After Winter

A short story

Lori Fisher arrives with her father in a small town – they are not talking – she is filled with sadness and resentment and he is just tired.  Mum’s death broke them apart and somehow they must find each other again.  But Lori has a gift, learned from her mother, that will help to find her a place among the strangers and will also help to heal the pain of another lost soul.  

Angel Hill 

Sample chapters

The disappearance of seven-year-old Cathy Dunn causes a ripple on the calm waters of life in the village. A number of submerged and half-forgotten secrets break the surface. There are few people who are not affected by the spate of disasters that summer. Superstition has no place in a commuter village like Angel Hill. Nonetheless, one magpie is always upsetting and everyone knows that disasters go in threes. To some, for good or ill, life will never be quite the same again.  

Baby Blues

Sample chapters

Grace’s life is just about perfect, except for one thing. She can’t have the baby she so desperately wants. Then she meets Vicky, the despised half sister she never really knew. Vicky’s life is falling apart as she struggles to find independence from her awful family and to support her young son. In spite of their differences the two sisters become friends and before long they discover that each holds the key to the others happiness.

Before the Monsoons come

A short story

'Before the Monsoons Come is set in a Newbury of the future, massively changed by global warming. Jed, travelling on the waterways in his barge, has no desire to give up his life of freedom until he meets the beautiful Mei-Ling. But then the rains come ...'

 Better Endings

Verses

I always found the endings of children’s stories unsatisfactory. So I rewrote some, in verse.

Breeze

A short story

A woman can only bear so much ordinariness before she decides that she deserves some adventure.  In search of the magic which gave her life and a name like a weather condition, Breeze Amber Morgan goes in search of her father – a mysterious and elusive figure in a photograph.  Collecting a coterie of characters along the way, Breeze finds that what happened in the Summer of Love, stayed in the Summer of Love and reality does not always follow the dream.  

Casper's Kingdom

A children's story 

Casper's Kingdom is a children's story of 13,000 words. Casper is a small, black and white common moggie, a mixture of independence, charm and sheer perversity. Everyone sees him differently. The four dogs are all under his paw.
With Casper, the reader eavesdrops on the lives played out around him. What Casper does and where he goes is his own affair and a mystery to the family. Boundaries of time and space have no meaning for him.

Coach

A short story

A slightly surreal story about the wonders of uPVC storm porches and musical doorbells.

Desire

A short story

Jessica worried about her gran being on her own, especially in that big old house, but when her gran dies and Jessica moves in having been left the house in the will, she discovers that her gran had never been alone. What she discovers is both thrilling, sensual and scary, but leaves her longing for the night to come once more. A sensual ghost story for grown ups.

Dream

A Poem

Where do you go to, my Love, every night?

Elliot

A short story

A story with no morals about a young entrepreneur, a depraved dog and the wonders of technology.

Fresh Start

A short story

"The past is written in pencil, Adrian and is easily erased." The woman's voice is soft and reassuring. "Soon you will make a fresh start."

Getting a Life

Sample chapters

Duncan, the IT contractor brought in to network the system at Willenshaw House, finds himself becoming reluctantly involved in a different kind of networking.  Only Duncan seems to be aware that everything at Willenshaw House is not as it should be.  He has lived too long in the shadow of his more successful older sister and needs to get a life of his own.  Before he can, he must solve a few problems unconnected with computers.

The Grotto House

Article

The Grotto House, now the headquarters of the Institute of Leisure and Amenity Management, is situated on the river just below the Goring Gap in an area of outstanding natural beauty. The house was built around 1720 as a place of retreat for an 18th Century lady. Her ghost is well documented. This is a series of essays, totalling 43,000 words, that trace the history of the house and its links with the history of leisure. It was  published by the Institute of Leisure and Management in September 2003 to celebrate its 20th anniversary.

Haikus

Poetry

Unlike proper poems, which take me weeks of intense effort, I always found haikus much quicker and much more fun.

Helping the NHS

A short story

Everyone knows the NHS needs help, but not like this.

The House at Bridgend

Sample chapters

At the beginning of this adult fairy story, Kathy has married her prince and discovered the crock of gold at the rainbow’s end in the form of a lottery win.  However, living happily ever after is not so easy with the local witch setting out to lure away her prince, who in any case is not all joy to live with.  If only she had recognised the frog (Tim) as her soul-mate earlier on.

Jack and Candy

Sample chapters

Jack and Candy are a happy and successful couple living in London at the start of the Nineties in the heyday of Thatcher's Britain. They never had it so good … until Candy's younger sister Joanna arrives, bringing with her reminders of the past that Candy thought she had left behind, and more than a hint of future trouble.

Joanna's raw emotional immediacy clashes with Jack's cultured control, and exposes the shortcomings of Candy's attempts to reinvent herself in London. Soon their lives start to unravel.

We follow the changing fortunes of these three characters through to the new millennium as they struggle to come to terms with the realities of love and success in the modern world.

Jonathan Wildchild and Wacky Winifred

A short story

If you had known Jonathan Wildchild at that time you would have said that he was anything but wild and that at the age of 42 it was quite a while since he had been a child.

Just Dreams and Shadows

A short story

Hezizag is a terrifying and monstrous demon but one night when he visits his next victim, a little girl, he finds himself undone by her charm and happiness. Stripped of his power he finds himself on a new path of existence, that of a children's toy! A children's story with a bit of bite, designed to scare and delight in equal measure.

The Lion and the Asp

Sample chapters

In the seventh century a Byzantine Emperor, Justinian II, is deposed and mutilated by having his nose and his tongue cut off.  Eight years later, after an arranged marriage with Theodora, an inspirational 'gypsy' princess, he is attempting to regain his throne.  He is helped in this enterprise by an odd collection of adventurers and hangers-on.  We learn the stories of Justinian's principal friends and supporters; who include Michael his ex-Chamberlain from his time as Emperor, his Viking bodyguard, Harald, and most importantly, Honorius, a defrocked monk who is Justinian's spy in Constantinople. 

 Madonna 

Sample chapters

Sad and lonely, Luke travels to Tuscany after the death of his father. He meets the attractive and enigmatic Sylvana and becomes obsessed by her. Their attraction for each other grows but then Luke is shocked to discover that Sylvana is his mother, although she is unaware of this. Devastated that his father had lied to him about her death, he flees to England where he joins the family auction business.

            Ingrid, a talented artist with secrets of her own, contacts Luke, searching for a missing portrait depicting Luke’s mother as the Madonna. Moving in the world of art and antiques, they unwittingly become involved in an art fraud and uncover family secrets and lies.

Mindseye

A short story

A brilliant scientist holds the key to a fantastical machine in his mind, he has dedicated his entire career to try and build it, and failed. Only in death, with the help of an unidentified power, is his mind free enough to fully realise his dream and visualise it in his "Mind's Eye"

Monologue

A short story

I hadn't been looking forward to the tax inspector coming in.  I just knew she'd find all those irregularities in our procedures which I knew about but Colin my boss who hated paying tax wouldn't let me change.  I didn't know which was worse, pretending I didn't know the rules and looking stupid or admitting to knowing exactly what they were and appearing dishonest, which is completely against my nature.

Moonlight On Water

Sample chapters

Bella is barely more than a child when she falls in love with Johnny. She will never forget that last golden summer at the family home, Waterleys Hall before the war changed everything. Believing Johnny to be dead, she makes an unhappy marriage to a rich doctor to save her family from financial ruin. Then Johnny comes home.

Their love remains steadfast over the next fifty years even though the timing never seems right for them to be together. Then a car crash, in which Bella’s second husband dies and her sister is left in a coma, sparks off a chain of events which reveal the secrets of the past to the next generation.

Mountains

A poem about poetry.

Nighthawks

A short story

A story inspired by Edward Hopper’s masterpiece, with apologies to the artist.

A Night to Remember

A short story

A short story which was runner-up in the 2003 Women and Home Short Story Competition

On The Run

A short story

When fireworks frighten Jake into taking flight, the secrets of Hill Top Farm are exposed.

Secrets

A short story

'Plump and sensibly-shod Mary, perfect headmaster's wife, is shocked when a visiting parent reminds her of a past in a hippy commune that she'd rather forget.'

So What is My Life

A short story

This is my favourite story. It was entered into the BBC World Service Short Story Competition 2005.

Criteria –

It had to be entirely original and my own work and never before published or publicly distributed.

It had to be between 1800 and 2100 words long.  It contains 1888 words.

Spaced

A short story

"Spaced, the final frontier" - written long before the TV series "Spaced" came on the scene, this short story is a tongue in cheek homage to all that is wrong with Star Trek: The Next Generation, written with the insight of somebody who truly loves the show.

Suicide

A short story

A story about the difficulties that can be encountered whilst trying to end it all.

They came from somewhere else

A novella

A Homage to the Discworld Series of novels and science-fiction as a genre in general. The Discworld is invaded by aliens! Twice! On the same day! Wizards and The Watch must join forces to battle the the invasion before the presence of the aliens undoes the magic that holds the Discworld together and destroys it. [Set after Guards! Guards!]

Thirty Days

Sample chapters

This is the story of a middle class family divided by sibling rivalries and subtle snobberies told over thirty days of present conflict reaching back across eighty years and four generations. Jan and Ali live next door to each other, but have not spoken for twenty years.  During the thirty days of September, as the two sisters seek reconciliation, incidents from the past relate to and explain the present.  

Too Soon

A short story

An old lady lies on her death bed remembering the good times. A short story, published in Scribble.

Untitled

Work in progress

I’m searching for a book for a seven year old boy that is filled with the adventure of Huckleberry Finn, the danger and daring-do of Treasure Island and is up to date with the busy life of your average primary school kid, but does not require the hero to wear his y-fronts over his trousers, have wizards (only because they all seem to), or celebrate bodily functions.  I can’t find it in the bookshops – so I’m going to write it.  Watch this space.

Vivaldi And Violets

A short story

Shortlisted for Writers’ News Love Story competition. A romantic tale of music and love in Prague.

The Waters and the Wild

Sample chapter

Two years ago Mary Simmons married an Irishman and moved from her London home, first to Dublin, and then to the far west of Ireland. Today she is a widow, alone and confused in the lochside cottage they bought together, trying to deal with the legacy of his suicide, and understand just what it says about their relationship, about the man she believed she knew, and ultimately, about her capacity for love. Conor Moore is adrift, a University drop-out living back on the farm his fore-fathers once worked for the English. His father believes he should never have left. Conor believes there's no way he can stay, to become a prisoner, like his father, freed at last from English rule only to be caged instead by the customs and traditions that seem so meaningless today. The west is dying. Farming is dead. For some, suicide is the only way out. The Waters and the Wild follows the fates of Mary and Conor as they escape across the water to London, to break free from the stagnant world of Dunsheery, in the hope they'll each find answers to the questions suddenly raised by the death of Stewart Donnell.

What Price the Moon?

Sample chapter

Harry Cornflower is lost. A private detective, touching forty and fattening nicely into middle-age. That wasn't how it was supposed to be. He'd just taken a wrong turning one day, a while back when it seemed the choices were still his to make, and now he couldn't find another way of looking at things, of getting back on track. And all those alternative paths he'd not taken, for fear of failure or some misguided sense of loyalty, they'd all grown thick with weeds and thorns...