Coffin Bell has published my short fiction, The Memory of Hannah Babinski, in Vol 5, Issue 1 of their superb journal. Read the story and the rest of the issue, … Continue reading Coffin Bell – Journal of Dark Literature

Coffin Bell has published my short fiction, The Memory of Hannah Babinski, in Vol 5, Issue 1 of their superb journal. Read the story and the rest of the issue, … Continue reading Coffin Bell – Journal of Dark Literature
A peak at some of the cracking fiction I’ve been lucky enough to read recently. Short fiction Things of Which We Do Not Speak by Lucy Taylor (from the collection, … Continue reading The Creased Spine Bookshelf 1/22
As we came into this year, I’d just completed my first collection of short fiction, and this continues along its publication journey. That, and the fact these past twelve months … Continue reading Publication Review 2021
With Mythic, a new quarterly SF&F magazine publishing my piece of short fiction, Holding Hands, next month, I wanted to give you a little back story about this rather personal tale.
A while ago my son and I were having some difficulty getting on. After around six months of very little communication between us, either verbally or physically, we happened to be walking back from town, him trailing behind in silence like usual. As we did so, I felt his hand slip in mine. It was wonderful, brief, and a beginning.
It was that moment which I attempted to capture in writing, and from that, Holding Hands developed. I’m not proficient enough as a writer yet to have done that, but I’ve tried. I hope you enjoy the story.
Flying high with the news that Mythic: A Quarterly Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine will be acquiring my short story, Holding Hands, for its third issue.
There has always been Night, then Man came with his fear and Darkness was born. Hypnos is one of the stories found in the anthology, Monsters Amongst Us, published by … Continue reading Monsters Amongst Us anthology (2017)
First draft finished! I also have three possible titles for my werewolf story: Autumn, My Hero, or Hashtag Rewilding.
Which one is the most evocative?
The late William Trevor on short story writing: “I think it is the art of the glimpse. If the novel is like an intricate Renaissance painting, the short story is an impressionist painting. It should be an explosion of truth. Its strength lies in what it leaves out just as much as what it puts in, if not more. It is concerned with the total exclusion of meaninglessness. Life, on the other hand, is meaningless most of the time. The novel imitates life, where the short story is bony, and cannot wander. It is essential art.”
(source: The Guardian)
I’m reworking The Red Spot Murders tonight. It’s a Pourquoi story exploring the haunted house phenomenon, and features a delightful antagonist by the name of Maeve. It was by researching this character that I learned that there are such things as Mother Trees. I had hoped there were. In fact I typed that exact term into my Google search to see what would come up, and was rewarded with this wonderful TED talk with Suzanne Simard, a Canadian ecologist. Damn, the woods have just got a whole load creepier.