New stories
Medusa Tales has published another of my “Millia Maslowa” pieces, “The Tiniest of Vibrations”:
Other vibrations were running up and down his strings, vibrations that had come from his voice box rather than her bow. They were waves that set up interference patterns with the waves she was trying to create. She placed her fingers on the strings to still them, then ran her way up towards the peg box, implanted in his sternum. If she’d run the other way, she would have found the tailpiece jutting out from his pelvis, but that felt a little too presumptuous.
And “Dampening” has been published by After Dinner Conversation:
When I first met Inspector Daria Hunt, I wanted to kill her. Not there and then; I wanted to take as long as possible over it, maximising the pain whilst leaving her with no hope of survival. Images of horrific injuries leapt into my mind, a catalogue of atrocities just awaiting my choice of which one to do first. She was a Basswelder, and I hated them.
But I’d had training in this, and within seconds I realised what I was doing and began glanding. Although all my muscles were tensed, and I had half risen from my chair to strike her, my responses began to damp down and I found myself relaxing against my will. I sat down in my chair, and my visions of violence began to feel like a distant dream. All of reality appeared to recede from me. I felt an ease in my mind, a slowness of reaction, and a sheer lack of necessity to respond. I was aware of my hatred of her race, I still had my memories of how they had treated us in the war, but I could put those feelings aside, and talk to her without risking her murder.
Recent publications
My Third Flatiron time travel story “A Rock in the Air” can now be heard on Tall Tale TV:
On 6 August 1945, Hideyoshi Kita acted without honour or courage, but only with cowardice and self-preservation. He ran. He ran away from his family, his friends and his work colleagues, whom he knew already would be consumed by the blast. He ran to save his own skin, as if he could move faster than the explosion that had never happened before.
And my Circlet Press time travel story “My Heart Beats Backwards” is available as a podcast from Nobilis Reed.
Don’t forget
You can buy my novel On Wings of Pity from Amazon, and my collection The End of the World: A User’s Guide for only £7.99.
[Last update 27 September 2022]
