Somewhat Less Than Thirty Pieces

Inspiration

Somewhat Less Than Thirty Pieces was originally written for Task Nine of the 2007-8 SlingInk Eurofiction Competition. The prompt used was "Write a story about betrayal". It was placed sixth equal out of a total field of 57.

Placings

Somewhat Less Than Thirty Pieces was longlisted for the March 2008 Cadenza competition.

Publications

I subsequently realised there was an opportunity for a gratuitous point-of-view switch in the story, so I inserted that before sending it off to The Right-Eyed Deer. Donna Gagnon-Pugh then made a further editorial suggestion, which resulted in the final paragraph being added. I was very pleased with this, as it brought the story - and, in fact the entire Dot Dash collection - to a tidy conclusion.

Notes

This story was originally written in desperation when I was running out of time for something to write for Eurofiction. It is, frankly, more than a little self-indulgent, as it's largely an excuse for a whole slew of metafictional gags at the expense of creative writing. It also has absolutely nothing to do with betrayal, either. I was quite pleased with the interplay between the footnotes and the rest of the story, though, and I do like the way that the ending actually takes the storyline back into the footnotes. As soon as I'd written it, I realised that it would be the perfect story to end a collection on. Which is why it's there, obviously.