Muse

The pen scratched on the page. The words crawled slowly in the wake of the nib. They were weak and empty things, and there was no life in them. I looked down at what I had written and sighed. “It was a dark and stormy night…” A trite sentence, the latest in a series of […]

Why I Don’t Do NaNo or Check My Speed

NaNoWriMo is a great idea. A community supporting its members in writing 50,000 words of a novel throughout November. It helps deal with one of the big issues about writing, that of the primary task being getting the words on paper (or screen etc) without letting second guessing or procrastination get in the way. A […]

Hither Came Conan

A strange admission for someone of my long tenure in the worlds of fantasy and science fiction, but I’d never actually read Robert E Howard’s Conan stories before. I know they’re almost archetypal examples of the genre but for some reason I’d never got round to picking them up. That changed recently, when I bought […]

Beyond the white hand

I The tavern hall was crowded that night, with raucous voices raised in laughter or contention and the thick sweet smell of acrid violets in the air that spoke of intoxicants other than ale and wine. Zaira the singer moved through the press of people, accepting their accolades and compliments for the performance that she […]

Unchainmail

With youth soft skin and eager heart

sin.dex

Asmodeus, a great king, strong and powerful, was supposed to have appeared with three heads (bull, man, ram). It had taken weeks to beg, borrow and steal the ingredients for the incense. It had taken days to obtain candles – real candles – from the undermarket: Unregistered products were forbidden by the Syndic.

Monolith

An exercise in inspiration – having a vaguely Lovecraftian mood on me I decided to just start typing and see where the mood take me. The first couple of lines sprang out of nowhere and I just let the whole thing flow without editing or pausing.

Apparition

Edmund Jenkin was not an old man but he was weary and reaching the end of his resources. He had been waiting for his caller who was overdue by an hour and he was worried. The weather was bad but that was not what concerned him. What concerned him was that the time was bad, […]

The Cure

Eddie was a bright guy. I met him at college where he was studying literature and poetry and he had a real passion for it all. He had a gift with words and loved a well crafted phrase loaded with booby-trap cleverness.

Landslide Victory

Do you remember when you were a child? Alone and hungry and crying for a mother that was beyond hearing?