Novels and short stories
I have written a complete novel - The Nettle Jar -and I’m working on ideas for another. I’m also busy writing short stories across different genres, but generally with a speculative edge. This page will tell you more about current projects and publication news.
THE NETTLE JAR
Only a witch with a wounded heart can save a wounded earth.
Agrimony (‘Grim’) lives a quiet life as a village witch, practising nature magic and sharing her consciousness with the living creatures around her. But she is wounded by the legacy of her father’s magical experiments on her, and her deep link to the earth is something she both loves and fears. It affects her trust in people, and in her own body.
When Grim discovers that unknown forces have rekindled her father’s dream to enslave nature and transcend death, she is drawn into a rising crisis that threatens both personal and societal collapse. As the dreams of ambitious mages, cruel priests and ravenous demons converge and conflict, Grim must join with the living Heart of the earth itself to turn the tide of disaster. It is a quest that will test her courage, resilience and capacity for love.
‘Her consciousness had flown again. It was matted into the silver and black branches of the birch tree against which her body leaned. She saw herself from above. There was dust in her tangled hair. One hand lolled across her lap, spilling leaves on to the ground. A bluebottle landed on her finger. It was heavy with eggs, searching for carrion. The finger twitched, and the bluebottle took off, riding other trails of decay.’
He pushes the jar towards her. The sudden scrape of glass against the ridges of wood startles her and she presses back into her chair.
‘No, don’t be frightened. People like you and I can’t fear the power of the earth. We must know it all. Not from stories and books, but in our own flesh. We must be true to the root, and the root is not always sweet.’ He considers her. There is a spark around the black centre of his eyes.
‘Go on.’
The girl sits up straight. She forms the fingers of her right hand into a point. After a moment’s hesitation, she pushes them into the jar.
At first, it is delicious: a sense of quivering life, the leaves caressing her skin, seeking connection. She is held. There is a metallic taste of distant lightning on a summer day. Then the pain flares up, like heated needles, driving into her. It flares through her veins. She feels the sweat pinprick along her arms and back. The lights burst in her eyes, burst and swirl as if forming a tunnel that leads her down, down, down, and she is falling into clouds, acid washing her skin, soil filling her mouth, her eyes. The earth is taking her into itself. An abyss gapes before her mind’s eye. It is ringed with teeth.
She convulses and jerks away from the jar, but, at the edge of the storm, she feels a stronger hand grasp her wrist and force it back down.
The Nettle Jar is a dark fantasy novel, which explores issues of trauma, power and the domination of nature.
The first version was written as my manuscript submission for the MFA for Creative Writing At Manchester Metropolitan University. It was awarded a Distinction and the prize for best manuscript submitted that year.
Current projects
I’m exploring short form fiction and considering ideas for a second novel - see below for what I’m doing and links to publications when they come.
LIKE STARS THEY FELL - OUT SOON
My short story, ‘Like Stars They Fell’, will be available in the Inkd Publishing Anthology, Rebels, from Spring 2026. More information at the link below (note the Kickstarter campaign is closed now: I will update with details of where to get the anthology when available)
THE WEIGHT OF THE MOON
Novel in progress
Listen. There was a once a gravedigger. He lived alone in a cottage by the graveyard. A cottage dirtied by the ash that drifted from the pyres. A cottage as cold as bones.
The gravedigger was as ash-blown as his home, and his bones were just as cold. Day after day, he dug the graves and stoked the pyres. Night after night he filled the graves and raked the cinders.
It was not dealing with the dead that made his soul so bitter. The dead were done. They did not haunt him. They were quiet when the fire or the earth ate them. No, it was the smoke of the burning, the soil in his nails, the smear of dirt and sweat his hand left behind when he wiped his brow. It was the flies that bit and hovered.
The gravedigger was a sad and hollow man. There was only one thing that touched him.
It was the moon that touched him. Every darkfall, when the sky was clear, he would look up at her. She was so bright, so pure. She waxed and waned so gently. The gravedigger looked at the moon and longed to be with her. He wanted to ride in the clean air with her.
But he knew it could never be. The moon was up there, he was down here. She never knew nor noticed him. So, he dug the graves and raked the ashes and drank the smoke until he felt like choking on it.
One night, after a long day’s work, he rested on his spade and looked up. It was overcast, but at that moment, the clouds parted. And there she was: a moon as full and bright and big as he had ever seen. It filled his eyes, his mind, his heart. And at that very moment, he felt a tug at his trouser leg. He looked down.
It was a fox. The gravedigger jumped back and held up his spade to strike the creature. But as he did, he saw the moon reflected in the fox’s eyes, and he stopped. The man and the animal stood in the moon’s light and watched each other. And then the fox spoke.
OTHER STORIES
‘Permutations’
As I digested my mate, I could not help thinking: what I miss most is the way things taste. The touch of them.
‘Audiophile’
I’m waiting to get off the bus near the middle of Liverpool, making sure I’m behind the yellow line. Renshaw Street blurs past me. The driver tries to go zero to sixty in the hundred yards from one red light to the next. He slams the breaks on as if he’s saving a kid’s life. I lose my grip on the dayglo yellow bar and physics does the rest. Luckily the plastic screen stops me from impaling my own guts on the ticket machine.
Driver looks at me as though he’d forgotten he had passengers. ‘Lost my grip,’ I squeak redundantly, murdering a grin. He shakes his greasy head, face all jowls and furrows. There’s a half-drunk bottle of Lucozade propped on the dash next to an A to Z and a packet of Camels. Classy.
‘The memory of trees’
I started to hear it, you see. The ocean in the tree. The sap and the slow turning of light into energy. I held my ear to the trunk at first, but after a while I didn’t need to. The sound seemed to ooze out and surround me. Soft and slow. It resonated in my bones.