It’s that time again: December with a vengeance, and time to take stock my creative year. On the surface it feels like it was a quieter year compared to 2024, but that’s no bad thing.
Fiction-wise, in 2025 I published three new short stories. At the start of the year, Her Little Ray Of Sunshine graced the first issue of Andy Cox and Richard Wagner’s brilliant new zine, Remains and The Family Axe appeared in Boreal: An Anthology of Taiga Horror. And in the autumn, Cold Case came out in Absolute Zero, an anthology of cold horror.
All three are part of my cycle of weird inheritance stories.
My big production in 2025 was editing my urban folk horror anthology, Blood In The Bricks, and launching it at the World Fantasy Convention in Brighton.
I’m super proud of this book and so grateful to Ian Whates of NewCon Press, artist Vincent Chong and all the contributors for making it so darned good.
On the music side of things, FAWM came up trumps again and we got a new The Disappointed Skeptics Club album as a result. If sardonic singer-songwriter is your vibe give it a listen, if not no worries. The world is full of great music to discover.
Coming up in 2026? Well I’m putting the final touches to a new short story collection. Hand-me-downs will present all of my weird bequests tales together and is due out from PS Publishing in the Spring. And for those of you that enjoyed my SF novella The Packet when it was serialised in ParSec Magazine, there’s going to be a physical edition courtesy of the wonderful people NewCon Press in the Summer.
So the work waits, as ever. But there’s lots to look forward to.
ayeahmur 