Universal Time	Leanna Drew the Moon

in Silverthought – Dec 2007 I’m working the deep 7 run again. Last time I was out here, must’ve been pre-schism. Before the split, and opinion divided the universe. Image from here.	published in The Harrow – May 2008 Leanna knew she was a special little girl because the moon spoke to her. She knew that it shouldn’t, and that she shouldn’t listen, but none of that stopped it from happening.
Waterfall	Caterpillar Man

in The Harrow – June 2009 I cut open his brain because he needed help.”Help me,” he’d whispered, banging at my fly screen in the middle of the night. Image from here .	in Shelter of Daylight – April 2009 I fell in the hole on a Tuesday. The hole is a hole in the road. Maybe 50 people walk by a day. I fell in by accident and now I can’t get out.
Freemantle Mons	Celibate Jayne the Hammerhand

published in Something Wicked – February 2008 It was 4:59 and a minute from dawn when Freemantle Mons the Leviathan Smile felt the Grammaton clockworkings die. Image by Hendrik Gericke.	published in TQR Stories – April 2008 It was nearing high-tide on the Sheckledown Sea when Celibate Jayne the Hammerhand finally bashed his way out of the belly of the whale. Image from Ben Saber.

Stick Man	Building New Atlantis

Dray is slumped at the edge of his desk, doodling. It’s Saturday again. Another business studies class. 4 low level Japanese students talking about their companies in broken English.No matter what he does, it’s always boring.You’d think, you’re the teacher of a class, it’s going to be interesting. You’d think, you’re the teacher, you shouldn’t be the one falling asleep.But it happens. He spends longer every time, planning, brings in CDs, newspapers, games, but somehow it always comes down to this. Just, dull.Image from here.	The first stage in the construction of New Atlantis went quietly, and the world scarcely noticed. It looked enough like a new ship or oil drilling platform on the satellite photos that no other nation would pay it too much mind.It was only after that first stage was completed, and the second stage begun right next to it, that the world sat up and took notice.”Is this a new fleet then?” asked the United Nations.”Whose property is this?” asked NATO.

Brand New Day	Two Hearts

She wakes up slow, opens her dull eyes expecting the new day to glow in, but no. It’s still night. She blinks, yawns into her pillow, stretches beneath the duvet. It’s the pig bedspread, the one her mother made. Her dozy palms bobble over the linen pigs stitched onto the cotton, sleep-weakened fingers catching in the felt swirls of their curly pink tails. She pulls one out gently, lets it tug back into place, and smiles.Image from here.	He held the FridgePak plastic bag close up to his eyes, but he couldn’t see anything special. He saw no spark of life, no memory of love, nor any trace of meaning. He just saw the pulp of a heart. Liquidized. Red and purple, twisted through with fragments of yellow fat, white sinew, the strings and cords that held the organ together. Floating in the melted mushy blur.Image from David Ehlen.

Sir Clowdishley and the Sea	Sky Painter

His name was Sir Clowdishley. He was once a royalty man, an astronomer to the king. He surveyed great kingdoms of heaven and charted the progress of the stars. He named whole galaxies after his two children and wife, but his family were now all dead, outlived by their celestial counterparts, lost to the sea.Image by Caspar David Friedrich.	The Sky Painter lived on the mountain and painted the sky. He painted it blue for blue skies, and white and grey for clouds. At night he painted it black, with white for all the stars. When the sun rose he dashed its arcing yellow lines across the heavens, and as it sank he brushed it orange and gold over the horizon.Image from here.

Freya 13	My Kids

Delathon Rent, a 28 year old technician on the Freya 13 space station, sits slumped in the Outer rim command pod with a gas hatch sealed behind him, video-phone in his lap, waiting for it to ring. He’s been waiting for about 10 minutes now, after intermittently placing calls himself to the Freya Commune for the last hour.Image from here.	“It happened 2 years ago,” he says.”What did?”Silence.”You don’t remember?” Image from here.

Route 66	Hunting Ground

Black highway snaking through an empty desert, star-studded midnight sky overhead, reflecting on the polished blacktop. Constellations dot to dot across the shiny old road, here and there disturbed by the central glint of refracting cat’s eyes, forming new and curious imaginary beasts on the black surface, the earth’s alteration of the heavens’ map.Image from artbypavel.	REN, TEKALUS, LORIEThey pick up the blip off the bait drop corner, burning bright green on the inner screen of their visors, flashing with a rapid-fire heartbeat, scouring afterglow trails into their eyes.It’s the strongest they’ve ever seen.Image from here.

	The Book of All

	I’m a cripple. Always have been. I was born with one of the latest cerebro-spinal disorders, unpleasant off-shoot of muddled genetic manipulation in vitro. My father was one of the leading scientists in the field at the time. He was also a drunk..Image from here.

Fade out	Deathwatch

They strapped a man to the ceiling today. I know him. His name is Wasari Ichimura. I tried to talk to him afterwards but he wasn`t interested, and I was too tired to give chase. Most days now, my muscles don`t stop shaking `til past midnight.Image from here.	It`s a beautiful day already. The sun is up and dawning like a golden rip in the pewter and orange sky, leaking rays of light across the blue ocean and bridge.Everything is still. It`s a beginning, the start of a new day. Strange thing is, everything that matters is already over.Image from here.

Universal Time	Fortune City

I’m working the deep 7 run again. Last time I was out here, must’ve been pre-schism. Before the split, and opinion divided the universe.-Blah blah.That’s what my mistress says, when I try to discuss politics.-All I can hear is blah blah.Image from here.	I started talking out loud around 3, I think. It’s a sweltering day, but that’s no excuse. It’s more to do with the height, I think. The wind rushing in my ears and I couldn’t hear a damn thing I was thinking.What was I saying?Oh. It’s like reality TV. Safe. Distant. Gritty. Real. I’m a star again.

The Blue Chipset and the Thing	Giant Robot and the Myna Bird

I’m standing at the Way-station Hub. Everybody around me is dead. I’m holding the blue chipset in my hand and I’m willing it to work.Over my head the sky is swirling. It’s a purple vortex. I’m waiting for it all to end.Image from Andrew Jones.	The giant robot stalked the empty world, looking for its lost arm.It had fought in many wars, from the beginning to the end. In ancient Thrace it had brought down the gates of Thermopylae. In Samarkand it had crushed the Czar’s men underfoot.Image from here.
Isidro’s Furnace	Bathsheba

Isidro’s furnace demanded FBI agents, but he only fed it limestone and coke, sometimes Rice Crispies if it was good. In return, it fed his insanity. Neither got exactly what they wanted, but it was a happy enough arrangement for the both of them.”FBI agents!” it would roar down the phone at Isidro, who often held a towel to his other ear to keep the noise in. “Out there, in the lawn, take your blunderbuss to the cheeky lot of them!”Image from here.	Mad Noah can’t give me what I want.No. Mad Noah stands in his tent and shouts at me in the doorway- “Incubus of Satan! If you had SEEN the holy holy holy as I have, if you had SEEN!”And I leave.Mad Noah comes to me at night and between his whisperings of a world gone mad he slips his fingers between my thighs, and while he tells the story of the one eyed fox that learnt to fly above the second flood, he strokes me, and I do what?Image from here.

Stormwatcher	Leanna Drew the Moon

The storm-post was made of crumbling old red brick. Ragged weeds grew up its chipped and tattered sides, through its paving stones and round the observation platform binoculars on its roof. The grindstone railings that once prevented tourists from falling over the edge had collapsed inwards in a landslide a long time ago.Once it had been a place filled with people, tourists come to see the volcano spume and smoke, then the storms came, the avalanches began, and the people left.Image from here.	published in The Harrow – May 2008 Leanna knew she was a special little girl because the moon spoke to her. She knew that it shouldn’t, and that she shouldn’t listen, but none of that stopped it from happening. She drew pictures at school of her talking to a big moon face and the moon saying things like “try eating those soap suds, Leanna,” or “that dog wants a bite of clay, go on,” and in the pictures she would go ahead and do it. The moon, after all, was her friend. But it wasn’t always so nice.

Waterfall	One Eighty

I cut open his brain because he needed help.”Help me,” he’d whispered, banging at my fly screen in the middle of the night, his wet shirtsleeves slapping against the cracked glass of my back-porch slide door.”I need help.”So I’d let him in. Set him down. Listened to him talk.”There’s a waterfall,” he’d said, lying there in the dark kitchen slumped across my table. “I see it when I dream. And the dark creatures. There are dark creatures in the waterfall. Slithering in the cold, behind the falls.”Image from here .	It”s not what he expects. His room is in disarray, futon lying disheveled with the covers beneath it, bookshelf standing on its head and tilted into the corner, full-length mirror fallen flat and smashed to pieces.But that isn’t everything. The main thing is the light bulb by his feet. He takes a deep breath, and looks out the window.”What the,” he breathes.The world is upside down.Image from here.

The People in the Walls	Caterpillar Man

The people in the walls are an infestation. They crowd around the living room in their inch-thin insulation space and watch me while I go about my life.Some of them have drilled peep-holes.I cover the holes with paintings I paint myself, and vases full of flowers which they sometimes steal and eat. I paint paintings of the people in the walls. I suppose they look a little bit like aliens. They have big and flat grey heads an inch thick. They look a lot like stick men. They are normally smiling stick-thin smiles, which creeps me out.Image from here.	in Shelter of Daylight – April 2009 I fell in the hole on a Tuesday. The hole is a hole in the road. Maybe 50 people walk by a day. I fell in by accident and now I can’t get out. The sides are steep, and there’s nothing down here for me to eat but this damn banana tree and rat bones.There’s a lot of dry and desiccated rats down here.It doesn’t make any sense to me. But, I have to eat, so I crack the bones and slurp down the dry marrow.It’s like molasses, but not as sweet.

Stick Man	Alegria’s Hair

Dray is slumped at the edge of his desk, doodling. It’s Saturday again. Another business studies class. Four low level Japanese students talking about their companies in broken English. No matter what he does, it’s always boring.You’d think, you’re the teacher of a class, it’s going to be interesting. You’d think, you’re the teacher, you shouldn’t be the one falling asleep.	The first time Tarragon Ray saw the giant Alegria, he was a baby. He was lying in his father’s arms, staring goggle-eyed up at the clouds and the big blue sky. He could hear the comforting crack of his father’s whip, and the low braying of their humpback pony as it strained against its hauliers.Image from here.
Emhoola’s Gibbet	Mandragora’s Laws

Emhoola peddled magic. He sold it by the cartload, and everywhere he went it was bought with self-deceiving gusto. He sold it in cheap brass compasses that no longer worked, in the shriveled corpses of pack donkeys whose heads lolled flea-bitten against the sales-rack strappings of his wagon, in straw dolls and dried frogs and mosquito paste and all variety of herbs and medicinal fungi.	It was a bright spring morning when Mandragora came upon the sweet little cottage with the two dead bodies hanging from its eaves.”What’s all this then?” he asked his skulls, rattling out behind him on their 100 leather tethers.”Looks like a violation,” they called, bobbing and jostling to see. “A clear violation. Bodies from the eaves, what else could that be?”Image from here.

Tanglewood	Flatland

published – March 2003 On the southernmost fringe of the tanglewood forest beyond the kingdoms of men, in the midst of a purgatorial wasteland blighted with perpetual winter and savaged by endless storms, there stands an inn where the battle-lines between sanity and madness meet. Image from here.	published in Reflection’s Edge – April 2008 At the center of Flatland there was a tall sky-scraper, thirty stories high. In the skyscraper were many offices, filled with workers who spent their days typing at their ledgers, recording the business of Flatland that they could see out of their windows. After their work was finished every day, they left the skyscraper and went to their homes. They lived in houses and farms spread around the town- the only town in Flatland.

Sagasu’s Life	The Mistman

published in Reflection’s Edge – February 2008 Sagasu was watching the child in the corner. The corner was dark, and the child was dark. Its mouth was open, always. Sagasu was grinding butterfly’s wings. He was mixing them with chalk dust and melted ox fat. He used a pestle and mortar and he ground them so the smell of ivory burning filled the air, and he clicked his teeth and sometimes he spat into the paste. Image from here.	published in Byzarium – September 2008 There was a village in the mountains at the top of the world that was always shrouded in mist. Its name was Ballahee, and in it lived a small community of people, good people, who tended to their crops on the mountainsides, and looked after their sheep and their hardy goats, and helped each other through the cold and cruel winters. Image from here.

Freemantle Mons	Stereo Ward the Simpleton

published in Something Wicked – February 2008 It was 4:59 and a minute from dawn when Freemantle Mons the Leviathan Smile felt the Grammaton clockworkings die. He was up in the great clock-tower’s belfry alone that night, calibrating old cogwork and balancing up the penny weight piles, a gas revelatory tuned soft and hissing by his side. It was a gradual death. It spread up from the coils as the unravel slowed, and the 3 story pendulum’s swing faded out. Image by Hendrik Gericke.	published in Weird Stories – October 2004 It was 6:35 by the Grammaton and 2 hours to pushing off time when Stereo Ward the Simpleton found writing on the subway wall. That day he was working the Willoughby line, along with 20 other tunnel-worms fanned out behind him, trawling along by revelatory light, scraping away at the limey cakedust griming the concave walls.

Killin Jack the Malakite	Celibate Jayne the Hammerhand

published in Aoiffe`s Kiss – June 2009 It was gone All Hallows by the Grammaton’s gong when Killin Jack the Malakite mobbed down the last of the Bunnymen. He was stalking spires up the Seasham cathedral that night, hopping from ladder-top to gargoyle round the copper-roofed cloisters, swerving in to the dome-top graveyard in the middle. Image from Mike Beddall.	published in TQR Stories – April 2008 It was nearing high-tide on the Sheckledown Sea when Celibate Jayne the Hammerhand finally bashed his way out of the belly of the whale. Ashen face covered with gobbets of blubber and gut, he slithered down the black rubber side of the beached leviathan, a river of purple slime showering down on his head. Image from Ben Saber.
Gutterman	Clay Head

published in A Moonlit Path – March 2008 I found him one mad marsh-walking night.? I was out in the bogs, I don’t know why, crossing wet rivers and wading through peat mulberry patches, dashings of filth worming their way into the cuffs of my suit turn-ups.? I must have trekked two thirds of a golf course and the circumference of a length-ways lake when I hit upon the road.	published in A Fly in Amber – May 2008 There’s a giant head in my living room. It’s made of grey clay and it sings through the night. It sings songs about America. Sometimes boogie-woogie or the Big Bopper. It sings Buddy Holly. It sings about the plane that crashed and sometimes the song about the crash. It sings about whiskey and rye. Image by Karina Ishkhanova

2009

Killin Jack the Malakite – (from the world of The Dawn Cycle) – Jack finally kills the last of the Bunnymen. Is his long task finally at an end? @ Aoiffe`s Kiss PRINT MAGAZINE in June.

Caterpillar Man – A man in a hole in the road lives in squalor, until one day a fair maiden comes to save him with books. @ Shelter of Daylight PRINT MAGAZINE in April.

Freemantle Mons the Leviathan Smile - (from the world of The Dawn Cycle) – Freemantle watches the moon and stars freeze in the sky, and sets about doing what is necessary to get them spinning again.? @ Something Wicked PRINT MAGAZINE in February.

2008

The Mistman – A Pied Piper comes to the misty town of Bally-hoo, bewitches the mist away, but takes a lovely young girl in payment. Will the villagers stand for it? @ Byzarium in September

Leanna Drew the Moon – A little girl talks to the moon, her only friend. The moon tells her to kill her little brother. What then? @ The Harrow in May

Clay Head – The giant clay head in the living room sings sad songs through the night- why? @ A Fly in Amber in May

Celibate Jayne the Hammerhand - (One of the Jabbler’s Mons series) – Jayne busts out of a whale that he thinks has a living man inside. Should he try to save him, or worry more about brewing up the whale oil? @ TQR Stories in April

Flatland – The world is flat, it is six football fields wide, and it has an edge. What happens if one child goes over the side? @ Reflection’s Edge in April

Caterpillar Man – A man in a hole in the road lives in squalor, until one day a fair maiden comes to save him with books. @ The Nautilus Engine in April

Gutterman - A mad man goes marsh-walking, finds a man trapped inside a gutter on a lonely road to nowhere, makes a friend. @ Moonlit Path in March

Killin Jack the Malakite – (One of the Jabbler’s Mons series) – Jack finally kills the last of the Bunnymen. Is his long task finally at an end? @ Atom Jack Magazine in February

Sagasu’s Life – Sagasu the magician has tried for years to bring about the end of his sworn enemies the Summer Lords. Finally it seems he might succeed, and take the whole world with him. @ Reflection’s Edge in February

2006

Fadeout - Tokyo is a city without power. People work in giant tents outfitted like gyms to generate electricity. Can it really keep on going like that? @ Reflection’s Edge in March

Waterfall - One man has black monsters behind a waterfall inside his brain. His friend vows to dig them out. @ The Harrow in February

2005

Pendolino Lane – Something happens on a hill. Pretty crazy. @ in April.

On the Raft - Two young loves get stuck on a raft on the open ocean after being thrown off a people-trafficking transit ship. There isn’t enough food, how will they survive? @ Dawn Sky in April

Building New Atlantis – Somebody is building a new continent in the Pacific ocean out of oil-rigs and ships. America is not happy, fearing another Cuban Missile Crisis. Nuclear weapons come to the fore. @ in January

Isidro’s Furnace – Isidro talks to his furnace, and his furnace demands FBI agents. When the FBI finally come, what’s going to happen to their relationship? @ Reflection’s Edge in January.

2004

Brawdegger’s Penance – Some weird things happen in a dreamy desert somewhere. @ in December.

Stereo Ward the Simpleton – (from the world of The Dawn Cycle) – Stereo finds writing on the subway wall. What’s afoot? @ in October.

Deathwatch – The Deathwatch preside over citizen administrated cumulative executions. But what if you know the person underneath the wooden board, as the weight piles on? @ Amarillo Bay in October.

Emhoola’s Gibbet – Emhoolah the travelling salesman gets accosted in a new town, beaten, bullied, and imprisoned. But he will have his vengeance. @ in September.

Stick Man – An English teacher in Japan one day finds his doodles have come to life, the english chain school manager has been kidnapped, and he’ll have to think quick an doodle even quicker to save her from the menacing black scrawl. @ Dark Energy SF in September.

The Squinching of Ricky Shay – Ricky Shay is a gold-eating pig, but he dreams of so much more. @ in June.

The Disgusting Crow – Tycho lives on a hill in a purgatory world, battling with the crow that comes daily for a different piece of his body. Is he doomed to be pecked to pieces like the man on the hill beside him? @ Ultraverse in May.

One Eighty – An English teacher in Tokyo wakes up one day to find the world has flipped on its axis, and up is down and down is up. Will he be able to get to his girlfriend’s place in time to rescue her? @ in April.

Theme and Variations – A lot of strange things happen in this dreamy alternate-versions-of-one-story story. @ in April.

Route 66 – The white-haired young man stalks the desert roads. He finds the gas station owner, living in the shell of his dilapidated station. This is what apocalypse looks like. @ in February.

The Nature of Man – Bad things happen. Revenge follows. @ in February.

Marjory Helvetica – She’s a flighty journalist-wannabe with a serious case of performance anxiety- but somehow she’ll get into the limelight with a story on aliens and space-time. @ in February.

2003

Universal Time – Rav works the Deep 7 run, carrying Universal Time with him in his ship from galaxy to galaxy. But the Empire is crumbling, split by the Schism. What’s the point of ferrying Universal Time back and forth when there’s no-one left to care about it anymore? @ in September.

Fortune City – This is reality television gone mad. Take the Apprentice and mix it with The Running Man, and this is what you get.? @Twilight Times in June.

Tanglewood – A foul old magician with the miniature heads of his victims for teeth tries to take his next victim from a winter pub. Will the young lady’s suitor allow it to happen? @ in March.

Hunting Ground - The hunters go down to the old subterranean city streets for thrills, hunting wastrels and whatever genetic carrion they can find. But this time, seeking extra thrills, they’re out of the usual hunting grounds. Are they the hunters, or the hunted? @ in February.

My Kids - The world went mad, the kids took over, and chaos reigned supreme. @ in January.

On Writing

In this series MJG shares his thoughts on writing style, and development as a writer.

#1 the DM’s screen

#2 motivation gaps

#3 bad guy motives

#4 flashbang

#5 make them real

#6 building the maze

#7 the engine of fiction

#8 tapestry narratives

#9 completion euphoria

#10 ethics of plagiarism

#11 cover letter mistakes

#12 kill all wimps

#13 going hot

Critics have said-

What can I say about this work? The dialogue is salty as a damask whore. The world it takes place in has a disturbingly familiar foreignness that is never forced. It reverberates with verisimilitude without being portentous. You could call it allegorical biblical fantasy or literary tour de force. I call it simply a damn fine read.

- Theodore Rorschalk, on Celibate Jayne the Hammerhand

Michael John Grist successfully uses an ‘opposites’ concept, slightly exotic dialog, and at times sing-songy description to draw the reader through to the main attraction–a powerful and moving story of redemption.

- Melissa Palladino, on Celibate Jayne the Hammerhand

In [this story] … an old clock stops, and the people for whom it is a fixture are surprised to discover that the sun fails to rise and time fails to move forward without it. In the best tale of this issue, Freemantle Mons must discover why the sun refuses to rise and what it means not just for the city, but also for him.

- The Fix, on Freemantle Mons the Leviathan Smile

Popular Ruins / Haikyo

Nara Dreamland
Russian Village
Sports World
Tachikawa Air Base
Matsuo Ghost Town
Queen Chateau Soapland

Recent Comments
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SF & Fantasy Stories -old

- the pro sf/fantasy magazine Beneath Ceaseless Skies #75 2011 (Bone Diamond)

- the semi-pro magazines Ideomancer #10.4 2011 (The Orphan Queen) and Andromeda Spaceways (Cullsman #9 : upcoming)

- see his most recent published stories here.

- Dawn Rising tells the interwoven stories of 6 wildly different children as they struggle to survive in the brutal caste-ridden city of Jabbler’s Mons.

- You can see artwork based on the novel here.

#1 the DM’s screen

#2 motivation gaps

#3 bad guy motives

#4 flashbang

#5 make them real

#6 building the maze

#7 the engine of fiction

#8 tapestry narratives

#9 completion euphoria

#10 ethics of plagiarism

#11 cover letter mistakes

#12 kill all wimps

#13 going hot

in Silverthought – Dec 2007

published in The Harrow – May 2008

in The Harrow – June 2009

in Shelter of Daylight – April 2009

published in Something Wicked – February 2008

published in TQR Stories – April 2008

published in The Harrow – May 2008

in Shelter of Daylight – April 2009

published – March 2003

published in Reflection’s Edge – April 2008

published in Reflection’s Edge – February 2008

published in Byzarium – September 2008

published in Something Wicked – February 2008

published in Weird Stories – October 2004

published in Aoiffe`s Kiss – June 2009

published in TQR Stories – April 2008

published in A Moonlit Path – March 2008

published in A Fly in Amber – May 2008

2009

Killin Jack the Malakite – (from the world of The Dawn Cycle) – Jack finally kills the last of the Bunnymen. Is his long task finally at an end? @ Aoiffe`s Kiss PRINT MAGAZINE in June.

Caterpillar Man – A man in a hole in the road lives in squalor, until one day a fair maiden comes to save him with books. @ Shelter of Daylight PRINT MAGAZINE in April.

Freemantle Mons the Leviathan Smile - (from the world of The Dawn Cycle) – Freemantle watches the moon and stars freeze in the sky, and sets about doing what is necessary to get them spinning again.? @ Something Wicked PRINT MAGAZINE in February.

2008

The Mistman – A Pied Piper comes to the misty town of Bally-hoo, bewitches the mist away, but takes a lovely young girl in payment. Will the villagers stand for it? @ Byzarium in September

Leanna Drew the Moon – A little girl talks to the moon, her only friend. The moon tells her to kill her little brother. What then? @ The Harrow in May

Clay Head – The giant clay head in the living room sings sad songs through the night- why? @ A Fly in Amber in May

Celibate Jayne the Hammerhand - (One of the Jabbler’s Mons series) – Jayne busts out of a whale that he thinks has a living man inside. Should he try to save him, or worry more about brewing up the whale oil? @ TQR Stories in April

Flatland – The world is flat, it is six football fields wide, and it has an edge. What happens if one child goes over the side? @ Reflection’s Edge in April

Caterpillar Man – A man in a hole in the road lives in squalor, until one day a fair maiden comes to save him with books. @ The Nautilus Engine in April

Gutterman - A mad man goes marsh-walking, finds a man trapped inside a gutter on a lonely road to nowhere, makes a friend. @ Moonlit Path in March

Killin Jack the Malakite – (One of the Jabbler’s Mons series) – Jack finally kills the last of the Bunnymen. Is his long task finally at an end? @ Atom Jack Magazine in February

Sagasu’s Life – Sagasu the magician has tried for years to bring about the end of his sworn enemies the Summer Lords. Finally it seems he might succeed, and take the whole world with him. @ Reflection’s Edge in February

2006

Fadeout - Tokyo is a city without power. People work in giant tents outfitted like gyms to generate electricity. Can it really keep on going like that? @ Reflection’s Edge in March

Waterfall - One man has black monsters behind a waterfall inside his brain. His friend vows to dig them out. @ The Harrow in February

2005

Pendolino Lane – Something happens on a hill. Pretty crazy. @ in April.

On the Raft - Two young loves get stuck on a raft on the open ocean after being thrown off a people-trafficking transit ship. There isn’t enough food, how will they survive? @ Dawn Sky in April

Building New Atlantis – Somebody is building a new continent in the Pacific ocean out of oil-rigs and ships. America is not happy, fearing another Cuban Missile Crisis. Nuclear weapons come to the fore. @ in January

Isidro’s Furnace – Isidro talks to his furnace, and his furnace demands FBI agents. When the FBI finally come, what’s going to happen to their relationship? @ Reflection’s Edge in January.

2004

Brawdegger’s Penance – Some weird things happen in a dreamy desert somewhere. @ in December.

Stereo Ward the Simpleton – (from the world of The Dawn Cycle) – Stereo finds writing on the subway wall. What’s afoot? @ in October.

Deathwatch – The Deathwatch preside over citizen administrated cumulative executions. But what if you know the person underneath the wooden board, as the weight piles on? @ Amarillo Bay in October.

Emhoola’s Gibbet – Emhoolah the travelling salesman gets accosted in a new town, beaten, bullied, and imprisoned. But he will have his vengeance. @ in September.

Stick Man – An English teacher in Japan one day finds his doodles have come to life, the english chain school manager has been kidnapped, and he’ll have to think quick an doodle even quicker to save her from the menacing black scrawl. @ Dark Energy SF in September.

The Squinching of Ricky Shay – Ricky Shay is a gold-eating pig, but he dreams of so much more. @ in June.

The Disgusting Crow – Tycho lives on a hill in a purgatory world, battling with the crow that comes daily for a different piece of his body. Is he doomed to be pecked to pieces like the man on the hill beside him? @ Ultraverse in May.

One Eighty – An English teacher in Tokyo wakes up one day to find the world has flipped on its axis, and up is down and down is up. Will he be able to get to his girlfriend’s place in time to rescue her? @ in April.

Theme and Variations – A lot of strange things happen in this dreamy alternate-versions-of-one-story story. @ in April.

Route 66 – The white-haired young man stalks the desert roads. He finds the gas station owner, living in the shell of his dilapidated station. This is what apocalypse looks like. @ in February.

The Nature of Man – Bad things happen. Revenge follows. @ in February.

Marjory Helvetica – She’s a flighty journalist-wannabe with a serious case of performance anxiety- but somehow she’ll get into the limelight with a story on aliens and space-time. @ in February.

2003

Universal Time – Rav works the Deep 7 run, carrying Universal Time with him in his ship from galaxy to galaxy. But the Empire is crumbling, split by the Schism. What’s the point of ferrying Universal Time back and forth when there’s no-one left to care about it anymore? @ in September.

Fortune City – This is reality television gone mad. Take the Apprentice and mix it with The Running Man, and this is what you get.? @Twilight Times in June.

Tanglewood – A foul old magician with the miniature heads of his victims for teeth tries to take his next victim from a winter pub. Will the young lady’s suitor allow it to happen? @ in March.

Hunting Ground - The hunters go down to the old subterranean city streets for thrills, hunting wastrels and whatever genetic carrion they can find. But this time, seeking extra thrills, they’re out of the usual hunting grounds. Are they the hunters, or the hunted? @ in February.

My Kids - The world went mad, the kids took over, and chaos reigned supreme. @ in January.

On Writing

#1 the DM’s screen