M. T. Lee

I’ve always liked liner notes, author corners, and behind-the-scenes, so here are some of my own.

The Summer of Lugubriosity

This started as an exercise from Ursula Le Guin’s book Steering the Craft about writing a story in sentences with no more than seven words. Somehow I found the restraint perfect for comedy, and you can still see some of this in the opening scenes.

The first version of the story ended right after the fish ‘n chip shop. When I revised the story around 2023, the next scenes, and the central theme, came out very organically; I’ve hardly edited it since that first draft. I’m very intigued by this found theme and I’m still happy with it; it feels fresh, and fun.

Obviously, the story was very fun to write. My favourite line was “He might as well have been called Maurice”, which came entirely out of nowhere.

Setting-wise, this drew on my own childhood growing up in Christchurch, New Zealand, biking around with my friends and doing nothing in particular. Fellow Christchurch dwellers might notice the illogicality of biking between New Brighton and Halswell, which would take two hours, but I chanced on this being a small enough population in the readership to get away with it.

I’m oddly glad this little piece of Kiwi childhood became not only one of my Clarion submission stories, but also my first publication. It feels right.