My novel-in-progress, All The Hollow Places, focuses on the last day in the life of explorer and political officer, Gertrude Bell. Gertrude Bell’s legacy is a complex one and it intersects with a contemporary need to reexamine what it means to be English in the light of empire and imperialism. How do we address the past with open eyes in a way that changes our present and our future? Information and curiosity are the central parts of this examination and these ways of writing the past in fiction demand different things of the narrative. I see my work as a conversation with other books, with other voices and hopefully with readers. The traditional teleological, conflict-driven, three act structure might not be best placed to deliver this conversational, multi-perspective approach. You’ll have to wait and see if you agree.
My previous fiction, has focused around something I have called the unpalatable. It is a form of literature interested in exploring the limits and base realities of human behaviour and existence, refusing to settle with conventional attitudes to the ‘real’, and often creating feelings of discomfort, disgust or shock in the reader. The unpalatable isn’t straightforward horror, or speculative fiction, magical realism or slipstream, but it shares many of their aspects.
This may sound lofty, but really, I’m as interested in how we live with social inequality (a desire to get rid of the homeless man sleeping in our stairwell) as I am in how much of the monster is in all of us.
Short Pieces
My story, ‘Convivial’ was performed by Liars League in October 2022. You can see the performance and read it here.
I won Byte The Book’s monthly short story competition, Byte Shorts in 2019 and you can read my entry here.
The Other Stories Podcast recorded my story ‘A Jackdaw Calls’. You can hear it here.
I’ve also been published in The Mechanics Institute Review, Tales of the DeCongested and 3:am Magazine (follow the link for the story).