There are several of my short stories and extracts of longer works scattered within this blog. Stories are posted as and when I feel like it. There are tags, but I thought I’d make it easier for my readers, and list and link them here. Most of the stories have appeared in magazines some years back, so I shall try and include links for these, unless the magazine is dead and gone. There is some recent flash fiction too. You can find fiction-related posts and novel extracts connected under the tags ‘short story’ and ‘fiction’. (There are also tags for poems, and I will get round to a poetry links page sometime!)
Short Stories
In addition to the links below, a couple of my stories have been read at Liars’ League events, and direct links to the You Tube recordings are accessible from the News and Publications page. I have recorded an extract from my Nightjar Press short story, Touch Me With Your Cold, Hard Fingers. Find it in the sidebar, alongside some of my poems.
Here are the stories from this blog. Click on the title to reach the start page:
The Widower – short story that appeared in my short story collection – Familiar Possessions, 2002, now out of print. Dark little story with supernatural undertones. First appeared in Leviathan Quarterly – a magazine now defunct.
Mortar – short story that appeared in my short story collection – Familiar Possessions, 2002, now out of print. A wife wishes for more. Her husband knocks down a wall. It isn’t going to end happily. First appeared in the magazine Pitch – now defunct – at the turn of the century.
Mrs Wetherby – a short story from my Gulf-themed Kindle triplet This Heat. Why is Mrs Wetherby teasing a single man? Shortlisted for the Fish short story competition. 2002.
The Waitress – a gently humorous short story told from multiple perspectives. Much tea and cake by the seaside, and goings-on behind the scenes.
What Happens Now – appeared in Dream Catcher in 2004. A realist literary story of a family caring for an older relative. Includes a telescope and an oil refinery.
The Capsule – appeared in Dream Catcher in 2005. Speculative fiction, set in a space capsule falling into the gravity well of a sun. Loosely classified as speculative/philosophical story, or perhaps dark realism. This edition of Dream Catcher was described as a humour edition, so there you have a genre spectrum.
Nuns and Harlots – flash story of flowers and a failing relationship. Featured in Word Bohemia .in September 2013. More of my flash fiction and some poetry is also on this site.
Dear Universe – a flash fiction. What happens when the vicar loosens up a bit too much.
The Rhododendron Canopy – short story that appeared in my 2002 short story collection – Familiar Possessions, and Two Ravens Press anthology – Murmurations – in 2011. About an aging woman who invites a strange man to tea. Some dead birds and poisonous plants. This story upset a cat lover, but that is incidental to what it might be about.
The Fool – a flash fiction I read at the Cumbria flood fund-raiser at Words by the Water in March 2016. A version of this appeared as The Bridge in Word Bohemia.
Accidental – a short fiction of two parts. No middle. See if it works!
Extracts from Longer Fiction
The Hot House and Beryl – novel extracts from Gulf sequence.
Settling – Buying Back the Farm – the beginning of something – possibly!
Lester – the first emergence of one of my novels-in-progress
Dunstan and Pushing – something that I have been playing around with for much too long.
Elizabeth Stott - to Blog or Not 