There’s 3 books of these stories available on Amazon. Put your e-mail address in the box below and I’ll send you the first one for free, as a PDF.
Not only that, you’ll get new stories as I write them. That’s about one a week, at the moment.
And they’re more fun to find in your in-box than more ‘BUY MORE STUFF!’ messages too.
“Best of nineteen?”
The apparition in front of me stared at the grid. Even in this state, I had trouble focusing on him… her… it?
When it spoke, its words came from no mouth. Its words just were.
This is a stupid rule.
“I didn’t make it up.”
We should play chess.
“My challenge, my game. And my game is tic-tac-toe.”
Death silently scratched an X into the top-left corner. I placed an O in the middle-bottom.
We will draw. Again.
“Yep.”
If neither of us wins, we will be here forever.
“That’s OK.” I said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Sometimes, you don’t even need 100 words. These 2-sentence horror stories are awesome.
It had been an ill-timed jump, and Dirk was about to die.
He’d been told there was a bright white light. Then maybe he’d be taken to stand in front of Saint Peter, or watch as his heart was weighed against a feather.
But instead of his life flashing before him, two words appeared as his world went dark.
Continue Y/N?
And a countdown. Ten. Nine. Eight.
“Yes!” he said, as the numbers ticked lower. “Yes, yes!”
On the edge of hearing, he caught ‘not that interesting…’ ‘meh, old crap…’ ‘let’s play Street Fighter instead…’
Then silence.
Three. Two. One.
Turns out when you set aside a bit of time for writing the things you mean to write rather than playing Civ, you actually write them. Who knew?
So, I read Winter in Madrid, by C J Sansom. I’m kinda conflicted about it. FYI, spoilers follow.
We lay on our backs and watched as the islands drifted past.
Normally you were lucky to see one, but today there was a whole archipelago. Cutting through clouds, blocking out the sun.
“D’you think anyone lives on them?” Katie asked.
“My Grandad says he saw someone fall off one once.”
“Your Grandad says he used to be Sultan of Byzantium.”
I’d been to lots of places. I’d even been to the city, and that’s miles away, but I’d never been on a floating island.
“Come on,” I said, standing up.
“Where we going?”
“Time we learnt how to fly.”
I am the Golden Man.
In times past, when a new chief came, the tribe covered him in gold dust and sent him out into the lake. Here he would cast away a king’s ransom in gold.
It was cleansing. A cut-off between old times and new.
So it seemed appropriate, my dear, to mark our new start the same way.
The water’s swallowed the TV and the computer. The iPhone, the camera, and all the money from the joint account.
All my possessions. Half of which, the court says, are now yours.
I’ll leave it to you to collect.
So, I’ve not posted a story here yet this week. I do have one, and it’s going up today.
But here’s a quick explanation of the change of schedule.
I’m planning on self-publishing a set of these stories, so I’m taking a bit more time to work on that. Also, I want to write more long stuff, and other blog posts here.
But you’ll still get at least one story every week. I’m not abandoning you completely 
Trials and tribulations of self-publishing are all going in a thread at Writing Forums, if you’re interested.
They say that focus on success can turn your heart to stone, but such warnings weren’t heeded by Jenny the Queen of Slums.
She was extortionate in her rent and ruthless with her evictions. With every pound she made, her heart calcified more.
And as her heart solidified, the rot spread outwards. Her eyes hard and glassy, her skin marble-cold. She liked it. Said it showed her strong character.
But strength, as she found on the day she first used her new swimming pool, is not everything.
Her obituary read:
Hard as diamond. Tough as granite. Floated like a brick.
The mechanical priest stood in the same place each day, explaining fate.
My fingertips traced the ribbon in its chest, feeling holes the tiny levers fell into.
“These ones determine my utterances,” it said.
“Including that?”
“Including that.”
“Most of the ribbon has fed through.”
Its eyeless face followed me, predetermined by its program.
“You already know what happens, can’t you avoid the end?”
“Your cogs are smaller than mine,” it said. “If I told these people that twelve will die attacking me later today, do you suppose they could choose not to?”
The market fell quiet.
“I suppose not.”
It came in the post with a note: ‘your turn’.
Beatrice tells me it’s a meme. You’re sent a bikini. You put it on, take a ‘selfie’, share your picture on Facebook, then post it to someone else.
Apparently it was started by a 16-year-old who wanted more nearly-naked women on the internet, but soon enough it was sent to a Jack Black lookalike who gleefully posted something she describes as NSFW.
“Well,” I said, “that sounds like an excellent idea.”
Charles will no doubt disapprove. But just because one is Queen doesn’t mean one can’t have a little fun.