"Winning the Purple Dragon Short Story Competition came as quite a shock. I arrived at Theatr Mwldan having been told a story (I didn't even know which) had been shortlisted.

Then I heard that both stories I submitted had been shortlisted. When the third and second prizewinners were read out and I wasn't one, I thought I was out of the running. The rest was almost unreal.

The story itself originated in a writing exercise. I was running a creative writing class at Fishguard Community Education Centre (now--scandalously--defunct) and decided to offer the challenge of writing a short story based on a fairy-tale.

Being a feisty kind of class they immediately challenged me to do one as well. 'Soldier' (after quite a lot of rewrites) is the result.

The first draft was entirely in the voice of Jack, the conjuror. In a later draft I introduced the voices of Alanna, the ballerina, and Terry, the soldier.

I once did a course in Transactional Analysis in which we had to say which fairy-tale had most significance for us. In my case it was the one this story is based on--it's not hard to guess which."

Article written by Alex Barr