I have been rather idle of late regarding regular blog posts and updates, so allow me to begin by offering my most sincere apple low guys. Good, now we’ve got all of that out of the way, let’s quickly move on and jump straight in with a brief round up of what’s been going down (all announcements made in my absolute best jolly radio disc jockey vocal style) … The beginning of July saw The Horror Tree website release their three annual short story collections, compiled from their weekly online publication TREMBLING WITH FEAR. TWF YEAR FOUR featured eight of my stories, including two of my favourites, A LITTLE CONVERSATION and THE WAKE, while TWF MORE TALES FROM THE TREE VOL THREE contained four of my pieces, including my dark Valentines tale CLOSE TO YOU. July also saw three of my stories published on the FRIDAY FLASH FICTION website. One of them, LATE, ET AL, was fortunate enough to reach the Judges commended list in the FFF EDINBURGH FESTIVAL 2021 competition. August saw the publication of two more collections featuring my work. 666 A DARK MICRO FICTION ANTHOLOGY from BLACK HARE PRESS contained my story GORE MAY DELIGHT, while another piece of mine, DEATH SENTENCE, appeared in BLACK INK FICTION’s excellent book LEGENDS OF NIGHT: REAPERMAN. September saw my flash SAMMY’S SUMMER SANDY SUNDAY BEACH BLANKET PARTY A GO-GO reprinted in TWF’S End of Summer special, which brings us kicking and screaming into what all horror fans worth their salt know as the most wonderful time of the fear/year, October, with its accompanying celebration of all things freaky, Halloween! So far this month, my story SHRILL has been published in TWF on THE HORROR TREE website, while another tale, HAL OWEN, has appeared in the BLACK HARE PRESS online magazine DARK MOMENTS. Links to all of these pieces will soon be added to the credits section. Eagle-eyed visitors to the site may have also noticed an extra addition to the audio recordings section. DANGER ANGER is a prose poem, written and recorded during June on the beach by the ocean in East Runton, a beautiful spot just down the coast from Cromer. This spoken word performance is part of a bigger ongoing project in which I intend to write, recite and record a story or poem in a series of different and unusual geographical locations. You can listen to my ramblings by clicking on the link up at the top of the page. PHEW! So, enough looking back, let’s start moving forward. I have some more work scheduled to appear through-out October (including some tasty Halloween treats within this very blog) so hopefully the next post should appear pretty quickly! Until then, here is a (very) short fifty-word terror tale to tide you over…
I SPIED HER by Steven Holding.
Kept seeing arachnids out the corner of my eye, scuttling away before I could find them. Thought I was losing my mind.
Medicine kept them at bay. Until today.
Looking in the mirror, I made a discovery.
They’d simply been hiding all this time.
In the corner of my eyes.
END OF TRANSMISSION.
OVER AND OUT.
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