Out in Autumn 2017
Worse Things
Photo courtesy of Red Fez
“It’s not so bad,” another remand woman called Melissa, a credit card fraudster, had told me. “I’ve missed a few Christmases, and all through shopping early.” When I told her what I’d done she’d giggled, without spite, and said, “Your liberty literally isn’t worth a dog’s.”
Animal rights and leather jackets, bolt cutters and fences, the pleasing whoosh of exploding formaldehyde, absurdly delicate policemen and old fellows in wigs, all in my story Worse Things, which draws a few pros and cons between Christmas on remand and New year with your own permanent number… There ARE worse things. Probably. Available now in Red Fez, a mag I’ve admired from afar for a long time, coinciding with my favourite historical hat. You can read it here.
Animal rights and leather jackets, bolt cutters and fences, the pleasing whoosh of exploding formaldehyde, absurdly delicate policemen and old fellows in wigs, all in my story Worse Things, which draws a few pros and cons between Christmas on remand and New year with your own permanent number… There ARE worse things. Probably. Available now in Red Fez, a mag I’ve admired from afar for a long time, coinciding with my favourite historical hat. You can read it here.
Just Looking
Ready for a night's... looking... just looking.
Alex doesn't like his wife Elena wandering around the flat half naked after her shower. Though they live up high in the sky, there's a man out there, looking. Or so Alex says. And one night he may do more than just look - or so he says.
My tale of high-rise living and peeping gets a second outing in good company in Longshot Island magazine, and you can read it here.
My tale of high-rise living and peeping gets a second outing in good company in Longshot Island magazine, and you can read it here.
Transaction
A handbag? Good or bad night out? Warsaw, summer 2015.
A businessman with a mission, a tart with a tale to tell, and the question of reputation that dogs each of them in its own way. On a snowy night in Białystok, in eastern Poland near the Belarus border, a story unfolds of faded glamour, entrapment and anger, and explodes in a violence that leaves an uneasy calm behind. After its initial outing earlier in the year in Polish, Transakcja becomes Transaction, and is now out in Stoneboat Literary Journal.
Jerry's Last Word
Jer-ee, Jer-ee! I miss that call of Pam’s that used to echo round the yards in the evenings, I can’t think why. The repetition of his name was a sign of life, maybe, and of the assurance of a future. I miss too the sight of Jerry slopping his wet way across the road from the jetty, leaving the traces of the flat feet that would, I thought, keep him out of Vietnam – it seemed like it would go on forever at that time, August of seventy four.
My flash tale of a boy and his pet, Jerry’s Last Word, out now with Spelk Fiction, and available to read here.
My flash tale of a boy and his pet, Jerry’s Last Word, out now with Spelk Fiction, and available to read here.
Bookselling Blues
"Etruscans, darling. Etruscans."
“J’ai mal à tete,” she declared suddenly. That is what you learn to say when you have a headache in France. Because everybody will be so interested, and offer le sympathie and l’aspirin. And pourquoi pas? I think, had a French doctor been nearby, he’d have radioed for the Mal à Tete Sans Frontières helicopter to be waiting for her at her chosen Finchley tube stop.
My story Bookselling Blues, an everyday tale of North London people, out now in #LiterallyStories and available to read right here.
My story Bookselling Blues, an everyday tale of North London people, out now in #LiterallyStories and available to read right here.
The Boy at the Bus Stop
Belgrade, January 2010
“The boy,” the woman remembered. “There was a boy here too.”
“Where is he, then?” the policeman demanded.
“Well.” The woman took a look up and down the street. “I don’t know.”
“Well, where did he go?”
“I didn’t see him,” the woman confessed. “But he mentioned him.” She jerked a thumb towards R’s legs. “Before he... you know.”
Beware of boys who bring messages, especially on the eve of All Souls' Day. Ghosts can't do you any harm... or can they? Read The Boy at the Bus Stop here, in the kind care of the wonderful Literally Stories magazine.
The Boy at the Bus Stop - the non-naming of names and places
I've written a few stories about the wars that took place in ex-Yugoslavia in the 1990s - I'm not sure why. I was living in Turkey and Poland for most of the time the war was going on, and I guess there was something odd to me about being within a train ride of the war that made me think about it a lot. At one time I had certain fixed ideas about the good guys and bad guys in that war, but it's all a bit blurred now in my memory, reading and research. And I don't think any side came out of that conflict with its reputation quite intact. That's why I've chosen to leave character and place names obscure, by using a technique I associate with 19th century writing, and just putting an initial in place of a name.
For the ultimate story of the wars in Bosnia, there are a range of books, but one that stands out for me is Anthony Lloyd's excellent My War Gone By, I Miss It So - you will never think about war in the same way once you've read it. See more about it here.
“Where is he, then?” the policeman demanded.
“Well.” The woman took a look up and down the street. “I don’t know.”
“Well, where did he go?”
“I didn’t see him,” the woman confessed. “But he mentioned him.” She jerked a thumb towards R’s legs. “Before he... you know.”
Beware of boys who bring messages, especially on the eve of All Souls' Day. Ghosts can't do you any harm... or can they? Read The Boy at the Bus Stop here, in the kind care of the wonderful Literally Stories magazine.
The Boy at the Bus Stop - the non-naming of names and places
I've written a few stories about the wars that took place in ex-Yugoslavia in the 1990s - I'm not sure why. I was living in Turkey and Poland for most of the time the war was going on, and I guess there was something odd to me about being within a train ride of the war that made me think about it a lot. At one time I had certain fixed ideas about the good guys and bad guys in that war, but it's all a bit blurred now in my memory, reading and research. And I don't think any side came out of that conflict with its reputation quite intact. That's why I've chosen to leave character and place names obscure, by using a technique I associate with 19th century writing, and just putting an initial in place of a name.
For the ultimate story of the wars in Bosnia, there are a range of books, but one that stands out for me is Anthony Lloyd's excellent My War Gone By, I Miss It So - you will never think about war in the same way once you've read it. See more about it here.
Monstrous Men
Children's band, Sacre Couer, Paris, summer 1980
Some stolen music, a vain musician reduced to teaching, a haughty artist, and, worst of all, a narcissistic president. In the middle of it, a children's band. Monstrous Men is a story of disappearances and delusion, hubris and revenge, not in the distant past, but in a totalitarian trap somewhere in the East of Europe in the last century.
It has been reprinted in the autumn issue of The Woven Tale Press, and you can read it here.
It has been reprinted in the autumn issue of The Woven Tale Press, and you can read it here.
Zaginął Pies - Man Seeks Dog
The Church of the Visitation, Krakowskie Przedmieście, Warsaw
This is the Polish language version of my short crime caper Man Seeks Dog.
I wrote this story in the late 1990s, possibly while I was still living in Warsaw. One of the newspapers, Gazeta Wyborcza, had a column called Man Seeks Dog, either for people looking for lost dogs, or possibly, to adopt a dog. It was published in 1997 or 1998 in a small press magazine called Plume – long vanished, unfortunately, as with most print ventures of the time. It was republished online in 2014 in Jack Hardway’s Crime Magazine, but that seems to have disappeared, too.
I set Teodor’s flat in the block (across from one of Warsaw’s two Japanese restaurants, at the time) on ulica Dobra, in which I used to live, and had him going about his not-so-innocent dog-seeking business on nearby main street Krakowskie Przedmieście, and pondering his luck in the Nowy Świat Café. It was fun to bring them back to life in this story.
Thanks to Marta Crickmar and Paul D Brazill for moving and shaking to get this out – and to translator Anna Kuksinowicz for her hard work in rendering into a language that feels natural to it – Polish, of course.
Read it here in Prze Tlumacze, or here in Polski Noir.
I wrote this story in the late 1990s, possibly while I was still living in Warsaw. One of the newspapers, Gazeta Wyborcza, had a column called Man Seeks Dog, either for people looking for lost dogs, or possibly, to adopt a dog. It was published in 1997 or 1998 in a small press magazine called Plume – long vanished, unfortunately, as with most print ventures of the time. It was republished online in 2014 in Jack Hardway’s Crime Magazine, but that seems to have disappeared, too.
I set Teodor’s flat in the block (across from one of Warsaw’s two Japanese restaurants, at the time) on ulica Dobra, in which I used to live, and had him going about his not-so-innocent dog-seeking business on nearby main street Krakowskie Przedmieście, and pondering his luck in the Nowy Świat Café. It was fun to bring them back to life in this story.
Thanks to Marta Crickmar and Paul D Brazill for moving and shaking to get this out – and to translator Anna Kuksinowicz for her hard work in rendering into a language that feels natural to it – Polish, of course.
Read it here in Prze Tlumacze, or here in Polski Noir.
The Last of the Lace, or Ostatnie Koronki
Got the tee-shirt...
A woman goes on a journey to ensure that her family stays together, and finds her home town on its last legs, guarded by strangely-garbed spacemen. If they're not dead, she has a way of helping them achieve that unhappy state, and it's not by using the family heirloom of the title, but a more deadly one.
My story The Last of the Lace has been published, but it's only available in Polish at the moment. It's called Ostatnie Koronki, and is out in both Polski Noir and Prze Tłumacze - 'In Translation'.
Credits, and many thanks, to translator Aleksandra Guzik and movers and shakers Paul D Brazill and Marta Crickmar.
My story The Last of the Lace has been published, but it's only available in Polish at the moment. It's called Ostatnie Koronki, and is out in both Polski Noir and Prze Tłumacze - 'In Translation'.
Credits, and many thanks, to translator Aleksandra Guzik and movers and shakers Paul D Brazill and Marta Crickmar.