Writing
I write short stories, flash fiction, poetry and plays. I also have a full length novel gathering dust in a cupboard...
Latest posts:
Creative Challenges Completed..
Recent Competition Successes...
Winner of the June 2021 "53 Word Story" competition run by Prime Magazine (USA) - you can read my winning story below:
I can do it with my eyes shut
My other collie whines as I pay the vet.
“Hush, Bessie’s coming home!” Infection has turned her eyes milky.
Back at the farm, she pads, unseeing, a working dog no longer.
Next morning, I’m in the far field. I whistle. “Come-bye.”
The flock suddenly bleats and swerves.
Tail wagging, Bessie has found us.
Winner of the December 2020 Fest(ive) Norwood Short Story Competition judged by professional writer and film maker Mark Baxter in response to the brief he had set: “The Face at the Window of Number 16″…
Some play extracts
Amuse bouches
A little white lie
I knew she had walked into the restaurant because the waiter managed to scatter Parmesan all over the tablecloth, missing my plate by some inches. The scent she was wearing also announced her entrance well before she came round to my side of the table. It was an exotic heady floral which was hard to define, and which she had worn for as long as I had known her. I’d asked her once what it was called, and she had responded in immaculate, rapid French. I didn’t catch the words and I never asked her again…
The lunch date
Joanna has invited me to lunch at the Chelsea Physic Garden. I have never been here before, and hover uncertainly outside before I spot her on the other side of the road padlocking her bike to a railing. I am sporting a dressy peach number in honour of the occasion. Joanna is wearing cycling shorts, a turquoise Nike vest and a luminously yellow windcheater. Her lack of vanity is awe-inspiring….
Carpe Diem
It was inevitable, from the dangerous way in which Gerald Tyrrell was waving his glass, that a small tidal wave of whisky would eventually slosh over its rim. Janet, usually introduced as “the long suffering wife of our resident genius”, removed a J Cloth from the pocket of her corduroy skirt, and discreetly mopped up the amber droplets which were now starting to cascade from the table onto the Principal’s pristine beige carpet…