I can confirm they’ll each run to 27 chapters.

They’re the first stories I’ve told here which are set outside Australia, and the first with overtly (auto)biographical content. Lizzy May is based on my grandmother’s life story, and Tales from the Wood is based on key themes and events from my story, from the ages of ten to nineteen.

It has been interesting, placing next to each other episodes from the life of a mature woman, deeply enmeshed in the broad political and social developments of her day, and the minutiae of an adolescent boy’s progress towards adulthood.

It may seem a weird combination to you.

To me, on the other hand, it’s obvious. This is how it happened. I didn’t realise this until I had written a fair chunk of the text, but if I’m a storyteller today, it’s because my Nan was a storyteller then.

What next?

In a couple of weeks Susan (the voice of Lizzy May, and my wife) and I will be going on a month-long research trip to Tasmania.

Actually, we’re just going on holiday, but please allow me my delusion of being a ‘proper’ novelist.

Coincidentally – or not:

The next two stories will also be linked, and will begin when two near-identical Toyota Hiace campervans park next to each other on the cavernous vehicle deck of the Spirit of Tasmania, embarking from Geelong for Devonport.

Peter (Tuesday Tale) is a divorced market gardener, en route to take over a wooden fishing boat he has bought at auction, sight unseen, and intends to renovate and live aboard. He’s handy with wood and electrics, but knows nothing about sailing.

Leigh (Friday Novella) is a widowed photographer on the way to view the neglected apple orchard she has inherited from her reclusive uncle. She knows nothing about fruit growing, but a lot about sailing.

Both the orchard and the boatyard are in Kettering, near Hobart.

This sounds like an obvious ‘meet cute’ for a romance, but I don’t think it’s going to pan out that way. Each protagonist will be a character in the other’s tale, but I want each story to stand alone as its own narrative.

Why am I doing this?

I’ve always been fascinated by intertextuality: having places, characters and events from one story feature in another, and the frisson of recognition it gives the reader.

More than that: it gives the reader a feeling of knowing more profoundly the world in which the story occurs, and the unique place of each major character in that world. That’s why, for example, Wendell Berry’s Port William novels become more than the sum of their parts.

I won’t give away any more now.

That’s making a virtue out of necessity, because I don’t know much more.

On Tall and Tiny Tales, I’m telling myself the story at the same time I’m telling it to you, dear reader. I really don’t know what’s going to happen in the next chapter until I sit down to write it. That might be the day before I upload it to Substack for two hundred subscribers to read.

I don’t know if that’s weird, but it works for me – and dammit, it’s fun!

As usual there will be a seamless transition: no breaks in the publishing schedule. The new stories will start in the second week of April. The week after we get home from Tassie, in fact.

No pressure, then …

---

If the present stories aren’t to your taste – or you want more – just a reminder that I have a long, long backlist of free tales. You’ll find them all here:

Thank you for sticking around. You make this worthwhile. 💛