Author Archive: Vanessa Lafaye
Short Fiction: A Sliver of Ivory by Vanessa Lafaye
He wanted you to have this. It was written with exaggerated clarity on a scrap of paper, as if the author was unsure of the reader’s grasp of English. The torn paper, rather than a proper card, another signal from the sender. It was signed Elaine, with a rounded, buxom capital E. On the padded […]
Short Story: A Simple Mistake
The dome of an umbrella bobbed along the top of the fence, beneath the dripping horse chestnut branches. Pink, blue, white stripes. Childhood colours, an adult’s height. It had been raining for days, maybe weeks. Lots of umbrellas bobbed along her fence, but she recognised this one. It was him again. Cynthia wheeled herself into […]
Short Story: The Long Way Home
‘Did I defrost the chicken?’ Janice asked Mungo, the small bobbled bear stuck to her dashboard, as she pulled into the stream of going-home traffic. Tom used to do the remembering for both of them. That was before. Before the stroke which changed everything, destroyed his memory, robbed him of control over his left side. […]
Letter to My Pre-publication Self
It’s now 8 months since the book was first published, so I decided to invent time travel (patent pending) to give you a preview of what will happen and what you will learn during this crazy, baffling, exciting, scary time. You can thank me later. 1. Writing the book is not job done. It’s just […]
Here, There and Nowhere
As an American author, living in Britain, writing a novel about Florida, I am accustomed to existing in a semi-chronic state of dislocation. I have a mid-Atlantic accent which sounds to Brits like I’m right off the boat from Appalachia, but to Americans is pure Downton. Although 35 years of living in the UK have […]
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