New Release
The Lockdown Tales: Emergence
Seven women and three men leave the city to avoid the Covid pandemic. They isolate together in the country, where they pass the time working, flirting, eating, drinking, making music, and, above all, telling stories.
For some, the lockdown was a time of bitterness and conspiracy theories. It was a hard time for almost everyone. But it was also a time when most people did what they could to look out for each other. The Lockdown Tales: Emergence follows ten people, seven women and three men, through the second, more stressful year of the lockdown. It tells their stories as they form new relationships and put old ones under stress, and start looking ahead to a post-lockdown future.
As with the first volume, The Lockdown Tales, it also contains the stories that our ten characters meet together to tell each other. Their stories are moving, bawdy, absurd or satirical, and occasionally tragic. These stories are very human, and always compassionate.
$9.99Add to cart
Awards won
Runner-up of the Newcastle short story competition 2020
Winner of the Tulip Tree short story Merit prize 2021
About The Author
Telling stories in Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific and the world
People find themselves in stories. Sometimes or always, we realise that we need something, and so we start doing things to reach that goal. We have no idea where we will go, what other forces are in play and how the story ends.
All stories end in death, the truism goes. But before that they can end in farce, triumph or tragedy. All we know while we’re living it is that a part of our life has formed into a story and we’re in it.
People find themselves in stories. When we’re in a story, or we’re reading or watching someone else’s story, it tells us who we are.
Alan Whelan tells stories. He is a novelist, award-winning story-teller and poet.
Follow the links to see his books, and the services he offers as a plain English policy, legal and technical information writer.
His blog is here.
Alan Whelan
Words From Readers
William Laing
The Lockdown Tales
This was a thundering good read, very fresh because of the up-to-the minute setting and the recognizable characters
Tangea Tansley
The Lockdown Tales
Alan Whelan brings us a clever, sensual and sometimes poignant collection of stories that would make Boccaccio proud
Leigh Swinbourne
The Lockdown Tales
An old frame for a sharp new snapshot of contemporary Australia
Adrian Coleman
The Lockdown Tales
A witty, crisp & lively imagination let loose: the defiant challenge to a lockdown.
Best book of stories I’ve read since Lucia Berlin’s Manual for Cleaning Women, and
before that David Malouf’s The Complete Stories.