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 6th equal out of a total field of 57. The (unnamed) judge commented that it was "inspired and intelligent satire. Love it!"

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.