Tag: Alauna Lester

Posted on

Christmas comes on time for Paul McAllister

 

© 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.

Posted on

Paul McAllister is still here

 

© Still Here Magazine

 

Still Here magazine, an online publication that publishes poetry, short stories, essays and artwork focusing on “emotional realism, grounded storytelling, and honest writing that isn’t afraid to bleed a little”, has just published its second issue under the title Ghosts of Our Pasts.  I’m happy to report that Paul McAllister, the pseudonym I use for the occasional piece of fiction I write that’s grounded in reality and set in Ireland, has a short story included in this new issue, entitled That Time.

 

In keeping with the issue’s theme of the past persisting into the present – in the words of Still Here’s editor Alauna Lester, “even what follows us can still lead us forward” – That Time is inspired by a memory of something that happened to me as a kid in Northern Ireland in the 1970s.  At the time it seemed a trivial, and indeed comical, incident.  But with hindsight, and in the context of the madhouse that was 1970s Northern Ireland, it was rather terrifying too.  No wonder the memory has stuck with me.

 

Containing 33 poems, nine prose pieces and four works of art, and formatted in a manner that’s beautifully and hauntingly visual, Issue Two of Still Here can be downloaded here as a pdf, for free.  You rarely get something of such quality for nothing these days, so I urge you to sample it!