Publication date: August 2017

Completion date: December 2015

Number of times subbed: 8

Placing the story: Good god but this story wasn't half a thorn in my side. This was the story that plagued my nightmares for most of 2016 because it kept coming so, so close to publication. It was rejected seven times, but over the course of those seven rejections I had glowing personal feedback from editors, I had notifications of making it through four rounds of consideration, and ran all the way to the very end of several venues' submission periods. And then it would never quite make it. Normally I'd probably trunk a story about our or five submissions, but this time I was really proud of the story... and eventually determination won out, and the story was accepted by GlitterShip, which I was very excited about because I *love* GlitterShip and the stories they put out.

The story of the story: After I published my Dorian Gray story in Queers Destroy Horror, my publisher at Lethe (probably fairly flippantly) suggested I write a full collection of queered Victorian characters, removing them from their timeframe as I did with Dorian. I liked the idea, and began to formulate concepts, scouring every corner of the Victorian fantastic I could find. 'In Search of Stars' was the first of these stories I completed, though it takes an almost absurdly obscure character (he appears in one story which is a cheap knock-off of Henry Cavor and his adventures) but there was something that caught me about one particular detail, the invention of a paint that nullifies gravity. It immediately conjured an image, of a man floating, naked, out of a bedroom window and up into the sky. And that was all I had, so I wrote a 2000 word piece of flash fiction, a vignette that caught the atmosphere of what I'd imagined and not much else and transposed my Victorian character into the seedy edges of mid-century silver-screen glamour. My publisher sent it back and said 'carry on'. I replied, saying, 'But that's the whole story', and he sent me the same email back again. And so I did, and built a story from that image... and then revised and revised (and revised again, the most exacting editorial process I've ever been through on a story) until I had 'In Search of Stars'.

'In Search of Stars 'is currently available in Glittership Summer 2017 here.

Publication date: March 2017

Completion date: April 2015

Number of times subbed: n/a

Placing the story: This story was written by invite to Obverse Books' anthology of steampunk Iris Wildthyme stories. It's nice being invited to things; much less stressful than submissions. (Except the pressure to live up to being asked, of course.)

The story of the story: The Brenda and Effie novels were a gateway drug, through which I discovered Paul Magrs' Doctor Who spin-off character, Iris Wildthyme, transtemporal adventuress (played memorably by Katy Manning in the Big Finish audio series.) She's a sort of northern bag lady version of the Doctor, invariably half way to the bottom of a gin bottle, and accompanied by a deeply sarcastic stuffed panda (who, in this steampunk version, is made of brass and wood.) The Obverse releases don't have the Doctor Who rights of course, so sssh, this Iris doesn't know anything about TARDISes (TARDI?)
Steampunk is, these days, pretty much my stock-in-trade, so the idea of steampunk Iris... well! I happened upon the idea of an inverted world in which flesh was machine and machine was flesh. I arose from the image of Iris riding a enormous dragon resembling a London bus and spun off from there. There were a whole series of ideas before I eventually settled on the carnival concept that is the latter half of the story, and even then the ending went through four complete rewrites - the most heavy-duty alteration I've ever done on a story, I think - before I settled on the final choice.

But my god Iris Wildthyme was fun to write. It came to me rather too naturally. I started with what would happen if Jackie from Benidorm was cast as the Doctor, and just carried on from there.

Find the book here at Obverse Books.

Publication date: March 2017

Completion date: Sometime in 2013

Number of times subbed: n/a

Placing the story: Sometime in 2016, Obverse announced a collection of stories about Brenda and Effie, the heroes of Paul Magrs' series that begins with Never The Bride. The submission process in theory involved pitching an idea, and then writing a story if the pitch was accepted, but I had written 'The Ragged School' years ago. In a fit of overexcitement, I initially pitched my story as a comic adaptation of the piece I had already written, and pitched a sample page you can see at the bottom of this page, but in the end it was sensibly decided that perhaps I should just stick to my original story...

The story of the story: Anyone with even a passing knowledge of me knows how much a fan I am of Brenda and Effie; Never The Bride and the rest of the series are one of my favourite books of all time, and I have always found something enchanting and comforting about their spooky world of Whitby. Naturally, of course, I wanted to write for it. Back somewhere in the 2012/2013 era, I decided I was going to start a writing project in which, every time I read a novel, I would write a story in the style of that book afterwards. Like many of my projects, I flagged quickly (around the third story, which was meant to be imitating David Sedaris), but in its brief moment of productivity, I'd written 'The Ragged School'. It took inspiration from a huge school building at the bottom of the hill on which I lived, an old Victorian 'ragged school for girls', according to the big letters carved in the stone above its doors. The particular phrasing of it caught my ear; initially I assumed it was a specific name, i.e. THE Ragged School for Girls, but in researching I discovered that it was rather A ragged school for girls, ragged schools being Victorian-and-later institutions for the poor and unfortunate. (And if you're particularly interested in the building, it features as the exterior of the police station in No Offence.) From the idea of the school came the image of the desolate moors, and from this I veered towards horror imagery - the scratching in the walls, and the eyes in the dark - though of course, in Brenda and Effie, there is no horror that cannot be lessened by a cup of spicy tea.

It's quite odd coming back to a story years after you've written it, especially when that story was itself deliberately written in an imitative style. The editing process taught me a few things: I cut nearly a thousand words from the beginning in which not-a-great-deal happened, which I'd originally written because the bits of the books where Brenda and Effie knock around drinking tea and gossiping were always my favourite bits; that kind of thing is fine in a full novel, but in a short story, time is rather more of the essence. At the time, the chief lesson writing 'The Ragged School' had taught me was how difficult it is to balance a large cast of characters and keep each of them pertinent to the adventure in an ongoing story; when it came to editing, I concluded that this wasn't quite as necessary to a short story format, and excised some of the extra bits with Penny and Robert that existed only to make sure they had lined.

Nevertheless, it was quite pleasing to be able to return to an old story and not wince in embarrassment; it was even more pleasing to finally be able to give my Brenda and Effie story an actual place to be published and read. This collection really does look genuinely wonderful, so please do go buy it, read it, give it away, buy another copy. You can find it over here at Obverse Books.

​(Plus - because I am a man of many hats! - I was also very excited to get the chance to create the cover art for this book. Fine, fine, I'll stop boasting now.)

Publication date: July 2016

Placing the story: A bit of a different version of my usual debrief for this story, because A Target for Tommy is an unusual project.

You might be familiar with the author Tommy Donbavand. He's the author of the children's book series Scream Street (which are great!), as well as writing for both Doctor Who and the Beano. He was recently diagnosed with cancer and in the last few months months has been undergoing treatment. You can read his blog on the subject (and I recommend you do), but alongside the unpleasantness of the treatment, Tommy is now unable to do school visits, which comprised a huge part of the income with which he supports himself and his family.

In response, Paul Magrs and Stuart Douglas at Obverse books set up this charity anthology, with all the proceeds going to charity, and coaxed a great bunch of authors to write stories set in the Whoniverse. There's a whole bunch of authors in there who've written for Doctor Who (Paul Magrs, Paul Cornell, Una McCormack, Stewart Sheargold, Steve Cole...), other authors who I've reviewed previously on here (Roy Gill, Nick Campbell, Stuart Douglas, Philip Marsh...), and a whole bunch of other authors I'm excited to discover reading the collection. Oh, and me.

The story of the story: The fun of a charity anthology is really getting to do whatever the hell you want and screw canon and ponderous self-importance. There's a whole bunch of Classic Who stories that gleefully chuck around characters into crazy situations, mixing up favourite characters in unusual ways, and getting to write the kind of stories your inner 12-year-old has always secretly hoped the Show will actually do. For my part, as a relative Who-newbie who still has an inferiority complex about his Classic-Who knowledge, I went for as new as I could, so my story is a Twelfth-Doctor story, immediately post-Clara. And because I could, and my current TV obsession is Miss Fisher Mysteries, Twelve is about to run across a lady detective coincidentally named Miss Fish (and her assistant Dotty...). (I filed the numbers off my Miss Fish(er), but Stuart Douglas has an even finer crossover in the book, pairing the Doctor with Mapp and Lucia. Look me in the eye and tell me you don't want to read that...)

Oh, yeah, and the Silence are in there, so it was my chance to do a bit of jiggery-pokery with timeline and narrative order. It involved a lot of moving post-its around and mumbling to myself, 'But that doesn't work...'

The book is no longer available to buy (it sold out super-fast!) but if you want to know more about Tommy' story or generally help support, head over to his website here.

Publication date: May 2016

Completion date: November 2015

Number of times subbed: 3

Placing the story: This story had two rejections before it found a home. I'm normally pretty good at rejections, but these ones did sting because I had no idea where to place such a bizarre queer metafictional spec-fic period piece as 'Director's Cut'. And then the call for Harlot Media's fiction section swung around,  which seemed a great fit. Thankfully they agreed.
The story of the story: I don't usually work deliberately to a 'theme' for a story, and it's not an approach that writers usually recommend, but I specifically set out with this story to pick apart the trope of 'queer tragedy' in fiction (i.e. that a gay character can exist provided their story ends in misery, which was borderline-explicit in the early days of Hollywood and has turned into something more ingrained and subtextual these days.) This took me the longest to write of any short story all year, and more redrafting and cutting and staring blankly while necking wine than is my usual. I'm indebted to the assistance of Steve Berman as my beta-reader/editor overlord, because otherwise I'd have probably got myself completely lost in the complex tangle of making this story work itself into something that makes sense and retains some resonance.

I'm also going to mention my line edits from Benjanun Sriduangkaew, for the specific reason that one of my word-choices was removed for it's misogynistic overtones. My grounding is queer lit, so I'm more than hyper-aware of semantic implications on minorities that word choices can often unconsciously include, but I mention this because I wanted to underline: even if you think you're on top of something like that, you never stop learning, and you should learn it from the people who live it.

'What A Coincidence': Two couples in a restaurant: two youngs guys on an awkward first date, and an older couple celebrating their anniversary. Two couples that, by chance, are oddly similar to each other...

Publication date: April 2016

Completion date: November 2015

Number of times subbed: 1

​Placing the story: This story was written specifically for this call, partly because the theme appealed to me, and partly because I wanted to submit a story to the editor, Jerry L. Wheeler (having recently worked with him with the tables turned, myself as editor and he as writer.) The story was accepted a few months after, and went through a round of fairly minor line editing (in which Jerry removed about sixty em dashes, much to my distress.)

The story of the story: When I first started work on my Threesome anthology I conceived of a story in which the protagonist goes back in time (twice over, I suppose) and has a threesome with himself. In the end, I wrote an entirely different story, but the seed of an idea that was a time travel story was still niggling. When I first saw the call I wanted to submit, but had no idea to go about it; my output of stories is fairly eclectic, but light romance isn't a genre that's ever particularly appealed to me. Give it a bit of a twist though, and perhaps: and so, I decided to scratch the time travel itch. (By the way, it's not a spoiler that it's about time travel, as the very first line gives you a pretty strong idea. Or... does it? Maybe this story isn't actually about time travel at all...)

I'm of the opinion that not enough credit is given to writers who write light, readable prose. It's a far more difficult skill than it might appear, and to try and get to grips with the style I wrote the whole piece in one sitting, not wanting the story to end up disjointed or wooden. Although it seems like a straightforward story, I had to do a great deal of burying clues, suggestions, red herrings--all without having neon signs pointing at the work I had to do to construct the plot, and maintaining a brisk pace and a gentle touch to the style. It's very easy in the world of literature to be snobbish about easy reads, but I have profound respect for the writers of such stories who make it look so damn easy.

Publication date: March 2016

Completion date: November 2015

Number of times subbed: n/a

Placing the story: So, placing isn't really the right word. I know it's painfully gauche to include a story by yourself in an anthology edited by yourself, but in this case I had never actually intended to. In early October '15 I had the line-up for the Threesome anthology locked down, with one story outstanding, that unfortunately fell through by the end of November, leaving me to write to fill the slot.

The story was designed to specifically fit a specific bracket: it would slot in the first section of the collection (the character/story-driven, non-smut section) and it would feature a positive representation of a three-way relationship (I received a great deal of triad relationships stories during open submissions, but they were all problematic. They usually involved one partner pushing the other into accepting a third, or the break-up of relationships over trying to incorporate a third. I received few that took a three-way relationship at face value, and gave a completely positive representation, and I wanted one.) The original story was YA-ish one (or coming-of-age, I suppose, given how very un-YA the anthology is) and featured three gay teens finding a way to go to prom together, and that was all I knew about the story.

The story of the story: I quite liked the original prom concept, and so I stuck with it. I wrote it in two days flat (and it's a long story, standing at 9k by the time I'd finished...) which was probably the fastest I've ever written. So fast that, with the completed first draft, I hadn't the faintest clue whether what I'd written was gold or dross, and it required some rigorous editing to pull the whole thing together.

In the interests of writing fast, I unashamedly mined my own adolescence. A good deal of the religious-upbringing stuff is nicked wholesale from my own upbringing (and at one point I had cast Huw's parents as those of a childhood friend of mine's parents. My beta-reader edited them out, saying they were too over-the-top to be believed. So... there was that!), as well as various other moments that I wound together to make one whole story. I found myself falling a little bit in love with the central trio actually, and sorely tempted to write more about them.

Writing the story, I listened to the titular Time To Dance by The Jezebels pretty much on loop. Once, I loved it. Now it makes me shudder. (I'm a fan of soundtracks for fiction, by the way, and I recommend listening to the song alongside the story. I reckon it adds, but that might just be me.)

Publication date: February 2016

Completion date: February 2015

Number of times subbed: 0

The story of the story: Our protagonist - a musician escaping the big city - returns to the seaside hometown of his youth, and meets an old friend on whom he once had an all-consuming crush.

This was the first time I had ever attempted anything that could be termed erotica, and I was pretty nervous about writing it. The finished piece, although there is certainly a hefty dose of sex in it, is more character-driven than some of the other examples of the genre I read as research. The central idea arose from an encounter of my own; returned home to the village I grew up in, I met a school-friend for drinks. It wasn't a friend I had been particularly close to, probably best described as halfway between friend and acquaintance, but we'd spent five years at school together. This friend I had hitherto assumed to be straight, but whilst we sat in the dark by the river he told me that he was gay - in fact, had been in a relationship with a man for a year or two. This opened the floodgates to talk about our respective experiences of school, and in describing the things that we had (necessarily) kept completely secret from those around us, it was as if the stories of my youth were being rewritten.

The encounter wasn't sexual at all -- although there was an odd tensions which wasn't 'are we going to get it on now?' but instead 'would we have got it on then?' -- but it was that feeling of having my perspective of my formative years altered and retold that stuck with me, and what I was trying to capture in my story. (Alongside, of course, that elusive feel of homecoming to a place and to the people you left behind a long time ago.)

Plus, of course, this anthology was for an anthology about the larger male, so I was endeavouring to do justice to a character that rarely gets to appear in fiction in general, let alone sexually in an erotica story. (Which, I should say, I roundly applaud The Biggest Lover for, because this is literally the only anthology of its kind, which is shocking.) And this is an erotica story, and there is plenty of lovingly rendered detail to keep those of that inclination entertained. Just wipe up after.

​Placing the story: I was invited to the anthology. In fact, when I first was told by the publisher, I thought he was winding me up. He has a habit of doing so, and frequently invents anthologies I should write stories for. Knowing my love of the cubbier man, I assumed The Biggest Lover was the latest in this line, until the editor also contacted me. Writing in an unfamiliar genre, it seemed like a huge challenge, but I'm actually absurdly proud of the story. (And it may have led me to write a whole bunch of other erotica stories... But then again, it may not. Sssh.)

Publication date: December 2015

Completion date: May 2015

Number of times subbed: 1

Placing the story: This story was written directly for a themed call for submissions from the Manchester Speculative Fiction Writing Group. It was provisionally accepted with edits requested before a final decision, and then later definitively accepted.

The story of the story: As I live in Manchester it was hard to resist a call for submissions asking for 'speculative fiction stories set in Manchester'. Firstly, if I was going to write a Manchester story, it would undoubtedly be set on Canal Street, and as I had just binge-watched eight seasons of RuPaul's Drag Race, it was also fairly undoubtedly going to be about a drag queen. Then the title suggested itself to me, so I wrote to fit that, and the story was born: the last drag show on earth, on Canal Street.

In the tone of the story I was trying to evoke the mood of Canal Street Gothic and the stunning scene with Hazel in Russell T. Davies' Cucumber -- pairing frivolity with underlying sadness and pathos. And I had to work within the spec-fic guidelines, so I created a future society in which electronic gadgets mean we can choose our entire appearance on a whim, which played into parallels of the 'not-what-you-looked-liked-in-your-pictures' and 'its-not-true-drag-if-you're-not-cinched'. And to this far-future bar I had the many ghosts of Canal Street come from throughout history, which meant I got to tell a whole bunch of different stories.

I wrote the whole thing over a weekend, with multiple drafts. Fast for me, but I had a clear idea of the story. When it was provisionally accepted, the editor requested that some of the ambiguities were cleared up (mainly about the ghostly characters), though I tweaked very little, and I like to think some of the mystery remains.