I write in prose, and it’s true enough that in
one way or another most of what I write is
telling a story. Not everything I do looks like a
novel or even a short story: I would write
poetry because I certainly want to be able to
write lyrically, but I feel more comfortable
formally in prose, where the basic unit is the
sentence rather than the line.
I’ve included some occasional short pieces
here. Click on any of the links below and you’ll
be prompted to open or save a PDF of the full
text.
Despair: published in The Folkestone
Anthology, a meditation on faith and lost
opportunities.
Shoreline: a short meditation on nature,
permanence, and the bridges we try to build
to each other.
The Voyage: another story about faith and
purpose (I’m a lapsed Catholic), imagining the
journey of the Irish monk St Brendan in a
coracle to Iceland.
Marking Time: this is an extended piece, a
hybrid lyrical narrative about the experience
of depression and its circular impact on
relationships. If you click on the title link above
it will download a PDF version suitable for
printing out. If you’d prefer to read it on a
smaller screen (a tablet or ebook reader)
there’s an A5 PDF which would work better.
Just click here.
Or you can find a completed but neglected
novel Folkestone Beef right here as a PDF.
I have a few other projects in hand, including
Still Water, a novel I thought I’d finished but
which needs more work (don’t they always). I’ll
post more here when it’s done.
This image is a painting by my brother Mark, created in
response to “Waiting”, the first part of Marking Time. The
piece is carefully autobiographical, considering how we
make sense of our lives by making stories of them, the
past contained in chapters or anecdotes.