Fiction
fed on the sorry left-overs of
Fact
 

The author - click here to investigate
AUTHOR
An Abridged History - click here to investigate
RAILWAY
A Handbook of Volapük - click here to investigate
VOLAPÜK
Elephantina - click here to investigate
ELEPHANTINA
Scribbling Stories - click here to investigate
STORIES
Jane Kininmonth is watching you...

News

(has some come at last?)

In the delightful - though wet - town of Wigtown, I was fortunate enough to win the Festival's 10th Anniversary "short short story" competition - a short story in 100 words or less: a concept spawned by Satan, I believe, and promoted by those who have lost all sense of propriety. Nevertheless, you could check out the winning entry, and my other entry - which much amused me, if no one else - by clicking here. I've also added there some new stories to the list of unpublished stores - see if you can spot them...
Alternatively, you can choose to skip lightly on to more important matters.



My mentor,
Mr Kininmonth (the elder) ...
Photograph of Mr David Kininmonth, an elderly relative of the author - press his nose to read more about his young descendant
...politely requests that you leave this site - and the rest of our fragile planet - as tidy as (or tidier than) you found it; but, as in the matters of the rising price of snuff and the declining standard of pickled herring, is resigned to disappointment...

Alas! Mr. Kininmonth, you look how I sometimes feel - why? Click here to find out more, if you dare..





This novel was short-listed for the 2004 Saltire Prize for the First Book of the Year.
Cover of An Abridged History - click to read about it
  • An Abridged History
    This tells, for the first and last time, the story of the construction of a railway-line between Garve and Ullapool in the north of Scotland. The hero, Alexander Auchmuty Seth Kininmonth, has dreams of finding personal happiness, fame and fortune on this project. Alas, he finds that the combined forces of a Scottish climate, ignoble finance-capital and an assortment of feuding millennarians conspire against him. Read more ...



  • I am delighted to learn from a respected linguist in the Netherlands that an article has been created about me in the Volapük version of Wikipedia: click here to read it... Cover of A Handbook of Volapük - click to read about it
  • A Handbook of Volapük
    In April 1891, two matters greatly excite the inhabitants of Edinburgh: the decennial Population Census; and the Annual General Meeting of the Edinburgh Society for the Propagation of a Universal Language. The General Secretary of this Society, Mr. Justice, is a militant champion of the highly-popular language "Volapük"; but he is locked in a battle for ascendancy with Dr. Bosman, shameless apologist for "Esperanto". Read more ...



  • My short novel about elephants, enemies and enemas in Dundee in the year 1706 has now been published (May 2008). Elephantina: a tale of elephants and posterity...
  • Elephantina
    Just outside Dundee, in April 1706, an elephant sighs forlornly, topples over, and drowns in a ditch by the side of the road from Broughty Ferry. Foiling almost all the energetic attempts of the citizenry to make off with large chunks of meat, and other elephantine trophies, local surgeon, botanist and anatomist Dr Patrick Blair embarks on a mission to be the first in Britain to dissect an elephant and to complete a pioneering scientific study of the dead animal's internal organs and skeleton. Read more ...



  • Scribbling stories: unpublished gems and otherwise from the home of oddities... Take a few minutes to read some of my unpublished stories. They have been accumulating for several decades. Some are well past their use-by date, others should never have had a use-by date in the first place. But - what do I care? - there's space here, so why not?
    Read more
    ...



    Copyrights: All stories and book extracts appearing on this site © Andrew Drummond 2006.
    Photos of the author taken by Graham Clark.
    The usual Disclaimers:
  • all the stories and extracts offered here are accessible only as Adobe Acrobat PDF files. Most computers can read these files, but - if yours cannot - you can download Adobe Acrobat Reader from the usual web-sites.
  • any links to external sites will be checked by me regularly. But I cannot guarantee they will work all the time...



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