New Stories for 2020

2020 already looks like being quite an exiting year, as I'll be having a number of new stories appearing in some fine publications.

My tale. Last Shot, about a paparazzi photographer who starts to wonder if he might just be the Angel of Death has been accepted for Stories We Tell After Midnight from Crone Girls Press.  The cover and line up for this looks amazing.  This book should be making an appearance around Halloween this year.  Can't wait for this one.

Due in spring is The Alchemy Press Book of Horrors 2 in which I get to share a table of contents with some big names from the world of horror and weird fiction such as John Howard and Peter Sutton.  My story, Black Nore, explores the murky waters of memory as the protagonist, Hunter, tries to come to terms with whether or not he murdered his own brother.

My story, The Lies of the Heart, returns to the mountains overrun with shapeshifting creatures which I first visited in my tale The Shape of the Heart, published in the anthology Once Bitten from Knightwatch Press back in 2015.  Going up against the shapeshifters this time is the recently bereaved Nev, whose self-imposed isolation in the mountains is about to be shattered by the arrival of a character from the original story.  The Lies of the Heart will be published in the anthology What Monsters Do For Love from Soteria Press.










Other stories of mine seeing publication this year include another shapeshifting tale, Butterfly, which has been accepted for the first issue of The New Gothic Review; Time For Sale and The Long Sleep, two very different stories which will both see print in the Time anthology from Transmundane Press; and a reprint of The Way Stationer which will appear in Terry Grimwood's space exploration anthology Time We Left.  I'm also due to have a story published in the festival-themed anthology, Nabu Carnivale, which will be published by Tell-Tale Press in May.  This story is called The Black Masquerade and will also be the title story of my next collection.

Recommended: Rare Birds by L.S. Johnson

I've been quite vocal about how much I enjoy L.S. Johnson's writing in past blog posts, and her second collection of short stories did not disappoint.  I'd read most of these stories before in the publications where they first appeared, but that didn't stop me enjoying them a second time around.  In fact, it was worth buying the book just for the two tales that were new to me: Marigolds (a tale of love and witchcraft among the women working in a Parisian brothel), and The Properties of Obligate Pearls (about a doctor who harvests misery).

As a taster, why not check out the excellent podcast of We Are Sirens (one of the standout stories from Rare Birds), which was narrated wonderfully by Abra Staffin-Weibe on Podcastle.

The Ginneyghoul

As new story of mine, entitled The Ginneyghoul, has been published in the anthology The Monsters We Forgot Vol.1 from Soteira Press.  See except below.

"I’d heard about people going missing on the estate. It’s been happening for years. No one ever discussed it, but you’d hear things. Sometimes I recognized the names of the missing. Or it was someone I’d seen around, but never spoken to. Gone. It never bothered me before; it was just the way things were. But when Kayleigh told us no one had seen or heard from her brother Reece in weeks, I had a strange feeling like there was something approaching. Closing in on me. Closing in on all of us."