Exit… Signs

Here’s the Pinterest board for Exit…

As always, whenever I stumble across an image that appeals to the story that I’m currently writing, I pin it to a board. I don’t always bother editing the tags… that’s too much bother. I really only care about the visual and the inspiration that it provides.

The image I used for the cover is not there this time. I found that whilst rummaging around on the internet for someone else. I saw it. It saw me.

The images I’m using for the paperback cover are not on the board either. Again, the base image was one that I found some time ago before I had even decided to write the story. I filed it away as I knew I’d have a use for it one day. The other image -Tommy’s face- are photos provided by a friend and so I didn’t want to make them public at this time.

EXIT is available at Amazon, iBooks, Kobo, Google Play, and Barnes & Noble

Exit

Remembering to forget
is harder than it sounds…

I have a new book. It’s called Exit. It’s out now. Please buy it…

That’s what I want to say. The story disapproves of my directness. It wants me to delete the above sentence. I don’t. I won’t.

Many authors will tell you that writing is not easy. I’ll happily tell you the same. Once I finish writing, editing, writing some more, deleting, and finally, reading the story, I don’t want to look at it anymore. The story feels the same. We glance at each other across the room in an uncomfortable silence. We know too much… of each other and ourselves.

It doesn’t get any easier.

In all honesty, I find writing blog pieces and introductions, like this, the hardest part. I think it’s because it comes at the end. By now, my story and I just want to go our separate ways. However, we have to do this. Since I have the fingers, it’s my job to do it. The story just peeks over my shoulder every now and then in order correct me or point out a spelling mistake. If ever stories gained fingers… I shudder to think.

So, I want you to give a good home to a story. It’s well-trained in as much as it can be, however, it probably won’t love you. You will probably catch it staring at you from time to time. Those moments when you’re alone in the house or flat and you hear a noise… yep, that will probably be the story.

So… interested?

I don’t think I’m alone when I say it would be nice to forget 2018. I shall not mourn its passing in a few weeks.

Forgetting the bad years isn’t as easy as turning the page on a calendar. The effects and consequences linger on in your life. In some cases, that may be forever. Does it extend beyond forever? We don’t know. Perhaps we do it all over again, only forgetting everything in the process. Perhaps it never really gets any better.

Can we change ourselves? Our lives? Our past? Can we forge a different outcome?

Tommy and Mary would like to think so…

What if the soundtrack to your life was forever stuck, unchanging, on repeat.
How far would you go to change the person you are?

Tommy and Mary wanted to get out of the city and away from the loop that their life had become. Where better than the backwoods to really forget about everything and find yourself?

It is often the quietest places that are the loudest. Silence rings with the echoes of the past bringing with it unwanted memories. Finding himself may prove to be the last thing Tommy wants to do.

Remembering to forget is harder than it sounds.

01134 – book trailer

Never have we been more connected
Never have we been so alone

01134 is a psychological horror/drama set in Japan. It’s sad. It’s strange. It’s a tad creepy in places. It’s… well, watch the book trailer and decide.

---

 

---

01134 is available at Amazon, iBooks, Kobo, Google Play, and Barnes & Noble

01134

Never have we been more connected
Never have we been so alone

So, about that short story…

I started writing the idea back in December 2016 while I was passing through Kansai International Airport. I was just starting my winter vacation and was thinking about cracking on with Glade. Unfortunately, those good intentions got lost in transit and ended up somewhere else entirely (apparently, they ended up on an island passing the time playing cards with a Lost and confused manuscript). They have since returned to the wardrobe I tentatively call ‘home’, having stowed away on a passing cargo ship before hitching a ride back up to Osaka and making themselves a cup of tea.

So, while my good intentions and I parted ways, I found myself stumbling upon an idea whilst making my way through the airport. One thing led to another and I ended up with a short story.

The story is called 01134.

---

LIFE IS SOMETIMES THAT PHONE CALL
YOU WISH YOU HAD NEVER GOT.
THAT TRAIN YOU WISH YOU HAD MISSED.
THAT PERSON YOU WISH YOU HAD NEVER MET.

SOMETIMES WE TAKE A WRONG TURN. WE LOSE OUR WAY.
WE SLIP THROUGH THE CRACKS.

SOMETIMES IT’S OUR FAULT. SOMETIMES IT’S NOT.
SOMETIMES WE ARE NUDGED, OTHER TIMES WE
ARE PUSHED, SCREAMING INTO THAT EMPTY ABYSS.

SOMETIMES WE JUST CLOSE OUR EYES AND FALL.

FOR TATSUYA, IT MAY ALREADY BE TOO LATE…

Meetup – Writers of the Round Table | Osaka

I know. It has been an age since I actually posted anything. Work gets in the way and the little time that I do manage to scrape together I generally use for writing rather than updating. For what use is updating if I’m not writing anything to update about?

In this instance, however, I thought I’d provide a little insight into how I’ve managed to carve out a regular slot of time in order to at least get some writing done when all hope seems to be lost.

Back in 2016, I fought a running battle on two fronts with life and work being the opposition. Time was the battlefield and it was touch and go as to which would control the field. As I write this, it remains in a state of flux.

I did, however, find a way to fortify the hard-won ground that I had bloodied myself upon. The answer came in the form of creating a Meetup group.

Cinder – Carols for the Damned…

In October, I never got around to releasing the playlist I used whilst writing ‘Cinder’. So, here it is… not exactly seasonal, although, with a glass of mulled wine, a log fire, and a room of candles… it does work.

Actually, the playlist has been public for a couple of months, so maybe you already stumbled upon it. Nah, probably not.

It’s a small playlist. Only 21 tracks. Some of the tracks I also listened to whilst writing ‘A Bump in the Night’. It’s a little ‘darker’ than that playlist, though.

It’s always hard to say which track got more play time. Once again, ‘The Cure’ feature a lot. I’m also rather fond of ‘Cranes’. Alison Shaw’s voice is deliciously haunting. If I could eat it, I probably would. There are one or two tracks that might seem out of place, but they just seemed to appeal at different times during the writing. Memories can be like that. The last track, ‘Mr Self Destruct’ by NIN, was one that I had in mind before I even added it to the playlist.

As always, the videos below were chosen purely for their sound and not for any other reason (or because I couldn’t find another).

So, for those of you tired of listening to carols, have a listen to this selection before retiring for the night… oh, and pleasant dreams!

---

1. Three Imaginary Boys – The Cure
2. New Dawn Fades – Joy Division
3. How Beautiful You Are – The Cure
4. Where Fishes Go – Live
5. Speak No Evil – Cocteau Twins
6. Cold – The Cure
7. In The Flat Field – Bauhaus
8. Hot Ride – The Prodigy (ft. Juliette Lewis)
9. Golgotha Tenement Blues – Machines of Loving Grace
10. The River – Nymphs
11. From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea – The Cure
12. Lillies – Cranes
13. Night Shift – Siouxsie & the Banshees
14. Mire – Theatre of Tragedy
15. Bela Lugosi’s Dead – Bauhaus
16. The Figurehead – The Cure
17. Alice – The Sisters of Mercy
18. Come This Far – Cranes
19. No Time To Cry – The Sisters of Mercy
20. Kitty’s Dead – Seraphim Shock
21. Mr Self Destruct – Nine Inch Nails

---

---

CINDER is available at Amazon, iBooks, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble

Cinder – Wallpaper for the Soul…

Christmas is but a few days away and very much like Christmas, I too have decided to make an end-of-year appearance.

I haven’t been around much this year, despite the very best of intentions. Indeed, the posts I wrote for ‘Cinder’, brief as they were, had been written a month in advance and scheduled for publication.

Last year (or was it the beginning of this one?), I laid out my plans for 2016. I won’t be doing that again. I’ve forgotten the last time I looked back at a year a given it the thumbs up, but this one was not as bad as some. It was a year where the mundane took command of the wheel and writing slumped into the backseat (with headphones on) and counted the number of fences it could jump as the year flashed by the window.

As the New Year struggles through customs with an overzealous official, I will head back into the rising sun with my suitcase full of good intentions. This time, however, I’ll offer them up for sacrifice and focus solely upon finishing ‘Glade’.

Yes, I’m still working on it. There are no timelines or deadlines anymore, but I would very much like to be looking at covers before 2017 pops its clogs.

Before I go and grab my glass of mulled wine, I would like to thank those that have stuck around and offered their continued support despite my absence. Cheers. In particular, I would like to thank fellow author and award-winning poet, CW Hawes, for the occasional mention here and there throughout the year. Much appreciated.

If you are not familiar with his work, CW Hawes is the prolific author of a number of books and genres from the ongoing ‘Rocheport Saga’ to the adventures of ‘Justina Wright, P.I.’ amongst others. I can heartily recommend the sextet of books written to date within the ‘Rocheport Saga’. For anyone that enjoys a post-apocalyptic setting (with a focus upon survival rather than the commonplace fare of zombie avoidance), then this is well-worth your time.

And so, without further ado (my wine is getting cold), I present to you a simple Christmas offering. Now, despite alternative suggestions from my old friends, Messrs Snuffle and Snaggle (suggestions which involved the use of blindfolds and pitchforks…), I have decided to give you all some free wallpaper inspired by the short story, ‘Cinder’.

Cinder – cover reveal

As promised, here’s the cover for Cinder. If you haven’t read the preview yet, then you can do so here.

Cinder – haunting stores from October 27th…

I had two ideas for the cover. I went with this one. The other was a moth that spread across the front and back covers. Quite nice, but it would be lost in the digital editions. Despite that, this was always my first choice.

It was also the quickest cover I’ve made. From design to finish it only took two days. That included the ‘step-away’. I always leave something for a day or night and then return to it with fresh eyes and a different perspective.

The model is a friend of mine who agreed to send me a photo one evening after work. I messed about with it in Photoshop a little to get what I specifically had in mind. It turned out well. Cheers, Julia!

Does the cover reveal anything about the story?

No, not really… although… yes, it does.

---

CINDER is available at Amazon, iBooks, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble

Cinder

Friday night. The end of another week.

Jill would rather be down the pub with her friends, but being a student often means taking the money whenever it’s offered. That means the odd babysitting job every now and then.

The Comptons are going out and have asked Jill to babysit their young son, William. An easy night’s work, if not exactly exciting. Even so, events soon suggest that not everything is quite right…

Perhaps it’s just the season.

The short, autumnal, days often make the evenings feel darker, lonelier. The growing darkness awakens that instinctive hunger in all living things, to seek out warmth and comfort so as to better ward against the last, chill breaths of a dying year.

We are but moths in the long dark of existence.

And so too are the dead.

Cinder is a short story of around 8,000 words that I wrote over the past few months. Yes, I wrote that slowly.

Something wicked…

When the notification arrived in your inbox to suggest that I had posted something, you could be forgiven for checking twice.

That’s right. It’s been a good half-year or thereabouts since I posted anything. There are a number of reasons for this. All of them incredibly good ones, too. Sadly, none are true. Truth, it seems, has a penchant for believability and a dash of boredom.

For those that skimmed through my last post to see if there was anything worthwhile reading, I returned to Japanese shores earlier this year. In the time since, I have found myself struggling to get much of anything done. Time, it would seem, got lost in transit and is currently meandering around an airport somewhere between England and Japan. No doubt it has drunk the bar dry and is currently napping on some lounge chair surrounded by half-eaten boxes of duty-free chocolate. If you see it, give it a nudge and point it in my direction – cheers.