Introducing Suspension

Suspension is my first collection of short stories. For years now, ever since about 2017, I've long been anxious about now having a short story collection. I don't know why, it's maybe been a bugbear because I drilled it into myself that if you can't tell a story in two pages, you're not a real writer. This is, of course, ridiculous. Tolkien never wrote short stories, as much as I know (at least, not famous short stories), and he's the most famous writer of all time. Dickens never wrote short stories (or at least, famous short stories), and he's almost really famous. These days, short stories are only for the New Yorker with things like "Cat Person".

Thing is, by 2017, I already had a bunch of short stories that I had written in university. Some of the stories in this book go back to 2015. For instance, the "Bats" short-story was written right after Eldritch Nights. Most of them, however, are new. I'm proud that I received £20 for "Ultrasound", which made the longlist for Elegant Magazine.

You can tell I wrote these short stories as they have my familiar obsessions. A rollercoaster. Rock music. Gardens. Animals. There's lots of that.

I'm currently writing another short story collection but with a much larger title story, one which is more of a novella. Still, there's going to be far more short stories accompanying it.