Sean J Halford

Possibly, but I think poor Caleb accidentally took out two eyes instead of one. 😅

‘Cal! Wait, bru!’ I looked back and saw him struggling with his sweat pants, still bare-chested. He tripped and fell face-down in the mud and cursed. I turned and nipped into the pine plantation that skirted the school’s southern border. I put my back against a tree to hide from the worst of the downpour. The rain was a thick sheet and I could hardly see a metre in front of me. ‘Cal! Please man.’ His voice was closer. ‘I know you’re here.’ I heard him scrambling around, and tri

Oh gosh the comments are coming in thick and fast but it means people are reading 😂😂 so to clarify: (1) Fridays before a game were always rest days for the rugby team at my school. (2) St Francis is a Catholic school so no obligatory extra murals would take place on a Friday afternoon except for those going to Catechism. Cal is utilising open time at the pool (3) St Francis is a private, fairly wealthy school and it is the mid-2000s… this sort of thing did (and does) go down from time to time when the adults are not looking (or purposefully turning a blind eye to its prime sports team who have been on a winning streak). Rugby is very much a religion at traditionally white SA schools. (4) I must point out that St Francis is moreover a fictional school drawn from many different sources and school systems and can differ within countries and between countries. (5) Top marks for imago — moth, and recall that Cal got Chris to read Virginia Woolf’s “The Death of the Moth” I am sitting here smirking that I’ve generated so much discussion 😇

Hit the nail on the head!

Oops! Thanks for that! My messy mind, not Cal's. Fixed!

Friday afternoons used to be when I went to catechism. Friday afternoons were when I yielded myself to dogma, ate fish for lunch and thought, because I did these things, I would spin my doubt into a cocoon of faith and, in chrysalis, glimpse the infinite in verses and lines that were copies of copies of copies of things written in tongues no longer spoken. I had studied and still my mother’s tumour had spread. I had prayed and still my mother had lost her hair. I had knelt before

Neither did I, neither did I 🤣 I felt genuinely bad for my make-believe lads when I wrote this XD

You're too kind, sir. Pleased you are enjoying.

Update: have now spent a whole afternoon tightening up this chapter. Deleted a scene, condensed the others, and murdered a few darlings. It flows a bit better, I think, without me having to be too on the nose with foreshadowing.

I see your point (s). Maybe I should cut a scene or two and make the foreshadowing I sprinkled into each scene a bit more obvious. Let’s see if it pays off in the next few chapters.

Haha glad you enjoyed. Rob needed some attention in the storyline

The mercury was plummeting. I didn’t mind the cold so much as the awful dark mornings—the tip of Africa being the victim of an inconvenient meridian. One wet June afternoon I found myself gathering up his stuff that had slowly been conquering my room. The winter rains were buffeting the peninsula with ever-growing battalions of storm fronts that drifted up from the Subantarctic. ‘What are you doing?’ he said, rubbing his eyes. We had collapsed together for a snuggle after finishin

Hahaha. I love being meta and breaking the fourth wall now and then.

Hahaha. I love being meta and breaking the fourth wall now and then.

You're welcome...it's perhaps a lullaby for Chris, maybe?

The poet of the piano.

Fiona found a clinic with an intensive six week program half an hour south of the city. We fetched Chris the day before his mother started treatment. He looked pretty shaken when they said goodbye. Chris moved into Sarah’s old room—at least, this was the official story that, I suppose, would help my father sleep soundly. And I do think Devon MacLeod was sleeping more soundly. Ever my little tumble at the Waterfront, a little brightness had appeared in my father’s eyes. The pictures of

I'm glad it worked! I was wondering how my teenage self would react to such doom and gloom and the Star Wars reference just seemed appropriate with the guys' mid-2000s cultural landscape

Yup. And sadly Brian's behaviour actually happens in real life people really do have their blind spots. I'll admit it's a challenge to write villains that are also believable... Brian is not a serial killer or a demon, but he certainly has racked up some karma against him if I as storyteller have anything to hint at

PART THREE Zenith and Nadir I was spending an excruciating Saturday morning at the dining room table trying to cram for my learner’s licence exam when the doorbell rang. I looked up through the bay windows to our front garden and saw the top of the green Jeep I knew so well parked on the side of the road. ‘That was quick,’ I said over the intercom. I’d texted Chris just two hours ago to wish him luck for his visit with his dad. I clicked the button to open the gate and jogged ou

Thank you so much! And you're welcome. (I've also now posted the full translation of the Psalm extract that Cal's dad recites at the end of the chapter, because I realise I'd only posted part of it initially). Great to hear you have an SA connection

This is... very high praise and I don't know what to say except thank you.

Work does indeed suck. But it (barely) pays the bills. I've given up hope that I'll make a full-time career out of writing, but I do know now that writing is good for me. The bonus is that some of you seem to like what I write. So I'll carry on. I'm glad you like the diary entries (this particular chapter is completely new) I've always felt Chris needed a bit more depth to him; in the very first draft he was a little too flat as the "golden boy" despite his daddy issues. I'll admit I started writing him as a fantasy boyfriend (all first novels are autobiographical in some way). I think he's more realistic now... both more realistically flawed but also more convincingly just on the cusp on nineteen and feeling the pain of growing up. It is quite annoying when you read young characters but they come off as old as their writers... and I'm trying to cover up my past transgressions in this regard, haha.

This is wonderful! I am a huge Woolf fan so to know a bit more about her and her people as it were is great. Not sure if you've come across this, the only recording of her voice:

Nicely spotted!