Symphony in White

1 Jun

This story has just been published by Graveside Press! Read more about the Tiny Terrors anthology below or buy it here.

Step into the Graveside…

Horrors abound, and you never know what you’re gonna find. Winged beasts at a snowy Chicago train stop, a museum of death that’s a little too realistic, the new apartment popping up overnight across the hall, clowns who are really underpaid, for their work, and entities who can put a stop to your worst nightmares…for a price.

A collection of 37 stories across the gamut, ranging from paranormal, body horror, psychological, gothic, cosmic, and creature-features.

There’s a little terror for everyone.

Featuring: A E Deakin, A. J. Payler, Alan P. Marks, Alex Laurel Lanz, Caroline Barnard-Smith, Chad Gayle, Chris Scott, Dane Erbach, David Lee Zweifler, Devin Oldham, Diane M Johnson, gaast, Gina Easton, J C Lee, J D Outcalt, J. E. Norwood, J.E. Schleicher, Jacqueline K Goldblatt, Jim Donohue, Justin Sangermano, Katherine Traylor, Kay Hanifen, Kayla Whittle, Lane Blevins, Larry Hodges, Mary Frances Slebodnik, Matthew Doggett, Michael A. Reed, Michael Mullen, Norman Gary Thomson, P. N. Harrison, Patricia Esposito, Petina Ann Strohmer, Shannon Lawrence, Vicky Pointing, Victoria Brun, Z. C. Loki

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Don’t Call Until Voting Opens

1 Jun

An excerpt

“And cut. Thanks, Natalie.”

As soon as the camera dips, the fragile smile slides from the girl’s face. She hunches her shoulders, hands in her lap plucking at the too-tight material of her dress, chosen by wardrobe to cling in all the wrong places. It’s been decided she’s the pity vote, although they’re all pity votes really.

“Am I done?” Natalie asks.

A nod from the producer and she wriggles and drops from the too-small too-high bar stool they’ve placed her on. Her face is flushed as she heads to the back of the room, to a man swamped by his wheelchair, his body crumpled like discarded paper.

“Dad?” she says, and his eyes flutter open.

“Sweetheart,” he says.

“You hungry?”

He nods, although he isn’t, and she wheels him from the room.

The producer reviews her footage, lingering on a close-up of Natalie wiping her eyes with the sleeve of her dress. She laughs.

“Good work,” she says. “Bring in the next one. Who is it?”

“The bachelor,” someone says. The team has nicknames for each of the six competitors and their companions: pity vote, posh totty, ice twins, damn hippies, doolally Larry, and – their star player – the bachelor. These interviews are part of the build up to the live show, which will be streamed 24/7 into the homes of eager viewers, chomping at the bit to view the first – and quite possibly last, judging by the legal battle that’s already raging – series of their show.

Published by Gnashing Teeth in The Cost of Our Baggage, an anthology of poetry and short fiction (September 2024).

Full story coming soon on Patreon.

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Blood, Body, Wings

1 Jun

An excerpt

In the darkness of an early July morning, you piled into the car with your suitcase, plugged in your headphones and pretended to sleep; a well-practised strategy to avoid becoming the focus of your parents’ low bickering. You spent the flight with your gaze glued to the horizon, searching for the first thin slice of another country peering out above the sea.

The dirt road to the house was rough, and the car stirred up the dust of three weeks with no rain, flinging some of it through your open window. You felt the excitement of a new place and stared out at a sprawling field of sunflowers, thick stemmed, their rough faces turned to the sun. You don’t remember what your room was like, only the silence and darkness that night. You wanted to sleep with a lamp on, so kept reading after your parents went to bed, but your mother crossed your room like an uninvited spirit and switched the light off. You watched the faint glow of her white nightdress recede to nothing.

The next day, you spent a little time in the fields, tipping your head back to bathe your face in the heat of the sun. Your mother would have liked to rest in the shade, but your father had a schedule. Every morning he swept you both into the car and drove into town or to the sorts of places he thought you should go: a ruined castle, a museum, a hissing wind-whipped beach. Once, he took you to a pottery and, while you mother cooed over a dull, expensive vase, you found yourself wandering past shelves filled with palm-sized, long-limbed creatures, wings draped over skeletal bodies, eyes huge, dark and uncaring. Fairies perhaps, but not the reassuring kind. Some had sharp little teeth. All had claws. You bought one, clutching it in your hand all the way back to the farm.

That night you woke with an ache in your belly and found blood on your pyjamas when you stumbled to the toilet. You sat, exuberant and sore, pressing your feet into the cold floor tiles, until your mother pushed the door open and stood at the threshold, arms crossed.

Published by Valley Press in Permanent Emotion, an anthology of stories from the Northern Short Story Festival Academy (July 2024).

Full story coming soon on Patreon.

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That’s Not What Self-Isolation Means, Right?

11 Oct

Living on my own through the pandemic did me no favours, as a writer or a human being. I’ve always been an introvert with a small circle of friends, but the stay-at-home lockdowns seem to have left me swaddled in a residual layer of isolation that I’m struggling to escape from.

The first lockdown wasn’t too unpleasant, once we were allowed to shout at a friend from two meters away while taking our government-sanctioned exercise, and once it became unnecessary to watch the news every day because something would have changed in the last 24 hours. I liked being at home, enjoying the garden and quality time with my cat. I wrote a good chunk of a young adult novel from May to August, and returned to the workplace feeling positive.

Over the following months I wrote very little, my work in an educational setting taking up most of my brain space and energy. But when we moved into the ‘of course schools are safe you idiots, no wait of course schools aren’t safe if people go into them you idiots’ lockdown, I went back to writing in my spare time. I took my work-in-progress to the point where I only had three chapters left to write and a seriously hefty structural edit to complete. The writing, I think, made up for the lack of social encounters, but I was so preoccupied with it that I didn’t realise how much the absence of human contact was affecting me.

I had a bubble friend, once that was allowed, and we relished our time spent together, initially feeling like naughty children who’ve snuck out of bed for a midnight feast. But other than that, I cut myself off from people. It was as though my mind, when presented with a scenario where I wasn’t allowed to see other humans, decided not to miss them and not to bother thinking about them if it could avoid it. I retreated to my own internal universe, the one I’d created as a child to avoid dealing with an unpleasant reality.

Back on site at work, my writing stopped again, and the creativity disappeared from my world. Now I had no energy for my book, and a mental block on my appreciation of my friends and colleagues. I felt as though I had been steamrollered by the pandemic. I found myself more irritated by other people than usual, while also feeling an urgent need to reconnect. It felt like I had forgotten how to be fun, as if I had shrivelled into a cantankerous elderly aunt, who my friends only visited due to a vague sense of concern and responsibility. I’m still trying to get back to my former state, and to enjoy the company of my fellow humans again.

I’d love to work from home, at least some of the time, but this isn’t possible with my current job. Instead, I’ve reduced my hours to four days a week, to allow myself time to write. So far on my day off, I’ve mainly been reading, sleeping, running errands, and trying to process the past 18 months, but I’m grateful to have more time for all that than a lot of people do. I am hopeful that my urge to write will return. After all, I have three chapters to write and a lot of editing to do.

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Cold comfort – The Handmaid’s Tale

18 Jun

Image result for the handmaid's tale

The content of this post may upset you.

I first read Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale when I was 14. I loved that book, not only because of Atwood’s skill as a writer, and the way she swept me up in Offred’s world, but because her story brought me comfort. Given the novel’s shocking and harrowing content, that may seem like a very odd thing to say, so let me explain.

The summer I turned 14 was followed by the first year of my GCSE’s, and new GCSE classes meant new classmates. One of those classmates was a girl I’d never really spoken to before. She was quiet, studious and awkward like me, but also funny and warm. We bonded over the ridiculousness of our physics teacher’s hair, over the pertness of our biology teacher’s bottom and over a mutual love of chocolate, which we sneaked into class and ate whole bars of during endless afternoons stuck in the labs. She quickly became my best friend. Not that being around her was always easy. She could be moody, withdrawn, and sometimes cruel. I remember her laughing in my face over some small embarrassment more than once, and in response I would retreat, deeply hurt. But I never questioned her treatment of me. I never stopped being her friend. I only tried harder to be whatever she needed on any particular day; funny, attentive, silent. Because I quickly realised that something was very wrong.

I don’t remember the first time she self-harmed in front of me, slicing up the back of her hand with the blade from her pencil sharpener. I don’t remember exactly how I found out about her dad. There had been rumours, a year or two before, rumours that I hadn’t really understood. And then there was the fact that she had two social workers and a shrink, something she’d told me one day in class as if she was just commenting on our homework. Piece by piece, over the months, she revealed the truth to me. And the truth was ugly.

Her dad raped her. Frequently. When she’d started at high school, she’d told everything to an elderly teacher with a kind face who’d called social services. My friend’s dad moved out of the family home, was taken to court, and found guilty of her rape. Then her mother and aunt (a woman I never met, who accused my friend both of being a ‘lying whore’ and of ‘asking for it’), said that if she didn’t let her dad move back in, they would disown her and kick her out of the house. So she told the social workers he could come home and the abuse started again.

I can’t explain what it’s like to have your best friend tell you this. There are no words to describe my fury, disgust, bewilderment and the overwhelming sense of powerlessness that I felt, knowing what was being done to her and knowing there was nothing I could do. Because I couldn’t tell the adults. My friend had confided in me, made it very clear this was a secret for me to carry, and besides, she’d already tried speaking up and it had done nothing to help her. So it was just me and her and this terrible truth. I couldn’t process it, not at 14. The knowledge was there in my head but I pushed it away and focused on my friend, on listening to her, on trying to find the right words in response, always with panic fluttering against my ribcage. I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know what to say. What do I do?

I didn’t tell my parents, not then.

When I read The Handmaid’s Tale later that year it wasn’t shock that I felt most strongly. It was relief and recognition. In Atwood’s world, those in authority couldn’t be trusted, and had imposed an awful, degrading hypocrisy on the protagonist. In my world, those in authority (my friend’s parents, social services, the staff at school who knew what had happened and did nothing to check she was okay, not even when she cut herself in class) couldn’t be trusted, and had imposed an awful, degrading reality on my friend. Knowing that someone out there was experiencing something similar, even if that person was a fictional character, brought me immense comfort. Offred’s understanding of how horrible her situation was, her absolute belief that it was not okay and must be fought against, no matter how much those around her presented it to her as ‘normal’, was vital in a situation where all the adults around me and my friend were acting as though everything was absolutely fine. It was such a relief to see someone else struggling in the face of something so awful, to know that it was okay to struggle.

For me, the Handmaid’s Tale didn’t just point a finger at the most shadowy corners of humanity, it provided cold comfort for me and my friend, trapped there in the darkness through no fault of our own. It said: ‘yes, what you’re experiencing is wrong, you deserve to survive, so please keep fighting’. The book and Offred’s character helped me to stick by my friend, to support her through what I now know to be PTSD, intermittent anorexia, frequent suicide attempts and a life-threatening personality disorder. I am very pleased to say – more pleased than I can express – that my friend is not only alive but very well. I owe a little bit of my part in that to Atwood.

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The Dark is Rising

30 Jan

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I always thought I hated winter, with its cold dark days when the chill seeps into your bones and you just want to curl up in bed and sulk until the sun comes back.

My least favourite things about this time of year include: getting to work in the dark, leaving work in the dark, people on the bus taking turns to exhibit their hacking coughs, always losing at least one glove, and icy pavements, which I don’t seem able to walk across without imitating an elderly constipated penguin.

However, I have to – grudgingly – admit that the darkness brings something with it; there is magic and mystery in the shadows. Back in December I found The Box of Delights on DVD and watched it over a long weekend, nestled under a blanket on the sofa. This series is based on the children’s book of the same name by John Masefield and its events unfold during one boy’s snowy Christmas holiday. Clandestine villainous meetings are held in murky back streets, wolves give chase in the night, and at one point the antagonist calls up a blizzard to cut off the epicentre of events from the rest of the world. I can’t imagine this story working, or generating anywhere near the same amount of threat, if it was set during a blisteringly hot summer.

There are many other children’s books that I could say the same about; The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis, and The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Jane Aiken are just three.

I think the reason for this prevalence of winter-time settings in children’s books of a fantastical and frightening sort is two-fold. Firstly, it’s easier to imagine the existence of mythical beasts or the occurrence of magical events when the world is in shadow. Again, I don’t think the bright light of day lends itself as well to the mystical. Secondly, we humans have retained our fear of the dark; of what could be lurking beyond the reach of the light that shines from our windows. It’s very easy to squint into a moonlit wood or even to walk down a darkened street and imagine you see something moving slowly towards you, a black shape full of evil intent.

Let’s face it, the dark still spooks us.

So winter is a gift to writers, particularly those who want to evoke the feeling that all is not well, we really aren’t safe, because something is out there in the shadows.

Maybe I like winter after all.

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How I write short pieces: ‘We Serve Beer As Cold As Your Ex’s Heart.’

10 Dec

beer

Warning: contains spoilers! (If you’d like to read the story first click here.)

Over the summer I decided to write some short pieces, mainly flash fiction with one or two short stories thrown in for fun. Oh yes, I know how to enjoy myself.

By the end of August I had seven new pieces of writing, one of which – We Serve Beer As Cold As Your Ex’s Heart – will soon be published on the Expanding Horizons website, I’m very happy to say. That piece, like any other I’ve written, went through several editing stages, and I thought it might be helpful, and hopefully interesting, to share these.

The inspiration for the story came from a sign outside a pub that I spotted in Jersey in July. It was the week when temperatures got up to 36 degrees and the pub’s owner had wisely recognised that an ice-cold beer would be on the minds of many potential punters. For me, that sign got me thinking.

One particular thought bounced around my head for a few days until I got home and switched on the laptop. I wanted my story to be about getting over an ex, so I spent a bit of time researching the usual stages of grieving for a relationship and the likely behaviour of someone going through that process. Obviously I’ve had ex’s myself, but I find research useful to back up and build on my own experiences.

My other preparation for writing had been spending the previous few weeks reading short story anthologies. I find this helps my brain get into the right mode, as I subconsciously absorb the format and particularities of the short story. Beyond that, I felt ready to write a first draft, as I had a good, simple premise. That’s not always the case; often I’ll get an idea and have to spend time mulling it over and figuring out details of plot and character.

So, I sat down at the laptop. When I’m writing a short piece, so long as I have a decent grasp on the plot I don’t find myself making a lot of conscious decisions. For Beer As Cold I was mainly thinking about the beverages which my protagonist was going to be served and the effect they’d have on him.

The first draft wasn’t bad (I’ve written far worse) but certainly one that required some polishing. So I left the story for a few days and then came back to it and tidied it up, cutting out unnecessary words where possible, checking for repetition or poor grammar. After that I decided – in my usual, slightly terrified manner – to send it to a writer friend whose opinion I trust, and who is very good at pinpointing exactly why a story isn’t working.

She pinpointed exactly why the story wasn’t working. It was a clarity issue, because I hadn’t quite conveyed what was in my head. My opening paragraph didn’t make it obvious exactly what was happening, and one or two sections needed expanding to get across what the reader needed to know. I did another edit and sent it back to her, and this time, she gave it the thumbs up.

Now that the story was ready – perhaps not in its final state, but ready enough – I looked at the bank of websites I have saved in my favourites as places to submit work to, and chose one that felt like a good match. The work was rejected, so I cheerfully noted that in my submissions spreadsheet (I love spreadsheets, I know this makes me weird and I’m perfectly happy with that). I did another edit of the piece, deciding to cut the final paragraph as I felt it was unnecessary. Then I sent it out again.

When the reply from Expanded Horizons came, it started off like any other rejection email. Except they said they wanted my story. I might have done a bit of fist pumping at that point. Then cheerfully noted it in my submissions spreadsheet.

And that is my writing (and publishing) process for short pieces.

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Guilt: a writer’s guide.

7 Dec

guilty-dog

I spent a fair chunk of last Sunday editing a few short pieces and submitting them. Once I’d finished, I realised – again – how much I actually enjoy writing. It makes me happy. And the reason I forgot that? I was too busy feeling guilty about not getting more writing done.

Setting yourself writing targets and completion deadlines is a great idea and can be very helpful for those of us who otherwise lack motivation. However, if these deadlines do nothing other than make you feel anxious about the fact you’re not going to meet them, perhaps you need a re-think.

I’ve recently started a new job. I knew this would take some adjustment and that, being on a massive learning curve, I wouldn’t have as much energy left for writing in the evenings and weekends as usual. Even knowing that, I still managed to convince myself that I should try and do a complete edit of my work-in-progress between September, when the job began, and Christmas. Now I’m three months in I can see this was just silly, not to mention physically impossible without the aid of some sort of time travel machine and / or someone to cook, clean and socialise on my behalf. In spite of understanding how silly this deadline was, I still feel guilty – massively guilty – that I haven’t achieved more in the last few months.

This is because there is a tug of war going on in my head. Part of me wants to look after myself and keep me from working too hard and getting stressed out, and another part of me wants to JUST GET ON WITH THE WRITING. This tug of war makes me feel frustrated, resentful and grumpy as well as guilty. But actually it’s important that my ambition is tempered with self care.

I’ve just spent three and a half years completing a creative writing master’s degree and writing a book while working full-time. That was hard and I am tired. So maybe – and I’m doing my best to believe this – maybe it’s okay for me to take the writing at a gentler pace and allow myself a bit of fallow time. The problem is that when I give myself space to recharge, guilt creeps into it.

With this mental push-me-pull-you going on, it’s tricky to get the balance right between resting, writing, and all the everyday chores that need doing (yes, writing brain, you do have to go to work today. You like eating, right?). If anyone out there has any tips, I’d be glad to know them.

Oh, and I am certain there are many other types of writerly guilt. This is just mine.

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Tripping the Light Fantastic

16 Oct

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I’ve always been drawn to fantasy and science fiction, to stories of other worlds and to other versions of this one. Although I do enjoy a bit of non-fiction (mainly sociogenetics or ancient history) I don’t often read novels set entirely in reality. The problem with reality is that it’s where I spend the majority of my time, and when I’m reading I’d rather be somewhere else. When it comes to writing I feel much the same, preferring to work under the umbrella of speculative fiction.

Someone said to me recently that immersing yourself in fantasy – whether you’re reading it or writing it – can be a coping strategy for dealing with a real world which is disappointing, difficult or dull. As a child and teenager I certainly experienced a fairly large amount of disappointment and difficulty. I ended up dealing with events that a mature and well-balanced adult would find extremely challenging. Perhaps as a result, I had no interest in spending my free time reading about the same sorts of events occurring within the world that was treating me so badly. Therefore to some extent I believe my friend’s comment is true: speculative fiction provides escapism.

However, it also offers an alternative lens through which the writer or reader can filter their experiences. A lens which, being one step removed from reality, allows you a little more space for processing the disappointing or difficult. You can explore cruelty, heartbreak, abuse and betrayal, and the characters and content are authentic within the context of their world. This authenticity allows the reader to feel a connection to the story through common experience, even if their experience is based in the everyday, rather than on a distant alien planet.

At a recent book reading I went to, a young adult author commented that dystopian fictions are so popular because of how closely they can be related to the reality of being a teenager. Negative events feel like the end of the world, your best friend suddenly becomes your mortal enemy, the adults are dictating exactly what you can and can’t do, and sometimes when you have a decision to make, there is no right or easy choice.

It’s important for speculative fiction to show that life is hard, to show that, even though the protagonist is living 4000 years in the future, they still struggle, are let down by people, experience misery. It’s important too that the characters find joy and triumph in spite of all that, at least some of the time. And if the horror of the fantasy world gets too much, it can be dismissed with the closing of the book, thus providing a safe space to explore the dangerous and unpleasant. This offers the reader so much more than simple escapism. Perhaps that’s why I’m such a fan of speculative fiction.

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The post-novel void.

6 Aug

I knew it was going to be odd, not having a novel to work on any more, I knew I was going to suddenly discover oodles of time that I’d previously spent editing, but one or two things did surprise me about my post-novel void.

It’s been three months since I finished my MA and three months since I looked at the book I wrote for it. In the initial days after hand-in, I mainly went to work, celebrated, and slept. I used my suddenly abundant spare time to patch up my social life, which had been somewhat neglected in the run-up to the deadline. I basked in the fact I’d actually finished the book, and encouraged my writing brain to chill out.

After a week or two came the sadness that I was expecting: sadness at the end of a three and a half year process of learning and fretting and learning to fret less, and getting to spend time with people who cared about writing as much as I did. I still miss all of that, very much, but I’m lucky to have some excellent writer friends – both from the course and otherwise – who have massively reduced my withdrawal symptoms.

One thing I wasn’t expecting was how much writing had become a habit for me. My brain soon started craving its laptop time again and I was surprised by how quickly ideas began dropping into my head. I thought I’d need a long fallow period to recover from such an extended stint of work, that I’d be out of action for a while, and rightly so. But that was the other thing that surprised me: almost as soon as I’d handed in my MA novel, I began to feel like I should be writing something else, a sort of “okay, you’ve finished that, but what are you doing now?”.

I have a habit of putting too much pressure on myself, so I resisted this persistent little voice for a while and stubbornly stuck to having some time off from writing. I read a lot, which was just lovely, and very much helped to fill the post-MA void. Then I came up with a plan. I like plans. I dislike floating about waiting to see what happens, and plans keep me occupied and positive. My plan was to re-read the majority of the short story books that I have – more than I’d realised as it turned out – then spend some time turning the ideas that appeared in my head into short stories and flash fiction pieces.

And for the past few weeks, that’s exactly what I’ve been doing. I’m lucky, I get a month off in the summer, and aside from lie-ins and reading and plenty of tea and cake with friends, I’ve been reading and writing pretty much every day. I’m not working for as many hours per week as I was on the MA, but that’s just fine with me. I am meant to be on holiday, after all. But I’m very glad that writing is still a part of my life, and that I still enjoy it so much.

Once the summer is over, it’ll be time to get out the book for another edit, and actually, I’m really excited about getting reacquainted with it. I know I’ll do a better job on this edit having had a decent break and maybe that’s really what the post-novel void is for: to recharge. To rest and read and let your enthusiasm for your work return so you can make it better. I hope so anyway…

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