I’m going to serialise my new novella, The Man Who Brought the Rain, chapter by chapter. That way, I can shamelessly self-promote it while simultaneously working to overcome my natural aversion to self-promotion: a hoodoo lurking in the darkest recesses of my inadequate soul ever since I can recall.

A dissemination strategy is cunningly at play here. Like the proverbial squirrel, the more acorns I bury in the digital soil, the more chance of finding at least one version of the novella when I return in a future incarnation centuries hence, only to remember that I was once the man who brought the rain.

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The Elevator Pitch

Much as he’d rather take the dry road, from the Martian deserts of Chile to the Gompas of the high Himalayas, Stanley Fairwether cannot seem to outrun the rain. In a world of weather extremes, some gifts are curses that don’t know when to stop.

Synopsis

The novella’s Scottish-born protagonist, Stanley Fairwether, is, for the early chapters of the story, an unwitting host of a randomly-inherited curse that brings rain for every time he steps outside. Being born in a drenched land, it is not until he starts to travel to drier climates around the world that his suspicions are aroused that something weirdly personal might be going on with the weather. Believing he has intuitively proven that he is being pursued by the rain, he turns this epiphany and his newfound fame into a two-pronged mission in life: firstly to make pots of money from bringing rain to the unlikeliest corners (those usually held in trust by third-world despots or oil-rich sheikhs who grow weary of cloud-seeding), and then, once comfortable, to use his rainmaking powers for philanthropic purposes to alleviate suffering from scorched and flood-prone regions of a world gone climate mad.

Stanley’s born talents for being a conduit for all things wet are as abundant as the rain he brings. But although Stanley can put out Amazonian wildfires and refill empty South African reservoirs just by standing for long enough under wide skies, he cannot control the volume of what falls. This is his Achilles heel, and it is this propensity for extremes that will ultimately get Stanley into a drowned world of trouble. Sick of the clouds that follow him, and weary of the role of self-appointed saviour of a world out of balance, Stanley heads for the one place the rain can’t follow him: above the clouds. But from his monastery retreat in the high Himalaya, he chances on another natural disaster brewing down south, and so, nagged by the better angels of his nature, goes incognito to try and tempt the no-show monsoon. Recognised from his dalliance with online fame, he is celebrated as a reincarnation of the Hindu rain god, Indra, only to invite a deluge that just about washes everything away. This does not go down well with the mob. Trapped amid rising waters and irate locals, will Stanley be hoisted with his own petard?

Chapter & Verse

You won’t find a single verse in the pages to follow, but you will find 30-odd short chapters.

More to follow….