The View From Endless Street.

My new story collection with WiDo Publishing, forthcoming on April 8th, contains twenty one stories, quite a few of which have been published before, but all of which have been like old familiar shoes to me, and now that they're together in one book, it feels as if they've all gone on a journey and I've been left behind. I guess that shows just how involved you can get with the construction of an imaginary world and the characters you create to people it with.
The collection is called 'The View From Endless Street' and it has a wonderfully surreal book jacket. The description of the book is:-
"With this collection of short stories set in the south of England and beyond, Rebecca Lloyd explores relationships and the brave or foolish things they can make people do. These stories about murder and ghosts, delusion and desperation, obsession and arson, show readers a sometimes sweet, sometimes macabre vision of humanity.
Rebecca Lloyd channels Roald Dahl’s wit and flair for the unexpected in this collection that will appeal to the quirky side of the literary reader."

...The wonderful effect of feeling slightly bereft was that it gave me the energy to write a new collection, Whelp and Other Stories, which, although not yet published was short-listed in the Paul Bowles Award in short fiction with C&R Press a few weeks ago. And further to that, I have started a series of stories in a darker strain still.

My thought for anyone reading this who is entering the writing world themselves is that you never really do know how a story is going to turn out and if it will work well or not. Sometimes what you write won't be the best you've done and you'll be conscious of that, but the most important thing is to keep going because the habit of writing is one you can fall out of only too easily and then it takes a huge effort to get back into it because part of getting back into it means re-energizing your faith in yourself and that can be a big job.