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My longer shorts published online, listed in reverse order of publication.

Click below for my identity-themed collection:
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The Woman in Purple

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.
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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


My Dirty Weekend

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


Shall I show you what it’s like out there?
 
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

Ella looked up from where she knelt at the fireplace, raking cinders from the bottom of the grate. Her father loved a log fire in the evenings but, like a small boy begging for a puppy, he had no notion of the time and energy lost in feeding it and cleaning up its mess. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’d love to Gris, but you know what it’s like.”

Published April 2019 by Amarillo Bay

No Flowers by Request
 
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?
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One of the stories in a free ebook for newsletter subscribers. Click on the image to claim yours.
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

We’d agreed not to mention the press conference until the plane was on the ground. We couldn’t predict what they’d do if they got overexcited. As it was, the girls abandoned us at the luggage carousel and rushed off to the toilets to reapply their make-up. All except Becca who leant against the wall with that same scornful sneer she’d worn the entire week ...

Published October 2017 by Foliate Oak and again in November 2021 by Fiction on the web
Blood

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

Comments welcome  on  Annecdotal
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One of the stories in a free ebook for newsletter subscribers. Click on the image to claim yours.

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

Stella shepherds her troupe into the classroom and closes the door. She struts to the front and pretends to check the papers on her clipboard while she watches how the sixth formers select their seats. As expected, they mostly congregate towards the back of the room.


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

There ought to be a way of measuring how big an argument is getting.  Like Fahrenheit and Centigrade for temperature.  Or the Richter scale for earthquakes. 

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

It was autumn when my daughter died.  Yellowed leaves had shrouded her crumpled corpse by the time they found her in the grass verge between the pavement and the park.  According to the coroner, it was the sludge of fallen leaves that had killed her, made her slip and bang her head in the panic of the attack; mugged for fifty quid and her mobile phone.

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

Maybe it was that they had learnt from the mistakes they'd made first time round and pre-empted them in their prenuptial agreement.  Maybe it was that they worked, as well as lived, together.  Maybe it was that the project was bigger than either of them.

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

At first he thought it was a joke. But ten hours of footie day after day soon loses its funny side. He wondered if he’d been kept back with the wheezers and dickheads, the kind of lad you’d prefer to have fielding for the enemy, but no. Some of these stay-behinders were medal-winning athletes. Some of them had university degrees.

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

Jessica glances down at her flamingo-pink cropped T-shirt and black flared hipsters.  The gap between the end of her T-shirt and the top of her trousers exposes a narrow band of pale skin, like a belt with her belly button where the buckle would be. “Why shouldn’t I?” 

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

Tamsin's alarm clock was a much-loved souvenir of childhood, its face nestling in the belly of a lurid plastic clown. Most mornings it made her laugh. But not  today. It was the sight of the clock she had treasured since she was eight years  old that made her realise something was wrong.

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

His voice is warm and soothing, like a bowl of chicken soup.  “I’m making a courtesy call from Alliance Soffits and Fascias.”

“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

While his colleagues close their ring binders and scrape back their chairs, Nigel Carmichael takes the opportunity to refill his fountain pen from a bottle of Quink.

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

I stole a glance at my husband. He must have heard, but he didn't raise his head from his book. I knew what he was up to: waiting for me to rescue him from the green-eyed monster that had plagued him since that first getting-to-know-you meal. So Ivan and I had a similar sense of humour?

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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One of the stories in a free ebook for newsletter subscribers. Click on the image to claim yours.


Mummy and Me

The only difference was that, with us, it was always the little girl who pulled the mummy back so as she wouldn’t get slapped hard on the legs by the clanking train.
Winner of the 2005/6 Sid Chaplin Short Story Competition and published May 2008 by Espresso Fiction and October 2012 by Short-Story Me.


To comment on this story, see School: a suitable place for fiction? or A Mother's Day Alternative Annethology. 

Melanie's Last Tune

How can he hope to make music looking like that?   I steal a glance at my newspaper.  Just over half an hour until I can rest my legs and catch up on the local gossip with a glass of sherry.
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

One morning in late June, in the year before the century turned, the world stopped spinning for a moment, and Melissa Montgomery stepped off. 

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
Arthur Jekyll was a doctor. Of course he was, how could he be otherwise, when both his parents, and their parents before them, had been doctors? What other options did he have when all the terrors and comforts of his formative years had been accompanied by a heavy dose of familial doctoring?
Published by Rose & Thorn, Spring 2010 and again by Red Fez, Februrary 2016

Comments welcome  on  Annecdotal

(Re-edited version appears along with forty-one others in my first short story collection, Becoming Someone.)

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

Driving out of town, I go over all the things I could have said, should have said:

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. 

Third prize winner in the 2007 Mary Gornall Memorial competition and published in print by Still Crazy in 2008.
Republished November 2013 by Alfie Dog Fiction

(Re-edited version appears along with forty-one others in my first short story collection, Becoming Someone.)

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

To comment on this story, see my post School: a suitable place for fiction?

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.

Published 2008 by Cantaraville.

(Re-edited version appears along with forty-one others in my first short story collection, Becoming Someone.)

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 ...

This story won first prize in the AllWrite short story competition in 2007 and appeared again in print in September 2012 as part of the Writing East Midlands/Lincolnshire Echo short story competition.

(Re-edited version appears along with forty-one others in my first short story collection, Becoming Someone.)

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 ...

This story was first published in QWF magazine and has also appeared (in Swedish) in Allas, both in 2007. Republished February 2016 by Short Story Me.

(Re-edited version appears along with forty-one others in my first short story collection, Becoming Someone.)
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