Click below for my identity-themed collection:
Someone is trying to kill me: I can feel their hunger knocking on my bones. Hear it. Taste it. Like someone’s hurling rocks at the glassy surface of a pond in winter. But I refuse to crack.
When I open my eyes there’s no sign of someone. No noose, no sword, no gun. No shard of ice or jagged piece of mirror. Only me.
Published March 2023 by CommuterLit
If he met her, I know he’d find her charming. Doesn’t everyone? But I won’t taunt myself with doomsday prophecies. I won’t let her gate-crash my dirty weekend.
As we gobble up tarmac on the motorway, I pinch myself. I’ve waited eight weeks and eighty lonely summers to be swept off my feet.
Published September 2021 by MIRonline
The triage nurse inspects the wound and pronounces it superficial. “Still,” he says, “you should get it stitched or it might heal skewwhiff.”
Muttering sotto voce, Lenny ushers her through ranks of injured drunks and hypochondriacs to the far corner of the room. He wipes the orange bucket seats with a paper napkin before sitting down. “Superficial, my arse! He could’ve put your eye out.”
Published August 2020 by Blue Lake Review
Her Knight in Shining Armour
Published April 2019 by Amarillo Bay
Had my highlights not been in need of attention, I might never have known of Mr Blenkinsop’s demise. I don’t normally patronise the local rag but I was marooned at the hairdresser’s and some other woman had nabbed last month’s Vogue.
Published December 2018 by Here Comes Everyone
My Mother Sent Me a Parcel
My mother sent me a parcel. I must admit I was surprised. She’d never been one for spontaneous displays of affection, and it wasn’t my birthday or Christmas. The postman must have been equally surprised to find me still in my pyjamas when he handed over the parcel at almost noon. He didn’t show it though. Like window cleaners and refuse collectors, postal workers have a knack of affecting indifference to the mess glimpsed beyond our front doors. Published December 2018 by Galley Collective p56 and again in February 2020 by Fiction on the Web, where your comments are welcome. |
Tobacco and Testosterone
He’d set out to find the blue mosque, but he must have taken a wrong turning, veered right instead of left somewhere, because now he was lost within a mash of alleyways devoid of street signs. He’d tried asking for directions, homing in on men in European dress who might speak English, but without luck. Did they walk on because they genuinely couldn’t understand him or because they couldn’t be arsed to help? Tobacco and Testosterone won the 2016 Ilkley Festival Short Story Competition and was published online in November 2018 by Fictive Dream and, along with forty-one others in my first short story collection, Becoming Someone. |
With a Small Bomb in Her Chest
One moonless night, when her daughter was but a few months old, Eve clawed back her silken baby skin and planted a bomb in her chest. It wasn’t as difficult as you’d imagine; a baby’s body is more malleable than an adult’s. Getting under her daughter’s skin was rather like peeling an orange. Or picking at the flap of a sealed envelope to slip an extra something inside. Published August 2018 by MIRonline To comment on this story go to Should I stretch this short story to a novel? |
The Arrangement
In the five years they’d been together, she’d only once caused Clinton to lose his smile. It was early on, when they were still dancing around the fine detail of the arrangement, and Julia had poked her nose where it didn’t belong. Published November 2017 by Storgy (Re-edited version appears along with forty-one others in my first short story collection, Becoming Someone.) |
Life Lesson
Published October 2017 by Foliate Oak and again in November 2021 by Fiction on the web
I open the door to a sea of expectant faces. Ashen with anxiety, illness or winter’s dribbling sun. On the wall above my head, the counter clicks over to the next digit. A man in a donkey jacket, jeans and steel-toed work boots rises to his feet.
Published May 2017 by Fictive Dream
Across the Table
“Nope, sorry, I don’t recognise you.” It’s not until I hear his words, until they solidify and sink inside me, that I realise how much I’d relied on a warmer welcome. As if the miles I’ve travelled and the money I’ve spent, along with the time I’ve wasted dreaming, would earn me something, if only a grudging prize for effort. Published November 2016 by Fictive Dream (Re-edited version appears along with forty-one others in my first short story collection, Becoming Someone.) |
Getting to grips with Liathach
James was surprised when I mentioned I might have a hen party. He knew I was too sensible to get plastered in some East European capital with an L-plate pinned to my back. But I fancied summoning my female friends for some ritual bonding. Once I was married, I wouldn’t have such a compelling excuse. Published September 2016 by Firefly Magazine (p57) (Re-edited version appears along with forty-one others in my first short story collection, Becoming Someone.) |
A Smell of Paint
Today my daughter is coming home. At last. Her brother has gone to bring her back to the house of her childhood to paint pictures and be mothered back to herself.
Published May 2016 by Fiction on the Web, where your comments are welcome. (Re-edited version appears along with forty-one others in my first short story collection, Becoming Someone.) For a painterly book review, call in at Annecdotal. |
A House for the Wazungu
And then we knew that wearing dark glasses or living in the city or flying through the sky in a giant hippo, deafened by the drone of bees, had made these men mad.
Published by Chuffed Buff Books 2013 and again by Red Fez, May 2016
A Daughter Your Age
Call it habit, call it obsession, but as soon as I hit the bend, I’m readying myself for the bus stop. Even today, when I’m hardly in the mood, I hold myself more erect in my seat. Even though for weeks there’s been no-one but chubby-armed women off late-night shopping, my gaze is drawn to the shelter, holding my breath until I can pick out the shape of a girl.
Winner of the Writers' Bureau Short Story competition 2015 and published on the website February 2016. Read about the background to the story and leave your comments on Annecdotal. |
Tattoos and Rubber Gloves
On the day of the funeral, Elsa vowed that the end of Arthur’s life wouldn’t presage the withering of hers. It wasn’t that she didn’t miss him, didn’t feel the ache of his loss with the dawn of each new day, but she’d learnt, long ago, that life was not to be squandered. She had a duty to carry on.
Published November 2015 by Amarillo Bay (Re-edited version appears along with forty-one others in my first short story collection, Becoming Someone.) |
All the way from Zokandu
Wendy is in the hallway, touching up her make-up, when the letterbox rattles for her attention. From the corner of her eye, she watches a pale-blue airmail envelope parachute to the mat. Her smile crinkles her lipstick; Efuru's letters never fail to brighten her day.
Published May 2015 by The Honest Ulsterman (Re-edited version appears along with forty-one others in my first short story collection, Becoming Someone.) |
Stepping into Dan's Shoes
They ribbed me about my shiny brogues and funeral suit borrowed from my brother. Ours wasn’t the kind of work where you’d turn up in collar and tie at nine. But we were all relieved to have something to laugh about that day, even Karen. Took our minds off what they’d done to Dan.
Published September 2014 by Halfway Down The Stairs (Re-edited version appears along with forty-one others in my first short story collection, Becoming Someone.) To comment on this story, see my post Good Grief for Writers? |
The Experiment Requires
Published August 2014 by Fiction on the Web, where your comments are welcome.
For more on this theme, see also my blog posts on The Tragedy of Obedience and Obedience Revisited
The Ruler in my Head
Published August 2014 by Short-Story Me.
To comment on this story, see my post School: a suitable place for fiction?
The Beach Where He Found It
Published online in the August 2014 issue of Words with Jam, where your comments are welcome.
Blog post on water-themed fiction now on Annecdotal. You might also like my blog post Good Grief for Writers that connects with this story.
Telling the Parents
The other night I sat my parents down and told them. I reckoned they were ready; I reckoned I had the whole thing sussed.
Mum’s skin turned blotchy round the throat and her eyes welled with tears. “What did we do wrong, Adam?” she said. You know how it is with mums, first to take the rap for anything. Published April 2014 by Blue Lake Review (Re-edited version appears along with forty-one others in my first short story collection, Becoming Someone.) Blog post on ideas that blow your mind now on Annecdotal, see also Disorientation: literally and literary, Old mysteries and their repercussions |
Elementary Mechanics
... The children used to race each other through the alleys around her family home, watched by the old men smoking in the doorways of the dark cafés. Although he was a month older, she was always a couple of steps ahead, so that if she should slip between the women examining squashes and aubergines to filch an apricot from a kerbside stall, he would be the one who would get caught and cuffed around the head.
First published in print in The Yellow Room 5, Autumn 2010 Published online March 2014 by Fiction on the Web, where your comments are welcome. (Re-edited version appears along with forty-one others in my first short story collection, Becoming Someone.) See also my blog post on How to Be a Heroine |
The Invention of Harmony
Even before she heard her speak, Sister Perpetua knew from the sweep of her skirts and the smell of rosemary it was the abbess who had come to relieve her. After all, no-one else would enter another nun’s cell without knocking. After three days of isolation, the older woman’s words seemed to drum on her ears.
Published February 2014 by Zouch Magazine where your comments are welcome. (Re-edited version appears along with forty-one others in my first short story collection, Becoming Someone.) I've blogged about my first attempt at writing historical fiction in my post Stepping tentatively back in time Blog post on ideas that blow your mind now on Annecdotal See also my blogpost A Flash (or Two) of Musical Inspiration And my review of The Chimes. |
Habeas Corpus
After five weeks and a day, they bound a rope around his wrists, put a sack over his head and bundled him into the boot of a car. His body shook and sweated and loosened in all the wrong places, yet he was determined to hold on to his mind right to the end. If he couldn't die nobly or bravely, if he couldn't die for some worthwhile cause, at least he could go honestly. With his self intact and with gratitude for all that had made him who he was.
Published January 2014 by Baltimore Review (Re-edited version appears along with forty-one others in my first short story collection, Becoming Someone.) Blog posts on writing about terror and on writing about its aftermath and on disorientation now on Annecdotal – comments welcome |
Stealing the Show from Nature
Published January 2014 by Zouch Magazine where your comments are welcome.
Blog posts on allotment gardening and Dirt under the fingernails now on Annecdotal
My Father's Love
When I was a baby in my cradle, or so the story goes, my father gathered up his love for me and fashioned a chalice of burnished gold. He swaddled the chalice in a skein of silk shipped all the way from China and bedded it down in a drawer in his wardrobe where he used to store his cufflinks and bowties.
Published January 2014 by Foliate Oak (Re-edited version appears along with forty-one others in my first short story collection, Becoming Someone.) Go to my post on showing and telling to comment on this story |
Heroes
Published online December 2013 by Words with Jam, and again in July 2019 by Scarlet Leaf Review, where your comments are welcome.
Blog post on slipstream fiction now on Annecdotal
Jessica's Navel
Published online December 2013 by Fiction on the Web, where your comments are welcome.
Comments also welcome on the blog posts The embodied you and me and School: a suitable place for fiction?
Had to Be You
As I edge nearer, I notice someone in the driving seat, so I slow right down and give them a look that I hope might nudge them to move on. They give me a look back that says I’m not budging for anyone, girl, and, I realise, too late, it’s not just any old car, not just any old driver, it’s you.
Published October 2013 by Zouch Magazine (Re-edited version appears along with forty-one others in my first short story collection, Becoming Someone.) Read my posts on leaving home to be a writer; and on writing in the second person where your comments are welcome |
The Neck
First published in print in 2009 by Bridge House and now online by Fiction on the Web, as the story of the month of August 2013. You're welcome to leave comments there or, alternatively, you can do so on annecdotal. See also the blog post on disorientation.
How's Your Sister?
So how’s she doing these days?
- She’s doing fine. Hell of a thing to come to terms with. - She’s happy enough. What was it again? - Cancer. What she must have gone through. Puts all our grumbles in perspective. - You could say that. Well, pass on my regards when you see her next. - Sure. Second prizewinner in the Southport Writers' Short Story Competition 2007 and published by Greatest Uncommon Denominator, Spring 2009, republished June 2013 by Red Fez. (Re-edited version appears along with forty-one others in my first short story collection, Becoming Someone.) See my blog post on bodily transformations where you can also leave comments on this story. You can also find a short review at Keep Your Shorts On. |
A Dress for the Address
I step back from the mirror and look again. I turn sideways and stare back at my reflection from over my shoulder. I narrow my eyes so the greens merge as in an impressionist painting. But it makes no difference. No way is this the sartorial statement of a serious scientist at the summit of her career. I rip off the jacket and tear myself out of the dress and stand, wretched, in my bra and knickers.
Published June 2013 by Halfway Down The Stairs (Re-edited version appears along with forty-one others in my first short story collection, Becoming Someone.) To comment on this story, go to the blog post Her indoors |
Cold Calling
“A courtesy call, how nice,” says Muriel. She has often remarked that there isn’t enough courtesy around these days.
Published online in March and in print in May 2013 by Foliate Oak
To comment on this story, please call in at the blog.
Lunch Break
Placed third in the Sid Chaplin Short Story Competition 2007 and published February 2013 by Short-Story Me.
To comment on this story, please call in at annecdotal.
Silver Bangles
Published February 2013 by Amarillo Bay and in August 2019 by Eunoia Review
Read about the inspiration for this story and/or join in the discussion in the context of ethical tourism.
Reflecting Queenie
Queenie spoke casually, as if it were a joke. “Who do you think is the better looking, Blanche or me?”
I felt it inside me like her baby-cries all those years ago. Winner of the monthly short story competition, December 2012 and published by Creative Writing Ink. (Re-edited version appears along with forty-one others in my first short story collection, Becoming Someone.) To comment on this story, please call in at the blog. |
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Melanie's Last Tune
Published September 2012 by Short-Story Me.
You can comment on this story on my blogpost A Flash (or Two) of Musical Inspiration or School: a suitable place for fiction? You might also like to see my blog post Good Grief for Writers that connects with this story.
What time it sunset?
Tonight you’ll be back in your own room with Marilyn Manson watching over you from the posters on the black-emulsioned walls.
Published September 2012 by Metazen Republished March 2016 by Alliterati (Re-edited version appears along with forty-one others in my first short story collection, Becoming Someone.) |
My Beautiful Smile
I'm walking past the plate glass windows of the Wellcome Foundation when they hit me with it. Above the roar of the traffic along Euston Road, cocky as a novelty ring-tone: "Cheer up! It might never happen."
Prizewinner in the 2010 Writers' Bureau Short Story Competition and published in Gold Dust Issue 21, June 2012 Republished November 2013 by Alfie Dog Fiction (Re-edited version appears along with forty-one others in my first short story collection, Becoming Someone.) |
In the Interim
Published May 2012 by Amarillo Bay
Four Hail Marys
... There’s nowhere to hide among the flattened gravestones and, if Graham should catch her skulking there, it would be all too obvious she’s trying to avoid him. Without stopping to think, she darts up the path to the porch and rattles the door handle.
Published 23 February 2012 as part of the Writing East Midlands and Lincolnshire Echo Short Story Competition and in a Hungarian translation by Eva Molnar on Eva's blog, republished September 2014 on Short-Story Me. (Re-edited version appears along with forty-one others in my first short story collection, Becoming Someone.) |
Madonna and Child
Something was different that morning, but she couldn't yet identify quite what.
Published by Gold Dust, Winter 2011 (Best prose winner) To comment on this story, please call in at the blog. (Re-edited version appears along with forty-one others in my first short story collection, Becoming Someone.) |
Doctoring
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Spring Cleaning
Home from Uni for the Easter holidays, I’m supposed to be churning out an essay on the English civil war. I’m supposed to be searching for a McJob to tame my overdraft, or hanging out in the pub with friends I haven’t seen since Christmas. Unfortunately, what I’m supposed to be doing is of no consequence to my mother. Set against one of her projects, any plans of mine turn out to be as flimsy as cobwebs.
Published in 2009 by apt To comment on this story, please call in at the blog. (Re-edited version appears along with forty-one others in my first short story collection, Becoming Someone.) |
The Good News
You're in no position to dictate who I spend my time with. No need to spell out the whys and wherefores.
There's a lot more to Lorna than that happy-clappy Jesus stuff. Only you're too bigoted to see it.
A dose of positive thinking is exactly what I need right now. If it's got the power to scare off the big-C, who knows what it might do for a broken heart?
At least the woman has morals. Unlike some people I could mention.
Lorna's been there for me since primary school. Which gives her a good twenty years on my relationship with you.
And you've got bits of breakfast nesting in your beard.
Published 2009 by Amarillo Bay
Shaggy Dog Story
I hum a few bars of All Things Bright and Beautiful and Rufus joins in with his funny doggie whine. I laugh and squeeze his body tight to my chest like a hot water bottle, and he growls and licks my face. |
Washing Dishes at the Old People’s Luncheon Club
It’s over, she tells herself in the same brisk manner she used earlier on the checkout woman. Forget about it. She selects a lipstick from the shelf and paints herself a death-defying smile.
Published on Laura Hird Showcase in 2008.
To comment on this story, please call in at annecdotal. I also have a related post on
Kinky Norm
Kinky Norm would let us linger in the classroom after the lesson was over. While he did his business in his cupboard-cum-office, we’d sit on the desks with our feet on the chairs discussing last night’s telly.
First published in 2008 by Rose and Thorn and nominated for the Pushcart Prize and again in January 2016 on Short Story Me
Flexible Rostering
Until this: taking an extended lunch break to visit Gordon Welch and find out more about him than he’d ever known, more than he’d ever wanted to know. And not even doing it to deepen his friendship with Gordon. Doing it for the sake of his son. |
After Icarus
If you want to know something about me: well, I’ve got two eyes, a nose and a mouth. I live in this city and my name ... |
In Search of Mr Right
Once upon a time, on a High Street not so very far from here, a fresh-faced young virgin looked up from the record counter at Woolworth’s, straight into the beautiful chestnut-brown eyes of Mr Right ... |