Toby woke with a start, sitting bolt upright in bed. His face and chest were covered in a cold sweat. He had to… had to… had to do something he was sure, Had he been dreaming? The memories were wispy, and when he tried to grasp them they fled. The alarm by his bed blared […]

She sat on the shore, arms wrapped around her knees. As he saw her, he let out a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding. He picked his way across the rocks to her. “Hey,” she said as he sat behind her. She didn’t turn her head, but settled back into him as he wrapped […]

Clara sat at the small table in one corner of the room, shivering slightly. She felt dirty every day in this place, but it rarely got to her anymore. This was different. She hurt all over and though he hadn’t actually hit her or spoken a cruel word, she knew he realised and enjoyed it. […]

Weeks later, after all the dust had settled, I still had one question. One question that I doubt I’ll get an answer to now. At the time it didn’t seem to matter. At the time my fourth whiskey was reduced to a glass of ice and the bartender was too busy chatting up some lawyer […]

“How did you know?” he asked. “You wrote it in a story once,” she smiled. “I wrote about dragons in a story once,” he said. “You didn’t get me one of those, did you?” She smiled again. “I could always tell which ones were stories and which were real. You know that.” “I know,” he […]

“Let’s play a game,” she said. He glanced out through the balcony doors. The cobbled street below wound away down the hill, lined on either side by tall houses, leant against each other for support. In the distance he could see the harbour, then the ocean, then the sun, sinking slowly. “Do we have time?” […]

She loved food. He liked that. A lot of people loved to eat, loved taste, loved indulgence, but not many could be said to love food itself. He would catch her looking hungrily at cookbooks in shop windows as they passed. Hungry for the lovingly prepared presentations on their glossy covers, and the ideas contained […]

The second pass of my novel edit is finished. It’s an improvement, definitely, which is something I was a little concerned about, having grown so used to how it was before. I think the distance I had gained from not reading it for a year and a half helped. Plus, even though I still wasn’t […]

In 2046, mankind struck out into space. It was not the thrill of adventure that drove them, nor the quest for new horizons. It was fear. Satellites and space stations were rafted together to form the foundations of Orbit 1 and first governments, then the rich, then anyone there was room for boarded shuttles and […]

Clara picked up the bottle and two empty glasses from the dresser and followed the man out the door. She leaned against the railing of the balcony as she watched him make his way down the stairs and across the saloon, stepping over drunks and around fights, until he was out the door and into […]