The Ministry of Time
By Kiliane Bradley
Narrated by George Weightman & Katie Leung
Published by Hodder and Stourton
07 May 2024
Running time 10hr 23min
This is the first time I have reviewed an audio book.
I was drawn to this by the title. I was intrigued as to whether it was connected to the Spanish TV series of a similar name, from the synopsis I deduced it was not, the title is coincidental.
I have been asked in the past where I get ideas from for my Writing. We’re talking fiction here, I’ve included in an earlier article an overview of how I research for facts for OP Eds, or Cuxton if I’m needing facts.
Shakur do I get ideas like squirrels with human-like faces? Or strange creatures? Or even an everyday person?
This story is linked to a story I am working on for an Anthology that I hope to put out. The Anthology will be short stories, not necessarily linked but all in the same “Universe”.
This story does not directly use any main character from the Anthology.
It does use an object from several of the main stories so I’m being vague below and just referring to it as “the object”.
You can put that down to this character being an Unreliable Narrator. The characters in this story don’t exactly know what “the object” is.
Indeed them not knowing is exactly what this story is about.
I was playing Pathfinder finder tonight with some friends. On the way home I mentioned a Superhero setting I used to run.
I don’t say much about it for now. Brief details only. That’s because I may do a short story book using the setting so don’t want too much revealed.
Suffice to say the Heroes were in the setting known as Rogues and were Freedom Fighters. The Country they lived on was supposedly a Social Democracy bit was in fact a rather nasty Police State. Setting was the “very near future” an indetermined “fee years” ahead of now in a parallel world.
Here is an excerpt of an idea that may make it on to the short story collection. This is a draft I’ve written in one go tonight, not a finished story. It is a writing exercise for me Continue reading
I’m working on multiple projects at the moment, slowly building on them.
Hopefully some will be revealed over the coming months. One hopefully ready to discuss in May. Others might be sooner, certainly some later.
Short stories published at the moment are almost certainly not part of those projects. This one however is adjacent to the project I hope to announce in May. It could end up being worked in to that project but spoils nothing for what I hope to reveal in May.
Short stories come to me quickly, often without any planning. This is one such example.
The premis came fully formed. Not just the topic but the delivery.
Short stories need few characters, this had only one unnamed female character.
All stories need to set a scene, tell us the needs and wants of a character. There should be some form of conflict or concern. The reader should understand what the needs are and resolving conflict should make sense in the scene.
I think I achieved all those aims in this story. Hopefully without revealing the outcome too quickly.
I’ve not written a short story for a while.
This is a self contained story that I’ve written and edited in one sitting.
It isn’t really intended to be a finished piece. Nor is it intended to have any expansion. It is simply an exercise in writing. Just getting something on a “page”.
There’s a partly written comic somewhere, aren’t there a lot of those? In that story I established the basics for a setting that ties in to the Western short story I recently shared.
Rules I decided for the world in that unfinished comic are consistent with this one. This story is set in the first weeks of a Pandemic (sorry/not sorry).
I wrote this in roughly half an hour, no major edit.
Here is a short story written in one sitting with minimal edits. In this case I spent 20 Minutes writing.
I will try to do a few of these alongside my (at least) Daily Poem.
This story is the first draft of a story I sent to someone who wanted a Cowboy/Zombie story for an RPG he is working on. It got rejected so I haven’t taken it past first draft. I was going to expand it, this is more or less just an intro and would have been maybe half as long again and then followed up with an action scene.
I may still return to this, but thought I’d share it. Continue reading
Judge-Tutor Semple 