For a Breath of air

By Nic Steven When I came around, I lay bound and gagged, slumped in the corner of a bare room. No windows, stale air, a cellar probably. A faint light from somewhere illuminated the room. There, a small window, high up above a door at the top of a bare wooden staircase, with a rickety […]

Valentine’s Day Blog hop

Careful What You Wish For Rosie strolled along the High Street, watching other girls parading and being whistled at or called to by the boys. They laughed and exchanged banter, some of them walking off in pairs. Nobody whistled or called to Rosie. She was glad of this, but it would have been nice if […]

The Old Ways

by Nic Steven Amanda heard the doorbell. She had been told not to answer but was feeling rebellious. Her parents had left her alone on Samhain to work at a nearby standing stone. They said they trusted her. Well fine, but she was bored. A girl, roughly her age stood in a black cloak and […]

Storytime Blog Hop – July

The Pooka Plays Pool by Nic Steven The pooka was playing his favourite game and his team were losing. This was of course far from impossible, but his pub side were top of the pool league in the town and their opponents sat near the bottom. They had a new player and looking at the […]

Collateral Damage by Nic Steven

APRIL STORYTIME BLOG HOP Collateral Damage by Nic Steven Dijark the terminator activated his search screens. He would be the one to activate the solution to our problem. I was just the ship’s captain, the transport driver if you like. The preparatory work had been going on for a few years. The seed agents had […]

January Blog HOP

It’s that time again, where a group of Speculative fiction writers join post a flash length story to go live at the same time. My contribution is below, followed by links to the others. Syrojax lends a claw by Nic Steven Syrojax the dragon was woken by a loud noise outside his cave. Reluctantly he […]

Indie authors’ advent calendar

I have a story maybe two in the above calendar. Also a story or two in the bonus material (available at the end, if you sign up for alerts). It starts on Sunday 1st December 2019 so take a look at the website. https://adventcalendar.katharinagerlach.com/ The theme is ‘Dragons’. in the bonus material there will be […]

Oct. Blog Hop – Henry Moves House

Storytime Blog Hop – October Henry Moves House by Nic Steven Henry had liked lively places when he was alive, and he had not changed after death. He loved it when the kids came to his house. Okay he did scare them away. He was dead after all and there wasn’t much fun to be […]

Twitfic

What is Twitfic or Twitter Fiction? It is a form of micro-fiction where the writer tries to tell a complete story within the confines of a tweet (280 characters. One example of this came long before Twitter was thought of. From memory, it was Ernest Hemingway – For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn. My little […]

REview. penric and the shaman

Penric and the Shaman by Lois McMaster Bujold 5 Stars The second of five novellas involving Penric, the youngest son of a minor noble family, and the demon he calls, Desdemona. This is a mini-series, set within the larger series of the World of the Five Gods. Penric is continuing his studies of sorcery while […]