In Progress and Forthcoming

Ok, so I am a slow writer!  Look out for these books . . . sometime in the future!  Some sooner – some later. 

The Book of Tides / The Whispering Girl and Other Tales of Experiment and Descent

This is a substantial collection of linked tales, all touching on Feather, the main character of What the Giants were Saying. This was a massive project – taking over 7 years to reach its final form.  The pieces are mostly novellas with a few shorter works acting as frames that step back from the world of the book into the world of the writer - who has the job of bringing Feather into the world and taking her out of it.  In some, Feather is a central character, in others she is in the background, but her effect is always there.

There are probably going to be 7 pieces in all.

'Yellow Eyes' is the first Feather story of all, with a fragment of her rather strange and troubled formative years: white mushrooms, windmills, Samphire and a nuclear powerstation. I walk the narrow tightrope of a fragile character and surrounding brutality because I am determined to find the cold, quiet and rational place that exists at the centre of even the hardest of atrocities. Only there do they start to become interesting.  When, as Feather would put it, you can get to grips with the ‘why’ rather than merely the ‘what’. Or when you cant . . .

I think 'The Magpies' remains the story with the most interesting ideas behind it and in it you will encounter such things as a Magpie Man who eats carrion, a world-spanning polyhedron, lots of music (and its absence) - and all set in the wonderful lonely hills of Dartmoor.

The Book of Tides is a bitter tasting work about a phenomenally lonely man living in the wilds of Scotland, getting lost in his own very bizarre form of creativity that may or may not predict dire disaster for the whole of the country.  This story was included in the Blind Swimmer anthology from Eibonvale Press.

'To Call the Sea' is a sometimes light-hearted, sometimes very bitter supernatural story set in a liberal arts college and dealing with the pain of unrequited love and loneliness in company.  

The text of this books is now complete and it will be published soon.

The WindmillMuseum

A full-length novel and this is the most substantial and complex Feather story of all.  It deals with stolen memories, SM interactions and three of the strangest characters I have ever put into fiction - The White Flower Man, The Magician and The English Gentleman. It's an extreme tale and poor Feather gets absolutely put through the wringer by these three lunatic but rather extraordinary men. This is a city story – set in London, and it seeks to conjure up the sense of mystery that can surround cities – full of bizarre hidden spaces and goings on between the cracks of the world.