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."

The Way Stationer

My short story 'The Way Stationer' will shortly be published in the anthology Colp: Solitude.

This sci-fi tale wrestles with the meaning of 'home' when mankind begins discovering other planets to populate beyond Earth.  Here's an except:

"The visitor ships always departed soon after they arrived.  The occupants were making new homes out in the far reaches of the galaxy, new homes with a new set of wonders.  Kayin was just a stop along their way.  A way station, they called it.  Its soil had been deemed too acidic for agriculture; it’s winds at times too relentless for human beings to tolerate.  No one mentioned the breath-taking beauty of Kayin’s sky at night.  Instead, for more than a hundred years, they had stored fuel and foodstuffs here, in the huge station complex where Amelia lived most of the time alone.  Amelia sometimes tried to imagine these other planets her visitors were headed too, but mostly she thought about Earth.  She pictured in her mind Earth’s cities, its oceans, it deserts, its green meadows.  Polluted, the visitors said when she asked them about it.  Dangerous.  Overcrowded.  Concepts she found it near-impossible to imagine."

Upcoming publications

A number of my short stories will be published this spring.  First will be The Birdman of Bishopsbourne which appears in the Transmundane Press Anthology 'In the Air' published on 24th April.  The story is about a farmer obsessed with flight who wakes up one morning and finds something has crash landed in his barn.

May 14th sees the release of the 'Lost and Found' anthology from Wagonbridge Publishing and included in this one is my story The Garden of Lost Things.  This tale revolves around an elderly couple with a tragedy in their past who start to make bizarre discoveries when they move into a new home.

Later the same month my story Emma will be published in the Tell Tale Press anthology 'Creatures'.  This story is about magic and motherhood.

And June will see the release of Issue 2 of C.M. Muller's 'SYNTH', in which I am fortune enough to have a sci-fi story titled  Remnants.  Don't have a cover or an exact release date for this one yet, but Issue 1 (shown here) was well received so I'm very much looking forward to being a part of Issue 2.

You Will Never Lose Me: Stories

My new book of short stories, entitled 'You Will Never Lose Me' collects together some of my fiction from the past 3 years.

This was a period when alot of the protagonists in my stories where creative types.  So in this book there are tales of painters, musicians, film stars, and general rock n' rollers, mostly coming up against the weird and supernatural. All but 3 of the 19 stories have been previously published in anthologies and magazines such as Weirdbook, Nightscript, Not One of Us, Turn to Ash, and Sanitarium Magazine.

That great cover was by the illustrator Sally Barnett.

Available from Amazon.

New Year, New Stories

In these first few months of 2019, I'll be having two new stories published.  First up, Raking Light will appear in the first issue of the re-launched Sanitarium Magazine. This story is about a young man named Marco mourning the death of his closest friend whilst having to restore a painting by a famous artist for the gallery he works for.  The discovery of odd symbols on the back of the painting, and a mysterious visitor to the gallery who appears to be growing younger, leads Marco to wonder if he can in fact cheat death.

Sanitarium Magazine No.1 will be available from 18th January.

Continuing the painterly theme, my story The Last Salvador, kicks things of in the anthology Twice-Told: A Collection of Doubles edited C.M. Muller.  This story re-imagines the childhood of a certain Surrealist, blending facts, fiction, and imagery from some of the artist's own work.  I'm very proud that my story gets to start things off in what I'm sure will be a wonderful book which also contains stories by Charles Wilkinson, Craig Wallwork, Tim Major, Farah Rose Smith,

and Steve Rasnic Tem, amongst others.

Twice-Told: A Collection of Doubles is already available for pre-order, but will be officially released on 2nd February.