- you know those folks who excavate a dinosaur's vertebra and reconstruct an entire skeleton from it - The idea for a story usually comes from the story itself, no more no less. I stumble across a single bone, usually without searching (the world is littered with story bones and a writer basically has to decide which ones are worth reconstructing). My first 'Waterside' story, The Destitute, came that way. Which bone I found? the first sentence: 'In the morning they found him lying by the roadside, not ten metres from Ma'Comfy's buka .' ... (To study this slightly psychotic process in more detail [ala Reality Lit], follow the reconstruction of Killing my Neighbour's Cat, here.)
Here then, are some short stories. The (Hired) Coffin is from my 1999 book, African Tales at Jailpoint, while Evidence of the Stew is from my 2003 book, One More Tale for the Road.
© Chuma Nwokolo, Jr.
