Oh.

My laptop fell ill this afternoon and has been sent off to be fixed. I've decided to take the il-logical step of going offline myself for the up-to-10 days it will be away. The stories are so close to ready, it seems crazy, but that's what I'm doing. My occupationally over-used shoulder will thank me for it and so will my mind, I suspect. Nothing will crumble in my absence. The Slightly Peculiar Love Stories will be all the lovelier for the pause. I'll see you in little over a week.

Love and Linda Niccol

I've met Linda only through her two compelling collections of short stories, Geometry of Desire, and The Temperature of Water, but she looks, well, fun. Intriguing.

She won the 2006 Kaos Films British Short Screenplay Competition with 'The Handkerchief', and co-wrote New Zealand’s 2007 box office smash 'Second-Hand Wedding' — among other creditable work you'll read about on her site.

Love, New York style

At least once she replied to my email from New York where she snapped this slightly peculiar sculpture, and where the NZ Film commission had sent her to sell her film script and a novella.

Linda has a story in the newly released Tales for Canterbury, from which all proceeds go to help those in need since the Christchurch earthquakes.

I'm ending Slightly Peculiar Love Stories with her moving and gutsy story of love changed utterly.

And, guess what, the manuscript is being formatted. That means there's still a good chance it'll be online by the end of the week which is also the end of June. Send it thoughts of ease and glitch-free processing, okay?

Tea with Lawrence Pun

Fantastic numbers of you have come and browsed the blog over the last couple of weeks — checking out your friends (or yourselves) and making new acquaintances; anticipating the release of Slightly Peculiar Love Stories. As I keep saying (or others say to me, consolingly) these things take the time they take so, my latest mantra is: before the end of June. Meanwhile, let's have a nice cup of tea.

As you sip, I'd like you to meet Lawrence Pun. (The website's in Chinese, I know. And I'm ashamed to say I can't read a word of it, but you might be able to.) Lawrence is a gentle, charming man who lives in Hong Kong. His love story is as deft and delicate as the sulphur butterfly it features. And as tough as the child who dismembers insects out of ferocious curiosity.

Lawrence K L Pun. Photo by Thomas Langdon.

Lawrence is a fiction writer and cultural critic who has authored four fiction works and a number of non-fiction works on urban cultures and films. His writing has been awarded in Hong Kong and beyond. In recent years, his works have gained a wider audience in Mainland China, and some have been translated into English.

Elena Bossi — en amor con vide

Elena was the convivial hub of our 30-spoked wheel in Iowa (International Writers Programme 2007) and in the photo below is checking up on one of our number in Istanbul last month (no, not the dude on the plinth).

As Elena and I sat one evening in her Iowa room with our feet on the windowsill, she announced that we must make a 'proyect' together for the sake of our friendship which would otherwise founder in the gaps of our communication; my Spanish is threadbare, her English 'pintoresco'. So we began that year to write a novel together, bilingually. That involved a trip for me to Argentina, gracias a Creative NZ, where we shared a work table, our translations, travel, and much hilarity. One day out walking, Elena swooped on a pile of vile-looking fungi, telling me they were as precious as truffles. The resulting jellyfish risotto had something of the flavour we were after, but E conceded that we might have overdone the quantity and that drying them first would have improved the texture.

Con hongos de pino. You know, the ones that grow under pines.

Anyway, to the point: Elena is a fine writer: playwright, essayist, literary critic, and novelist, whose grasp of 'the canon', literary and filmic, is extraordinary.  She was forever saying things like, 'You know the scene in Faust where … ' or, 'Remember the girl in the Salinger story who says, "I love squalid things?"' I could only roll my eyes and blush.

In Elena's Slightly Peculiar Short Story, a man watches a window washer and yearns.

Brenda Sue Cowley on coming to heel

Penelope: How strange. The image I'd formed of Brenda Sue since she sent her story to be considered for Slightly Peculiar Love Stories couldn't be more different from the one she sent yesterday of the athletic young person you see here. Nonetheless (or perhaps therefore) our exchanges have been lively, and I'm taken with the heart in her work.

Brenda Sue: I walk on tippy toes.  I've done it since childhood, as have many of my family members, leading me to believe it is a hereditary trait. 

Walking on tip-toes (usually reserved for puttering around the kitchen, slipping to the bathroom at night, climbing stairs ... and walking towards the computer) is a bad habit. 

It also has adverse physical effects such as (but not limited to) the deterioration of the arch in the foot and the shortening of the Achilles' heel — making it even more of a weakness. 

I met Penelope while walking on tippy toe. A very close friend had died an untimely and earth-shattering death, two years ago this summer.  Someone stepped into my life, and plugged me into a writing group here in Salt Lake City, Utah.  And that is where I met a woman named Dorothee Kocks. I tip-toed towards Dorothee (The Glass Harmonica), a new friend at the time, who quickly became a life-long friend.  Dorothee felt I might have something for Penelope, and that Penelope might have something for me.

On tip-toe, I reached across the world to Penelope and our finger tips touched. Now, while I head towards this publication, I am standing in a correct, upright position – feet spread on the floor, shoulder width apart, and toes gently splayed. 

Reading these blog postings have inspired me not only to correct my poor physical habits, but to correct some writing habits as well. 

Like not walking on tippy toe towards the computer when I think I might be onto something.

Lyndal Adleigh — mystery writer

There are yet more writers of Slightly Peculiar Love Stories, but not all have sent material for the blog, so it's up to me. Who shall I choose today? Eeny meeny miney …

I choose Lyndal Adleigh. Information about Lyndal is scarce but I imagine a cup of tea would go down nicely with Lyndal while I fossick around.

With a slice of tan square and a small pile of paper napkins.

Lyndal is fond of these – not a poached egg, but a cowrie shell.

And is often serenaded at the door:

Lyndal's story well suits the slightly peculiar title — a story of love that, if not quite sublimated, is very neatly transferred. Lyndal's character makes the best of it – as we do – finding love that's manageable and almost good enough.

Editor's notes: no, I am not Lyndal Adleigh.
Yes, the stories are going to be published soon. No, not this week. Next? Let's cross our fingers.

Maxine Alterio — days lived well

'A day without writing, reading or storytelling feels to me as though it has not been well lived.'

Another writer of Slightly Peculiar Love Stories, Maxine lives here in Dunedin. She's warm, intelligent, funny, and incredibly hard-working. Diligent also comes to mind. When we belonged to the same writing group some years ago, she read us a single story month after month as she honed and re-honed it to the point where it won a major UK short story prize. Her stories have been well anthologised and her first collection Live News and Other Stories appeared in 2005. Her best-selling novel Ribbons of Grace was published in 2007.

Maxine is currently enrolled in a PhD in Creative Writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters, Victoria University of Wellington, where she is working on a thesis based on the memoirs of First World War nurses, and her second novel, Lives We Leave Behind. I'm looking forward to that.

Maxine once had an English butler for ten days. The ingredients of her slightly peculiar story include a physio pool, a steep path, a banana and a file…