12+   Episode 87 (15 February 2024): If you ask me, the Moon is the best object in the night sky. And you don't need an expensive telescope to observe it. A pair of binoculars does the trick. I'm looking at the Moon now, leaning against a wall to steady my hands, and it's a beautiful sight. No wonder it inspires poets and lovers.

Furious Fiction is a short story writing challenge run by the Australian Writers' Centre on the first weekend of the month. I have submitted an entry to every Furious Fiction since my first in April 2020 (A Song on the Radio). Except for the October 2023 challenge, when I was in Perth on a whirlwind trip for a family wedding.

To satisfy my Furious Fiction fix, I decided to write an unofficial short story, as I did in 2022 when the challenge briefly moved from monthly to quarterly, using October's brief and respecting the 55-hour deadline.

However, the following weekend, I was involved in the Voice to Parliament Referendum in Australia and the next, while still in shock from the result, I narrated and released a podcast episode, the last of a three-part story inspired by the Voice campaign, Some Things Change, Episodes 79, 80 and 81 of Tall And True Short Reads.

The Brief

The first chance I had to write my short story was on the last weekend of October. The Writers' Centre's brief was:

• The story had to feature someone looking through a TELESCOPE or BINOCULARS.
• It had to include a five-digit number, e.g. "90210", "10,000", etc.
• And the words BLIND, WIND, FIND and MIND (see if you can hear them in my story).

The Writers' Centre also publishes its Furious Fiction showcase on the last weekend of the month. I had planned to include a telescope in my story. But I read the showcased entries and some featured telescopes, and they were good, so I changed tack on my astronomical equipment. And, as astronomers like our narrator will tell you, binoculars are perfect for observing our nearest celestial neighbour in the night sky, the Moon.

Wrote Itself

As often happens with my Furious Fictions, after labouring on the opening paragraph, The Lonely Moon "wrote itself". I let my first-person narrator's conversational words and emotions flow, adding appropriate callbacks, confident I'd know when I'd written the last sentence.

I may sound big-headed, but four years of official and unofficial Furious Fictions have given me confidence in my writing process. That's why I highly recommend the Writers' Centre's monthly challenge to aspiring writers or those like me who crave monthly fixes!

More Writing

You can read my short stories, blog posts and other writings on Tall And True. You can also buy my short story collections, including the latest Tall And True Microfiction anthology, from the Amazon Kindle, Apple Books, and Kobo online bookstores.

The next episode of Tall And True Short Reads will be released shortly. In the meantime, please check your feed or the podcast website, TallAndTrueShortReads.com, for earlier episodes from all four seasons, and follow or subscribe to the podcast and rate and review it via your favourite app — doing so helps me share my storytelling.

Please Share

I hope you enjoy my lunar tale. You can listen to The Lonely Moon on Acast (above), the Tall And True Short Reads website, or find it and other episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and all popular podcasting apps.

Please share this blog post and podcast episode with your family and friends and tell them about Tall And True Short Reads and the Tall And True writers' website.

© 2024 Robert Fairhead

N.B. You might like to read a blog post introducing Tall And True Short Reads - Season Four.

Grammarly