It all started when I won first prize in a little writing competition in my home town (with Death walks round the world). To test the water, in 1985 I applied for a regional Arts Council bursary: if successful, I planned to start writing more seriously; if I wasn't, I'll only write when I feel like it. I did receive it, and have since built a body of work amounting to over 50 short stories (with 11 at late draft stage) and three short novels (two still in progress). Short stories were once badly neglected in the UK, but until I left full-time work in 1992 they suited my extended lunch hours in Nottingham city library; now they are ideal for working in small chunks of time. I mainly keep poetry private (mainly from lack of confidence, and written on the portable in the photo!) although I’ve used it to illustrate one personal area of this site. I tend to move between between art, music and writing. The first thing I ever did on a (green-screen Amstrad) computer in the 80s was write and create geometric graphics.
Published Work
Full details to follow of published work to date. After six drafts and a few test readers, I recently submitted my first novel The Waiting Place from Faber Academy and received very useful and encouraging feedback, so am currently focussing on that rather than short stories, while researching agents.
Short Stories
A selection, some have been published.
- The iron alarm
No-one round here says “hello”. They say “alright”, as if they care how you are or need to check that everything is as it should be, but no-one ever knows because you're just supposed to say “alright” back…
- Our special fishes
Leaning over the harbour wall I could see my uncle amongst them. Fish with human faces. The first time I saw them I was three years old, and alarmed…
- Death walks round the world
By now, death had walked calmly round the world so many times that the sea no longer took the trouble to get it wet as it crossed the ocean floor…
(This is the story than started me off. It won first prize in a little writing competition in my home town.)- Small
- Peter has to work like most of us, but although he's not quite feeling normal he finds someone who understands that the world sometimes looks like it's coming at him from the wrong end of a telescope.
- Bald
Out in the desert, they wanted to take off their clothes. She didn't stop at her clothes. She took off her hair…
- Petrol
When he discovered that she was drinking petrol he wasn’t surprised. He had spotted the bottle in her bag. She would take it out, sipping at intervals throughout the day…
- The mole
The pipes, tubes, meters and walkways gave this machinery the appearance of a pumping station I had once visited—the scale of the equipment evoked the comparison—but I knew at once that what was before me had nothing at all to do with water.
Stories and poetry from real life…
- Go through the rainy window
- for four very short stories with a melancholy edge…
- Or see poetry in a bottle
- for five poems on the same melancholy theme (opens new tab/window)