What is a magnum opus but a masterpiece? An author’s greatest work. Few people would disagree that J D Salinger’s magnum opus is The Catcher in the Rye, and yet this little masterpiece barely stretches to 200 pages, or 73,000 words.
Animal Farm – which probably would not actually be considered to be George Orwell’s magnum opus – numbers just over 100 pages, around 30,000 words.
War and Peace, on the other hand, comes in at 1,225 pages, containing over 500,000 words.
Is War and Peace better than The Catcher in the Rye, or even Animal Farm? That’s a matter of opinion of course, which is all it can ever be. Novel or novella, either could qualify as a magnum opus in my book.
Short stories, on the other hand, would not in themselves qualify for such status. However, they could be considered when collected together into a larger volume. In the past such collections came into being mainly because printing and distribution costs would be disproportionate for a book comprising fewer than 20 pages.
However, in this e-reader age there is a demand for bite-sized e-books which can be enjoyed over the course of a lunch hour, a bus or train journey – perhaps even a coffee break. Economies of scale are irrelevant in this brave new world.
We at Xania Books publish books of many different lengths, sizes, and formats, but some of our most popular are the short 15-30 minute reads which are exemplified by The Selenics Trilogy.
This comprises three self-contained, but related, stories which are published separately in e-reader formats such as kindle, but are also collected together in a combined volume, The Ageless Ones.
The three stories – Dead and Buried, The Blooding, and The Homecoming – feature recurring characters in different settings and with different timelines, and can even be read in any order. The publication sequence is in the same order as above, but the second and third books take the form of prequels to the first, Dead and Buried.
Why not try them out for yourself, read them in the published 1-2-3 sequence and then start again in chronological order, 2-3-1? You will definitely get a different experience each time, but which would be your preferred order? Perhaps even 3-2-1.
Are these short works Alister Morton’s magnum opus? We will have to wait and see whether his next published work tops the trilogy which stands alone as – The Ageless Ones.
Here is a brief extract from each of the three short stories:
The Peak District, England. November 6th, 2019
Claire stared straight ahead at the coffin, resting immediately in front of her on a sturdy trestle flanked by candles. She couldn’t believe that her beloved husband was in there, just days after they had celebrated her first pregnancy.
The little church was nearly full, the mourners from the village joined by Gavin’s sparsely remaining family which had been decimated in the fire. An unexplained fire which had destroyed the manor on the family estate earlier in the year. What a year it had been – and now this.
The curse of the Darbys…
… The funeral service was about to begin, and Claire cast a quick look over her shoulder as the door clanged shut a little too violently. At least those young teenage girls all dressed in bright red dresses, who had been sitting in the church porch, hadn’t ventured inside. Nor, she thought, as her glance took in the congregation, had those strange, almost sinister-looking women who had been dressed in similar long black vintage dresses, contrasting with their strikingly white faces.
She couldn’t quite place what had been so strange about them. Perhaps it was the incongruity of their deeply set eyes, yet somehow giving the impression of shining with exhilaration, set against their tight-lipped expressions, as though their mouths were sealed shut.
The Blue Mountains, Australia. February 25th 2019
She looked out of the window. The sun had just gone behind Mount Solitary and she was feeling uneasy.
The hostel was quiet and still, and none of the busy gaggle of backpackers who had been around yesterday had come back yet. If any of them planned to. Since she had been cooped up with her broken leg these last few days she had spoken to hardly anyone, except a couple of guys who came in late last night when she was in the kitchen.
Now she was alone and not happy about it. The atmosphere had inexplicably chilled since last evening, taken on an edgy air. Still, it can’t have had anything to do with those two latecomers – what was it, Denzell and some other name, never heard of it before. No, they had brought a bit of spirit to the place.
No sign of them now, though. She hadn’t seen them go, but they must have gone out hiking, like everybody else.
A sound caught her attention from the room next door. Unmistakable, a low murmur. She didn’t like this. Dark outside, no-one had come in, and there had been no sound all day…
…Hobbling over to the light switch and quickly turning off her light she looked outside again. No light cast outside from anywhere, inside or out.
In the darkness, the murmur came again, and another, with a different tone.
She turned the light back on and reached into her bag for a knife, glad she’d taken the warden’s advice to protect herself from ‘Australian nature’ in those brief couple of days before her leg had taken the brunt of her fall.
A knock on the door.
The Peak District, England. October 25th, 2019
Claire stared straight ahead at the coffin, resting immediately in front of her on a sturdy trestle flanked by candles. She couldn’t believe that so much tragedy could befall such a small, remote area that had now become her home. First the series of funerals following the inexplicable fire that had taken away much of Gavin’s family merely months ago – and now this, another mysterious death on the family estate.
Gavin squeezed her hand encouragingly as the vicar began the short funeral service…
October 26th, 2019
Tonight it was very still, and very dark as Claire kept a lookout for Gavin through the lounge window, and continued to sit in the darkened room. Normally she would have drawn the curtains by now, but her eyes were drawn to the black fells beyond the glass, peering out for a glimmer of something that could possibly represent Gavin’s homecoming. An unquiet dread gripped her.
Her intent stare could, amazingly enough, pick something out in the distance, the more her eyes penetrated the darkness. Right over in the far corner of Ambro’s Field, with the looming presence of Old Tom, the grisly hanging tree beyond its hedge.
There was something moving, shadows under torchlight, and then – what was that? – a beam of light spinning high in the air and coming down somewhere. Possibly on the other side of the hedge, where a faint beam of light shone away from her and down towards Old Tom.
Claire froze as the sound of light footsteps crossed the grass outside and approached the window.
