Free Short Stories and a Quick Update

Last week, where I live, absolutely perfect meterological conditions occurred.Perfectly awful that is.It was just warm enough for rain to fall in liquid form, but the ground was just cold enough to cause rain to freeze on contact. The entire city tur...

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Jan 26, 2024
On Future Writing Projects and Time Travel

The weather's become much colder, with freezing temperatures as I walk my kids to school. On a sunny winter's day (which I'll admit is rare where I live), the view of daybreak peircing the mist that rises from the fields near my home, as we walk, is...

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Jan 12, 2024
Countdowns // Free Short Story // Concept Art

Only a few days to go until your New Year resolutions kick in. Have you made any?Mine is obviously to finish Past Mistakes. By "finish", I mean not only to get the text written, but the other steps that come after.Re-reading, editing, cover design, b...

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Dec 29, 2023
Imaginary worlds // Concept Art // Free book, and more

Happy Friday!I hope you're looking forward to the holidays as much as I am. I need a break from the routine and nothing kicks me out of an unconscious rut as effectively as a little bit of travel. I won't be going far, just across the English Channel...

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Dec 15, 2023
The Plot Arc of Past Mistakes

I went about writing Past Mistakes entirely the wrong way. That’s not a great way to start a post, but the mistakes go back years and have since been corrected. I can be honest about them now. As with most of my stories, it started with a premise. Th...

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Nov 25, 2023
The Emancipation of Shadows

In my last post, I shared a short story I was particularly happy with, called “Shadows.” I also explained in a previous post that this story had originally been very different. The first time I considered the concept of people losing their shadows, m...

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May 21, 2021
Shadows: A Free Short Story

I wrote Shadows over a year before I made it freely available. Much of that time was spent adjusting small details that no-one will ever notice. I liked this story very much, and I think that’s part of the reason why it was so hard to let go. The aud...

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Apr 27, 2021
Review: Sisyphus

Sisyphus is a Korean science fiction drama exclusively available on Netflix. It follows a successful tech entrepreneur called Han Tae-Sul and Gang Seo-Hae, a woman who travels back from the future to save him from assassination, and by extension, sav...

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Apr 26, 2021
Vaccinations and Expectations

I live in the UK, and as a resident of this Northern Isle, I have the stupendous privilege, for reasons that are a source of great international discontent, of having access to the Coronavirus vaccine now, rather than later. I took advantage of this...

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Apr 22, 2021
Review: Alice in Borderland

Netflix been a blessing during the pandemic. It’s brought us a huge variety of entertainment. When it ran out of Western shows to feed our ever-present need for distraction, there was an entire realm of foreign-language fiction to discover. Among the...

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Mar 30, 2021
Review: The Mask of Mirrors by M.A.Carrick

The Mask of Mirrors is a rich and thickly-embroidered story of intrigue, conspiracy and magic woven throughout a Venetian city where religion and magic are as much a part of the city as the cobblestones themselves. Into this society divided by class,...

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Feb 17, 2021
Review: Shadow in the Cloud

Tricky, Tricky. There’s a lot to like about Shadow in the Cloud, including a great performance by Chloe Grace Moretz. There are also some ballsy special effects that took a historical war setting and injected some almost-Marvel-like magic, however un...

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Feb 06, 2021
A Few Lessons Learned Over The Course Of A Year

I’ve been writing short stories for a long time, and scratching out story ideas for even longer. Long before I started writing the things you’ve read. Given that experience, you might think that I knew a lot about writing. In some ways I did, but in...

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Feb 01, 2021