charles barrow's writing

I've been reading short stories recently; micro-fiction, flash fiction. This morning I've been dipping into 'Stories On The Go- 101 Very Short Stories By 101 Authors.' Edited by Andrew Ashling. This book was the culmination of an idea launched by Hugh Howey (author of the Wool trilogy) on 'Kboards', a forum for Kindle readers that has attracted a community of indie authors too, it tells me in the introduction at the front of the book. 'Stories On The Go.' is an anthology of indie writing and each of the 101 stories is of 1,000 words or less and can be read on laptop, tablet or phone in under five minutes, even when you're on the go. I tore through a dozen tales this morning in no time so I know that last fact to be true. As ever, with an anthology, I found I liked some stories more than I did others, and they were of varying quality. Each story is followed by a short author bio and I fancy I could soon tell by the quality of the story writing wheth...

I spent a few hours in Portsmouth City yesterday. Charles Dickens was born there. I'd like to have visited the house where he was born, now a museum, but it was closed. There is also a fine statue of him but I didn't find it in my wanderings. Arther Conan Doyle also lived in Portsmouth for a while. He wrote his first Sherlock Holmes novel A Study in Scarlet while he was living there. I did find the spot where he used to live but his house is gone and there is just a small purple plaque on the wall of the building that stands there now. So, I was breathing the same air that two literary giants breathed but I have no souvenirs to show for it, no better understanding of them as writers or people. I feel rather disappointed that I didn't try harder to track these great men down, I merely glanced at the Conan Doyle plaque and then moved on. I could have walked out of my way to find the Dickens statue, that wouldn't have put me out. But I didn't. An opportunity missed. ...

I saw a little girl running around in the park with a feather in her hair. It was pale grey and black, a Seagull's wing feather perhaps? The girl's Mother had tucked the feather into the elastic band that held her ponytail in place. It was upside down, quill end skyward. That's what struck me, the perfectly casual rightness of it being the wrong way up. What struck me also was the pleasing lack of regard for cleanliness on the Mother's part. A bird feather in her daughter's hair and not an anti-bacterial wipe in sight. There is probably a Health and Safety ruling against this, at the very least Social Services would want to poke their nose in. What I most liked about the scene is that it spoke of a carefree childhood, both the little girl's now and the Mother's in memory. My Sister found this hawk feather. I say hawk feather because she thinks it might have come from some kind of raptor, although as I post the picture now it occurs to me it might have come...

I found this feather on the lawn, while doing some gardening for my mother. Earlier I'd been watching some Goldfinches on her bird feeders. She'd put out some tiny, black Nyger seeds especially for them. Goldfinches hang around in small groups. There are several collective nouns for a group of Goldfinches; a charm, a chirm, a drum, a troubling. They really are no trouble in your garden beyond a lively clamour they set up, you'd be lucky to have them visit, they are beautiful, but I like the sound of a troubling of Goldfinches. They are small birds with red faces, white cheek bars, black caps, buff coloured bodies, and black wings with a brilliant yellow flash, and some black and white striped wing feathers. So this found feather may belong to one of them. It's tiny, I should have put a 10p coin in the picture for scale. I never used to like bird feathers, would never have picked one up, I thought they were unclean, I'd been told that as a child, told I'd catch...