Ashes of the Ancestors
In a haunted monastery at the heart of a crumbling empire, a lone priest tends the fires for the dead. A servant bound by the bones of her family, Magdalisa is her people’s last link to the wisdom of the past.
But as the land around them dies, new arrivals throw the monastery into turmoil. A dead warlord demanding recognition. Her rival, seizing the scraps of power. Two priests, both claiming to serve the spirits, both with their own agendas.
As ancient shadows struggle for the soul of an empire, Magdalisa must decide how far she will go to keep tradition alive.
Ashes of the Ancestors, a novella about memory and tradition, coming from Luna Press Publishing in February 2023. Place your preorder now.
Silver and Gold
“Politically charged, vivid and hopeful, a delight: just the kind of thing we need right now!” — Anna Smith Spark, author of the Empires of Dust trilogy
The goldsmith Cualli lives in a land of endless summer, where blood sacrifices hold back the dark of winter. Through her craft, she grants power to priests and soldiers, channelling the magic of Emperor Sun. But when the season of sacrifice threatens the lives of her closest friends, Cualli must face a choice: will she fight for change through the illegal magic of silver, or will she bask in her own triumph and the endless golden summer?
Silver and Gold, a novella of friendship, magic, and rebellion, is published by Candlemark and Gleam. E-book available in multiple formats through their site. Also available via Amazon.
The Bear’s Claws
It’s 1982 but not as we know it. The Third World War has broken out and Soviet forces are pouring into West Germany. On the fighting front, an idealistic squad leader struggles against undisciplined troops, a corrupt superior officer, and NATO’s military might, while back in Leningrad, his sister is drawn into the seeds of a new revolution. Will they make it through the war, and what sort of world will they find at the end?
The Bear’s Claw is available as a paperback through Amazon and an ebook through all good online stores.
The Epiphany Club Books
The Epiphany Club follows Victorian adventurers Dirk Dynamo, Sir Timothy Blaze-Simms and Isabelle McNair as they search for the lost Great Library of Alexandria. Faced with every sort of peril, from mutated bears to wily ninjas, can they find the Library and its fabulous secrets before their criminal opponents do?
The full story is available as a series of novellas or a single collected edition.
Book 1: Guns and Guano
Dirk Dynamo is enjoying a life of learning with the gentlemen adventurers of the Epiphany Club. Joining an expedition to find the Great Library of Alexandria, Dirk finds himself on the island of Hakon, where colonial life is not what it seems. With monsters in the jungle, conspiracies in the mansion and ninjas dogging his trail, can Dirk and his friends find the first clue to the Library before they meet a deadly fate?
Guns and Guano is available from all good ebook stores.
Book 2: Suits and Sewers
Adventurer Dirk Dynamo is glad to be back in civilisation, with the first two clues to the location of the Great Library of Alexandria. But when ninjas kidnap his best friend and steal a priceless artefect, Dirk is forced to pursue them across London and into the sewers below. Faced with deadly assassins and the strange followers of London’s Underlord, can Dirk save Sir Timothy and the tablet before he finds himself on the wrong end of a shuriken?
Suits and Sewers is available from all good ebook stores.
Book 3: Aristocrats and Artillery
Adventurer Dirk Dynamo is back in Paris, in pursuit of the final clue to the location of the lost Great Library. But Paris is a city at war, with Prussian troops closing in from the east and the King in Shadow preparing to rise up in revolt. As violence reaches the city streets, can Dirk retrieve the last tablet, or will the path to the Great Library fall into the hands of a criminal mastermind?
Aristocrats and Artillery is available from all good ebook stores.
Book 4: Sieges and Silverware
In the face of war and betrayal, adventurer Dirk Dynamo is still looking for the clues that will take him to the lost Great Library of Alexandria. Arriving at an isolated German castle, he finds his life threatened not just by the enemies prowling its corridors, but by an army laying siege outside the walls. Surrounded by traitors, monsters and falling artillery shells, can Dirk escape with his life and with the artefacts he needs, or will he be one more casualty of a nation being born in iron and blood?
Sieges and Silverware is available from all good ebook stores.
Book 5: Dead Men and Dynamite
Adventurer Dirk Dynamo finally has all the clues he needs, and is heading into Egypt to find the lost Great Library of Alexandria. But as he sets out on the final leg of his trail, others are there ahead of him, people who would use the knowledge of the Great Library to nefarious ends. As he races spies and gangsters through the land of the Pharaohs, Dirk must decide how far he will go for knowledge, and what he really values most in the world – life, love or learning.
Dead Men and Dynamite is available from all good ebook stores.
The Epiphany Club
Dirk Dynamo is used to adventure. He’s chased villainous masterminds across the mountains of Europe, stalked gangsters through the streets of Chicago, and faced the terrible battlefields of the Civil War. But now he’s on a mission that will really shake his world.
For centuries, the Great Library of Alexandria was thought lost. Now a set of clues has been discovered that could lead to its hiding place. With the learned adventurers of the Epiphany Club, Dirk sets out to gather the clues, track down the Library, and reveal its secrets to the world.
Roaming from the jungles of West Africa to the sewers beneath London, The Epiphany Club is a modern pulp adventure, a story of action, adventure, and romance set against the dark underbelly of the Victorian age.
Collects all five novellas in the Epiphany Club series. Available in all good ebook stores and as a print edition via Amazon.
Gods of Rome
Ocean Gods, Roman Blades
Ancient history meets epic fantasy in an action packed novella of war, magic and one man’s struggle to find himself.
Varus is the fiercest soldier in the Roman legion, and the most undisciplined. Fighting Thracian pirates on the high seas, he faces attacks not just from spears and arrows, but from divine magic. With the enemy closing in, Varus finds himself in a desperate battle for survival, made worse by his own divided instincts. Will Roman blades be strong enough to survive against ocean gods?
Ocean Gods, Roman Blades is available as an ebook from Amazon.
Short Story Collections
Riding the Mainspring
A steam-powered cowboy with a taste for death.
A daring art heist in a moving city.
A zeppelin flight through the smoke-filled skies of a Europe torn apart by volcanoes.
This collection brings together nine stories of mechanical endeavour and daring do from worlds where pistons and clockwork are king. Each short story explores a different steampunk possibility, from the Wild West to the sewers below Venice. Starring scientists, detectives, criminals, and more machines than you can shake a pair of brass goggles at.
So get on board and ride the mainspring to adventure.
You can read more about this collection of steampunk short stories, including what other readers thought here. It’s available for the Kindle through Amazon or you can get a copy for free by signing up to my mailing list.
From a Foreign Shore
What if someone had conquered the Vikings, someone claiming to be their gods?
What if King Arthur’s knights met a very different metal-clad warrior?
What if you were ordered to execute a statue, and hanging just didn’t seem to work?
These short stories explore different aspects of history, some of them grounded in reality, some alternative takes on the past as we know it. Stories of daring and defiance; of love and of loss; of noble lords and exasperated peasants.
You can read more about From a Foreign Shore, including what other readers thought here. It’s available on Kindle through Amazon.
By Sword, Stave or Stylus
A gladiator painting with manticore blood.
A demon detective policing Hell.
A ninja who can turn into shadow.
Prepare to be swept away to worlds beyond our own in these thirteen short fantasy stories.
Action, art and mystery all feature in this collection. You can read more about it, including what other readers thought here. It’s available as an ebook via Amazon.
Lies We Will Tell Ourselves
A spin doctor forced to deal with aliens who loathe lies.
A squad of soldiers torn apart by the fiction in their midst.
A hunting submarine with its dead captain strapped to the prow, the crew promising that one day they’ll revive him.
We all tell lies to get through the day, some of them to ourselves, some to other people. Now read the extraordinary lies of the future in these nine short science fiction stories, available on Amazon. You can read more about the collection here.
A Mosaic of Stars
A demon detective and a steam-powered samurai. An engineer from the distant past and a pilot from the far future. Love, loss, pain and triumph in worlds beyond our own. Enjoy brief trips to other realities in these fifty-nine flash stories including fantasy, steampunk, science fiction and historical fiction.
A Mosaic of Stars collects the first fourteen months’ worth of my weekly flash stories. It’s available as a Kindle e-book.
Beasts Clothed in Beauty
A collection of all the fiction I published on my blog in 2016 – a mixture of science fiction, fantasy, steampunk, and historical fiction. There are refugees on the spaceship to Io, smugglers on the Phoenix Shore, and some very cold legionaries stuck on Hadrian’s Wall, along with dozens of other characters and settings. There are even reappearances by characters from some of my previous stories, such as cynical British space diplomat Julian Atticus and the demon detective Shadowvalt.
Beasts Clothed in Beauty is available as an ebook from Amazon.
Old Odd Ends
A magic-wielding card shark living by her wits. A diplomat frustrated by criminal aliens. A private investigator in a city built on rusting machines. Meet these characters and more in fifty short stories set in worlds beyond our own.
Old Odd Ends collects all the short stories I published on my blog in 2017. It’s available as an ebook from a wide range of stores.
All the Beautiful Sunsets
A fairy noble hunting for spies. A soldier digging for his life beneath a battlefield. A man learning the cost of renting out his brain. Meet all these characters and more in fifty-two short stories set in worlds beyond our own.
All the Beautiful Sunsets collects all the short stories I published on my blog in 2018. It’s available as an ebook from a wide range of stores.
Maps of Broken Places
A clockwork city winding down into entropy. A forest where moving statues stand sentry over the dead. A post-apocalyptic garbage heap. Visit all these places and more in fifty-two short stories set in worlds beyond our own.
Maps of Broken Places collects all the flash fiction I published on my blog in 2019. It’s available from all good ebook stores.
One Cog Dreaming
A shipwrecked sailor hunting for a way home from a land of talking animals. A rebel desperate to carve out her own path in a steam-powered city. A casualty from the trenches of World War One looking for a reason to live. A time traveller seeking knowledge in the past while trying to protect history from the future.
Meet all these people and more in fifty-two short stories, ranging from the ancient past to the far future and into words utterly unlike our own.
One Cog Dreaming collects all the flash fiction I published on my blog in 2020. You can buy it as an ebook from all the usual ebook places.
Standalone Short Stories
These stories are published as e-books through Amazon and Smashwords, and are available for free in most e-book stores.
Mud and Brass
How far would you go for love, or for justice, or for the perfect gearwheel?
Thomas Niggle grew up a mudlark, hunting for scrap on the polluted banks of the River Burr. One of the countless poor living in the shadows of Mercer Shackleton’s vast factories, he has dragged himself out of poverty using his mechanical skills. An encounter with Gloria Shackleton, the Mercer’s daughter, offers Niggle the possibility of love, but it also offers something else, deep in the heart of the Mercer’s domain.
What hope can the future hold for a boy raised amidst the mud and brass?
You can read more about this steampunk short story, including what other readers thought here. It’s available for the Kindle through Amazon and on other formats via Smashwords.
Silence on Second Street
Foul mouthed Holden Flynn is a policeman on the rocks. His marriage has fallen apart, and now he’s the only detective in occupied Greykirk, a city scarred by interplanetary war. Trusted by no-one, supported by no-one, Flynn is faced with the tangled loyalties of an occupied planet and the broken technology of a shattered city. Everyone knows who killed Annie Talbot, but can Holden Flynn work out why, and catch the man responsible before another tragedy takes place?
Silence on Second Street, a science fiction short story, is available as a free ebook on Amazon and Smashwords.
Demons and the Deep
An apprentice magician on a Mediterranean pirate galley, Saul is learning the art of controlling demons. Pursued by the armies of Rome, his shipmates fight to retain their freedom, while Saul struggles with oppression at the hands of his master. When even demons are bound in chains, can a young man make himself truly free?
A short story of magic, power and resistance in the world of ancient Rome.
Demons and the Deep is available for free on Amazon and Smashwords.
Honour Among Thieves
Hob was a simple peasant farmer until idealism turned him into a rebel. Now he’s an outlaw living in Sherwood Forest, seeking justice at the end of an arrow.
Under the leadership of Robert Deyville, Hob enjoys the outlaw life, feasting beneath the stars and robbing the supporters of a corrupt regime. But as he grows closer to his companions, the darkness of their life starts to show. With not just friendship but his life at risk, Hob struggles to separate right from wrong. Can he do what is right and survive to see the results? Is there such a thing as honour among thieves?
‘Honour Among Thieves’, a historical short story, is available for free as a Kindle e-book via and Amazon and in epub format from Smashwords.