In early May, I was reading A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway. Coincidentally, a writer named Harvey Stanbrough announced a writing contest for short stories inspired by any work of Hemingway’s.
This must be a sign, I thought; I’m right in the thick of what’s known as the great love story of World War I.
I wrote a story and submitted it. It wasn’t one of the stories chosen as top 3 (with a little prize money) but it was chosen to be in the e-book anthology, “Echoes of Hemingway.”
The title of my story is “Sonnets to Psalms,” and it’s about what happens to the main character Frederick Henry after the war ends. The title comes from a sonnet written in 1590 by George Peal, which some literary critics believe inspired Hemingway to write his World War I story. The sonnet’s title: “A Farewell to Arms.”
Then it became a matter of fitting pieces together – the town of Montreux, Switzerland, where Frederick and Catherine lived; an abbey not too far away; and some basic research.
The anthology contains 20 stories by 13 writers (a few overachievers wrote more than one story), and it has some very fine short stories covering a surprising number of genres. My own story would be categorized as general or historical fiction.
You can find more information about the anthology at https://payhip.com/b/3ibI5, and it will be available on the various book sites July 12. It can be pre-ordered at Amazon or at Books2Read. And it’s available right now at Harvey’s web site.
I’d never done this with a short story before, and it was actually a lot of fun.
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