Category Archives: Fiction

Maps – Sparks In The Snow (Short Story, 2024)

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It’s been a while, but I’ve written another short story inspired by the music and songwriting of Maps (James Chapman). As I’ve said before, there’s something indefinable in the emotional dynamics of James’s music that really inspires me to write short fiction. This time the track is ‘Sparks In The Snow’, the B-side of his second single ‘Lost My Soul’.

This is the fourth of these I’ve written, and when completed, the collection will be published as A Small Book Of Maps through my Mortality Tables collaborative project.

It is bundled with a collaboration with Maps that kicked off the Mortality Tables releases for 2024, ‘LF15 / A 4’33” Walk To Woburn Sands Station’. This formed part of Season 02 of the LIFEFILES series, where artists respond to my extremely basic lo-fi field recordings. In this case it was the sounds of the walk from my house to my local station, a walk that coincidentally takes 4’33”. I spoke to James about his versions of the John Cage piece for my other Mute blog, stumm433.com. You can read that interview here.

‘Sparks In The Snow’ is available through the Mortality Tables Bandcamp site here.

(c) 2024 Mat Smith / Mortality Tables

Maps – A.M.A. (Short Story, 2013)

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In 2013 I reviewed Vicissitude by Maps for Clash, which turned out to be my favourite album of that year. My review can be found here.

It is one of the few albums in recent years where, when I listen back, I still 100% agree with the high score that I gave it. Others that I won’t mention haven’t lasted the test of time, but this one has. I revisit the album every so often and it still stirs something up in me that I can’t fully identify, some strange cocktail of optimism and melancholia that appeals to my outlook on the world as I approach my forties.

James Chapman‘s third album had such a profound impact on me that I was inspired to write a very short piece of fiction loosely related to the track ‘A.M.A.’. I’ve written short fiction before, but never one inspired – however obliquely – by a song. You can read and download ‘A.M.A.’ below.

A.M.A. (inspired by Maps) by MJA Smith

My other short stories are no longer online. If you desperately want to read them, please get in touch.

(c) 2013 Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence