(available as an audio book shortly)
Two party members, Peter and Nick, are canvassing for the upcoming by-election. Peter, the older and less physically fit, takes on the quieter end of Priory Road, with its old Victorian houses. But as Peter advances up the road, the atmosphere becomes more unworldly and unsettling. What awaits Peter at the end house?
An eerie tale of duty and foreboding.
"They shared Sarah like they shared everything else: the car, the flat, their shirts. Rick had her Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Rob - Tuesdays, Thursdays, Sundays. Saturdays she did her own thing…"
One woman, two men, one shared arrangement. But can they all be satisfied with this? A humorous risqué short, first published as ‘Heads Or Tails’ by Skrev Press.
‘The smack was passed down from mother to daughter (there having been a paucity of sons for generations) and the smack started with Elsie...Things tended to get a bit sketchy pre-Elsie who passed the smack down through Pearl to Pattie and eventually to Tanya, like a genetic defect.’
But Tanya is determined to bury this family tradition once and for all.
Under the thick materials of leather, denim and suede, children Peter and Wendy hide among the coats at the 1970s party of the grown-ups. They are on the cusp of puberty, yet still innocent. But they discover more than they bargained for.
Shortlisted for the Fish Short Story Award 2003.
Cover Image by Colin Hambrook. His blog can be found at: https://knittingtime.wordpress.com
From childhood, with a pair of scissors in her hand, Hilary “cuts out the chain of Mummies and Daddies that Nanny has crayoned for her. Father's fist on the table now becomes only a blurred edge of sound, out of focus, like Mother's sobbing, as Hilary loses herself in the happy paper figures, the way she loses herself in the Happy Families cards…” And so begins a life where a pair of scissors, and the occasional scalpel, come to define Hilary’s life: sometimes a tool for ambition but mostly a coping mechanism for frustration and despair. Previously published by Skrev Press.
The Old Black Telephone (short spin-off from 'Did You Whisper Back?'
Amanda is undergoing therapy to address her life-long fear of telephones, stemming from troubling childhood experiences. She brings a vintage black phone from her past and it becomes the centrepiece for her sessions, unlocking memories of people and events still present in Amanda's subconscious. But what about post therapy? Try as she might Amands battles to make the menacing phone shrink in significance.
While reading 'Did You Whisper Back?' is not essential, it offers additional context, enriching the story.
There comes a day when you realize you’re never going to be great at anything. For many of your haven’t-yet-made-it contemporaries it was around the age of forty-two or three, while you battled on in hope, against all the odds. “Life begins at forty,” you said, defiantly, ten years ago, even though there were bright twenty-somethings breathing down your neck and even brighter thirty-somethings passing you on their ever-upward climb while you and your friends rationalized your situation with talk of “late blossomings”..' A wry look at what it means to be fifty!
cover design by Sessha Batto
A saucy little short previously published in the Diva Book of Short Stories (2002) and Dancing In The Dark (Pfoxmoor Publishing 2011).