Please take a listen to the except on SoundCloud:
https://soundcloud.com/rajendra-shepherd/well-always-have-tea-the-enduring-power-of-love
‘We’ll always have tea & other stories’ is a collection of timid beauty
that will tip-toe its way into your life and stay there. The diverse
roll call of characters includes an elderly couple, a baby angel and a school
janitor whose stories are connected by a curiousity for life and the
drama that unfolds in exploring it.
In ‘We’ll always have tea’ Derek believes he receives messages
from his dead wife, Deirdre, through his daily routine of making tea.
This contemplation on love reveals a life brimming with detail and yet
one that could so easily be overlooked.
The Gothic tale, ‘Of Thosalus born’, is set in a ghetto town in the
Caribbean that is transformed when a baby angel falls from the sky
and becomes a community spectacle. Told through the eyes of schoolboy
Thosalus, who sees life as a series of challenges, it celebrates the power
individuality - even if that means letting another steal the limelight.
What would life be without mischief? Probably a whole lot easier
for the messed-up janitor in ‘The Maenad’s touch’ who falls for a woman
set on mayhem. A raw and cautionary tale, each disasterous turn reveals
a new depravity in an American highschool when an offbeat student
becomes the centre of attention.
These stories take a sideways look at life, calling all who are willing
to be carried along, to take a moment and see what they might have
missed - in the silence, in the unlit corners, and in that one last drop of
tea.
Please take a listen to the except on SoundCloud:
https://soundcloud.com/rajendra-shepherd/well-always-have-tea-the-enduring-power-of-love
These short stories tell three unique stories that have been recorded as an audio book. It attracted some attention in print and was brought to life by a brilliant narrator, John Moran.
The stories themselves are threaded together in indirect ways - and perhaps the feeling of love is the only true similarity between the characters. All the protagonists are male, but their voices are variously gentle, enquiring, and bolshy, perhaps.
Sales have been steady - for me, and probably many others, this could always be better. The sales are in the hundreds across print and audio. I would say the audience is still emerging, and would love to see these stories flourish.
Reviews and excerpts are here:
1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFe0f4V37ZQ
2) https://humans.media/we-ll-always-have-tea
We'll always have tea
Between Derek and Deirdre there would always be tea…
Since his wife had died Derek never stopped talking to her, and wondered what he would like to do after he died. The spilt sugar on his kitchen table had scattered and, he thought, arranged itself, perhaps not accidentally, into a form that resembled the face of Deirdre. His late wife was always sending him signs, but Derek wanted to make sure; make sure he wasn’t just seeing things. By considering each granule he would decide if it were chance, or design, which was facilitating a message. Only then would he write down the date, the incident and the particulars of her commentary on their life.
If this were to go in his book - which he kept in the left-hand drawer of the kitchen bureau during the day - he might have marked down in his studied hand, that Deirdre (who would by now be 85 had she not died five years earlier of a tired heart) had spoken to him while he was making a cup of tea; and that sitting at his table on an afternoon in June, in their quiet suburban cul-de-sac, she had indicated that ‘she wants tea’, and, therefore, still loved him.
When Margaret would later find this notebook, and the series of others that filled Derek’s days, their daughter would cry, at first gently and then blubbering and snotty, with laughter, noting how for years Dad had annotated his days with messages from Mum. She would question if they were true – both as Dad had indicated he had seen them, and if it were even possible for someone to speak from beyond the grave – but would be touched, in great lolling waves of emotion...
| Language | Status |
|---|---|
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Italian
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Translation in progress.
Translated by Mazzani Anna
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Portuguese
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Already translated.
Translated by Mariana C. Dias
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Spanish
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Already translated.
Translated by Paola Andrea Palma Rojas
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