My contribution to the (2020) pandemic kitchen party posts that
are all the rage on Facebook consists of a short piece of fiction recorded and
posted to YouTube. The kitchen party contributions (on FB) are exclusively for
musical performances. While my story has a musical theme, it doesn’t fit for
two reasons: I can’t play any instruments or sing, and it (the story) would be
far too long for a Facebook post (it’s about a half hour). So, YouTube (and
Peter Rose) to the rescue. A downloadable audio-only file (podcast) is coming shortly.
There are lots of great performances on that Facebook site,
by the way, I invite you to check it out – just search out Ultimate Nove Scotia
Kitchen Party (Covid-19 edition).
By way of introduction, since moving to West Bay, Cape
Breton in 2016, I’ve been working on a collection of short fiction tentatively
titled Local Colour: Stories from The
Landing and Elsewhere. The Landing is a fictional village loosely based on
local geography and a few local histories and anecdotes – all greatly
exaggerated, of course, and most attempting to highlight and honour the deep,
but somewhat overgrown culture of the Highland Gaels who steaded the Bras d’Or
Lake watershed a hundred-plus years ago.
Most of the stories in the collection are humourous (I
hope), some are not. This story is
not (I hope), except for a little quips here and there.
Like most of the collection the story is set against the
backdrop of Scots-Gaelic culture. I call it “Mac-Talla – The Echo.” That being
the Gaelic, and the English meaning. It was somewhat inspired by West Bay piper Rod MacInnis, who sometimes practices while walking along the beach near the village. Mac-Talla, by the way, was the name of a
19th-century Scots-Gaelic newspaper published in Cape Breton.
A much earlier version of this story was in answer to a
writing challenge in which the genre and a couple of random details were
prescribed, from which competitors were to craft a short story over a period of
a week. I think the requisites were speculative fiction (a genre that doesn’t
interest me in the least), an audition, and dirty fingernails, of all things. Anyway,
my entry failed to make the cut, but I thought there was a kernel of something
better there and went back to it several times over the last couple of years
resulting in what I’m sharing here.
Thanks to Peter Rose for assisting with the entire process.
Link here to Part One of “Mac Talla / The Echo” by me, Mike R Hunter.
Link here to Part Two of "Mac Talla / The Echo" by me, Mike R Hunter.
Link here to Part Two of "Mac Talla / The Echo" by me, Mike R Hunter.
Link here to an audio-only version. Choose "download" and a player should open.
