Hidayat Adams talks about his involvement with our anthology Gifted

 

I interpreted the word "gifted" in three ways in my story entitled "The Sealed Heart". (a) The story looked at a gifted or very talented surgeon. (b) It looked at how a patient returns the doctor's empathy as a gift by reminding him why he became a doctor in the first place. (c) The third gift was the doctor's wife falling pregnant and the child being the gift to both of them.

  

I found out about your call for submissions on Facebook. I belong to a group that updates members about writing competitions, and that's where I saw the announcement for the competition. I can tell you that I was extremely excited about the idea, but it took me quite a while before I felt I had the right kind of story. It was influenced mostly by my own experience at the time, as I was in and out of hospital for kidney and kidney stone treatments. It thus felt natural to set my story in a hospital and have the main character be a doctor. I based the character on my surgeon who was treating me.

I love the short story form because I can't seem to write anything longer than 6000 words. My fantasy novel wrote itself, as the story flowed effortlessly, but although I've started writing part two, it's just too much effort. The short story allows me to create a full story with interesting characters, and then move on to another story. I don't have to keep track of who's who, or who said what or what happened as I would have to do with a novel. I also love the fact that I can choose to have all loose ends tied up neatly, or present the reader with an open ending for them to figure it out. Additionally, I can experiment with a variety of genres from horror to comedy to romance to fantasy to science-fiction...

I am an English Academic Support lecturer at the College of Cape Town. I'm a self-published author of one fantasy novel and four short stories anthologies. I am a loner by nature, but I'm not anti-social. I just prefer my own company and being indoors. Aside from writing short stories, I also write poetry. I've had one of my poems published in a local poetry magazine, and three other poems have been selected by an online magazine to be posted on their site during November and December. I'm a bachelor for life, I love to bake (my speciality is a lemon meringue tart) and I am generous to a fault.

I am currently working on three novels, each at various stages of development. I've written the first four chapters of Part Two of my fantasy series; I've nearly finished a supernatural thriller which I started writing last year this time, and I started a new fantasy novel at the beginning of October. Unfortunately, all these projects have stalled, but I hope with the upcoming December holidays, I will be able to carry on with them and even finish one or two.

My website is http://www.hidayatscorner.co.za

I have a Facebook page called Hidayat's Corner as well as a Facebook Profile for Hidayat Adams.

I have three books on http://www.inkitt.com that are  free to read.

Some of my poems can be found on http://www.poetrysoup.com