Out of the Darkness, Writing the Uncanny, Best British Short stories

It’s been a long time since I posted an update on here for various reasons, and I’m happy to say since the last post I’ve had stories and essays in three different publications.


I have an essay in Writing the Uncanny: Essays on Crafting Strange Fiction, ed. Dan Coxon & Richard V. Hirst (Dead Ink) titled ‘Half-Concealed Places, or a Particularly Humdrum Uncanny’. The essay is about weird and uncanny fiction’s interaction with edgeland and psychogeographic writing, and how it can work powerfully in seemingly ‘humdrum’ spaces.

I was honoured to be invited to contribute to an anthology featuring writers such as Jeremy Dyson, Alison Moore, Lucie McKnight Hardy, Jenn Ashworth and many more.

You can buy it here.


I have a new story in the charity anthology Out of the Darkness, ed. Dan Coxon (Unsung Stories) called ‘The Residential’. Themed around mental-health, all proceeds from sales of the book go to the charity Together for Mental Wellbeing.

‘The Residential’ is a new London Incognita story, about the everyday stresses and rage induced by life in a city like London – specifically when all the systems that keep the city fail. It’s also about the eeriness and uncanny nature of suburban streets.

Once again, it’s a pleasure to be in an athology with so many brilliant writers of the weird – Laura Mauro, Malcolm Devlin, Aliya Whiteley, Gareth E. Rees and many more.

You can buy it here.


My story ‘What Never Was’, first published in Confingo magazine and part of last year’s collection London Incognita was selected for Best British Short Stories 2021, ed. Nicholas Royle (Salt). It feels like a real stamp of approval to have one of my stories included in this collection, and I’m very grateful to be in such good company.

You can buy it here.

Dead Ink Halloween Takeover

Thanks to everyone who attended the Dead Ink Halloween takeover on Halloween last night! It was great fun – watching readings from the brilliant Naomi Booth and Lucie McKnight Hardy, reading my story ‘Sky City’ from the newly published London Incognita and answering questions afterwards.

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You can watch the whole event here: https://www.instagram.com/p/CG-5jB_FmI3/

First LONDON INCOGNITA review

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A great first review is in for London Incognita, from Jackie Law on the Never Imitate blog. A flattering and perceptive review:

The London portrayed is home to the homeless – druggies and ghosts. Graffiti and rubbish abut closed off building sites, keeping the discarded from areas now shiny and gentrified. Beneath are the sewers, where giant rats gorge on fatburgs, and a mythical queen lures urban explorers…

I have read several, excellent non fiction books about urban explorers and psychogeographers seeking out the mostly unregarded aspects of well traversed spaces. This short story collection does this masterfully, with the addition of melancholy wraiths and the Londoners whose lives they change. It is a dark love story to the city.

You can review the full review here: https://neverimitate.wordpress.com/2020/10/02/book-review-london-incognita/

NIGHTSCRIPT VI

I am delighted to announce that I have a new short story appearing in the forthcoming volume of Nightscript.

CONTENTS

Dauda’s Return — Timothy Dodd
The Patent-Master — LC von Hessen
Let Your Hinged Jaw Do the Talking — Tom Johnstone
The Best Thing About Her — Ralph Robert Moore
What Crows Mean — Julia Rust
A Postcard From White Dunes — Jeremy Schliewe
Baddavine — Dan Coxon
Beyond the Lace — Charles Wilkinson
The Gods Shall Lay Sore Trouble Upon Them — Christi Nogle
A Photograph — Alexander James
The Owner— Francesco Corigliano
Passed Pawn
— Selene dePackh
The Death Bodies of Kanggye — Kurt Newton
Loneliness — James Owens
Victims of a Transitional Time in Morality — J.R. Hamantaschen
The Whisper Gallery — Amelia Gorman
Long Rock — Gary Budden

Volume VI will be released on October 1st. Preorder information can be found here.

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UNCERTAINTIES VOL. 4

I am very happy to say that my story ‘We Pass Under’ is included in the upcoming edition of Uncertainties, published by Swan River Press and edited by Timothy J. Jarvis

Numbered edition of 100 also available while supplies last.

You can PRE -ORDER here

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THE SHADOW BOOTH Vol. 4

I’m pleased to have a second story in the excellent Shadow Booth series, edited by Dan Coxon. I was in the very first volume with my story ‘Where No Shadows Fall’ so I am delighted to be back with a new piece of short fiction, ‘Collector of Games’, that focuses on the hunt for mythical video-games and the pitch-black reaches of the dark web. Dan has gathered a really stunning lineup of writers for this volume, so I really recommend getting hold of a copy. You can pre-order a copy here: http://www.theshadowbooth.com/2019/08/the-shadow-booth-vol-4-coming-this.html

Table of Contents reads as follows:

  • The Devil of Timanfaya by Lucie McKnight Hardy

  • The Tribute by James Machin

  • The Larpins by Charles Wilkinson

  • Drowning by Giselle Leeb

  • You Are Not in Kettering Now by Andrew McDonnell

  • Hardrada by Ashley Stokes

  • Defensive Wounds by James Everington

  • The Verandah by Jay Caselberg

  • The Salt Marsh Lambs by Jane Roberts

  • The Box of Knowledge by Tim Cooke

  • His Hand by Polis Loizou

  • Terminal Teatime by Anna Vaught

  • Collector of Games by Gary Budden

  • One Two Three by Marian Womack

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AN INVITE TO ETERNITY

An Invite to Eternity. Tales of Nature Disrupted, takes its cue from John Clare to address the most pressing issue humanity is facing: anthropogenic climate change.  Edited by Marian Womack and myself, and with a foreword by Helen Marshall.

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BURNING

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I can see where it began to unravel. That summer; the one the whole country remembers. I was twenty-five-years-old, the tarmac of London oozing in the heat. Hotter than Spain, screamed the headlines. Much flesh on display.

The city was burning. Five night of riots, triggered by something so common we’d almost all forgotten it was a travesty. The police choked a young black lad squeezed the life out of him, as they’d done to so many before. It was out Wood Green way.

PK and I had taken our fair share of batterings out on the demos, and Andy once took a beating in the cells of Stoke Newington for having too much of a mouth on him. But we considered ourselves lucky – we put ourselves in those situations. I see that now. The police didn’t come looking for us.

For whatever reason, people weren’t having it that summer. Who can blame them. Push people too far, then punish them for having the gall to react – the sheer nerve of it. The put-upon of London reacted with torched squad cars, bricks through the windows of Currys, looting all those things they were told they needed to be a proper person, but could not afford.

Petrol bombs burst on riot shields, a gorgeous, compelling and frightening sight. The memories of London streets lit at night by oily flame, so beautiful. Rip it up, tear it down, smash, start again. If only it had been that way.

Even back then I knew the violence, the unhappiness and unrest, was nothing new to London. This ancient city, my home, a place I knew like one of its rats, eking life out in the cracks and gaps. I had this… what’d you call a gift. A gift that isolated me.

I could see the ghosts of the all the cities London had been. I’d often catch glimpses of men and women in outdated clothing, and wonder. It was so hard to tell who was living and who was dead – with retro fashion booming, second-hand chic a thing, even skinhead fashion suffering a fashionable re-appreciation, how could I tell when anyone was from? And who was I, anyway, to pass judgment on this? Whether I was decked out, like I was back then, in the black and white t-shirts of bands from the early eighties, or smartened up in polo shirts, when the hell was I from? I burned with nostalgia for times that never really happened.

The weight of the city I lived in crushed me. I couldn’t verbalise it. It was a drug. I’d sit and watch old Pogues videos, flick through my shelves of London fiction, stare out high as a kite over the view from London Bridge at five am as the sun came up, and the knowledge of where I was, what this city was and the fact that I lived in it – I lived in it – became unbearable. Like a pill you’d taken that you knew was too strong, with the rush of emotions feeling enough to buckle me at the spine. I never knew what to call those feelings. Some kind of extra, unnecessary, sensitivity.

I saw the spriggan on Parkland Walk struggling to get free of the brickwork when no one else could; I knew the golem in Stamford Hill was real. I studied the tarot, I loved weird fiction, and took an interest in things like the collective unconscious. I had taken mushrooms, acid, even DMT down on the south coast in Hastings, an experience which almost made me believe in an afterlife.

That night as the city burned, we thought we’d nose out what was going on, try and live up to some of the creeds we claimed to adhere to. I can still see Jess, in her light denim jacket with covered in patches promoting causes that mattered in those days, plain black T shirt, hair shaved along one side of the head like the girls used to do back then. It was before we really got together, and way before it all turned to shit.

We were running down a side road off the Green Lanes, fleeing it as a whole unit of riot police done up like a dystopian enforcers marched down the street. Turks and kurds leaning out of their windows above the kebab shops and grocery stores. I have a memory of a tipped-over box of Turkish peppers, those pale green ones your cook up with eggs in a metal pan, arranged like an absurd, crushed corona on the tarmac

 Some of the Turks were out on the street, tooled up with cleavers and bats that should have been hitting softballs in London’s parks. They were a community that knew how to look after themselves, and I always respected them for that. They were defending their property from the looters, people we presumed they knew as neighbours.

We ran down the alley as the Green Lanes went up in flames and came down in smashed glass and scorched brick. Jess and I had lost the others, and it felt like we were in theold Alex Cox movie, Sid & Nancy, excited and adrenalised by the fact that things were happening and for once the status quo was wobbling. We kissed in the shadow behind a green industrial recycling bin, a piece of smouldering cardboard wafting above us like a burning angel.

A PERSONAL ANTHOLOGY

I was pleased to contribute to the excellent ‘A Personal Anthology’ series run by Jonathan Gibbs. The concept is simple – a writer chooses twelve pieces of favourite short fiction and explains why others should read them.

My list:

  1. ‘Black County’ – Joel Lane

  2. ‘The Stains’ – Robert Aickman

  3. ‘The White Cat’ – Joyce Carol Oates

  4. ‘The Husband Stitch’ – Carmen Maria Machado

  5. ‘Wide Acre’ – Nathan Ballingrud’

  6. ‘An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk According to One Who Saw It’ – Jessie Greengrass

  7. ‘The Horse of Iron and How We Can Know It (And Be Changed By It)’ – M John Harrison

  8. ‘Four Abstracts’ – Nina Allan

  9. ‘The Man Whom the Trees Loved’ – Algernon Blackwood

  10. ‘The Cheater’s Guide to Love’ – Junot Diaz

  11. ‘The Last Clean, Bright Summer’ – Livia Llewellyn

  12. ‘The Unwish’ – Claire Dean

You can read it here.