I’ve just added the story ‘Beanfield’ to the short stories section of this blog. It originally started off as a riff on the Sawney Bean story, relocated to a modern day housing estate in Scotland. Between conception and writing, however, it’s twisted into something else entirely and, I’ll be honest, I’m not sure I’m particularly happy with what it’s become. The original concept had a subtext relating to the control single families of drug dealers can gradually infect an entire town with their product, but that’s been lost. Without that subtext, the story feels a lot less sympathetic to the people of the estate on which it’s set, meaning that it can come across as a bit down on the underclass, which is entirely unintended. I’ve tried to redress the balance slightly, but not too successfully.
Still, it has a certain pulpy charm, and it’s a damn sight nastier than a lot of what I’ve written recently, so it has its place here. I’m glad that I’ve managed to shift the story from my mind and onto ‘paper’ as it frees me up to crack on with some fresher ideas. The next one will be a short (five pages or so) tale called ‘The Other One’, which should benefit from being a lot tighter and more focused. Hopefully it’ll be done and ready in a week or so.
In the meantime, feel free to give Beanfield a read. Comments, as always, welcome.
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