I created City of Secrets to write about the strange and unsettling things I find while exploring Milton Keynes, and for a long time, I just shared these as blog posts. Now, some of these experiences have turned into stories, some of those have been published, and recently I’ve also been telling tales that go beyond the grid roads. On this page, you can find all of my stories that have gone out into the wider world and you can read about You’ll Hear Them In The Wires, my novel-in-progress here. Enjoy!
Short Story: Bless The Light
Last year, I took a brilliant writing course run by Matt Wesolowski, all about modern folklore and how to combine the best bits of traditional folk stories with a modern twist.
We had the chance to contribute our stories to an anthology, and I’m thrilled to share that it’s now been published! All the stories are set in the same fictional village, Aberstowe, and mine, Bless The Light, brings to life an ancient legend, a vengeful hare, and a newcomer who really should have listened when offered a light.
Cover art: Illustration generated by Midjourney, title details added afterwards.
You can buy a copy of the Modern Folklore anthology here.
Flash Fiction: What Burns Beneath
Longlisted for the 2025 Fish Publishing Flash Fiction competition
I only entered this year’s Fish Publishing competition on a whim because I’m a big fan of the judge, Tania Hershman. It’s a 300-word limit, and I had a piece that I’d written last year about the ghost town of Centralia which I really loved but it hadn’t found a home yet. I gave it a read over, sent it in, forgot all about it… The competition is renowned for being highly competitive and “literary”, whatever that means.
Didn’t think I stood a chance… and I’m over the moon to find out it was longlisted!! I’m so unspeakably proud, and absolutely delighted. I’ve been fascinated by Centralia since I read about it years ago, I have a whole collection of books about it, and for this story to do so well… Wow.
Cover art: Illustration generated by ChatGPT 4o, titles details added afterwards.
You can read What Burns Beneath here, download a PDF copy here, and listen to me reading it below.
Flash Fiction: What Lies Drowned May Rise
I’m absolutely delighted that this one’s been picked for the MK Lit Fest Dreams for Beltane event! After a good run with creative non-fiction, one of my dark little stories is getting an airing, and this one was a blast to write. It’s a dystopian story set in a post-flood Milton Keynes, because I’ve been reading too much VanderMeer, Hurley and Lovecraft. It’s got weird anomalies, familiar landmarks, mutant fish, drowned estates, chanting cultists and a ritual fire. And tentacles. Not bad for five hundred words.
Cover art: Illustration generated by Midjourney AI (v7), tinting and text added by me.
This story was published in the Dreams for Beltane anthology and you can buy a copy here. You can download a PDF copy of just my story here, and listen to me reading it below.
Live performances:
May 1st 2025: Dreams For Beltane: Live online event – available to stream free on Spotify
September 20th 2025: MK LitFest at Great Linford Heritage Celebration
📍Featured on MK List Fest’s Raising Voices map: a celebration of place-based writing and unheard stories.
Novel: You’ll Hear Them in the Wires
After spending some time wrangling ghosts into 500 words, I’ve decided to give them a bit more room to breathe. You’ll Hear Them In The Wires is my novel in progress, which I’m aiming to finish during 2026.
Milton Keynes was never just a city—it was designed and built to be a containment system. But modern upgrades and smart-city schemes are fracturing the original design, the old protections are breaking, and something ancient is waking beneath the grid. You’ll Hear Them In The Wires is a folk horror techno-thriller where a reluctant custodian of the city and a seeker of hidden stories must stop the city becoming a doorway to something dark, dangerous, and very hungry.
You can learn more, and read the opening chapter of You’ll Hear Them In The Wires here.
Flash Creative Non-Fiction: Following the Long Thread Home
It was a beautiful summer day last year when the MK Lit Festival announced their theme for the 2025 competition was going to be “Home”. I took myself off for a long walk up to Stanton Low, sat in St Peter’s Church ruins with my phone, and drafted the ideas that became this short piece of creative non-fiction. It’s an imaginary journey from the spot that I call home now, back through portals into other homes, other times, and other stories. I was delighted when it was shortlisted, and then so happy when the judges awarded it Highly Commended. I was also invited to read it for the festival’s Raising Voices event on April 12th 2025. A very special piece, which I’m so glad to be able to share.
You can buy the Mink#5 anthology here, download a PDF copy of Following the Long Thread Home here, or listen to me reading the story below.
Live performance:
April 12th 2025: MK LitFest’s Raising Voices event, Waterstones, Milton Keynes
Flash Fiction: Inhabited
It took me a long time to come up with an idea for the MKLitFest’s 2025 competition – the theme was “Home”, and of course, my mind went straight to haunted houses, but I didn’t have a fresh take on something that had been done so many times. Then one foggy morning, inspiration struck. It wasn’t successful in the competition, but that’s cool because it means I can share it here for you lovely people instead. Enjoy. Wait – did you hear something?
You can read Inhabited here.
Short Story: Subsumed
In 2024, I took part in a brilliant horror writing course run by Comma Press. Over twelve weeks, a group of us delved into the mechanics of writing fear and explored the things that chilled us to our bones. We each had the opportunity to include one of our stories for publication in the course anthology, and I chose to submit Subsumed, a delightfully dark tale about an entity that has dwelt in the depths of the Icelandic ocean for centuries, but has now possessed a poor soul and is hell-bent on destruction.
You can buy the anthology and read Subsumed along with five other excellent horror stories here.
Flash Fiction: In Midsummer, In Midwinter
I wrote In Midsummer, In Midwinter for the Milton Keynes Literary Festival’s ‘Never Mind the Baubles’ competition in November 2024. The theme for this event was stories celebrating the festive period, and as I’ve been reading a lot of folk horror, I wanted to tell the tale of the old Midsummer Oak. My story wasn’t selected for the event, but I enjoyed writing this piece too much not to share it.
You can read In Midsummer, In Midwinter here.
Flash Fiction: A Dark Gathering
I wrote A Dark Gathering for the Milton Keynes Literary Festival’s ‘Dreams for Lammas’ competition in August 2024. The brief was for short stories that capture something of the season of harvest, and I chose to go in a very dark direction. I was inspired by the abandoned ‘Devil’s Den’ farmhouse I’d found earlier in the year, and my story is about a group of urban explorers who go there on Lammas night, only to find that behind the dereliction and graffiti, an ancient evil is lurking.
I was delighted to be invited to read my story at the Lammas event, it was a joy to share a little bit of folk horror darkness among all the happier tales.
You can buy the MinK #4.5 anthology here, or listen to the whole event on Spotify. You can also listen to me reading the story below.
Live performance:
August 1st 2024: MK Lit Fest Dreams for Lammas online reading event
Flash Fiction: Remembering the Miller’s Daughter
I wrote a few different stories for the Dreams for Lammas event, some more successful than others. (It turns out that I have a lot to say about the topic of midsummer in Milton Keynes!) The piece I nearly submitted was this one, a dark little story inspired by sitting out by Bradwell Windmill early one summer morning. I was thinking about the old story that it was haunted by the ghost of a girl who committed suicide after a tragic quarrel between her two suitors ended with one murdered and one sentenced to death. In the final reckoning, I preferred the Devil’s Den story, but I’m quite fond of this one too!
You can read Remembering the Miller’s Daughter here.
Flash Fiction: A Lily at the Rose
I wrote A Lily at the Rose for the Milton Keynes Literary Festival’s 2024 competition, ‘Tales from the City’. Set at the iconic Milton Keynes Rose memorial, it’s a dark story about loss, grief, memories and the passage of time.
I was delighted when it was selected for inclusion in the Festival anthology, and have been honoured to be invited to read it at at the Rose for two events – the Festival’s literary walk around the city in May, and the Heritage Open Day in September. It’s also been included in the Rose’s ten year anniversary archive.
You can buy the Mink#4 ‘Tales from the City’ anthology here, download a PDF of my story here, and listen to me reading it below.
Live performances:
May 11th 2024: MK Lit Fest/Parks Trust Literary Walk
September 9th 2024: Heritage Open Days: MK Rose Guided Tour
April 23rd 2025: MK Rose/Open University Charter Day
November 2nd 2025: A City Literary Walk
📍Featured on MK List Fest’s Raising Voices map: a celebration of place-based writing and unheard stories.
Flash Creative Non-Fiction: The Scent of the City
The ‘Tales from the City’ competition was also looking for creative non-fiction pieces, so at the same time as submitting Lily at the Rose, I thought I’d give this a try as well. I decided to focus on the unique scent-scape of the city, and take my readers on a fragrant walk from the station all the way down to the beacon at Campbell Park.
It was a joy that this piece was also included in the anthology, and a real honour that the judges chose to award it a ‘Highly Commended’ result.
You can download a PDF of The Scent of the City here, listen to me reading it below, and buy the Mink#4 ‘Tales from the City’ anthology here.
Live performance:
May 11th 2025: A Green City – MK Lit Fest/Parks Trust Literary Walk
📍Featured on MK List Fest’s Raising Voices map: a celebration of place-based writing and unheard stories.
My short story collection: Taking the Red Way – Stories from the Dark Side of Milton Keynes
“Taking the Red Way: Stories from the dark side of Milton Keynes” is a collection of short stories that explore the new city of Milton Keynes, my adopted home town. In the spirit of the modern gothic, the stories take everyday encounters and experiences and look at the ways that these may actually be anything but normal. I’ve lived here for many years, and explored extensively to compile the material for this book. The ‘Red Way’ in the title refers to the network of walking and cycling ways that are part of the structure of the city, but also harks back to an older and more sinister sense that these paths may have been trodden in blood and anger in earlier times.
You can buy the collection as a paperback or eBook here.
Flash Fiction: Just Embers, Flickering
NYC Midnight runs regular writing challenges of varying lengths, but I was particularly drawn to their 500-word call in July 2024. Their challenges allocate writers a genre, an action and an object and you then have 48 hours to come up with a word story in that genre, which has to prominently feature the action and the object. My prompts were a science fiction story, to include bulletproof glass and the action of barging in.
Science fiction is way outside my comfort zone, but it was Jef’s absolute favourite genre to read. My story attempted to honour the joy he took from sci-fi stories, and is based on an idea that he had several years ago – what would it be like to be the first truly self-aware artificial agent?
You can read Just Embers, Flickering here.
The Five Minutes magazine collects transformative fragments of people’s lives, captured in no more than 100 words at a time. The rules are simple – your story has to encapsulate a real moment in your life, and be told simply, powerfully and briefly.
Off The Menu is my story of a moment at the start of Jef’s treatment that deeply changed me by forcing me to take a different view of one of the most nurturing acts in life, preparing food. I wanted to capture how seemingly small moments can have devastating, long-lasting consequences, and I was delighted that it was chosen for publication in June 2024.
I’ve also had the privilege of being a reader for Five Minutes during September 2024, and learned so much about from being on the other side of the submission process.
You can read Off The Menu here.
Micro-memoir: Not a Prayer
I’ve been through a lot these last couple of years. When really big, really important things happen now, there’s a little bit of my brain working on how I can write this into something I’ll remember. It’s a way of coping, I guess.
I had one of those awful moments in December 2024, when my sister had a serious health scare. My way of processing was to turn it into a Five Minutes micro-memoir, and every word of this tiny story is true. It’s about how the most mundane things can become sacred when you put all your hope onto them as talismans for good luck. My not-a-prayer was supplemented by some actual prayers from amazing friends and family, and I’m pleased to say that none of those worst outcomes I was fearing didn’t come to pass. Whether it was the talismanic chocolate, collective good wishes or just good fortune, we got lucky. This time.
Huge thanks to Susanna and the team for again selecting my moment for including in their excellent publication, that really did mean the world to me. I’m also delighted that I’m going to be a reader again for new submissions later this year, and I’m really looking forward to seeing more amazing fragments of people’s lives.
You can read Not a Prayer here.