Telling stories: human beings are the only creatures on earth who do this strange thing.
We all use stories to understand the kind of creatures we are - family stories, tales of our communities, sacred stories, national stories.
We make up brilliant stories too, and they tell us the truth about ourselves in a million different ways.
Stories are very near the heart of human nature. We are the story-telling animals.
What I’m going to do here is to talk about stories that have had a big impact on me, stories I’ve read in books or on the news, or seen in the movies or on TV or in a theater, or heard from my parents or my friends. And maybe as we proceed I’ll put up original stories of my own too, fictions that you won’t be able to read anywhere else.
A lot of that will be on here for free. Some of it won’t be, including a new, unpublished, full-length fiction I’ll be putting up in installments every week. If you decide to become a paid subscriber you’ll be able to read that, and more of my made-up stories, as well as personal stories, the stories behind the stories I’ll be telling, and sometimes I’ll ask you questions, too, and we can have a conversation about it all.
The point of doing this is to have a closer relationship with readers, to speak freely, without any intermediaries or gatekeepers. There’s just us here, just you and me, and we can take this wherever it goes. I hope you’ll enjoy that. I know I will.
I’ll be posting at least twice a week, more often if I’m bursting to tell you something.
So. Let’s go. Let’s talk about stories.
