The Short Stories of Brian Lowe

"A wise man writes his thoughts; a fool scribbles whatever comes into his mind."
Reading has been a passion all my life: I could read at a grade three level while still in grade one. I have been writing short stories and poems since about grade eight. The stories presented here are in approximate chronological order.

Index to the Short Stories Pages

* A Friend Indeed
* Victory for Amaros
* The Mall
* Dreams

* Guided Tour

A Friend Indeed

 I wrote A Friend Indeed in 1978 as part of my grade twelve Language Arts course. The teacher had assigned his students to write a short story over the Christmas holidays. It did not need to be fancy, "just two or so pages, handwritten if you prefer." That was a departure from his regular assignments which had to be type-written. "You can write about anything you want," he said, "except cars. If I don't make that restriction, I'll get in thirty-two stories about cars!"

It took me some time to figure out a theme for my submission, but eventually I wrote about a hypothetical situation where Santa's elves (described by one person as a bunch of subordinate Clauses) are not quite as happy in their jobs as everyone seems to think.

I have kept true to the original format of the story, resisting the urge to edit something I had written over a decade before. Thus I did not correct some of the glaring problems with the plot and maudlin dialogue and pacing. The omission of quotation marks was a deliberate device I had used then, and I maintain it here.

Despite its shortcomings, I like this story. I really should re-write it, applying the skills I have learned in years following that Christmas and make it into a real story. And perhaps one of these years I will, but for now I will keep it as it is.

* Read "A Friend Indeed"
* Back to top of page
* Guided Tour

Victory for Amaros

 Victory for Amaros has perhaps the most unusual origin of any in this collection. Its history goes back to another interest of mine known as the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard.

How does a typewriter keyboard layout relate to a short story? Well, I had read an article a few years before I wrote this story about something called the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard, or DSK. It was invented in the 1930s by a man of the same name doing research on the optimum layout for a typewriter keyboard. Not many people realize that the standard layout, known as QWERTY, was designed to slow down the typist and prevent jams in the 1890 version of the typewriter! We have suffered with it ever since.

Putting the soapbox aside, I wrote a program in 1982 to determine the efficiencies of both the QWERTY and DSK layouts. Of course, such a program requires input data to come up with its numbers. I could have just sat there and typed, but since I intended on running the program more than once I decided I should put the input data into a file. At the same time, I had been mulling over an idea for an "unfairy" fairy tale. No beautiful maiden or handsome knight here - just two ugly people who happen to like each other. And so was born this story.

* Read "Victory for Amaros"
* Back to top of page
* Guided Tour

The Mall

 At approximately 12,000 words, The Mall is the most ambitious short story I have written. Many feel it is also one of my best. It certainly is my favourite: I like the characters and the situation they are in. The idea for the story came in a dream I had one night about a group of travellers getting lost in a mall that had no exits. I was participating in a writing group at the time and its members gave me a lot of helpful hints for improving the base story.

* Read "The Mall"
* Back to top of page
* Guided Tour

Dreams

 Dreams is another story from the writing group. A member of the group had come up with the phrase that serves as the two opening sentences of this story, and we each tried our hand at writing a story based on them.

This particular piece received praise from another writer, also a member of the group, who said in his opinion it was the best piece I had done while I was with them, and even today encourages me to send it somewhere to see if they would be interested in publishing it. With the runaway success of Jurassic Park, perhaps Steven Spielberg might be interested.

Myself, I prefer some of the other stories, but I will let the reader decide the merits of this one.

* Read "Dreams"
* Back to top of page

Guided Tour

[Next] "A Friend Indeed"
[Previous] What I Don't Like!
[Next Section] Middle-Earth Role Playing Pages
[Home] Brian Lowe's Home Page
A Friend Indeed | Victory For Amaros | The Mall | Dreams
Personal | MERP | Hamster | Miscellaneous
Brian Lowe / Winnipeg PC User Group / blowe@wpcusrgrp.org
Last updated on September 15, 1996. Accesses since September 30, 1998: (Counter image not available)