Advent Ghosts: Can’t Even

A joyous Yule or other festival of choice to everyone. As in previous years, I am participating in Loren Eaton’s Advent Ghosts 100-word scary story project. This year, a little something to leave you shook: Can't Even According to JonAAAh it was the dankest meme ever like if chill but not chill was meta. Was …

Advent Ghosts: Dirty Hands

A joyous Yule or other festival of choice to everyone. As in previous years, I am participating in Loren Eaton’s Advent Ghosts 100-word scary story project. This year, a riff on a traditional creepy trope: Dirty Hands Light dances. Glass explodes. “Are you all right?” Josie appears from the kitchen. “Vase fell off. Almost hit …

Advent Ghosts: Uncountable Sorrow

A joyous Yule or other festival of choice to everyone. As in previous years, I am participating in Loren Eaton’s Advent Ghosts 100-word scary story project. This year, a story inspired by a Wiltshire legend: Uncountable Sorrow Twelve stones. It was silly; a story made up by locals to get outsiders to buy drinks. But …

Advent Ghosts: Naughty or Nice

A joyous Yule or other festivals of choice to everyone. As in previous years, I am participating in Loren Eaton's Advent Ghosts 100-word scary story project. This year, I endeavour to shed light on the true magic of Christmas: Naughty or Nice He yanked the last girl from his sack and ripped his claws across …

Advent Ghosts: Protected Speech

As in previous years, I'm part of Loren Eaton's Advent Ghosts, a 100-word scary story project. Read my submission is below. Protected Speech Josh strode up the beach, Bible clutched in one hand. Heathen arrows and spears flew toward him, only to be gusted aside by the wings of the angel behind him, the angel …

Dark Corner Newsstand Open for Business

I like short stories. I like reading them and I like writing them. And, whether you’re here for my reviews or to find out more about the stories I write, I suspect many of you like a good short story too.

So, I wanted to share this new project from the talented Misha Burnett: a repository of magazines and anthologies featuring short fiction.

That shared, I’m off to read something weird and abrupt.

Dark Corner Newsstand

This is something that I’ve been meaning to do for a while now. If you got here from my other blog, you know that I feel passionately about the need for a healthy market for short fiction. To this end I have been actively seeking indie magazines and anthologies that publish short genre fiction.

The market is growing fast now, and I’ve gotten to the point where I need a way to organize all the links I have into one place.

This is the place. Please pardon my dust, this is a work in progress.

View original post

Needs of the Few

Barry angled the mirror around. Satisfied no-one lurked near the door, he slipped into the supermarket. His gut roiled at the stench. They always said, don’t go shopping on an empty stomach; who knew piles of corpses would be even more effective. Mirror preceding him, he crept toward the tinned aisle. A woman in a …

Be Mindful of the Present

I’ll die at 8:23 am next Tuesday. Rather precise but true nevertheless. Teenage dreams had given way to boring adulthood. Then I saw this advert “Scared to live? We offer seven days without worry about possible futures.” It was free and I literally had nothing interesting that evening, so I went. Woke up with this …

Death of a Drone

Karl connected the repeater and stepped back. Fifteen seconds later, the window exploded. His breathing spiked as tiny drones swarmed through the hole. Pushing down images of neat holes in foreheads, he sent a message to all his contacts calling the President ugly. The swarm drifted randomly as his contacts responded. He was right: no …

Beating the Pain

The steel felt good beneath his hands, each blow echoing like a confirmation of existence. Knowledge had built the world around him, and given him the tools to understand what he felt and why. But knowledge wasn’t a tap in the barrel of his chest to drain away the adrenaline poisoning his taste and spasming …