Brothers gonna work it out: my short story in 'The Book of Manchester'

I have fiction news, so please unfurl your FICTION NEWS banner and tie each end to a lampshade. Ready? Here goes. I have a short story featured in 'The Book of Manchester', an anthology coming out on Comma Press.

Comma have a long history of releasing city-specific fiction anthologies. Their locational muses have spanned Shanghai to Sheffield, Cairo to Coventry, and Gaza to, er, goodness-knows elsewhere. There's loads of them, but this one is special in a way: Manchester is their home city.

The blurb for the book talks about the city's industrial past, its music scene, and – in themes that are perhaps more relevant to this book – the homelessness that is skyrocketing as the same rate as its new towers, and the "struggles of ordinary residents navigating a city in dramatic flux".

My story is called 'Ten-Two Forty-Four', and I wrote it during the fog of my stroke recovery last winter. The tale of two estranged brothers is threaded through with the discommunication and illusory nonsense-bobbins I experienced as a result of my medical emergency. Not that it's a story about strokes, but the elements are there.

Because the way this story came about was kind of painful and personal, and because this feels like a literary reset of sorts, I'm publishing under my real name Ian Carrington. The full list of writers featured in the book are (deep breath): David Constantine, Tom Benn, Pete Kalu, Brontë Schiltz , Sophie Parkes, Ian Carrington, Shelagh Delaney, Mike Duff, Mish Green, Okechukwu Nzelu, Reshma Ruia, Yusra Warsama, and Zig & Zag. I lied about that last one.

Because you are special, due to the fact you still read blogs, you can read the opening bit of the story below.

You can order the book from the Comma website^. Meanwhile, everyone's beloved and/or baffling writer Fat Roland will continue, of course, on this blog and in Electronic Sound and on various comedy stages hither and thither and where-iver.

Ten-Two Forty-Four excerpt

He turns up looking like a drowned rat or a soaked ferret or some other crappy animal dragged through piss that had no business being on my doorstep. The rain drips from his hands and his nose and whatever appendage that had not been chopped off by the torturing scum that had been holding him. For a moment, I say nothing despite all the things I had been planning on saying. Something about not trampling into the carpet or not sending me a postcard or some other witticism that, in truth, I am too afraid to say... (continue reading by buying the book^)

See the Book of Manchester launch event (Contact Theatre, 7pm, 12 October 2024, tickets £12 / £10)^