It all started when I won first prize in a little writing competition in my home town (with Death walks round the world). To test the water I applied in 1985 for a regional Arts Council bursary: if I get it, I'll start working as a writer; if I don't, I'll write - but only when I feel like it. I got it, and have now built up a body of written work amounting to exactly 50 short stories (with 11 at late draft stage) and three short novels (one still in progress). I prefer short stories; until recently they were badly neglected in the UK. Before I became self-employed in 1992 they also suited my extended lunch hours in Nottingham city library. Now they suit my time 'management'. Poetry I mostly keep private, except to illustrate personal areas of this site, I don't know why. I tend to hop around between art, music and writing. The typewriter (above left) is a neat little German portable I once used for poetry. The first thing I ever did on a (green-screen Amstrad) computer was write.
Short stories
Some of these have been published in various outlets.
No-one round here says “hello”. They say “alright”, as if they care how you are or need to check that everything is as it should be, but no-one ever knows because you're just supposed to say ” back…
By now, death had walked calmly round the world so many times that the sea no longer took the trouble to get it wet as it crossed the ocean floor…
(This is the story than started me off. It won first prize in a little writing competition in my home town.)
Peter has to work like most of us, but although he's not quite feeling normal he finds someone who understands that the world sometimes looks like it's coming at him from the wrong end of a telecsope.
When he discovered that she was drinking petrol he wasn’t surprised. He had spotted the bottle in her bag. She would take it out, sipping at intervals throughout the day…
The pipes, tubes, meters and walkways gave this machinery the appearance of a pumping station I had once visited—the scale of the equipment evoked the comparison—but I knew at once that what was before me had nothing at all to do with water.
for five poems on the same melancholy theme (opens new tab/window)
Essays
I keep thinking about using hypertext as a medium. And I do mean thinking about. For now, to view a future hypertext piece as (warning) one long page of ordinary text (that might have <link> inserted here and there), click on one of these essays—the nearest term I can find to describe them—below:
One individual explores the significant symbolic difference between six and seven in a Euclidean quest to discover the impossibility of constructing a perfect Heptagon.
aiming for detailed glimpses of the smallish lives we all experience… with interest in the complex issues of human interaction… needing regular human interaction to check the validity of viewpoints…
