A
contemporary writer who has lived in Norfolk and London, but is
currently living and working on the North Wales coast. He met the
co-author of The Five Quarters, Ian Rodwell at the
University of East Anglia.
Short Stories
The Night
Comes On,
Ash-Tree Press (Ashcroft, British Columbia), 1998
(A
collection of M.R. James pastiches: Including: "Introduction" by
Steve Duffy, The Night Comes On: Mummies smuggled out of
Egypt; vaguely Crowleyan baddie who wishes to reanimate them.
Out
Of The Water, Out Of The Earth: Man holidaying on a remote
Italian island stumbles upon something nasty; inadvertently lets
it loose. The Close At Chadminster: Antiquarian menaced by Thing
long dead-and-buried while advising on cathedral renovations.
The
Last Of The Scarisfields: Scholar unearths the truth
behind a long-ago crime in the grounds of a Lake District stately
home. The Hunter And His Quarry: Englishman ignores
local advice and visits small Baltic island: the fool! The chase
is afoot… The Ossuary: If there's one thing worse
than visiting remote islands, it's poking around ossuaries.
Especially on Good Friday, when the Dance of the Dead is about to
begin…Running Dogs: Isolated village in East
Anglia has a strange railway station, and even stranger
inhabitants. One Over: Elsewhere in East Anglia,
the sea-buried dead do not lie still. Figures On A
Hillside: Man carries out research into chalk giants:
finds more than he bargained for. Ex Libris: Or, why it's not
always best to return books to their rightful owners…
The
Story Of A Malediction: Weird travelling folk - not
the sort of people you want to cross. The Vicar Of Wryde St
Luke: Or, why it's always best to return books to
their rightful owners! The Marsh
Warden: Traveller puts up at shunned inn in the Essex
marshes: finds out soon enough why it's shunned. The Return
Journey: Rip-snorting Victorian melodrama set in and
around Highgate cemetery. Nigredo: An antiquarian on
the trail of alchemists in Holland runs into trouble when
unearthing their industrial waste. Tidesend: Weird
recollections of a childhood by the Thames, and the strange little
girls next door.)
The Five
Quarters,
Ash-Tree Press (Ashcroft, British Columbia), 2001. Written with
Ian Rodwell.
(Stories following the adventures of an East
Anglian drinking club with five members - the Quarters of the
title - each of whom takes it in turns to tell his weird tale at
the society's quarter-day meetings. Includes: Mr Gliddon's
Confession: In which Mr Gliddon tells of a youthful
adventure in Provence, in the course of which he witnesses the
righting of an historical wrong and unwittingly grants solace to a
troubled conscience… The Penny Drops: In which Mr May visits a
very peculiar amusement arcade on the far end of a sundered
seaside pier, only to have Something follow him back on to dry
land…Forever And A Day: In which Mr Scaife tells of
his friendship with a local ne'er-do-well and its tragic
conclusion, and explains why the words "a haunting melody" have
more than conventional significance for him… Better Than
One: In which Mr Ashworth explains why not all the
exhibits in the local museum are for display purposes only, and
how he narrowly escaped losing his head… Uneasy Lies The
Head: In which Mr Wilde comes into an inheritance with
altogether more strings attached than he realises, and the
Quarters find themselves following in the footsteps of MR James,
no less…)
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