My (long) short story Gravewatcher appears in the newly released Tales from The Graveyard from North Bristol Writers. Here’s a sample from the opening. Carina watched from the cemetery gate. Her new arrival tried to shove the gardener’s shoulder, passed straight through, and stumbled to his knees. Those who died | Read more…
Earlier this year, having been unscrupulously recruited into producing a story for their second anthology “The Dark Half of the Year”, I moved from the tentative fringe to being a fully fledged member of North Bristol Writers. It’s a very dynamic and proactive group; rather than simply focusing on writing | Read more…
I’ve been having a think about what makes a good piece of flash fiction, and while I don’t think I can say it any better than David Gaffney does in this article – Stories in your pocket: how to write flash fiction (which came out just before the very first National | Read more…
As I entered the polling station and handed my card to the lady at the desk, I still didn’t know how I would vote. Nothing I’d heard in the run up to the election made me want to vote for any of the parties. I did feel quite strongly about voting | Read more…
On the evolution of stories and a case of unexpected philosophy. Muse There are those who scoff at authors when they claim they have no control over the stories that they tell, that they are a conduit through which stories are told, more like a medium than an engineer. That | Read more…
Along with the rest of Britain, I’ve had a bit of a dry spell recently. A blogging dry spell at least. Hopefully the two aren’t linked and it won’t start raining as a result of me posting an update. This is a bit of a general update and “what’s coming | Read more…
Some thoughts on the use of song lyrics and other copyrighted material in fiction or other media. This weekend the subject of quoting song lyrics in works of fiction came up in conversation with another writer. He wanted to know whether he would be allowed to quote lines from a | Read more…
The last two months have been a crazy rush to get Great Escapes, Volume 1 edited and printed, hence the reason this blog has been somewhat neglected. But, the hard work is nearly over; the book is here! There are a few technical niggles to iron out with the eBook | Read more…
Isabel picks up more than turkey and sprouts shopping for her Christmas dinner. T’was the night before Christmas and after a long shift at the lab, Isabel stalked the supermarket shelves. She looked down at the few remaining loose Brussel sprouts. Scrawny little rejects. She didn’t even really like sprouts, | Read more…
Ideas are not something I usually struggle with, but sometimes I like to challenge myself to write something based on a prompt purely because it wasn’t my idea. I’ve found in the past that some of the stories I have created through trying to find a story within a prompt | Read more…