Charlie's latest newsletter

[charlie_cochrane]

Hi all. Well, Mr C and I have got over Covid and we’re back almost to a hundred percent activity. Well, ninety-five percent, anyway. Spring has sprung and our part of England is awash with blossom and new leaves. (I say our part, because for a small country, you get a lot of variety over here in terms of when things spring into bloom.)
 
News
 
There’s one of those Bookfunnel themed events on at present – a number of you have told me you really like them and that they help you to find different books to read. There are some really good authors and really good books here.
  

 
If second chances at love aren’t your cuppa, then keep an eye out for the next promo event, which has a military theme.
 
Free stories: I’ve been carrying on the big sort out of my free fiction page, with the final two bits being the trickiest. Well, anything that involves those two Cambridge Fellows is never simple. There are loads of extra stories about them, often featured on various blogs, and with time many of the links have become broken. So I’ve been gathering up the rag, tag and bobtail of the odder stories, which you’ll find on my website as the “Alternative universe” tales.  I hope you enjoy them.
 
Special offers: You can currently buy three of my stories at prices under £2 or indeed $2! Lessons in Love is on special offer and both Promises Made Under Fire and Dreams Of A Hero are always at a bargain price.
 
Today’s excerpt has to be from my novella Second Helpings. 
 
Stuart Collins’s life might as well have ended a year ago when his partner died in a car crash. Even Stuart’s widowed father has found new love with an old friend, Isabel Franklin, so why can’t Stuart be bothered to try?
Then he gets a phone call from Isabel’s son, Paul, who wants to check out whether or not Mr. Collins is good enough for his mother. During dinner together, though, they end up checking out each other. Trouble is, Paul’s got a boyfriend—or maybe he doesn’t, since the boyfriend’s supposedly giving Paul the push by ignoring him. Or maybe Paul just wants to have his cake and eat it too.
Honesty with each other is the only way to move forward. But maybe honesty with themselves is what they really need.
 
Some accident of the light, illumination from the pub garden streaming through a window and catching Paul’s hair, produced a halo. The effect was frightening. That’s just how Mark had appeared when Stuart had first seen him—in a pub of all places, sitting in a stream of sunlight, motes of dust dancing about his head like pinhead angels.  He hadn’t thought of that first meeting in an age, deliberately shutting off those memories of happier times.
“I asked whether your dad and my mum were an item once.” Paul gently tapped the table top.
“Sorry.” Stuart winced, as though that hand had struck him. “I was miles away. Almost like I saw a ghost.”
Paul studied him for a moment, then looked away. He produced a rueful smile, one which softened the angles of his face. “I thought I’d said something I shouldn’t.”
“No, you’re okay. It’s just...” Stuart pulled his beer towards him then pushed it away again. He wasn’t sure he wanted it any more. “My partner died last year. Sometimes it still feels like yesterday.”
“Oh, God, I’m sorry. I had no idea.” Paul grimaced. He’d grown pale, as pale as some of the victims Stuart had come across at work, deep in shock and wondering why the hell this was happening to them. “Mum didn’t warn me.”
“Perhaps she doesn’t know. Dad doesn’t particularly like discussing it.” Stuart looked at the table, like a chess player weighing up the next move among the beer mats and glasses. “He’s taken a hell of a long time to get over Mum dying. Mark’s death brought it all back and he’s only just finding his feet again.”
“Mark?”
“My partner.” Well, there was a decisive move. Paul would know he was gay.
“Mark was your partner?”
“Yes. Got a problem with that?” Stuart wondered if he’d drawn the homophobe in the pack.
“No.” Paul shook his head. “Would it help to talk about him?”
Stuart’s tide of anger came like Paul’s offer: sudden, unexpected and uncomfortable. He didn’t even know what he was cross about. “Why? So you can vet me, too?”
“No. God, no. I’m gay as well. I had no idea you were.”
“Oh, sorry, didn’t I make it clear as I came in? Should have worn my pink scarf and mascara. Then we could have joined the great queer conspiracy together.” It should have made it easier, the common nature: it didn’t. And, with a sudden clarity of thought he’d not felt in ages, Stuart realised the attraction he felt—and felt so guilty about—was putting a barrier between them.
 
 
Charlie