The Chocolate Fairy – out now!
My first book is out now – a children’s book rather than my more normal science fiction, you can get it on Apple Books now! The Chocolate Fairy
Microstory: The break-in
He just appeared! Right there in the bank vault. He hadn’t been there before. I know, I was standing right there, looking between the metal bars at the piles of safety deposit boxes, ready to close up for the evening. If he’d appeared a few seconds later, he would never have been seen. Why couldn’t he have appeared a few seconds later? That would have saved me all this grief. What do I do now? Call the police, tell them…
What we learn when we struggle
I wrote the following semi-auto-biographical short story for my Masters in Creative Writing, and thought I would share it: You spent the last four weeks learning how to be a teacher. That was it, just four weeks. In a small glass-fronted converted shop, you sat behind small desks and participated in large craft projects and focused learning. And now, jobs acquired, you have just travelled for hours by bus and ferry from Koh Samui, Thailand, to Bangkok, Thailand. You arrived…
Into the monkey’s mouth
The monkey pulled on his jaws and dislocated his mouth. “In you go,” he said, although it was hard to understand now that his jaw didn’t move up and down. The humanoid, no taller than a typical vase, stepped onto the tongue in the monkey’s mouth and threw a grappling hook down the monkey’s throat. “Okay, off I go,” the humanoid said. As soon as he was down his throat, the monkey grabbed his jaw and pushed it back into…
Amanath and Ofadrin
This story is a part of a series. See Amanath and Hodor for another story in the series. There was once a man of incredible wealth and power. His name was Amanath. He was known throughout the village near which he lived. He could often be heard telling people about faraway lands where he was also known, and where the people also feared his power. No one in the village had ever seen these faraway lands, but they knew the…
A letter from God, read to you
I have now published the most recent story as a video on YouTube. You can listen to this without viewing the video if you have YouTube Premium or live in a country without YouTube Premium available. Take a look and let me know what you think. Should I read more of my stories and publish them on YouTube?
A letter from God
I created the universe 14,000,000,000 years ago. It was a trivial thing. It took me barely a click of my finger. I created a singularity, you see, and then everything flowed from that. I am a patient being. I have existed forever, but only created the universe when I did on a whim. The readers of this document don’t need to know why. Nor what I was doing before. That’s part of my wonderful mystery. Go about your business, do…
A New England garden
As the garden grew, she started to fade. We got married on the beach in Maine, in April. At the time that had seemed like a good idea. Her parents had visited me in Norway in April the year before and it had been hot and sunny. And Maine is further south than Norway. And she is from New England, she would know what the weather was like. Years later on our anniversary, standing on that beach, in the driving…
The negative spiral
As the rain pattered against his hood, he hunched his shoulders, hoping to stop the icy rain from hitting his face. The coat was old and wasn’t as good at keeping out the rain as it had once been. The tired seams were more relaxed and the fabric itself was thinner. As he walked through the gloomy weather, along a street from-which the rain had sapped all the joy and life, he came across a woman. She smiled kindly, and…
Surrounding forest
No-one had ever left the town before. All the people knew that the forest was too thick. Once a generation or so, a brave person would strike out into the dense canopy seeking to find another part of the world – literally anything other than the town and the surrounding forest. Some had returned, turning around when they had under half of their rations left. They returned, but their stories were boring: The forest was the same for as far…