My writing

An example of my flash fiction and poetry are below but the bulk of my writing on this blog are on the 5PM Fiction, Tuesday Tales, Story A Day May and Flash Fiction Fridays pages. I also have two flash fiction pieces in Cake issue no.3.

Four of my eShorts (free on Smashwords), Story A Day May 2011, an anthology of 31 stories ($1.49) and The 365-Day Writer’s Block Workbook ($0.99 on Smashwords) are available from Smashwords ($1.22-$1.62 on Amazon), and my debut novel The Serial Dater’s Shopping List is available at $2.99 / £1.96 (on Smashwords / Amazon) – full details on the Books: mine page. More of everything to follow.

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I also have a story (‘First impression’) in the charity anthology Telling Tales and one of my Story A Day May 2012 stories (‘I did my very best to die in the war’) on Poems from the Battlefield.

The first piece of fiction I ever had published was a 60-worder in Woman’s Weekly back in 2006, which I called ‘Deep Pan Payback’ but they published as ‘Payback’:

“Deep Pan 12-inch Hawaiian, delivered please.” Alex was starving. Moving house, he’d skipped lunch. He thought of his ex-girlfriend, Jane, and sighed. Landing a high-powered job had gone to her head and she’d kicked him out of her flat. His doorbell rang. He got his money and opened the door. The delivery driver, horrified, dropped the pizza. Alex smiled. “Hello Jane.”

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Although I couldn’t call myself a poet (I don’t), this one was personal…

Three Quarters of a Whole
Three quarters of a family pose for a photo
Taken by a mother…of her husband, daughter, son.
Photographer-father now the subject of the snap
Captured in time and showered in love.

I found the picture while up in my loft
Buried in a box, overlooked til now.
A forgotten picture of unforgotten people
A family united in a happier time.

The daughter, me, stands in Sunday best.
The proud father holds me, a supporting role.
The son, my brother, sits beside me on the car
With a cheeky grin, he still often wears.

The family, now the subject of a faded print
In a wooden frame weathered with age and dust.
The flicks of trapped flies now sealed in death.
A loving time remembered for the people within.

My father’s moustache slightly greying with age
Shows signs of his half-life, thirty-six years past
Thirty-six to go and loving every second.
At ‘three score years and ten’, still pleased with his lot.

Two years later he passed away
A loss to his friends, children, wife.
Then three days later, the Twin Towers crumbled
Life became perspective, for us once more.

The father, a grandfather-in-thought perhaps.
Now no showing, loving, receiving or giving
Not here for the special things we want to share -
The weddings, the children, the travels, the fun.

So now the family is again just three quarters
Mother, daughter and son – husband/father gone.
Life passes quickly, we’re all so busy
Achieving the things, we know he’d be proud.

The picture now sits in the corner of my lounge
The home he helped, years ago, to update
Photographer-father now the subject of the snap
Captured in time and showered in love.