Short Stories

News, Short Stories

The Caretaker Accepted for Publication

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My horror short The Caretaker has been accepted for publication.

This short, based loosely on an unreleased film by Moe Acharki, is my only horror so far. It follows a young man tricked back to a village from his youth, searching for a friend he thought was missing. Instead he finds something older and far more deadly. The Caretaker is a slow-burn horror story dealing with themes of class, religion and the dangers of nostalgia.

I’ll have more information on the wheres and whens in the near future. I’m excited for people to be able to finally read it.

Watch this space.

Blog, News, Novels, Short Stories

New Short – New Updates

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A new short has been written and submitted for a competition! And while I’m not going into details at this point, it’s one I’m quite happy with.

To start with, I’ve had some problems with the website over the last week or so. When I’ve tried to reach it to post updates, it hasn’t loaded. I’m not sure if this is a me problem or an everybody problem, so it’s something I’ll keep an eye on.

Onto the short. It’s for a competition and I’ve decided not to talk too much about competition shorts from here on. They like anonymous judgment – no name or contact details on the manuscript. And while it’s unlikely the judge will jump onto Google to try and find details, it’s also not really in the spirit of things to post too much. So for now I’ll keep it secret.

All I’ll say is it deals with themes of masculinity, dementia and being trapped in a life that isn’t your own. It follows a father and son who had a bad relationship, but who now rely entirely on one another.

Over the next few days I’ll be posting some other updates. Some thoughts on submitting Nepo Baby, and an exploration of storytelling in film through three versions of The Secret Garden. I’d like to write more often about storytelling, but time is short and sometimes the website doesn’t work. We’ll see what happens.

News, Novels, Short Stories

A Clip of the Wrist – A New Short Story (And A Nepo Baby Update)

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I’ve finished a new short story, currently titled A Clip of the Wrist. It’s about an older woman, a busybody who clashes with the modern world when she places a letter on a poorly parked car. It’s a funny, touching short about the conflict between modern technology and the old fashioned way of seeing things.

I have a couple of venues in mind, both of which are currently closed, and so I’ll be submitting in the next couple of weeks. A Clip of the Wrist will be readable, hopefully, by the end of the year.

While we’re on the subject of submissions. I’ve completed the last couple of edits I had for Nepo Baby. A few days ago I posted about the process so far, and I’m happy to say it was short and sweet. The last challenge is to read it all through in a single setting. If it survived that, it’ll be ready to go out to agents.

It’s a book I’m extremely proud of. I’ve been very happy with how it’s stood up to the six-week break I gave it. Most of the bigger edits have been things I knew I wanted to do months ago.

The hard part, now, is figuring out how to place it with the right people. Like with submitting shorts, this is my least favourite part of the process, so wish me luck!

News, Short Stories

The Searcher and What We Want

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Two new flash shorts for this week: The Searcher and What We Want. They’re quite different stories and both have already been submitted for publication.

I first mentioned What We Want in a blog post a couple of weeks ago. Then it was under the title Lie For Me. That’s changed because, as so often happens, the character veered off in a direction I wasn’t expecting. It hasn’t changed substantially, but enough that the title no longer made sense.

It’s a mother talking to her daughter about something that happened at school. On the surface she’s trying to be supportive, but she let’s her own shortcomings get in the way. It deals with themes of love, family and cycles of abuse. It is 690 words long.

The other short is called The Searcher, and it’s about a man who vows never to spend a birthday alone after his fiftieth turns out to be a bust. This was an experimental piece for me, writing in a very literary, pared back version of my style.

One of my favourite books is The Life of a Stupid Man by Ryunosuke Akutagawa. It’s incredible how much he does with so little. The Searcher is in that vein, 800 words split across eight different sections. The shortest – and one of the most important – is just 55 words long.

I’ll do a proper breakdown of this one once it’s published, and it’s something I’ll continue experimenting with. That includes in shorts for Leak.

Both The Searcher and What We Want are in the pipeline, so hopefully I’ll be able to share them very soon.

News, Short Stories

RE: Our Last Year Published at Flash Fiction North

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RE: Our Last Year has been published at Flash Fiction North. You can head over to their Recently Published page to read it.

RE: Our Last Year is a is a satirical piece in the form of an email, sent by the head of a company that’s about to make some big changes.

It takes a look at work culture and late-stage capitalism by ramping up the “cost-cutting measures” and corporate double speak to 11. It’s familiar – a little too familiar.

Anybody who has ever had a boss has seen an email like this. There’s the faux cheeriness, the “camaraderie” that only goes one way. There’s the business plans that seem so destructive you wonder how you’ll ever come back.

You don’t come back. Then another email arrives.

It’s fantastic to see RE: Our Last Year published, and it’s sitting along some really cool stories in the August batch. Take a look, and read some of the others on your way.

For information about some of my other shorts, click across to the Prose page.

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