Cogito ergo amo pt 3

[following Pt 2]

‘Dr. Woods’, Terri interjected, just a little piqued at how she had suddenly lost his attention.
‘No. Richard is my name. And you are …?’
‘Tamarind.’
‘And?’
‘Starchild, meet Dr Richard Woods’.
The expected words didn’t materialise. Richard breathed a sigh of relief. He leant down, putting his face to the child’s. It was strangely still.
‘Hello Starchild. I’ll bet your daddy’s proud of you!’ Tamarind shot him a look.
Richard froze, but the cloud passed.
‘I know how this is going to sound’, she began … Continue reading

Cogito ergo amo pt 2

[following on from Pt 1]

‘… and so the natural state of being, of a being, is being in love. To be sentient is to love. Cogito, ergo amore. Thank you.’
The audience broke out into warm applause peppered with shouts of ‘yeah!’, as the twenty-minute period for questions finally ended an hour behind schedule. As he was led off the dais, the speaker was engrossed in animated conversation with the event’s organiser, his words illustrated with small but intense gestures.
‘… but I’m preaching to the converted here, Terri. It’s all well and good but there’s very little this lot can do.’
Terri bridled slightly as he took her by the arm. ‘But we’re doing workshops, holding consciousness awareness days, then there’s the … ‘ She was waved silent. Continue reading

Cogito ergo amo

‘Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee …’
The sound from the live feed stunned the room into silence, reducing its temperature by a good three degrees. Dave Baker, operative third class, was overwhelmed by a visceral surge of impotence. Even his colleagues comprehended that  what they had just witnessed was beyond special, beyond even unique; it was the future. And it didn’t seem to like them that much.
‘What the actual fuck?
The words dripped from Dave’s open mouth.
‘You have got to be kidding me.’ He sat heavily into his seat, utterly defeated.

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an odd exercise

Today, as part of a rather odd writing event, I wrote the following piece, from a standing start, in six minutes. The prescription was as follows: Agatha, Matt, and the five senses. This is utterly unedited, and sold three books:

‘Stop, look, listen’, said Agatha, as she felt young Matt tug on his reins. For his part, he had been humming the Marseillaise for some time now, a tune whose second verse, with its furrows of blood, was not to Agatha’s taste. What’s more, she was increasingly aware that her son was feeling the effects of a rather excessive intake of fruit juice on the bus. Not only were his hands sticky, but his hum was turning into a whine, like wine becoming vinegar, and she began to imagine the smell of the bus’s diesel fumes being infused with his piss.

Without willing it, her hands dropped the reins as she felt the hand on her shoulder and the whisper in her ear. A split second was all it took. The scream of a passer-by mixed in with the screech of brakes like two flavours of ice cream melting in the sun. She smelt burning rubber. Her heart stopped. There was silence. She felt the heat of her jeans spread as she turned to look.

There, looking directly at her was her son. Unharmed. She stepped forwards to envelop him in her arms, scoop him up to safety.

She didn’t see the lorry. She didn’t hear the lorry. She didn’t feel the lorry. But she smelt fear, and tasted death.

A book in hand …

Ok, so I published another book – Black Box, a collection of short stories from the dark to the whimsical and back again. It’s available as an e-book and as a c-book (c for carboniferous), just like my last book, Slender Threads. I’m not so interested in their relative subject matter as I am in their formats, and how they’ve fared in the (relative) marketplace. Continue reading

Black Box

Black Box is a collection of stories that were written between 1998 and 2011. I’m not exactly prolific. They cover a wide range of topics while never straying far from ‘the’ question. From hangovers to Faustian bargains, the stories are often about stories. And some of them are true. Cover by Helen Masacz.

Available now on Amazon in e-book and c-book formats and in the US at the createspace store.

Continue reading

You only know what you’ve got when it’s gone

There is a moment when it happens. It’s often tiny, it’s almost always unexpected: at least, in its particular position. It happens. The moment so small you can step on it and it isn’t harmed. You pass it by, and while you may not spot what it is, you know that everything has changed. You know that it’s over. Continue reading

Blackbeard’s Last Voyage

 

This here book I wrote a while back. This illustrated chapter is courtesy of the excellent Kaira Mezulis. Read the first few chapters of BlackBeard’s Last Voyage.