Stories I Had Published in the Year That Was 2023

Hello!

2023 has been busy, both in terms of stories published and stories written. Here is a short list of my work published this year with a little summary of each piece.

Crumpled in Deadlands #31

Horror, ghosts, family, afterlife.

Dream logic doesn’t normally translate well into the written word, but Crumpled is a story inspired by a dream that broke me. I needed a way to process the imagery and writing Crumpled allowed me to do that. The Deadlands has been a dream market since they first started publishing and I’m over the moon to have my work in the latest issue. You can grab a copy here, and read the story online at The Deadlands website.

Uprooted in IZ Digital

Homelessness, technology, horror, biotech.

Anyone who knows my work will probably be familiar with my own experiences of homelessness and vulnerable housing, as well as my previous work in this area with my writing, particularly Haunt. One aspect of this is to write protagonists who are homeless as rounded, complete characters rather than stereotypes or ciphers (I talk about this in my 2020 Tor article). With Uprooted I wanted to write a story where the main character was experiencing homelessness, and while it’s not upbeat I think the main character takes control of their situation and comes across as a complete individual.

However, this is also a scifi story, set in a future where the dominant technology is based around timber, and was inspired by an article about using tree cellulose to make knives.

You can read the story online at IZ Digital.

The Heart Beats Green and Grey in Three Lobed Burning Eye #38

Folk horror, rural crime, crime families, body horror.

The Heart Beats Green and Grey was published in Three Lobed Burning Eye issue 38, back in March. The story is about a son returning to the Dales village where he grew up to look for his missing father, and might start out feeling like a crime story, but swerves into pretty solid horror territory. With The Heart Beats I wanted to write about that other side of rural life, that not everything is a cottagecore idyll, local criminal families, and the claustrophobic nature of life in these places. I guess a major inspiration was Dead Man’s Shoes, one of the finest British films ever made. You can read The Heart Beats Green and Grey online at Three Lobed Burning Eye.

Through the Ivory Gate in Great British Horror 8 Something Peculiar

Cryptids, Ghosts, Crime, Horror.

Through the Ivory Gate combines a few of my loves, including cryptids (particularly Alien Black Cats), crime stories, and Lovejoy. It is a very British story of power and exploitation, and I’m very happy it found a home in Great British Horror. You can pick up a copy at the Black Shuck Books website.

Vele Di Mar Non Vid’io in Cosmic Horror Monthly #34

Body horror, isolation, cosmic horror.

Vele Di Mar Non Vid’io is a body horror short story inspired by how the Endurance crew used lifeboats as shelter on Elephant Island. Using this as a starting point, I changed the setting and cranked up the horror (which takes some doing, because surviving under a lifeboat after a shipwreck in the antarctic sounds pretty horrifying.), to try and capture the claustrophobia of the situation. You can read Vele Di Mar Non Vid’io online at Cosmic Horror Monthly.

Ohrwurm in Not One of Us #75

Cosmic horror, addiction, music.

Ohrwurm is an example of why you should never delete your trunk stories. I first wrote Ohrwurm in 2012, and submitted it many times over the next seven years. After lots of rejections I parked it for a bit, until this year when I managed to find a home for it in Not One of Us. Ohrwurm is about how music can infect and change us.

Iridescent Screams in Three Lobed Burning Eye #40

Cosmic horror, childhood, peacocks.

Out of all the stories I had published in 2023, Iridescent Screams has the strangest origin. A good friend of mine posted a picture his daughter had made at nursery, pointing out how it looked like a Shoggoth. Someone else commented that it was a very cute picture of a peacock. Iridescent Screams is the result of playing with those two viewpoints, as well as a childhood memory of a freerange peacock that lived on the housing estate where some of my school friends lived. Although the names have been changed, the setting is taken straight from my memories of growing up in my hometown. You can read Iridescent Screams (and listen to me read it to you) at Three Lobed Burning Eye.

And here is the picture that inspired the story.

Best of Selections 2023

Two of my stories from 2022 were selected for Best of anthologies out this year. The Ercildoun Accord was selected by Paula Guran to be republished in The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror #4.

My knitting cosmic horror story, On the Hills, the Knitters, is going to be republished in the forthcoming Best Horror of the Year #15 edited by Ellen Datlow.

Patreon

I’ve also continued publishing stories each week at my Patreon. I’ve changed the format slightly and now publish a self contained flash fiction every two weeks.

On the other weeks, I’m publishing instalments of an ongoing story called The Bridge about Lily and Rowan who live in the bridge of the title (actually the spine of a long dead creature that stretches between two continents), and are making their way from the middle where they live, to the land. Lily kills demons, Rowan hunts ghosts. Together they might survive.

The Bridge is a lot lighter than some of my other work. The tone I’m going for is a slightly darker Studio Ghibli, with the feel of a webcomic.

Non Fiction

2023 has been a bit quieter on the article front. I’ve continued writing my comics review column for Fortean Times, a job that I enjoy immensely.

I’ve also been publishing my Kaffee (und Kuchen) Racer pieces here, as well as a few little posts about motorbike events in this part of Germany. I’m really enjoying getting back to this side of my writing career.

The January/ February 2024 Analog Science Fiction and Fact is now out, including my interview with Dr Rachel Armstrong. You can grab a copy at the Analog website.