I am incredibly excited to introduce to you Graeme Hall, a talented storyteller whose memorable characters I instantly fell in love with. This short story collection, out in mid 2020, paints complex characters and exciting narratives, all set in the former Portuguese colony of Macau. Graeme Hall lived in Hong Kong from 1993 to 2010 and Macau is a city he knows very well.
Are any of your characters based on people you have met in real life?
None of the characters in my stories are based on anyone I know, or any real person at all, but central to all the stories is the former Portuguese colony of Macau and its people.
What do you hope people will feel when they read your work?
What I hope readers get from these stories is a flavour of a remarkable place. If people in Britain have heard of Macau at all it is probably as a major gambling destination, but it is so much more than that. Macau was the first European settlement in Asia (founded in 1557) and over some 450 years a unique Macanese culture developed, one that fused Europe and China to create an individual identity that sadly is in decline in the twenty-first century.
Inside this collection...
“And All Will Be Well” won the short story competition of the 2018 Ilkley Literature Festival. The judge - Nikesh Shukla - described it as being "An eerie coastal ghost story where the bewildering haunting of a boy takes a toll on his solitude and the hard edges of the community he finds himself in. An expert masterclass in tension and spooks.”
“The Jade Monkey Laughs” was placed third in the 2017 Ilkley competition and won the Macau Literary Festival short story competition in 2018. This story was published in Macau in English, Portuguese and Chinese.
“A History of Chinese Tea” was published online by Litro in 2016.
More about Graeme Hall:
I have been writing since I left the world of Intellectual Property law in 2014, concentrating on short stories and novel writing
In the field of short stories my main project has been a series of linked stories all set in the former Portuguese colony of Macau. Several of these stories have been published and/or won prizes. “And All Will Be Well” won the short story competition of the 2018 Ilkley Literature Festival, while “The Jade Monkey Laughs” won the Macau Literary Festival Short Story Competition and took third place in the 2017 Ilkley Literature Festival competition. My stories have also been published in anthologies by Black Pear Press, and the Macau Literary Festival, and online by Litro.
I am an active member of the Leeds Writers Circle.
My first novel – “On Borrowed Time” – set in Hong Kong and Shanghai over 1996/97 is currently being submitted to agents, and I am writing a second novel – “None More Loyal” – which is set in Macau in the years immediately following the Second World War.