Contact me

Unfortunately, the contact page was linked to a now defunct email address, meaning I have not received any messages via this website for at least 12 months. However, this issue has now been resolved and any messages will be received...

New novella out next month…

Coming in April 2021 from Black Shuck Books... Set in the near future on a beach in northern Libya, two NATO soldiers protect a stretch of coastline from the infected arriving via the currents of the Mediterranean Sea from the islands of Malta and Gozo. Isolated, with only each other to rely on, they have…

Swing, says the pendulum…

Title spread for my new short story coming in July from TTAPress

Magazine review: Black Static #63

Grim Reader Reviews… on Black Static #63, which includes my novella, THE HARDER IT GETS THE SOFTER WE SING.

Grim Reader Reviews

On the back of finishing the excellent Simon Avery novella, The Teardrop Method, I was eager to jump into the latest issue of Black Static Magazine #63. I’ll be honest, I was pretty wrung out from finishing that book and after excellent non-fiction from the ever-reliable Lynda E. Rucker and Ralph Robert Moore I was once again floored, this time by the excellent novella, The Harder it Gets The Softer We Sing from Stephen J. Dines. This story starts off in bizarre fashion with a dream sequence featuring no less than Ray Bradbury and Charles Bukowski in a bar. It threw me off a little, but as I delved further into Dines’ story I found myself unpacking an emotional and thoughtful tale that seemed to get better and better the further I read. By the story’s end, I was wiping tears from my eyes. I love a story with…

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Back to it…

After a couple of weeks off due to a visit home to Aberdeen and recovering from illness, it is back to the keyboard this morning. Kind words like these are the reason I drag myself out of bed at 5.00am to do this, but thank you to anyone who takes the time to read my work. https://twitter.com/FilmClubCHS/status/1000432717643870209

Free Fiction: So Many Heartbeats, So Many Words

As promised, to coincide with the release of Black Static #63, which contains my novella THE HARDER IT GETS, THE SOFTER WE SING, here is my 7,900 word novelette SO MANY HEARTBEATS, SO MANY WORDS, available to download free in pdf format below. Both stories are standalones but they can also be read in sequence. So, if…

Interzone #275 / Looking for Landau

Interzone #275 is now available to order from TTAPress. My novelette, LOOKING FOR LANDAU, appears alongside stories from Erica L Satifka, Abi Hynes, Malcolm Devlin, and Leo Vladimirsky, as well as columns from Andy Hedgecock and Nina Allan, and book and film reviews. Cover art is by Vince Haig, the interior illustrations by Martin Hanford,…

We Are the Inside… Part 2

There is a cliff top of ambition, there is a forest of regret. Self-doubt has always been a dubious friend of mine. It’s the hand on my back as I stand on the cliff. It’s the whisper in my ear to jump, let the waves have me, even as it pulls me back. Self-doubt can be a good thing too…

We Are the Inside…

Black Static #63 is now available to order from TTAPress. My novella, THE HARDER IT GETS, THE SOFTER WE SING is part of this issue's lineup, alongside short stories from J.S. Breukelaar, Matt Thompson, Kristi DeMeester, and Nicolas Kaufmann, as well as columns from Ralph Robert Moore and Lynda Rucker, book and film reviews, and an interview with the fabulous…

Catching up by bullet point

It's been a while... Since my last post in 2016 a lot has happened, which I won't go into in great detail here, but some of which I will bullet-point for brevity: My novelette, PERSPECTIVE, was published in Black Static magazine #54 (Sep/Oct 2016) and was well-received by readers and reviewers alike. I haven't published anything since, but that is…