WRITE NOW, I'M FINE

 5. Developments. Chloe turned the cigarette lighter over and over in her hand. Sparking up a butt now would be like setting fire to the person she had become, and allowing the person she used to be – the person she liked – to rise again from the ashes. That woman wouldn’t share another minute of her life with someone like Guy. That woman would stride into the house, hold out her hand, and demand the return of her keys. That woman had a set of brass balls. That woman would relish being alone. Chloe rummaged around in the box some more, desperate for a distraction, and she got one.  ‘Ow!’  She pulled out her hand, wiped her bloody finger on her leg, and carefully picked up the source of the injury: a Dachshund brooch. She’d seen a few replicas on Ebay, and been severely tempted to hit the Buy It Now button on several occasions, but she always let Guy talk her out of it. What did she want with costume jewellery? Why was she so fascinated with the past? Why did she want to w...

 3. A Drag of a Guy Chloe picked up the pouch that the jacks came in and ran her finger over the monogrammed initials of its former owner. S.E.T. One of the first things Chloe found out about her family, the thing that lead to their discovery, was that Stanley Thomas had died in odd circumstances when he was eight years old.  'That's morbid.' Guy took the pouch and threw it back in the box. 'I just think it's interesting. The boy who played with these jacks was murdered a few miles away from here. You don't find that interesting?' 'What's more interesting is that you'd rather play with a dead kid's toy than contemplate what a potential goldmine you're sitting on. Anyway, murder was never proven.' 'What do you think happened, then?' 'I think he saw one too many westerns, decided to camp out in the woods, fell down a hole, and accidentally set himself on fire.' 'I think it was murder.' 'Well whatever it was, ...

 Little Treasures was a novel that came to me when I thought about all of the little collectables people amass over a lifetime, that they pass down to their families. It occured to me that even the cheapest stuff must've meant something, had a past of its own.  LITTLE TREASURES 1. Chloe Chloe Brady couldn’t believe how twisted fate could be. She lost her parents in February, found out she was adopted in March, and discovered that her last blood relative was dead in April, which made her the sole inheritor of a magnificent, Cape Cod-style house. What she wanted more than anything was a family but, in lieu of that, a mansion would suffice. Then she saw the place. ‘Jesus.’ ‘So it’s a fixer-upper,’ said her boyfriend. Up until April, Chloe thought she’d have to bop Guy over the head, caveman style, and drag him up the aisle, but he’d been very keen to commit since the reading of the will. These days, it was Chloe’s feet that were turning blue. She wasn’t an idiot, she’d wa...

This story was born out of long clung to anger and resentment that resulted from something that happened to a loved one of mine that, even after writing this story to try to come to terms with it, is still no less potent.  THE SWEETMEAT HOUSE  Flora Reeves went to her room and closed the door behind her. Her mummy was sleeping again, and although it was two o’clock in the afternoon, she would scream if Flora woke her up, and Flora hated it when her mummy screamed. Flora remembered a time when her mummy never screamed or yelled, when she would help her pull up her tights for school, lifting her off the ground. Flora remembered a time when her mummy used to wrap her sandwiches in rainbow striped wax paper, and how the smell of her lunch would waft up when she unwrapped it. Flora remembered when her mother used to read her stories every night before she went to sleep, doing different voices for each of the characters. But her mummy wasn’t the same anymore. She didn’t read, or pla...

 Very rarely for me do story ideas start with a concept rather than a plot or a character, but at the time I wrote Persistence, I was obsessed with the idea of non-linear storytelling, and once I tried to imagine what it would be like to literally go back and retrace your steps to solve your own mystery, I was off. This kind of storytelling isn't new, I know, but it was interesting to explore. PERSISTENCE  You can only bleed so much. You can only bleed so much. That just popped into my head and I don’t know why. I think someone’s here. My mouth tastes like salt and blood and barbecue sauce, and I don’t know why. I’m sure the sore on my hand must have bled more when I first started picking at it, whenever that was. Now it just weeps a little. You can only bleed so much, I suppose. I hate the heat. It makes everything stink like filth. The hole in the centre of the sore on my hand is really filthy. Really big, too. Too big to have nothing in it. I licked it because it looked li...