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SITE FOR SORE EYES!
No frames or dynamic html on this site! Stone-age browsers
On this page you'll find some short stories, film reviews and other things that I have written, as well as some personal material and photos. I hope you'll find at least some of it interesting. If you would like to talk about anything on this site or about life in general please send me an e-mail and I'll get right back to you. And PLEASE sign the Guest Book. Have a nice day! |
THE MAN BEHIND THE MASK
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One of these three is David Gardiner, the man who failed the Turing Test. See if you can discover which it is. Here is a clue: don't use dress-sense as your sole criterion. | ||
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REVIEWS OF THIS SITE
"In terms of star-rating, I would award this one a black hole"
"The counter-example to so much that is exciting and vibrant in English writing today"
"Gardiner is a writer of the future and always will be"
"Mr. Gardiner's tireless efforts at self-promotion make this site a difficult one to avoid, but well worth the effort"
"This one does for web page design what Atilla the Hun did for diplomacy"
"If web-design were music; Mr. Gardiner's website would be the screeching of a blade of grass caught between two thumbs and blown upon."
".... writing powerfully evocative of the twilight of a mediocre career..."
"Is there no beginning to this man's talent?" |
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A WORD OF INTRODUCTION About the stories... The purpose of this introduction is to give visitors who haven't been here before some idea of what these stories are all about and which of them, if any, they might want to read. The full index of everything on the site can be found further down the page. This is just a selection. Someone suggested I should indicate the year when each story was written, which sounded like a cool idea. I could have an early, late and middle period like Picasso. But I haven't kept any records and like most writers I frequently revise and revamp old material, so exact dates are a bit indeterminate. What I have done though is rearrange the main index of stories into approximate chronological order. If you imagine a scale ten years long running down the left hand side that would be approximately correct, with the oldest pieces at the top. SIRAT the novel would fall well outside this scale since it has existed in some form, short story or novel or just in my head, for at least twenty years. But the printed (first)edition is about four years old. An updated second edition hit the shops in June 2003, and this is available for free download from this site or for purchase from Amazon and other outlets. Almost everything I have ever completed can be found on this site, and the pile is growing at the rate of about two or three a month. Some stories are very old, some are pretty inconsequential. I will only tell you about the ones I value most myself and suggest where you might start if your time is limited, as it must surely be. First you should know that these stories are old-fashioned in their form, having a beginning, a middle and an end. They cover a wide range of styles and subjects, but all are stories, descriptive accounts of events taking place, rather than random snatches of people's experience or thoughts framed in a literary or poetic sort of way or written in novel or experimental prose. I have nothing against that kind of writing but it isn't what I do. Getting down to particulars, the most popular thing I have ever written is a brief parable about self image and self esteem called Blind Date. This has been recycled more times and generated more correspondence than everything else I have ever written put together. I have a morbid fear that if I am remembered at all (unlikely, I know) it will be as the man who wrote Blind Date. In a few of my stories I have tried to look at big issues, or at least issues that are big for those they affect. The Battlefield Philosopher is perhaps the darkest tale I have written so far, the result of a mild depression that I was going through at the time. One kind person has pointed out to me that it nevertheless has a small positive aspect. The Lies of Sleeping Dogs is concerned with the nightmare of personal discovery that can result from shining a light into the darker corners of one's family history. Collateral Damage, which reached the final short list in the 2002 Fish Short Story Competition and was published in the July 2002 edition of CimmPlicity, is based on a true incident and concerns the way that a war can reach across half a century to blight the present. Letting Go concerns a former Nazi doctor receiving the visit that he has been waiting for since World War Two ended. It was placed second in the 2002 Fish Short Story Competition. Immaculata is an account of a very modern miracle, or if you prefer, of mental imbalance and religious obsession. It just depends where you're standing. Lettie is a short piece concerning an old woman looking back on her life. Bottom Feeders is a reworking of something I wrote a long time ago, when I was interested almost exclusively in science fiction. Using the medium of parable it tries to evaluate human nature from a cosmic perspective. How's that for ambition and arrogance? Witchcraft takes a skewed look at the world through the superstitious eyes of a child living in a remote village in rural Ireland. The Hand of God is a very simple tale but hopefully raises issues that are not. In Letter to Mammy a naive young Irishman away from home for the first time reports home to his mother. A Man of Letters is a love story, and I would like you to read it without any preconceptions or introduction. Life's Work, concerns a meeting between a young reporter and an ageing actress whose career is on the decline. The Lodger is a short work inspired by the words of the old Paul Simon song A Most Peculiar Man. Miss Sally is my attempt to get inside the head of a woman and let her tell her story in her own voice. I do it with some trepidation. Promises is a gentle tale about honesty, integrity and how we should treat other people. Neighbours is a simple tale that raises the question of whether or not I am my brother's keeper. Light of the World is about the human need to believe. Thomas and Me is a hopefully subtle tale told by a simple man. Lindy is from a novel I've been working on for years, loosely based on my student days in Belfast. I read the story out at this year's UKALive event (see the UKAuthors.com web site), where it was well received. The Black Boy began life as a literary challenge set by a fellow writer, to write a story based on specified elements. Ubermensch is a fairly light-hearted Gothic horror, designed to show that reading philosophy books can have practical applications. Storm Clouds, Lilac Wedding and Palermo Nights are all fairly contemplative tales in which people reflect on their lives. Sam and Hitch are more psychological thrillers. My newest offering The Other End of the Rainbow will be the introduction to a new Rainbow Man collection to be published by bluechrome later this year. It's a light-hearted piece in the Magical Realism style. Afterlife and The Runner-Up have also been added today. These are slightly more serious pieces. I hope you enjoy the new additions. My second group is made up of stories that are intensely personal in their focus, and in some cases loosely autobiographical. Cinderella's Slipper is a gentle and reflective piece about first love and rites of passage. Ellen and Aubery questions why a woman stays in an abusive relationship. I'm afraid it doesn't answer the question. Celia's Shrine deals with the human urge towards mysticism, our need to create idols and myths and to place people, especially women, on pedestals. The Go-Between is a brief shapshot of the lives of people looking for human contact in a city that has grown too big. The Dragonslayer is concerned with the question of whether it's enough to leave the world as we found it. My newest addition to this highly personal category is Union Business. which is a vignette of a period in all our yesterdays when the world seemed to be on the brink of a mighty change. If you prefer something a little bit lighter try Angel and the Elk, Muskie's Big Break, and Pastor Elk which are three comic stories dealing with a penniless London street-singer, his nymphomaniac girlfriend and their less than successful small-time drug-dealer friend the Elk at different stages of their lives. I suggest you read them in the order given. By the end of the first one you'll know if you want to read the other two. Gratifyingly most people do. Mills and Boon represents my first attempt at a novella-length story. It's in four parts and the meaning of life is revealed in Part 3, which should make it worth reading in itself. Other not-over-serious stories include The Oracle at the Adelphi, a story with a surprise ending, based on incidents from my childhood in Ireland, Debt Collector which is a tale of crime that brings about retribution of an unusual kind, and not forgetting Knight Errant and The Counsellor, both of which offer glimpses into unusual minds. The Rainbow Man was written to introduce and link together twenty-three of my stories published by Bluechrome under the title: The Rainbow Man and Other Stories. See below for full details. As well as the short stories there is the novel SIRAT which concerns the first emergence on earth of electronic intelligence and how it impacts the human race. Multiverse is a multi-world-line interactive story in which the reader makes decisions which determine the story's outcome, hopefully revealing something about the personality of the chooser. Mitzi is a short film script, a surreal tale concerning a young girl with a mental handicap. A new(ish) feature of the site is the collection of streaming MP3 voice readings of some of the stories. Links to some YouTube video clips of readings have just been added. You will also find some guest songs there, which are simply songs that appeal to me for one reason or another. The content of this page is expanding rapidly. If you like any of the stories, or even if you don't, please e-mail me or sign the guest book and let me know. |
Click above to hear some of the stories read by the
author. Video clips and guest songs too!
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The Other End of the Rainbow The second Rainbow Man collection containing 25 of my newest stories is now available from all on-line bookstores, or you can order your copy here and I will be happy to sign it for you. If you live in the UK and have a PayPal account please click on the button below and follow the instructions. I am charging £7 only per copy, which includes inland postage. Don't forget to include your postal address in the 'message' section of the PayPal order form.
When you've read the book please e-mail me and let me know what you think of it.
Have a look at the November 2008 launch of the book (at The Big Green Bookshop, Wood Green) on YouTube. There were lots of other readers present and also music sets from local singer/songwriters Rick Hayter and Tim West. |
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PUBLISHED JAN 2004 BY Can be ordered RIGHT NOW FROM AMAZON UK AMAZON.COM AND OTHER OUTLETS twenty-three of my most popular stories in a single collection If you would like a signed copy please e-mail me, and I will do my best to oblige, but I have very few copies left at present of either this or Sirat. Hopefully I will get more in the future. Both are still available from all the main on-line bookstores. |
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Reviews of The Rainbow Man
The stories themselves are a joy. They are very much that very thing, short stories, which now tend to be disappearing in a welter of "Art".
...Gardiner has the talent to depict character successfully in few words and work that character logically in his given setting.
...He creates scenes and characters which work and which make you think.
Review by Chris Williams
You pick up this book with its charming exterior thinking you are going read a collection of equally charming short stories, seasoned perhaps with a little grit to raise it above the tame, but what you actually get are jawdropping vignettes of the sort of lives only a writer of David's calibre could relate with such vivid and at times disturbing realism and all this whilst at the same time managing to avoiding the usual, the jaded and the hackneyed to ensnare your attention. Nothing is as it seems and the more mundane the surface, the more layers there appear to be; we are talking about a true literary onion here, multi-layered and quite able to bring tears to your eyes.
Binnacle Press Book of the Month Review
...without exception all twenty-three of the stories, exploring life both familiar and unfamiliar, leave the reader with something to think about, and linger in the mind long after the final page is turned.
The Irish Emigrant
James Joyce meets Ray Bradbury in David Gardiner’s collection of tales wrapped in the imaginings of children who hear a Cassandra/Wandering Jew-type sage mutter such things as “Ye know the trouble with youse northerners, your memories is too bloody long!”
From the secretly vengeful ex-nun propitiating a religious fraud on a smugly progressive church in “Immaculata” to the lovelorn man and woman in “Blind Date,” each thinking the other is too good for them, Gardiner’s characters face the loneliness of illusion and the loneliness of truth. As the war criminal of “Letting Go” asks, “That’s all you want of me? The truth? A small thing like that?”
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AVAILABLE FROM SECOND EDITION |
PLEASE DON'T LEAVE WITHOUT VISITING
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ABOUT MULTIVERSE Multiverse is a hyperlinked multi-worldline story, where the reader's decisions determine the path that the story takes. At the time I created it this was a trendy new idea, now it has become a bit old hat and Passé, but I still like this one. |
INTERNET PROWLER 5
BEST EXPERIENCED
WITH A FRIEND, IN THE BATH, SLIGHTLY PISSED
HAVE BEEN USED IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF THIS SITE
Don’t forget to sign the new Guest Book, or my friends from Sicily will be very upset.....
TOTAL NUMBER OF 
VISITORS TO THIS SITE
SINCE MOSES WAS A
RED SEA PEDESTRIAN:
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PRINTER FRIENDLY This web site is so printer-friendly it will cuddle-up to your printer, flutter its eyelashes at it, and sleep with it on the first date. Of course if it is seeing other web pages at the same time it may become jealous and resentful. ROBOT FRIENDLY Dear Visitor, if you are a robot or artificial arachnid of any description I would just like to say how very welcome you are and I hope you find all manner of key-words and hyper-links that are to your complete satisfaction. I have seen all three of the Terminator movies and would like to keep on the right side of all robots. |
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These pages were originally cobbled together on a steam-powered Compaq Presario difference engine, using WordPad, and occasionally some help from Word 97 and Serif PagePlus 5. The photographs were beaten into submission using Adobe PhotoShop 5. So if it looks like a dog's breakfast blame the writers of those packages, not me. All persons everywhere are entirely coincidental and should not be construed. Thanks for dropping by. Watch how you go and come again soon. |
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DISCLAIMER |
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Are you still here? Don't you have any home to go to? You want just one more item do you? All right. Here it is. The very LAST WORD. |
