This Halloween, rather than encountering ghosts and ghouls, we explore the horrors of war. A little girl sneaks out of her family home to buy a birthday gift for her mother, a decision that changes her life forever.

Nicholas Batura lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States, with his rad wife and their rescue pit bulls. When he’s not writing, he can be found on the jiu jitsu mats, or working through the secrets found in a bottle of wine.

This episode was produced by Tabitha Potts [https://www.tabithapotts.com].

Photo by pawankawan [https://morguefile.com/creative/pawankawan] at Morguefile.com

S: Beautiful Romantic Piano [https://freesound.org/people/UNIVERSFIELD/sounds/702866/] by UNIVERSFIELD [https://freesound.org/people/UNIVERSFIELD/] | License: Attribution 4.0

Dust and Oranges by Nicholas Batura

A monthly podcast dedicated to celebrating the literary short story and all things bookish. Bite-size short fiction for writers and readers everywhere. Listen to a short story or interview on the 1st of each month at 12:00am.

Hosted by Tabitha Potts and Martin Nathan open to established, new and emerging writers in the English language. Always free to submit.

We are a small organisation run by volunteer writers and producers (Tabitha Potts and Martin Nathan) hoping to benefit the writing community.

Our eventual aim is to be self-funding and to pay our writers and actors for each short story we produce. Visit our Patreon [https://patreon.com/storyradio] if you would like to support our work and access exclusive content.

Send us your stories

Visit the Submissions page on our website

https://www.storyradio.org [https://www.storyradio.org/submissions/]

Or contact Tabitha Potts at submit@storyradio.org

About us

Tabitha Potts is a writer living in East London. She has had several short stories published in print and online and short-listed for various awards, most recently the Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize [https://alpinefellowship.com/writing-prize]. In a previous life, she was a BBC Radio Drama producer.

Read more at http://www.tabithapotts.com [http://www.tabithapotts.com/].

Martin Nathan has worked as a labourer, showman, pancake chef, fire technician, and a railway engineer. His short fiction has been published by Tangent Press, HCE and Grist and his poetry has appeared in Finished Creatures, Erbacce and Aesthetica. His novel – A Place of Safety is published by Salt Publishing.

Website: http://www.martinnathan.co.uk [https://www.martinnathan.co.uk/]