My prize-winning story ‘The Ideal Husband Exhibition’ is free to read on The London Magazine website right now. Click here to take a look. You can purchase a print copy of the August/September 2017 edition (also containing the story) here too.

This was a bit of a departure for my style-wise as I tend to shy away from first-person narratives (not sure why) but this story is firmly told from the unique perspective of a single character. The structure of the story was bit of a challenge too, with each discreet section made up of three parts, each part doing a unique job within each section, while the movement of the sections hopefully creates a rhythm to the piece. Tonally too, it’s not as dark as many of my stories can be, it has, I hope, a lightness to it. I spent a fair chunk of time with Kate and Elisa in the writing of this (the original draft was a good bit longer and took much trimming and restructuring to get right) and kind of missed them once I was forced to leave them behind at the end. Looking at the story now, I really hope for good things for them, but, frankly, this is one of those stories that leaves that up to the individual reader.

So, if you have a spare 15 minutes or so, go read it at the link above. I hope you do. And I hope you like it.