Hello, constant reader! I hope you’re enjoying the late summer weather; it’s been a bit tempestuous weather-wise in the UK, and it feels like our summer skipped a few tracks, but I don’t mind; I have several reasons to look forward to Autumn and the “Ber” months.
Flowers are wilting My enthusiasm, too Only weeds survive.” – Gaia Garden The weeds are not only surviving; they’re winning, and a lot of my time is taken up with tackling them; in the garden and in my writing commitment. With lockdown easing, we’ve ventured out for a few walks, but always in less frequented […]
I want to kick off with a mention that Reflex Press’s anthology Volume Two, The Real Jazz Baby, has recently won the Best Anthology Award in the 2020 Saboteur Awards. My story Let Me Be Your Fantasy is featured, together with 160 other authors, and I’m very proud to be a small part of an […]
I’ve had asthma since my teens, nearly forty years now. It lurks, ready at the lack of a coat to remind me of how it’s compromised my respiratory system. A mild cold in December mutated into a chest infection that hung around like an oblivious, unwelcome guest for nearly a month. Needless to say, I’m […]
I hope you all had a restful and enjoyable Christmas and New Year break. The tone of this post was set by my New Year’s Eve iTunes playlist (mercifully for my friends and family it’s quite short, unlike my eight-hour gargantuan Christmas version). While singing along to Abba’s “Happy New Year” I realised it’s not […]
Hi constant reader, I’m still here, in case you were wondering; I took a summer/autumn hiatus from all things writing; my creative outlets were limited to completing a drawing course, gardening, and some pre-Christmas knitting. I promised to read more (and more physical books – Kindle on a tablet makes it way too tempting to […]
Make voyages. Attempt them. There’s nothing else. – Tennessee Williams Sometimes, rather than peace coming to me “dropping slow“, it’s inspiration. The inspiration to realise my writing dreams waxes and wanes, given the daily grind of job, commute, and paying the bills. Waiting for inspiration doesn’t get things done, and it can be interminably slow […]
Today I received my copy of the first anthology from Reflex Fiction, titled “Barely Casting a Shadow”; my short piece “The Shore Road” made their summer 2017 flash fiction long list. It’s great to see your words in print! If you get the chance, do check out the stories published at Reflex Fiction, there’s some really […]
I really enjoy this short mystery tale that I wrote for Goodread’s #MysteryWeek in May; the idea is to write a mystery story in no more than five sentences. I pushed the five-sentence rule to the absolute limits of credulity-twelve hundred words! – so I’ve edited the story to more reasonable sentence lengths while minimising […]
It’s been a few months since I’ve posted, even though in the interim I’ve had a couple of flash fiction stories published; my non-writing life got in the way, and family comes first. I hope you all had a great Christmas and New Year’s, constant reader; a gift I inadvertently gave myself for 2018 was […]
I admit it, I’m currently on a real kick for Horror fiction in general and HP Lovecraft in particular. Maybe it’s the time of year; the evenings draw in, there’s a catch in your breath from the cold air, it’s Halloween season, and your thoughts turn to cosmic horror and undying gods beyond the stars and […]
I’ve had a tumultuous couple of months, and my writing has suffered; in fact my output nose-dived to zero. I keenly feel the truth of the (probably apocryphal) Chinese curse of living through interesting times. You may note, dear reader, the lack of any posts on here since July, but my hiatus is hopefully over, […]
One of my 100-word stories has been published today by John Xero in Issue 12 of 101fiction.com . The theme of this issue is “underwater”. I love reading the other stories published at 101fiction; the quality is very high, so if you like reading bite size horror, Sci-Fi, fantasy and surreal tales, please check it out. […]
Today I’ve had a piece of flash fiction published at Ad Hoc Fiction, a Bath Flash Fiction Award project. The title of my story is “The Expedition” – it was published in the 27/4/16 weekly edition, but if you have difficulty locating it in the Flash eBook format, I’ve saved a copy for your perusal here! As with much […]
Woohoo! Three pieces of flash fiction published in one month, my all time best! Today I have a new story published on Tim Sevenhuysen’s fantastic fiftywordstories.com, it’s called A True Story, and it is in fact based on an event in my childhood. Please have a read of my story, and check out the other great […]
This is just a quick night post to proudly announce that one of my flash fiction stories has been published by Richard Hearn at Paragraph Planet, a brilliant creative writing site that has published one 75-word story every day since 2008. I’m very pleased to have my story featured as the 27th March entry! Please […]
My day job has just got a lot busier; I’m involved in business readiness for a large transformation IT project at work for the next few months. So what do I do? I create a new writing website! My timing seems atrocious, but I think under the surface I am becoming more confident in my […]
This is just a quick post to proudly announce that one of my 100-word stories has been published by John Xero at 101fiction.com. Please check the site out, now in its sixth year online, it has some fantastic flash fiction. My story’s title is “Wireless” and it is published in the March 2016 issue. The […]
Dear Constant Reader, Firstly, apologies for this blog being a non-event recently; I’m only just recovering from a particularly long-winded chest infection during which writing of any form dwindled to nothing as my constant phlegmy cough precluded everything but itself. But I’m back in the saddle – I’m finishing off chapter 6 of And The […]
“It had to mean something. And then I meant something, too. Yes, smaller than the smallest, I meant something, too. To God, there is no zero. I still exist!” (The Shrinking Man) I’m starting to flex my writing muscles now! As well as working on my novel, And The Buntings Flew, the past few months […]