As promised, here’s one of my flash fiction pieces, which was written live on air on my Instagram show. It needs a bit of spit and polish, but I was pleasantly surprised at how fully formed it came out at the time. Enjoy!
I only just noticed the cat. Margaret always loved cats. Always had cats. And the one that was right there on the other side of the street staring at me looked just like her family’s first cat, Roger. Fantastic name for a cat. We’d never met, but I’d seen photos. I don’t know why, but I knew that he wanted me to follow him. My instincts seemed correct, because as soon as I went to move across the road, he came halfway to meet me, but before I’d even got to the other side, I heard a massive crash from behind me, where I’d been stood seconds earlier. It was the scaffolding. It had collapsed. If I hadn’t moved… I looked down to thank the cat, but he was gone.
I write novels and short stories and draw and write cartoons. The main cartoon I'm working on at the moment is Still Life. It's about a man who sits at home on his sofa all day and yet bizarre things still happen to him. At the moment him and his sofa are stuck on a desert island. Check out Still Life Series Five: Beyond the Sofa on this site.
My debut novel is out now. It's called 'A Fifth Visitor', and it's a very unofficial sequel to 'A Christmas Carol'. The story picks up five years after the events of Dickens' classic, and we see how Scrooge is getting on with his promise to always keep Christmas. A new spirit pays him a visit and convinces Scrooge that he's not doing enough to redeem himself, so they both travel to the future to save a young nurse called Grace, but there's something big that this new spirit is keeping to himself. I'm developing a website dedicated to my writing, so watch this space. One of my short stories is available on amazon kindle. If you want to check it out, it's called 'Richmond's Rarity'. It's about a late night hospital radio DJ. I've written it under my author name of John D Payne.
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JOHN D. PAYNE IS WRITING 