Sam Bigglesworth's collection A Beautiful Place to Die demonstrates his ability to capture a character's pivotal moment. I often found myself invested in the characters to the point I wished their story continued.
The fourteen stories are quite diverse. Some are open-ended, some have a surprise or shock ending. Characters have a moment of life-altering clarity, lessons are learned, frailties uncovered, alliances made or severed. Shocking conclusions come in several of the stories.
The Watcher Woman is set in a dystopia where starving women living in urban decay encounter a callous, well-fed man.
The Soldier of Luxury is about a competitive, self-satisfied man trusting in the wrong things.
In The Wizard of the Forest a son watches his idolized father wield 'tree magic' but soon learns the limits of influence. A father teaches a life lesson to his daughter in The Coral Tailed Waffle Bird.
A dementia patient challenges her care workers in Where's Amit. A Beautiful Place to Die tells the heartbreaking story of a dying woman endeavoring to control her last days, cast out by a cold world.
The protagonist in The Dog Whisperer needs a purpose in life and adopts a rescue dog. The story recalled my own experience of adopting a troubled but lovable puppy mill rescue dog.
The writing is very descriptive and engages all the senses. Each story is illustrated with quality black and white art.
The stories are set in and around Manchester, England, where Bigglesworth lives.
I asked Bigglesworth to talk about his writing.
My writing career started in 2014 with a blog; in 2015, I decided to commit to writing fiction long term.
Towards the end of the year, after a few online courses and a great deal of time writing, I self-published my first novella, a character based comedy about one man’s love affair with nature, entitled ‘The Woods, The Jungle, The Sea’. It was inspired by experiences I had visiting remote parts of Patagonia, Bolivia, and Colombia. It has sold one-hundred copies and received generally positive reviews.
From that experience, I decided to wait longer and take each project through more edits before self-publishing it. I wanted to try writing in different voices, from a variety of characters' perspectives, and develop my writing style, so I began writing this short story collection.
I wrote this collection because I love stories which humanise people and show their flaws. Many people who appear unremarkable from the outside have remarkable stories to tell. Pain and growth are common to all our lives.
It began as 23 stories, then I picked the very best fourteen stories of those and polished and re-wrote them until I was proud of them. Add a set of illustrations from Henry Boon and editing advice from a professional editor and we have something really special that I am very proud to show the world.
Some of the stories are literal, but most of them have a hidden deeper meaning which take a little thought to understand. I really hope you enjoy them and I would love to hear what you thought and how you interpreted the stories!
I received a free ebook from the author in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.
Find A Beautiful Place to Die at Amazon for $2.99.
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