© Still Here Magazine
A few weeks ago, Paul McAllister, the penname under which I write realistic fiction set in Ireland, had a short story published in the digital magazine Still Here. (By ‘realistic’, I mean not horror or fantasy stories, which I write under two other pennames, Jim Mountfield and Rab Foster.) It pleases me to report that that the Still Here team has also published a ‘mini-issue’ to coincide with Christmas, entitled A Light in December, and it contains a further Paul McAllister story.
This new one is called The Recovery. It adheres to the theme of A Light in December, in that it takes place during the festive month. However, the idea for the story himself comes from a conversation I once had with a distant relative in Northern Ireland – at Christmas – when he recounted something that’d happened to him: a misunderstanding between him and some old friends of his dad. He tried to present the misunderstanding to me as being funny, but it was actually rather sad when I thought about it.
The term ‘mini-issue’ suggests a small, slim publication, but in fact A Light in December puts many full-scale magazines to shame. It’s 98 pages long and into those pages editor Alauna Lester has packed 19 poems and five pieces of prose. Design-wise, it’s gorgeous to look at and, best of all, it’s free to download. Please obtain a copy of this lovely magazine at its home page, here, or its ‘issues’ page, here.