Category: Short Fiction

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Vincent’s Penny on Podcastle

I’m delighted that Episode 628 of the splendid fantasy podcast Podcastle features my story ‘Vincent’s Penny’.

You can get the podcast here, or wherever you normally get your podcast fix. Subscribe while you’re at it – you’ve got hundreds of back episodes to catch up on.

‘Vincent’s Penny’ was first published in issue 16 of Australian online magazine Dimension 6, in April 2019. You can still get that copy of the magazine, free to download here.

I was pleased with the story in print, but I’ve got to say it gains an extra dimension read by the tall and talented Matt Dovey. This is the third time I’ve had one of my stories interpreted by Matt. Previous outings were both on the Tales to Terrify podcast – for ‘Ravello Steps‘ (May 2019) and ‘Looking After Shaun‘ (July 2018). I thought those were good, but I was bowled over by the way he handled ‘Vincent’s Penny.’ Check out Matt’s website for more of his work.

Here’s a taster of the story. Head over to Podcastle for the rest of it, should the mood take you…

Vincent’s Penny

May 1941

I’m a child this time. Five or six years old.

Fully clothed under a bed, on a wooden floor. I touch a hand to my throat, but there is nothing there. I examine my hands and arms, astonished by the smoothness of the skin. At last, I crawl out from beneath the bed and leave the room.

Light from a jagged hole in the roof, blue sky beyond, streaked with horsetails of cloud.  The floor is dusted with splinters of wood and brick. The window at the end of the hall has daggers of glass clinging to the frame.

Over the banister, more rubble and destruction below. Some of the stairs are broken, but I pick my way downstairs, helped by the fact that I am so light now, in this child’s frame. I could skip across a field of grass and barely disturb the dew. There is a door at the foot of the stairs. I turn the handle and push, but at first it does not move. Maybe the wall has shifted in the raid. I try again, ramming my tiny shoulder against the wood.

The door releases its grip and tumbles me outside.   

The Previous Day

Before they take me out, they put a hood over my head. A hand on my arm guides me down a flight of stairs. On the flat, they shove me forward. Hands pull me to a halt and there is the sound of a car door, before someone pushes down on the top of my head, pressing me inside. As the car engine starts, I hear a loud wailing in the distance.

“Air-raid siren,” I say. “Are you sure we should be going for a drive?”

“No need to worry about Hitler’s bombers,” a familiar voice says. “Nothing he can do to you that’s worse than what Vincent’s got in mind.”

The car gathers speed. The sirens fall away and another sound comes; a strengthening growl high above. I can picture the swollen metal bellies of the Heinkel bombers, stuffed with high explosives. With the motion of the car, I feel the ancient metal disc move on its chain beneath my shirt. Vincent’s penny; maybe it can bring me luck again.

“You can let me go. Who will ever know?”

“Why would we do that?”

“If you let Vincent do this, who will stop him doing worse in the future?”

The car stops, doors open and close. As they lead me away from the car a succession of explosions in the distance makes me flinch. A sound like a giant striding towards us, wading through houses and shops.

The hood is snatched away, revealing a large empty space, an abandoned warehouse. A table and three chairs in the centre of the room.

I know I will never leave this place…

(Continue reading…)

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Hard Times in Nuovo Genova: available free in the IGMS Archive

Even the name – Covid-19 – is like something out of a science fiction story, and truly we are living in strange and dystopian times. We have to take our comforts where we can.

That being so, it’s great that so many organisations have stepped up and made content available free at a time when we’re locked down. The online magazine, Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, sadly closed last year. But they have now posted all their stories online, free of charge. You can check out 14 years’ worth of stories and artwork here.

While you’re browsing, you might want to take a look at my story, Hard Times in Nuovo Genova, which featured in IGMS in August 2018, and was later included in the Newcon Press collection, The Best of British Science Fiction 2018.

I wrote about the story in my post of August 2018. It’s basically a boy meets girl story. Except the girl has the power to travel at will between alternative universes, and the boy doesn’t. A recipe for relationship trouble, if ever there was!

Go on – give it a read. You know you’ve got time. Here’s a taster:

Hard Times in Nuovo Genova (or How I Lost My Way)

I see them occasionally, wandering through Columbus Plaza or hanging around the lakefront. Always alone.

They’re obvious, if you know what to look for: something a bit off about their clothing; maybe the material or style sticks out–buttons on the shirt when everyone here has those tiny hook and eye things; blue denim worn tight when the men of Nuovo Genova favor baggy cotton pants.

It’s how they act, too. They drift up behind market traders on a cigarillo break and eavesdrop while pretending to tie a shoelace. They sit alone outside a café, pretending to read a newspaper. But they never turn a page as they listen to the talk at the table behind.

They’re passing through and they need to learn about the place fast. It’s not as if they can ask: Excuse me, what country is this? Was Roosevelt president in 1940, or was it Lindbergh?

I spot them easily because that was once me. Before I lost the Way.

Sian is waiting when I appear. She puts a finger to her lips and leads me off the beach. We sit with our backs against a tree, facing the lake.

The air is cold, with no sound except our breathing and the murmur of waves. I sniff the air. There’s something odd about the smell: metallic and smoky, like ash washed by rain. I look south toward Chicago, but there are no lights.

“It doesn’t feel good,” Sian whispers.

“How can you tell?”

“You develop an instinct. We should stay here until light.”

It’s hard to sleep on a cold beach when you have just arrived somewhere completely unknown. Several times, I am close to dozing off when a noise from the trees makes me stiffen and pull Sian close. There’s a screech like an animal in pain, followed by a low scraping sound, moving away inland. Another time, an eerie howling, like a pack of wolves a mile away.

“Maybe it’s a werewolf,” I say. “Full moon, after all.”

“You think you’re joking.”

Somehow, we sleep and wake to daylight the color of dirty dishwater. A bloated, rusty sun emerges from the lake. Oily cords of cloud paint stripes across the sky.

“Look at the city,” Sian says.

At first glance, the skyline is comforting in its familiarity. Then it comes into focus: stunted towers, like broken teeth; a wall of dark buildings, lit in places by sunlight on jagged remnants of windows. A rusted hulk of a ship half-submerged in the lake two miles south.

We stay on the beach all day, watching the dead city, but we see no movement. We leave with the moon...

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Once There Was a Way – Out Now on Starship Sofa

Those great folks at Starship Sofa have done an audio version of my story ‘Once There Was a Way’. You can find it wherever you get your podcasts, or on the Starship Sofa site. While you’re there, be sure to subscribe – they do some great stories.

The story first appeared last year, in the first anthology from Filles Vertes Publishing (who also published my novel, Fifty-One). The book – which features numerous other great stories – was called ‘Flicker: Stories of Inner Flame’, and you can check it out at Filles Vertes Publishing.

The story is one of three first published last year in the ‘Way’ series. It features a young man called Siggy, who meets a woman called Ellie. They fall in love, and she shares with him a fantastic secret: she has stumbled upon a mechanism for traveling between different versions of reality, between worlds that are subtly or dramatically different from our own, depending on how far you go along a mysterious path called the Way.

Siggy has a wanderlust, and showing him the Way is like giving him the keys to the sweetshop. He can’t resist using it without Ellie, only to get lost in parallel worlds, forever searching for the version of reality he left behind, the one with his lover in it.

It’s always nice to hear a story interpreted by someone else, and Andrew Leman does a fine job with the narration (including some suitably English dropped aitches!).

Here’s a taster of the story. For more, check out the podcast or buy ‘Flicker’ (and support a super independent publisher).

Once There Was A Way

I had known Ellie a month. We were at a party near the coast. It was after midnight when we kissed in the dark under the trees at the bottom of the garden.

Ellie said, “There’s something I want to show you.”

“Will I like it?” I assumed we were talking about sex, which was fine with me.

“I’ve never shown anyone else. I think you’re ready.”

She took my hand and led me through a gate, into a cliff-top meadow overlooking the Atlantic. A full moon stood sentinel over the sea, laying a shimmering trail across the water.

“Do you want me to show you something amazing?”

“Right here?” I admit, I was still thinking about sex.

“It only works at full moon.” She stepped closer and kissed me again.  “Close your eyes and relax.” Her hands were on my shoulders. She eased me backwards, a step at a time. “Tell me what you feel under your feet,” she whispered. “Each step.”

“Grass, of course. Grass again. Wait -.” A change in the texture of the ground, some kind of artificial surface.

“Open your eyes.”

I had one foot on a layer of mist, which was not there a few seconds before. It glowed faintly in the moonlight, making a ghostly path that snaked away from us, rippling along the cliff top. I thought at first it was some trick of the moonlight and a trace of sea mist, abetted by the wine we had drunk. But, however impossible it seemed, there was no denying that I stood on a thin strip of light a couple of inches above the grass.

“What is it?”

“It’s called the Way.”

“But what is it?”

“You can find out by trying it,” Ellie said. “You’re always keen to travel. But you have to do exactly as I say. Don’t go far, just a few minutes and then come back. Count the number of steps you take and make them even. You have to take the exact same number on the way back. And also, take this.” She reached up and unclasped the silver necklace she wore. “When you come back, give it to me before you do anything else.”

“Why?” The chain had a tiny silver dolphin on it.

“I’ll explain later. Now go, but hurry back.”

***

Is this two hundred trips, or maybe more? I’ve lost count. This time, her house isn’t even there. Instead, a brutalist 1970s apartment block squats on a patch of grass. Two teenage boys sit on the roof of a wrecked car. They watch me as I approach. I keep walking.

Once out of sight, I take the turning that should lead to the pub. But that isn’t there either. There is a row of narrow houses, some with boarded windows.

No house, no pub. No way of knowing if Ellie ever lived here or ever will. I should be used to this. I should have learned by now not to hope. But every time it’s a punch in the gut.

The full moon remains high and I walk back to where I left the Way. I step on it without a backward glance, and the buildings around me fade away.

I move on.

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Best of British Science Fiction 2018

As trailed earlier in the year, I’m pleased that my story ‘Hard Times in Nuovo Genova’ is included in the latest collection of the Best of British Science Fiction. You can find the book here.

Best Of British Science Fiction 2018 cover – image is Les Edwards’ Chasing the Lightship

The book is out now. If you want to buy it (and you should, you know), consider getting it direct from the publisher – NewCon Press. Whenever anyone supports an independent publisher, another fairy is saved.

I was gutted that I couldn’t make it to the book’s launch, at the science fiction WorldCon in Dublin. But I hear the event went well, and the book sold out on the day (so that’s good news for Tinkerbell and friends).

Hard Times’ was first published in August 2018 in Orson Scott Card’s sadly now-defunct Intergalactic Medicine Show. It’s one of three stories published last year in the ‘Way’ cycle of tales of love and loss in alternate universes. To see it nestling alongside such great British Sf writers as Alastair Reynolds, Aliya Whitely and GV Anderson is such a thrill.

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New Podcast: ‘Ravello Steps’ in Tales to Terrify out now

Following closely on from the recent story on Starship Sofa, my horror story “Ravello Steps” features in the latest podcast from Tales to Terrify. You can download it free from the Tales to Terrify website, or on iTunes.

The story is narrated by Matt Dovey, who did a super job on an earlier story of mine (Looking After Shaun Tales to Terrify 336). He does an equally fine job this time, too. Thanks, Matt. You can check out Matt’s own writing, and other news at https://mattdovey.com/

Ravello Steps first appeared in the UK’s premier horror magazine, Black Static, which is well worth subscribing to. If you like Ravello Steps, you might like my dark fantasy novel, Among the Living, with which it shares a significant amount of story DNA (and quite a few words!). You can find Among the Living here.

Here’s a taster for the story (but you really need to hear Matt reading it!)

RAVELLO STEPS

“You look like shit.”

I cleaned myself up in the room and rinsed my mouth with some whisky from the mini-bar, but I obviously show signs of the afternoon.

“Like you care.”

I get myself a Peroni and sit at Elizabeth’s table. She pushes her bag under the table with her foot. She looks fantastic again; dark hair pulled back and tied with a jewelled clip, lips full and dark, as if she has eaten cherries. This morning’s faint lines around her eyes are gone and she is spray-painted again with youth.

“Seriously.” A cool hand on my wrist. “What’s wrong?”

“When you left this morning, I thought maybe you were gone for good.” The hotel bar has a view over the bay and through the window behind Elizabeth, light is fast draining from the sky, turning the sea below a deep impossible blue.

“I decided to take a drive.”

The coast road twisted like a lunatic ribbon along the cliff tops. I barely noticed the sumptuous views of sapphire sea and small towns perched above the water. My mind was full of Elizabeth’s bizarre behaviour, and the way she walked out before breakfast.

The other times, back in London, it was easier to ignore what she was doing. In a city of millions of strangers she could disappear for days while I lost myself in work. She didn’t say where she went and I didn’t ask. Over the years, whenever she came back it was always good between us. She returned refreshed and revived, always with enough energy for both of us to apply jump leads to our flagging romance. 

Here in Italy it was different. It brought into focus the things I could ignore back home. The gaps in our relationship, the lack of common ground, the absence of family or friends or anyone who could tell me what she did and where she was before I met her, or what she did those times when she disappeared without explanation.

I stopped in a small town called Atrani and sat on the grey beach of volcanic sand. High crags on either side pinned the town beneath a pale blue vee of sky.   

Fifty yards away a woman walked rapidly along the street. It looked like Elizabeth but the glare of sun on windows made it hard to see. The woman turned a corner and disappeared. I ran up the beach and crossed the road. A narrow street led under an arch into a small square. There was no sign of the woman. To my left a narrow set of stone steps led upwards for a few yards and then disappeared around to the left. A sign on the wall said ‘Ravello Steps’.

Elizabeth had once said something about Ravello, when we were planning the holiday. She spent some time in Italy in her youth, she said. An aunt lived here.

I started to climb the steps.

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‘Hard Times’ in Best British SF 2018

The contents list for the latest collection of the Best of British Science Fiction has just been published. You can see it here.

It would be an understatement to say I’m thrilled that my story ‘Hard Times in Nuovo Genova’ is included. It’s always a pleasure when an editor wants your story, but doubly so when it nestles alongside tales from such a crowd of great British SF writers, in a collection pulled together by Donna Scott. Can’t wait to read them.

‘Hard Times’ was first published last August in Orson Scott Card’s sadly now-defunct Intergalactic Medicine Show (I didn’t break it, honest). It’s one of three stories published last year in the ‘Way’ cycle of tales of love and loss in alternate universes.

This is two years in a row that I’ve had a story in the Best of British anthology. Last year it was ‘When I Close My Eyes.’ You’ll have to wait until August for the launch of the 2018 anthology, but you can still buy the 2017 version (and you really should). Preferably direct from NewCon Press.