Passage of Time

When I first began writing short stories, I made several entries in the Aeon Award Contest run by Ireland's Albedo One Magazine. One of these stories made the quarterly shortlist and I promptly jumped to the erroneous conclusion that I had cracked this short story writing business.

In fact of course I still had an awful lot to learn; there is a considerable gulf between the literary demands of novel writing and those of short stories.  It took a year between my first published piece of flash fiction Elementary Mechanics and my first published short story, Spatchcock. There followed another ten months before The Old Man on The Green.

Of the four acceptances that I received earlier this year, two have so far been published and two are still awaiting publication. The queue awaiting a public airing have now, I am pleased to say, been joined by another story, Passage of Time which will finally take me back very close to where I started when it is published in Albedo 2.

This is my first acceptance outside North America, so with luck I am getting closer to being published at home, though of course the market in the UK is small and opportunities far fewer.

Passage of Time will be my first published story set (at least partly) aboard a space ship. I wouldn't really call it a space opera, since most of the conflict portrayed in the tale takes place upon Earth. However it does feel as though I'm getting closer to my ideal of being an all-round speculative writer.

By the way, I do write non-speculative stories too. So far none have made it to publication, but a couple have been competitively placed and I hope may yet see the light of printed day.

The Old Man on the Green

I'm very pleased to report that my short story The Old Man on the Green has been published today on T Gene Davis's Speculative Blog.

This story is the first of what I hope may be a series of tales set in the fictional Lincolnshire village of Micklethwaite, where life is lived at a slow pace and close to nature. Of course this does not mean that exciting events never happen there.

I should be very pleased to hear what readers think of the story, which was one that I really enjoyed researching and writing. 

It is an interesting thing (at least to me) how often a speculative story demands extensive research. I do like to feel that I have my facts consistent even if sometimes I have to make them up!