Glimpses into Unfolding Lives
This collection offers a unique journey into the heart of storytelling. Each piece is an incomplete narrative fragment, a moment captured mid-scene, or a page torn from a larger book. They invite your imagination to fill in the gaps, pondering what came before and envisioning what might happen next.
This project stands as an experiment at the intersection of human creativity and artificial intelligence. It explores how digital tools can act as a partner in the writing process, shaping new forms of storytelling and enhancing digital literacy in a collaborative environment.
This collection spans genres from sprawling Family Saga and intriguing Mystery to tender Coming-of-Age, Environmental Fiction, and Slice of Life. This particular selection showcases the work of Jamie F. Bell.
We invite you to explore these unfinished tales not just as a reader, but as a co-creator, completing the narrative in your own mind and shaping its ultimate direction.
Today’s Unfinished Tales and Short Stories
Focusing on Family Saga, Mystery, Coming-of-Age, and Environmental Fiction, with stylistic categories such as Minimalist and Western Style BL, we champion digital literacy. Our use of creative technology for unique short stories explores the dynamic intersection of AI-assisted narrative and the progressive future of publishing.
The Root in the Concrete
Category: Minimalist | Genre: Family Saga
Deven wakes to find a massive tree root has breached the foundation of his minimalist family home, disrupting his carefully curated isolation.
A Chill in the Timberline
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Western Style BL | Genre: Mystery
The wind howled a hollow, endless note, scrubbing the low hills of their remaining colour. A bitter, deep freeze had gripped the valley, turning the world into a study in whites and greys. Snow, fine as flour, coated everything in a thick, uncompromising blanket, piling high against the skeletal timber of spruce trees that clung desperately to the ridge lines. The air itself seemed to splinter on each breath, sharp and metallic, carrying the distant, indistinguishable scent of burning pine and something else, something acrid and old. Smoke, perhaps, from a fire long extinguished but never truly forgotten by the land.
The Glass Apple
Category: Slice of Life | Genre: Coming-of-Age
Andrew discovers a disturbance in his quiet home—a misplaced Christmas ornament that triggers a surreal deviation from the season.
An Absence Beneath the Ice
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Action-Adventure | Genre: Environmental Fiction
Johnnie trudges through the desolate beauty of an early winter forest, the air crisp and cold, stripping away distractions and forcing a somber reflection on the changing seasons and the quiet despair of environmental decline.
Inheritance by Weathering
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Slice of Life | Genre: Slice of Life
I don’t have a history like this. My family tree is more of a shrub, patchy and prone to dropping leaves unexpectedly. We don’t have deep roots; we have shallow, tangled ones that we packed up and moved every few years. So walking through St. Boniface feels like visiting another planet. Here, history isn’t just in a museum; it’s in the street names, the French on the ghost signs, the heavy stone of the cathedral that burned but refused to fall. It’s in the air.
About the Project
By design, these stories have no beginning and no end. Many stories are fictional, but many others are not. They are snapshots from worlds that never fully exist, inviting you to imagine what comes before and what happens next. We had fun exploring this project, and hope you will too.
The Unfinished Tales and Short Stories collection is an experimental, creative research project by The Arts Incubator Winnipeg and the Art Borups Corners Storytelling clubs. Each chapter is a unique interdisciplinary arts and narrative storytelling experiment, born from a collaboration between artists and applied AI researchers, designed to explore the boundaries of creative writing, automation, and storytelling. The project was made possible with funding and support from the Ontario Arts Council Multi and Inter-Arts Projects program and the Government of Ontario.
