Each
of my stories originally appeared on Nifty and I felt very gratified when asked
if a story could appear on Awesomedude. Even more gratified now that all six so
far written are listed.
I actually started writing my longest story, Aladdin's Awakening, first,
but have written all the others while completing that one. Each of the shorter
stories was triggered by some incident, happening or something read. For
example, Flips' Tale started off because of the experience a friend's son had,
Taming the ‘Phobes because of a newspaper article on name-calling and bullying.
In fact, throughout the stories there are many issues raised - worries,
anxieties, problems - which I know young people are concerned about especially
as they develop through their teen-age years. But, don’t be down-hearted, there
is plenty of humour and lightness - so I am told by many of my readers!
I started writing stories after I retired. I was an academic - as probably you
will gather when you read any of my tales. You will have to make guesses where
and in what subject. A number of correspondents have asked if Aladdin’s
Awakening is autobiographical. My response has always been ‘what is true, is
true; what is not is otherwise’. It must have had some effect as I had around
300 e-mails from all over the world, America, Canada, UK, Australia, France,
Germany, Russia and so on, while it was being first serialized and only one was
antagonistic.
By the way, Aladdin's Awakening is reputed to be one of the longest stories
published by Nifty - one correspondent said he printed it out and it came to
over 1630 pages!. Another wrote that he downloaded it and listened to a playback
on the four-hour journeys when visiting his mother. A third said that he had
read it at least five times. He kindly sent me lists of my errors - of dates,
names, language - all these have been taken care of in this edition. Any errors
that remain are mine. If you attempt the long haul let me know how you get on,
for that or any of the stories! Also as all, except one, have a British flavour,
ask if anything puzzles you.
Stories by Joel