We are delighted to announce the authors selected for our forthcoming illustrated chapbook anthology 39 Steps, celebrating the famous man-on-the-run thriller by John Buchan – The Thirty Nine Steps. The stories were submitted to our recent 39 Steps micro-flash fiction writing competition, in which authors were challenged to write a story in 39 words or under. Authors were encouraged to submit up to 4 stories, and among the stories selected by our volunteer judges, Nick Sayers and Mary Loring, three of the authors had all four of their submissions chosen for the anthology!

Authors and their stories to be included in the limited edition illustrated chapbook anthology 39 Steps published in conjunction with Sampson Low Publishers.

• Arthur Sparrow – Step Back, Pitch Black, Jumping Jack and –Paint the Cannons Pink
• Stacie Bates – Tea cups and Spinning Wheels, Count to 39 and 39 Steps Left
• Bridget Daly – Gin Lane and Being cruel to be kind
• Catherine Girardeau – Bootjack Trail, Mount Tamalpais
• Christopher Cuninghame – What a Performer!
• Erica Sharlette – Fight to the Death for Love and Run, If you want to Live
• Francisco Cruz – Occam’s Razor and Correlation Does Not Imply Causation
• Jane Sharkey – Murder in the Quarry, The Bellringer, The Witch Marks and The Fog Battery
• Jacquar Roston – How Quick it Ends
• Jaune Evayt – 10 Steps
• JedC – God Bless and Little Did They Know
• Kitiera Morey – No More
• Krista Carson – Meet Me at the Place near the Coast and Almost 40
• Lee Dillon – For Everything There Is a Season
• Lesley Cartwright – The Assignation, The Roslyn Beach Affair, The Cliff Lift and Sanctuary
• M J Malleck – The Adventures of the Comely Tourist
• Michael Wahlgren – A Walk of Mourning and Celebration, A Short Story of Life, We Bring you this Special news Bulletin and No Escaping the Night
• Peter Isaacson – Sleeper Cells
• Sarah Royston – Mors Janua Vitae (Death, Gateway to Life), Have you been a Literary Innkeeper for Long?, You’ve Got into the Wrong Ditch, Richard Hannay! and Various Parties Converging on the Sea

Meet the authors, hear their stories, their inspiration and their enthusiasm at our 39 Steps Showcase event online on Sunday 22 June.

We asked NG Bristow to put pen to paper and write an introduction to the forthcoming 39 Steps anthology of stories submitted in our recent 39 Steps micro-flash fiction writing competition.

THIRTY-NINE STEPS TO IMMORTALITY

Richard Hannay, the hapless hero of John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps, first stepped into the world in 1915, and immediately found himself in a state of mortal danger. Happily, Hannay is alive and well and very much still with us. Patrick Barlow’s Tony award-winning stage adaptation (taking Hitchcock’s 1935 film as its inspiration) plays the spy adventure story as a camp romp; the breathless rush of the action mirrored by lightning fast quick changes, with the cast of four playing all the parts, often swapping identities mid-scene.

As if that wasn’t enough of a claim to immortality, the unkillable Richard Hannay seems to have surfaced elsewhere under an assumed identity – or identities. Ian Fleming was an avowed admirer of Buchan and it doesn’t take a codebreaker to decipher his influence on James Bond. An added twist of Hannay in Bond’s DNA comes via Alfred Hitchcock – Hitchcock never filmed Bond (though he was approached), but North By Northwest (1959) is much discussed as a template for the Bond movies. And Hitch’s own 39 Steps (1935) was in many ways the prototype for his later North By Northwest. This breathless trail leads all the way from 1915 via the Scottish Highlands, through Mount Rushmore up to the Bourne series, and every other innocent-man-on- the-run nail-biter.

And what of the titular MacGuffin? The 39 Steps themselves? They seems to be every bit as shapeshifting and unkillable as Hannay. In Buchan’s novel they are a set of physical steps down to the beach. In Hitchcock (and Barlow) they are a spy ring. Turn the pages to see what other guises these treacherous steps can assume…

NG Bristow