A selection of my published short stories, essays and creative non-fiction. Most are available to read online — or support your favourite literary journal by purchasing a copy or subscribing.
There wasn’t much sunlight filtering in but the place still felt like the inside of a cathedral—not only the soaring ceilings and brilliant colours like stained glass, but also the hushed atmosphere of a place which had been sacred for centuries. King Billy Pines could live for two thousand years. When they fell they remained, moss-covered, like rows of green-cushioned pews.
The tour group, art lovers all, trotted behind our Russian guide, whom I’ll call ‘Sergei.’ We were following him through gallery after enormous gallery in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, heads swiveling…
There’s a lot of talk about how terrible the weather will be this summer, hot and windy, they say.
I have an embarrassing little secret. Let me tell you about it. The scene: an office at the university, me perched on the edge of a visitor’s chair…
You knock again and call again: Mum. It takes a few minutes for her to shake herself awake…
“My thoughts were perfectly lucid, neatly parsed and clearly enunciated—inwardly at any rate….
“Plenty of people told me I was lucky after I sold my sculpture, the one I made from the innards of a piano…
“Wet mist slithered down my neck. I was standing on a wooden lookout platform halfway up the mountain’s flank…
I was supposed to be at Corinna by now; they were expecting me at the pub, but the journey had…
At the hairdresser, they were having some kind of celebration. The salon was decorated with pink balloons…
Tonight Denny had parked on the fourth level, red/green, and to get to the exit he’d had to…
“Juniper’s old eyelids flickered open on one more day. Every day she had the same three thoughts when she awoke: first, incredulity that she had woken at all; second, that she was really amazingly voraciously hungry and when would breakfast arrive? And third, a longing for Koko.”
In the dim light of the apartment block stairwell, Olivia couldn’t make out just where she was….