Teamwork

Inspiration

Teamwork was originally written for Task Ten of the 2008-9 SlingInk Eurofiction Competition. The prompt used was "Write a story set in three different places", although I'm not sure if the resulting story strictly adhered to this, being a story set in the same place but different (yet somehow concurrent) times. My main inspiration was almost certainly the work of M.C.Escher - particularly the lithograph Relativity. I may also have borrowed the ending from Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman, a particular favourite of mine.

Teamwork came fifth out of a total field of unknown size (probably between 20 and 30). The (unknown) judge said that it was "an extremely unusual and clever idea, though you perhaps need to try and contextualise it a bit better."

Publications

After a few failed submissions, Teamwork was published in Issue 16 of Murky Depths in 2010, illustrated by Caroline Parkinson.

Notes

I originally submitted Teamwork to Murky Depths in September 2009. I didn't hear back from them until I nudged them in June 2010, at which point they said if I could reduce the confusion a bit, they would offer me a contract. I duly did so and they accepted it in September 2010, one year after submission. The moral is: hang in there!

The main character's name, Maurits, is a deliberate nod to Maurits Escher. Having chosen one dutch name, I looked for another one for the other named character and sealed on Theo. This appealed to me particularly because of its religious overtones. I liked the idea of Maurits being steered by a God - even if that God ultimately turned out to be himself.

I think this is one of my favourite stories.

Teamwork was also one of Gareth D Jones's favourite stories of 2011.