“The People of the Sea” has now been published by Headland:
She’s here I think, hidden in the waves. I always think I can just make her out. I keep thinking she’ll be washed up on the shore but she never seems to come any nearer. I tell myself it’s just shadows in the water or maybe other sea creatures, despite knowing the truth.
Each time I wonder if it’s time to join her, to let my clothes fall to the sand and walk out into the water, and never return.
Recent publications
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.
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 17 September 2023]
