About my short story – The Day Leonard Cohen Died – but firstly Happy New Year Everyone – I wish you all that you hope for yourself and your loved ones in 2022.
My year has begun very differently from last, especially because I have three beautiful granddaughters now to share life and celebrations with – Elsie born in May when the sun shone, and our solstice twins Lilah and Freja born on December 21st. For me nothing can compare to the hope and love these new lives bring. I am already thinking of stories to write and stories to tell them…
In between twin duties, I’m managing to make some headway with my WIP, a novel set in 1875 in a County Asylum, among a group of incarcerated women. I guess I’m returning to what I know. Like my poetry collection Going In With Flowers , I am drawn back again and again to reflect on those years spent working with women in prison.
But I haven’t forgotten my latest short story collection, this One Wild Place which opens with the story – The Day Leonard Cohen Died.
Somehow a copy of this collection made its way to Montreal, to a lady named Irena. Irena is one of those readers who writers dream of, the reader who emails your editor out of the blue to tell her she thinks you are ‘a fine writer,’ and should be better known. Thank you Irena, emails such as yours means so much especially to an indie writer like myself. So often we write into a void with no idea of where our book might be or if it’s being read at all.
The Day Leonard Cohen Died, is a particular favourite of mine. Probably because I am a big Leonard Cohen fan and because so many of his songs feature in the soundtrack of my life. Also because the world shifted the day he died, and old memories surfaced to the echo of his words.
If you’d like to read the beginning of The Day Leonard Cohen Died – click here
You can find out what happens to Loretta and read the complete story in the collection this One Wild Place or on Kindle HERE
with thanks to Irena x
