Confession is the first step to repentance, and here's one of mine: I’ve wanted to be
a novelist since the age of fifteen, and since then I’ve written about a quarter of a million words, total, on various projects.  Goddamn, that’s a lot.  Why don’t I stop arsing around and get myself a real job?!  Slacker.

These short stories, ranging from fifteen hundred to eight thousand words, are what remained when I sifted through the dross and removed the ones about killer ghosts, rampaging fruit, and lesbian vampires.

I’m quite proud of some of them.

Lebkuchen

Inspired by some research on fairy tales. Caution: its pretty Grimm. Man, I'm funny.

On the Edge

This is a short one I wrote for a competition then forgot to actually submit.  The story had to be called “On the Edge”, so that’s what this story is called.

From Tiny Acorns

This story is set in Wales in the 19th Century.  I wrote it for the Cordell Country Literary Competition, which commemorates Alexander Cordell, a Welsh author who wrote about rape and fire and coal.  This story isn’t like that.  For a start, there’s no fire or coal.

Chinese Whispers

The idea for this story hit me one day when I was reading.  I started writing and the words spilled onto the page until it was done.  The subject matter is disturbing, so
I’d tell you not to read it if you were easily upset, but that’d just ignite your curiosity, right?

Six Feet Away

My early stories were mostly horror.  I was reading books like IT and Salem’s Lot back then, and so my tales tended to involve unspeakable evils and small-town murders.  Most of those early stories are embarrassingly juvenile, but there was one
I thought had promise, and so a good few years later I (almost entirely, as it turned out) rewrote it.  And here it is. 

Let’s just call it my homage to the King.

Dreams

This story is long.  It grew from a sunny evening listening to the Beach Boys.  The main character's name is a tribute to Kerouac's masterpiece, On the Road.

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