This is my obligatory blog-post for a new release…this time it’s As the Crows Fly, which is another short story—11,500 words—in the Reworked Celtic Myths collection. The stories are a loose set of contemporary stories set in Wales, and the seed of each one comes from a Welsh or Irish legend.
The seed for As the Crows Fly is the story of St Kevin. He is the patron saint of crows and ravens, which is why I chose him. He is said to have been born in 498 CE and died in 618 and spent a long time being a hermit in a small cave in Glendalough in Ireland, where a large teaching monastery eventually grew up around him. He liked animals a lot more than people and apparently once nearly drowned a lady who tried to seduce him. He didn’t succeed—she became a nun instead. He is said to have stood still for weeks when a blackbird made a nest in his hand and laid an egg there, waiting for the egg to hatch.
I didn’t put any of that in, because drowning your lovers is a bit off and standing still for weeks waiting for eggs to hatch is an unexciting story. I just took the crows bit and the animals bit and ran with it, and here we are!
I had fun writing it and I hope you enjoy the story.
As the Crows Fly
Paul Webster has come out the army after a twenty-two year stretch with a trick hip and no idea what to do with his life. He takes a few weeks walking along the Welsh coast to get his head on straight.
Kevin Davies is a veterinary nurse and an artist. He’s getting lonelier and lonelier in his cottage on the edge of the sea, kept company by his cats and a friendly flock of crows.
What happens when the two men hunker down together to wait out a wild March gale?
A 11,500-word short story in the Reworked Celtic Myths series. This time, there are crows.
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