Hidden Shallows

Inspiration

Hidden Shallows was originally written for Task Nine of the 2008-9 SlingInk Eurofiction Competition. The prompt used was "Write a story set on or near water". It was the round winner out of a total field of unknown size (probably between 20 and 30).

Publications

Hidden Shallows was submitted to Every Day Fiction, where it was published on September 1st, 2009.

Notes

I'd been itching to write a story called Hidden Shallows for some time, although I'd no idea what form it might take. I just liked the idea of producing a collection called Hidden Shallows and Other Stories, largely because it reflected how I felt about the profundity (or rather the lack of it) in my writing. So when this prompt came up, I leapt at it. I liked the idea of turning a cliché on its head and having a couple of hyper-intelligent women fantasising about sex with a dumb bloke. The funny thing about the story is that I felt it was so slight that no-one would like it at all, but I've always had very positive comments about it - especially from men. Strong, sexy, intelligent women are clearly a good thing.

Oddly enough, this story was cited by Wordnik as an example of the use of the word treacle. I'm still not sure quite what to make of this.