The Weary Heart

A little boy looks at a star and makes a wish. A young woman, newly divorced, confronts an important moment from her past. A man who prefers solitude is forced to entertain an unwanted guest. A pregnant woman stares down at a gravesite and ponders her future. These are a few of the characters and situations you will meet in The Weary Heart, a brand new collection of stories and sketches by that up-and-coming, albeit almost entirely unknown, author, Simon Ott. The stories have a small town atmosphere about them, are short, medium, and long in length, don't skip on depth yet are easy to read. In fact, one reader – namely, Mr Ott himself – described their style as being "like a silky river, slipping smoothly along for the most part but then bam! suddenly turning into churning rapids or dashing itself against a rocky shore, only to then flow on smoothly once again." All of which is true enough – but the stories included here are written much better than that. Promise.

Simon Ott lives and works in a small town in rural Pennsylvania. Contact: chirrup23@outlook.com