Sean J Halford
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Everything posted by Sean J Halford
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Not too long, I promise. But I need to sort out a few plot threads. Besides, don't all good seasons of a TV series end on a cliffhanger to entice viewers to watch the next one? 😂
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As I walked up to the party, it felt like I was boarding a cruise ship. The house floated in the night, a gaudy wedding cake, lit up garishly against the black skies. Three drunk guys, arms linked and stumbling around, formed a moving Cerberus as I entered the vestibule. A Goth girl with purple Doc Martens was slumped against the wall. She looked me up and down while taking slow drags from a roll-up cigarette. I recognised Pearl Jam throbbing from the living room. There must have been at lea
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The grandparents didn’t say anything when I stumbled into their hallway half an hour later. Someone must have called and told them, because Grandpa just gave me a hug and walked back ito his study and put on some Mozart.I ran back into my dad’s old room and starfished myself on the bed, trying to inhale the linen. It smelled musty, of my sweat from the previous night and the mothballs that lived permanently in the closet. I could smell Graeme's awful hair gel too, and something else... somet
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Thanks! Pleased you're enjoying it. Haven't written a long work in a while so it will be interesting to see where it goes.
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Graeme and Liam were very quiet all morning. Maybe we’d just all settled into a comfortable zone. Or a shy one: I mentioned going to the lake again, but nobody seemed keen. After an hour of geometry that bent my brain into more angles than Euclid could ever have imagined, I'd had enough. I stared out at the garden. Ivy snaked up against the old pine trees; I could make up a bloom of toadstools flanking the edge of the woods. A strange sadness welled up my core: I felt old, terribly old.
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Glad you like it! Enjoy JHB. Who knows, maybe we could meet for a coffee when you're down my side.
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Thank you for all the cheerleading! Posting frequency will probably slow down now as I've only outlined three more chapters and it's clear this thing wants to head to novel length. I'm a notorious "seat-of-the-pants" writer...
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We played video games and watched cartoons for most of the morning, then got onto our bikes and rode to Milford’s on the main street. It was the first place to offer cappuccinos and Americanos when the country finally discovered that coffee was not necessarily a stale powder of chicory and pencil shavings. Liam was already sitting at one of the booths, sipping a vanilla milkshake that looked oddly dainty in his big hands. “Hey, Brody. Solomon.” I imagined Graeme’s bones snapping as
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Hahaha yes it has been a while. I sort of went dormant after the success of "Lions" I admit. I have written other stuff, but not as SJH (spoiler alert: my creative life wears many hats). My writing's in a different place now than it was in 2011, but I hope to never stop doing this. PM me if you'd like to see some of my other stuff. Thanks for the vote of confidence!
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Okay lol, fuck it, I'm going to turn it into a novella. This is why I love and hate interacting with readers 🤣... now for the hassle of rewriting this as a first chapter.
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The last suicides had been the previous winter, in the middle of an unseasonable fog. Their bodies had washed up on the lakeshore. If it hadn’t been for the note they left in the girl’s home we’d all have sworn the Butcher had escaped and was back at large. The municipality had even put up a sign at the top of the highest cliff that said “IT’S NOT WORTH IT” with a number for a 24-hour helpline. It never bothered me. On weekends I’d hike up to the cliffs and sit with my legs dangling over th
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Thank you so much! So lovely to interact with readers again and thank you for your kind words. "Lions" has been formally published now after a major edit, and I'm pleased to say it seems to have stood the test of time. It's on Amazon.
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Thanks again! I had intended this as a standalone... but maybe it could work as a novella? Though it would possibly mean removing Seth's declaration of love for Balt right now, and only reveal it at the climax of the first act or at least .a later story beat... so many possibilities...
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The thing I miss most is food. The sun I can live without, and, as I've aged, I can actually go out for a few hours before it starts to burn me. Noon would fry me within minutes, of course. But food... oh, to feel a steak or ratatouille melt in my mouth, oh for the dreamy butteriness of soft egg yolk sliding down my throat, these things I miss almost like a lover torn from his soulmate. It turns to ash in my mouth and I'm spectacularly nauseous for hours. Mikey, one of the newer ones I met at a
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It's hard being well-behaved when you're the hottest vampire in the city and pining over a girl you're too scared to involve in all your supernatural drama. It's even harder when your best bro and roommate is werewolf jock who's sending you all these mixed signals.
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We Lift Them Up To The Lord
Sean J Halford commented on Sean J Halford's story chapter in We Lift Them Up To The Lord
Why, thank you! The story actually resulted from an academic assignment (I am busy with an MFA in Creative Writing) where we had to craft a short story inspired by existing fiction; in this case it was the haunting ending from James Joyce's "The Dead", which, while having no supernatural element, is a searingly bittersweet study in loss. The paragraph where Scott falls into the sea is a direct response to the story's last paragraph, so I have to give Joyce credit. I'm humbled that people seemed to like it. Here's a link to the actual paragraph if you're interested: https://medium.com/drmstream/snow-was-general-all-over-ireland-the-last-paragraph-of-joyces-the-dead-48b08b4c3b1f -
Thank you! Been a while since I attempted a long(ish) work... but good to be back in the saddle here after (gasp) seven years!
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Thank you!
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“...into that world inverted where left is always right, where the shadows are really the body, where we stay awake all night, where the heavens are shallow as the sea is now deep, and you love me.” —Elizabeth Bishop, “Insomnia” * Somewhere, November 1993 My grandfather liked to write bad poetry. It was almost always self-involved, bigoted and rank with clichés. He clunked out pages and pages of it an old Underwood typewriter he'd bought at a church baz
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In the summer of 1993, a group of high school friends in a small town are forced to grow up overnight when love, bigotry, betrayal and mystery rain down on them in equal amounts.
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We Lift Them Up To The Lord
Sean J Halford commented on Sean J Halford's story chapter in We Lift Them Up To The Lord
Hahaha... the Kiwis would disagree with you: (I'm neutral; I'm a Saffer lol) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/11895654/Who-invented-the-flat-white-Row-breaks-out-between-Australian-and-New-Zealand-cafe-owners.html -
Thanks so much for reading and for the review. While the idea of exploring Scott's further relationship(s) is tempting, this was always going to be a self-contained short story; I'll leave it up to the reader to imagine what the future holds for him.
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The light is wrong... The rollerball Scott had bought specially for the journal was leaking. It was already an awkward process: he was using his lap as a desk, because he was too cold to get out of bed. He had promised himself he’d jot down at least a few thoughts every day. The shrink had told him keeping a journal would be good for him. The light is wrong, he wrote again. It’s like the sun’s hesitant to rise or something. I know the days get shorter the further you go south. At least i
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While on holiday with his family, all Scott wants is to read, watch the ocean, and have some quiet time away from the pressures of being a straight-A student and captain of the rugby team. His pesky younger brother isn't helping things much, always butting in with questions Scott would rather not answer. For Scott has a secret. As Easter looms, conversations between the brothers grow darker and more poignant as Scott's family deals with emotional wounds that have isolated parents and children from one another.
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Hey guys, thank you so much! I'm very pleased with the final edition, having gone through a proper editing process. You'll find it on the Amazon Kindle store.. currently on special (nudge nudge wink wink For legal reasons, this meant that it had to be taken off GA. However, I have a few free electronic copies that I could send to a few of you interested; all I would ask is for you to write an honest review of the book on Amazon. Big hugs to you all and thank you for the support! I will always be so grateful to the wonderful people here on GA.
