A picture may be worth a thousand words, but are they the right words?
How many times have you come home from a wonderful holiday and found that your photographs just didn’t capture the brilliance of a breathtaking view from the top of the mountain, or the brimming emotion in you when you first viewed your favorite masterpiece with your own hungry eyes? How different it all felt in the moment.
In my writing I strive to transport readers directly into a setting, sketching not only the relief work of a scene, but the mood, the unsaid, and prompting curiosity about what is behind the scenery and what could be waiting in the wings. I hope readers who travel through my writing, find my descriptions so vivid that they listen for voices or footsteps around the corner that are not yet audible, that have not yet been introduced on the page.
Several readers have commented while reading my stories they get restless to visit the settings of the story they are reading. Some become intrigued enough that they will interrupt their reading to look up images on the internet of the places where a scene is taking place. When I hear this, I know that I have done my job right.
Below is a collection of photographs that correspond with several of the short travel stories found in my new book The Tales of a Fly by Night. I hope the combination of my descriptions, coupled with these photographs will prompt you to grab your passport and backpack and get travelling.
Learning to Eat Like an Italian
What Happens in Barcelona… (Spain)
A Walk Across Spain
Our Swiss Chocolate Chalet (Switzerland)
The Dutch Cycle of Life (The Netherlands)
The Old Age Question (Belgium)
In Memory of Liberty (Romania)
Road-Mania (Romania)
Modern Memories of Kyiv (Ukraine)
The American Living Next Door (Russia)
Khrushchev & Coca-Cola (Russia)
These featured stories and others like it in can be read in V M Karren’s new short story anthology: The Tales of a Fly-By-Night, Learn more at www.flybynightpress.com.
