Tracy Baines has put together a collection of short stories previously published in Woman’s Weekly, My Weekly, Take A Break, Best and People’s Friend.
It is fascinating to read short stories written for women friendly magazines, stories that explore the everyday relationships of families, couples and friends.
This collection is filled with realistically imagined characters coping with life’s rich pattern, sometimes with aplomb, sometimes almost in spite of themselves, but always with humour and courage. I suppose that’s much as we all do, and this is the key to this collection, because Tracy Baines has a great understanding of women. To this end she has created real worlds with a few strokes of her pen.
Baines is such an expert at her craft that she hits the nail on the head for each one of her readers. Indeed, she has real understanding of the women’s magazine market, so much so that the short stories seem to flow effortlessly onto the page, solving the problem for the main character. But not just solving the problems of the main character, but through these stories she brings some sort of clarity to the muddle of our own lives. I said earlier, ‘effortlessly’ but bet it isn’t, because writing is a craft, and it takes time and application to achieve this level of expertise.
Tracy Baines has got this expertise, in spades. Read Ruby Slippers and enjoy.
Whether you are a reader or a writer, do note that Tracy will be tutoring a Short Story workshop on September 25th 2016 at High Wycombe – so maybe attend and see behind the scenes of short story writing.
Writers’ Short Story Workshop: www.wordsforthewounded.co.uk
Her book will be available there, or find it on Amazon.co.uk