Broken Rules and Other Stories
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I grew up in Margaret Thatcher’s Britain, where the government pursued and actively encouraged intolerance and hostility towards same-sex attraction. A culmination of the Tories’ damaging agenda was Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988, which forbade local authorities from promoting homosexuality, or from teaching its acceptability in maintained schools. The clause wasn’t repealed until
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There are two mother-son relationships within ‘Their Cruel Routines’, the opening story in Broken Rules and Other Stories: that between the fictional mother and her adult son, and that between my own mother and myself. The latter was the spark or inspiration for the story. A few years ago, I went to stay with my
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When I first began sending work to publications and competitions, I realised that something strange happens once a story is submitted. Despite all the time spent honing, refining, getting it just right, almost immediately after hitting ‘submit’, issues and ideas previously hidden become apparent, opening up new and exciting ways to think about the story.
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It’s a huge thrill and honour to have been a finalist in this year’s Queensland Literary Awards. Broken Rules and Other Stories was one of five books shortlisted for the University of Southern Queensland Steele Rudd Award for a Short Story Collection. Thanks so much to the judges and everyone involved in the awards. I
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Wednesday this week marked one year from the release of Broken Rules and Other Stories. How time flies. Seems only yesterday that I was seeing cheery signs in the frolicking of a dolphin in the sunny waters of the Maribyrnong River on the morning of publication day. And now here we are in spring again.
Barry Lee Thompson 