Serial: The Road Less Travelled - Part 1 (2026)
As the old coaching inn endured the onslaught of a relentless drizzle, Ollie peered from the branches of the tallest tree on the lonely hillside and thought only of revenge. The inn had received no visitors since the first Spring rain and the stout wooden door remained closed, a comforting reassurance that the Dead Man was still inside and was, for the moment at least, very much alive. In that respect, he was a lot like Rabnar’s fabled basement full of emerald wine and had to be seen to be believed.
He’s in there, Ollie thought. I know he is.
Serial: The Abrasion List Part 1 (2026)
I find Kimiko quite abrasive, so I’ve decided to kill her before she comes to my room tonight and kills me. I know it sounds paranoid or even delusional, but Kimiko has threatened to kill me tons of times and in a very real sense she never gives up. The second anyone suggests a game or a trial or literally any sort of life-or-death contest, she’s immediately in if the opportunity involves snuffing out her favourite victim in some way. We even played this co-op once where she deliberately tanked the entire team just so that I would die as a by-product of the loss.
Like I say, Kimiko is coming for me…but I’m going to get her first.
Short Story: Dances With Drumsticks (2022)
Apathy Jackson was overtaking a bus outside the chicken graveyard when one of his neek LifeCode followers triggered an engine failure. The car glanced the verge with a scrape of metal, and the tyres screamed as he struggled to turn into the spin, trying to force a frantic smile when all six of the internal cameras sprang into life.
‘Okay, which one of you found a brain cell?’ he growled into the nearest lens, almost biting off his own tongue when the steering column locked and the vehicle finally shuddered to a halt.
The monitor screen spat out a series of comments which projected onto the windscreen in bold, angry fonts.
Serial: Maze Chimps Part 1 (2026)
The poster was pinned so high on the wall that Cramp, a good head taller than anyone else in the party, had to stand on tiptoe to reach it. The images were much like the others they’d seen hastily scrawled on different walls of the building. This particular example contained five crude drawings under a bold heading in a custom font.
‘Maze Chimps,’ said Limbo, clearly working on the assumption that nobody else in the group could read. ‘Look, Bro – that one is definitely YOU.’
Serial: Over The Moon Part 1 (2026)
John Rice was strumming a guitar in a chilly music room on the Stanky Leg Orbital when the Moonrise Serial Killer struck again.
Rice glanced down at the update on his wrist pin and literally rolled his eyes at the announcement before stowing the instrument and calling up the Hub.
“You’re not serious,” he said, before a single word could be levelled at him. “As much as I love a good game of Among Us in the middle of a mining operation, how is this even HAPPENING? There are a hundred people on this station: not a hundred thousand - a hundred.”
Short Story: Rock Bottom (2026)
You put on the headset before you jump.
There are so many people who will tell you not to jump, but they’re handing you a poisoned chalice, and the poison won’t be slow to act: you’ll feel everything on the way down; you’ll feel it all.
Ignore the ones who tell you to fall. They’re rooting you out, and I’m rooting for you. I leave you this note and swear my allegiance to you purely because we have never met, and I wish to pay my own fortune forward. Any others you read are a form of calculated malice. You must not FALL.
Serial: Beaks Bloody Part 1 (2026)
The Roost Coaching Inn spanned most of the bridge at a point where the Winter River divided two large expanses of forest in the Northern Territory.
The traveller climbed down from the coach and watched the horses drag the dilapidated heap beyond the screen of trees before hauling his own heavy carcass to the inn’s oddly uninviting doorway.
He tried the handle, which was stiff and refused to turn.
‘You can’t get in that way.’
Novella: Bad Apples (2023)
Prologue
Dimple had suspected that something bad would happen sooner or later...but this? This was beyond belief.
The cottage window exploded in a shower of glass, firing the tufted mass across the garden like a rogue cannonball. Sprouting a pair of little furry legs in midair, Baby Bear hit the ground running and didn’t stop until he’d reached the screen of trees that marked the fringe of the forest.
Novella: The Shinbone Shadowhunter (2024)
It was midnight in Shinbone and a fine rain peppered the streets, disturbing the pale reflection of the crescent moon in puddles the size of lakes and gently soaking the crowds of drunks that gathered in tavern doorways all over town.
In an ancient study at the top of a rickety house on the edge of one of the oldest streets in the rich district, Fulbert Fairwhack removed his spectacles and pinched the bridge of his nose as he strained to examine the document on the candlelit table before him. He’d been concentrating on it for the best part of an hour, pausing only once to usher away three large and exceedingly ugly birds that had landed on his windowsill.
Short Story: Inside (1999)
It’s a Saturday night of the old-fashioned sort, mum staring out of the kitchen window and dad drinking as heavily as he always does before the church clears him of any wrongdoing in the morning. He’d dropped his lottery ticket during happy hour at The Den, comes home to find it’s worth a sure tenner. It’s not my fault, what difference that makes. A sharp slap across the face and it’s up to bed, drum some responsibility into me. No punches tonight, no kicks – I’m off easy.
Don’t look back.
Tears running down my cheeks, I climb the stairs, pausing only to lick the steady flow of blood from my aching nose. A loud bang interrupts my thoughts, but it’s probably mum’s head hitting the wall. He’ll kill her, one day: I swear he will.
Short Story: Retrosex (1998)
I'm having intercourse with Sar23. She's been in Kentucky for two weeks attending the annual Nuclear Disarmament Convention, and I couldn't wait any longer. I think she's enjoying herself - I certainly hope she is - but I can't really tell now I've dropped the radar.
I still haven't got used to retro-conduit copulation, you see: it's a strange old concept. I guess the mental buzz is terrific, but you can't help feeling that any physical pleasure gets a bit lost in the transfer. And somehow it doesn't seem worth it. You can only moan and groan for so long, and at the end of the day, what do you have to show for your efforts? A bucket of sweat and leg-ache from the suction pads.
So how did I become involved in this voluntary pastime? Well, I'll tell you.
Novelette: The Swallowfalls Spinecaster (2015)
It was high summer, a season inexplicably translated by the environmental lunacy of Fogrise into thick, meandering mists, a fine coat of rain dust and the sort of chill you only get when a small handful of snow is suddenly deposited in your underpants. Everyone was miserable, but arguably no one more so than visiting Princess Envy of Rappohallodran.
'This place makes me weep,' she said, staring despondently from the windows of Fogrise Keep at a village square that, judging by the clutter of ugly architecture, it seemed several different builders were to blame for. Even the ornamental well looked ready to collapse, but this hadn't stopped the local children from playing a variety of difficult and dangerous games around it. The one going on now involved two of the bigger, more rotund teenagers trying to dangle a skinny ginger one over the side without dropping him. A short scream signalled that they had failed.
Novelette: Curse of The Kingslayer (2015)
‘How long has the throne been empty?’
Gordo Goldeaxe cast a glance around him and tried to fix an accusatory stare on the nearest sentry.
‘Just over a week, Sir,’ said the man in question, a trembling youth who had been on active duty for less than half that time. ‘King Teethgrit told us you were only to be summoned and appointed to lead us in the event of his being declared absent for more than three days.
‘But you waited seven?’ Gordo frowned and raised an eyebrow. ‘Why was that, exactly?’
The guard looked around at his cohorts, but found no signs of support so ploughed on: ‘Well, King Teethgrit’s been gone for a week, Sir: that much is true. The thing is, er, Captain Teethgrit’s only been gone for three days.’
Short Story: The Dullitch Assassins (1997)
If you could accept that killing people was a necessary part of the job, and that getting your hands dirty generally meant you ended up covered in your own blood as well as other people’s, then you were going places…though - admittedly - via the morgue. The problem with being a standout killer at Crumb Lane was knowing that you were a standout killer among a hundred or so other death-dealers who probably hadn’t had the luck or the opportunity to surpass you… yet.
Victor Franklin was a standout killer for all the wrong reasons. He’d passed his first exam because Beau Bledling had fallen backwards out of a window, he’d aced his second final because Peacock Legrand couldn’t hold his poison, and he’d scraped through the third with a critical victory over Beth Paison, which had more to do with her gammy leg than his ability to spot a lurking patch of quicksand. As far as he was concerned, Victor Franklin had never killed anybody. However, all that was about to change. If Victor didn’t kill someone this evening, there would be no windows, no poisons, and no quicksand. There would just be death, and this time…the icy fingers wouldn’t be touching anyone else.
Short Story: Lair of the Leviathan (2014)
Sunlight washed over the southern island of Lick, lending a terrible scene the sort of sharp contrast most of the observers could have done without.
It was like some sickening jigsaw of a man: all the pieces were there, they just didn’t quite fit together in the right way. This was mainly because the edges were wrinkly and, in several places, enthusiastically chewed.
Hieronymus Blush, journeyman magician and newly initiated outreach merchant for the southern islands, stepped between the two grizzled fisherman in order to get a better look at the corpse.
He’d seen a lot of tragic accidents in his five years as an apprentice at the Magician’s Proving Ground, but these mostly involved the victims disappearing without a trace. For some reason, the look of complete shock on the face of the corpse was particularly unsettling.
Nevertheless, Blush made a valiant attempt to pull himself together: something the poor native on the beach would never get another go at.
He focused on the sand, drawing a small circle distractedly with his big toe while pointing a thin finger at the body. ‘I don’t understand why he’s…complete?’