The festive season is usually reserved for the pursuit of cheer and happiness with good friends and family, but sometimes, when they drive you mad, you just want to escape into a different world. Well, I have several different flavours of escapism for you. Something warm with a dash of sharp: My first middle-grade book, …
Tag Archives: sci-fi
Ferrymen (Chapter VII)
They slithered into position on a bluff overlooking the ruins below. Behind him, Atton could hear the gurgling as Caio and Solsza finished cutting the throats of the sentries. He still had Kaedros’ magnoculars, and lent them to Marwen. She struggled with the heavy optics, until he steadied them for her. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered. …
Ferrymen (Chapter VI)
Atton pulled a silk slipper from a sucking hole in the mud. A broken branch, gouges in the soft bank and a small-span handprint left signs a blind man could read. Spots of the same blood confirmed it; only the hairs found with it told them it was a head wound. Solsza spoke up. ‘She …
Ferrymen (Chapter V)
Marwen was miserable. She stank, covered in grey-green mud. The berries she’d seen the birds nibbling were foul and the wad of roots she chewed were bitter cud. She wandered down the path, sharp stones vexing her bare feet, her dainty slippers long gone to the boggy riverbank, but she’d kept the long stick which …
Ferrymen (Chapter IV)
Marwen shivered, drenched. Even dry, her thin robes were no protection from the elements or the cold, congealed mud gluing her to the riverbank. Eyes wide, she fought to get onto hands and knees, the basic urge in her guts sudden and terrible, as her back arched and the painful retching began. Steam welled up …
Ferrymen (Chapter II)
They weren’t going to survive, she was certain. Marwen watched on in horror, as three temple guards were cleaved down by a brute with a single horn sprouting from his head, rusted bands of armour trussed about his scarred torso. A long, slavering tongue lolled from between filed teeth, to lick at sores sprouting from …
Ferrymen (Chapter I)
With his giant hand clamped around the human’s mouth and nose, Ravyx Atton yanked the stupefied, staring wretch into the river. Panicked limbs thrashed in alarm, but the Space Marine simply closed his hand, bursting the man’s skull in a dull rupture of crimson slick. The body immediately stilled; a dead weight in the current, …
Black Library Open Subs (II)
This is my submission (Ferrymen) to the Warhammer 40,000 Black Library Open Subs window for 2023, which was rejected. I did say I would drop it here, (I don’t think I have done so before) but life has been very busy and troublesome. The Publishers requirements/Application criteria were, at best, nebulous. I read between the …
Black Library Open Subs (I)
The Dissection Begins The Black Library Open Submissions were strange. The way they handled it was a bit out of spec for what I expect from a normal publisher, and it left a lot of folks scratching their heads what the submission criteria actually was. Some of this is down to inexperience, the rest is …
Going Down in Flames
Warning: 40k nerding, and tales of Writers’ Folly ahead. The title and artwork refers to a short story I prepared whilst working with my writer’s room over the Bolter and Chainsword called ‘Down In Flames’. It’s Part One of a three-part project to document a few POV’s of characters around the Badab War. I did …
Mightier Is The Pen 