There’s a supernatural serial killer on the loose… Elliot Cross didn’t believe in monsters. At least, not until his brother died at the hands of something unnatural. Four years later and a string of impossible deaths leave the police baffled. Consumed by a desire to shine a journalistic light on | Read more...
A TIME TRAVEL ROMANCE NOVELETTE It’s 2012. According to the Mayans the world is about to end… they might be right. When local science reporter Ruth Anders attends a press conference for the Kepler project, she knows it’s going to be a memorable experience but she never expects to be | Read more...
Welcome to the Graveyard—Where the worlds of the living and the dead overlap. North Bristol Writers present a third anthology of 16 enthralling tales. A boy encounters a mysterious groundskeeper; two students unearth an ancient terror; and in the wilds of Africa, a hunter stumbles into danger. Corpses rise, creatures | Read more...
What is your author voice? How do you develop it and bring it to the fore? It’s a tricky question and one many authors struggle with. I myself struggle to reconcile what I know to be good writing practice with injecting distinction and personality into my writing. I went to a | Read more…
I am not an expert on the UK-EU relationship. I don’t know whether we would be better of in or out in the long run. Most of the “facts” being bandied about are estimates, misrepresentations or vague guesses which makes it hard to know what to believe. There are both | Read more…
I am currently caught in a reading dilemma. The book I’m reading isn’t very good. Or at least isn’t holding my attention. Is it okay to stop reading a book? Logic says “of course!” and yet it feels wrong. When I am enjoying a book I make time to read | Read more…
The classic advice to writers is to write what we know, or the more accurate alternative: “Write what you know, or can research.” There’s an inference in the quote above, that information you research is inherently different from information you know. Which, I suppose, may be true, depending on your definition of knowing. | Read more…
Geordie Sharpe and his SAS team are sent to Africa to train government forces in the war torn nation of Kamanga. After an accident leaves a young boy dead, the local witch doctor makes a chilling pronouncement. Unless they leave now, ten white men or women will die. Geordie dismisses | 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…
This is a post about the futility of trying to make capital and physical punishment humane. I read an update on the case of Raif Badawi and (notwithstanding the complete injustice of his case as a whole*), I found myself thinking, this is insane. This is like… The Land of the Headless | Read more…
An article today on the BBC news website covered a dramatic meeting between facial transplant patient Richard Norris and Rebekah Aversano, the sister of the man whose face he now wears. Richard Norris was severely injured in a shotgun accident some 15 years ago. In 2012 he received a transplant | Read more…
The Glass Demon by Helen Grant Lin Fox is dragged away from her life in England by her family. Her father is obsessed with finding the mysterious Allerheiligen Glass – medieval stained glass windows thought lost for centuries – and moves them to a remote part of Germany. His initial | Read more…
Twitter went crazy today with artists, writers, musicians and other creatives reacting against the Green Party policy on copyright. **Warning, this blog post may contain political opinion** Copyright is a strange beast. For many people, it’s an inconvenience standing between them and content they would like to access, copy or | Read more…
“I can’t die.” Even before I say it I know you’ll never believe me, but it’s true. “I can prove it.” I turn the knife over in my hand and watch your eyes slant towards the door behind me. You know you can’t get past me, which is why you | Read more...
Between the pale green, silver-spined fronds, round stems probe the air with tiny explorers at their tips. It’s pointless. The plant sits on top of a filing cabinet in an executive office on the fifth floor of a concrete box, yet it dangles its babies over the carpet in a | Read more...
The food was at the back of a small, white box. Mushkin put her foot on the smooth surface and tested it. Nothing bad happened. She sniffed and felt with her whiskers. Strange smells mixed with the tempting aroma of wheat but none that she recognised as dangerous. She stretched | Read more...