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In October I'll be publishing my first full length volume of new fiction in 25 years. It's called Warning Signs, it'll be published by Comma Press and you can pre-order your copy here.
Comprising 7 totally original 'long short' stories created especially for this project, Warning Signs was written to thrill, chill, intrigue, delight, uplift, inspire and entertain - to carry readers up, through and out, with bold characters, strong settings, a dash of wildness, some fine conflicts and plenty of back and forth. In my stories, stuff happens. I had a blast crafting them and I hope you have a blast reading them, especially if you love... let's see, who would the dream team be... Angela Carter, Edgar Allen Poe, Italo Calvino, Alan Moore, Diana Wynne Jones, the League of Gentlemen, Susan Hill, Stephen King, Shirley Jackson, Daphne du Maurier, The Wicker Man, Black Mirror, Blumhouse, the TV series Atlanta, Stranger Things, Dario Argento and other giallo cinema, The Love Witch, Ana Lily Amirpour, Hammer Horror and all contemporaries, spin-offs, spoofs and tributes thereof.
I'm incredibly happy to make this announcement and there are more details to come - watch this space. I love the 'long short' format as both a reader and writer and I am delighted to be working with Comma Press. We have collaborated before on three anthologies in recent years - Resist (2020 - in my story Occupied Territory, a warrior woman in Roman-occupied ancient Britain joins Boudica's army), The Cuckoo Cage (2022 - in my story Lady Swing a seemingly meek household staff member allegedly descended from witches terrorises a modern day country grand estate alongside a community of local secret rebels and a mythical beast) and Collision (2023 - in my story Afterglow, mad scientists jockey for position at CERN with bonkers slash disastrous consequences). The three stories I wrote for those anthologies are not in my forthcoming book as I wanted to give you all-new work. I credit Comma Press with getting me back into fiction in a way I've really enjoyed and that seems to have found a sweet spot with readers and critics too.
Warning Signs follows my short film series Aurora (2020-2023), first short film An Impossible Poison (2017) my fifth book Asylum and Exile: Hidden Voices (2015) and the bound essay The Future of Serious Art (2020). You can find my other career stuff and job factoids right here if you must. I know I haven't exactly been away from public life - quite the opposite - but in terms of publishing a full length volume of new fiction, it's been a minute. Or a quarter of a century. For a quick overview of that side of things you can look at the My Writing Life interview I did for the Royal Literary Fund and maybe also this for Renaissance One, and for a bibliography you can look here. I started my journalism career in my mid-teens and published two novels at 18 and 21 (respectively: Seahorses in 1997 with Flamingo/HarperCollins after that famous book-deal-at-16, then Too Fast To Live in 2000 with Duckworth) but at the time I never felt that longform literary fiction was quite me, despite working with amazing editors, agents and PRs, making good friends among my contemporaries, having a fantastic time generally and being supported by respectful and considerate critics and readers. I'm so pleased that things have come around.
I signed the Warning Signs deal at the end of 2023 and spent the whole of 2024 doing deep dives into each story with total focus, writing large (almost novel length every time) and then cutting down, compressing and polishing carefully to deliver all thriller no filler. Cheesy phrase, but that slightly lurid psychodrama quality is what I'm into. Above all, I want to entertain and I very much hope you enjoy the collection when it comes out.
