West To The Rising Sun

Bewildered Vikings stuck out of their time, fractured fairy tales, terrible puns, genial idiots, frustrated ghosts and even an explanation for why people eat Brussel sprouts.

Stories as short as 10 words and as long as 6,500. So many types of humour. Laughs (or at least smiles) on every page – except the index and the copyright page.
 

When I first started writing … actually this was only very recently, but starting with a pompous statement like this makes me sound like an experienced wordsmith, and perhaps I can trick you into thinking it worthwhile to buy my stories.

As I was saying: When I first started writing I belonged to a suburban writers' group. As is common with many such groups (or I suppose so, I have only belonged to two) our major activity was critiquing each other's writing. Each meeting two of us would present a piece of about 2500 words for detailed critiquing. Then everyone who had attempted it would present a piece of nominally 500 words on a topic that had been set the time before.

Occasionally the topic was just a theme, such as a ghost story, but usually if was a phrase or word such as 'It all began when …' or 'Presentiment'.
Different members treated this in different ways. Some would present stories, often very fine ones, in which the word was just mentioned in passing (a distant relative of 'charades'?). Others would write a story with it as a much more central theme, or present an extract of a longer work which fitted the topic.

I tried most of these at various times, but my favourite was to try and make a pun out of the phrase. There are some puns which work best if the reader does not know what is coming. Others can work quite well when the reader knows what is coming, but the journey to get there is improbable – Denis Norden and Frank Muir on 'My Word!' were masters of this form. I am certainly not claiming to be in their class, but I at least try to follow in their tradition.
Hope you enjoy some of these and get a chuckle or at least a groan out of them.