Welcome to episode 21: the beginning of part III.

Salome is a Gothic horror novel set in 1880s Liverpool. When a novice murders a sister at her own convent in Turin, she expects the gallows. Instead she is brought to a clandestine convent on the banks of the River Mersey. Her name is Salome, and she has a gift, but she must choose a side.

Salome is a prequel novel to support the Muldoon supernatural thriller series (Book 3 is coming soon!) and will be released in ebook/paperback in October 2026.

Chapter 1

Book 3? I need to catch up!

Index

I climbed the stairs again, sure that I had created enough distance between myself and Muldoon. The strain on my heart forced me to slow down. I was tired, but I could not even consider sleeping. I would pretend I hadn’t been down there. I would pretend I hadn’t seen. Awash with pity and an equal measure of curiosity, I thought of Catherine’s scars and I wondered how he’d acquired his. From creatures such as that which chased us into the kitchen?

…From something worse?

In the darkness, I sat on the top step of the first-floor staircase, catching my breath. The severity of the situation sat heavy. I wiped sweat from my forehead and learned back. Soft fur brushed against one of my hands. Jethro. He purred as he looped around my arm, butting my back with his face. I reached for him and put him on my lap, stroking him from head to tail. I wanted to squeeze him harder, to cry into his soft belly, but I restrained myself. His rhythmic purring calmed me. He stayed still and let me scratch his chin, his purrs growing louder.

“Bless you,” I whispered to my little friend. “What am I going to do?”

He yawned and turned his face away, still purring.

I sat there for some time, staring out of the window of the landing, the moonlight glowing through it and onto the staircase until I heard someone coming.

Muldoon.

He arrived on the lower landing of the staircase wearing a new, clean shirt. Father John’s, and slightly too big for him. He’d made an effort to tuck it in and fasten his suspenders over his shoulders. “How is she?” he asked, his face partly obscured by the shadows.

“Sleeping,” I said, not even knowing if it was true.

The cat remained on my lap. Muldoon didn’t attempt to approach us. He stayed where he was, and leaned against the wall.

“How can you project like that?” I asked.

He bowed his head for a moment. “I’ve always been able to do it. I just didn’t realise for a good while.”

I stopped my eyes from rolling. Of course he could. He was great at everything.

“When did you realise?”

“When I visited my grandmother. I visited for a couple of years while I was at boarding school.”

“Boarding school? What is that?”

“It’s like school, but you only go home for Christmas and Easter. Sometimes in summer, too.”

My heart sank. “How old were you?”

“About ten or eleven. I went to her when I needed to run away.” He folded his arms and scoffed. “I ran away from school all the time. She was always in her little house in Holywood. Always happy to see me.” He half-laughed. “You’d think I’d have noticed how perfect the conditions were. She could do it too.”

“So you never left school?”

“Most of the time? No.” He shook his head, a weak smile pervading. “Thought I had. Most of it was dreamwalking.”

“But I don’t understand… how did you… how are you here?”

“Oh that’s a long story. Nana was dying, and she went to a hospice. I met a monk there. He sent me to Rome.”

I looked at him, baffled. Both of us stayed still, neither speaking. The cat’s purring had lessened, but it was the only sound for a few seconds.

“Anyway, I’d better…” he began to turn away and waved a hand. “It’s late.”

“Buonanotte.”

“Goodnight.”

I heard the front door close, and released a deep breath.

Jethro climbed down and hurried down the stairs, meowing. I reluctantly rose from the top step and followed him, a soft groan in my throat as he turned toward the kitchen. He wanted to go out.

I went to the back door with him and opened it. The cat scurried out into the yard and leapt onto the wall, sitting to clean himself. I bade him goodnight, closed the door and bolted it, coming back through the building to lock the front door also. I pulled the lace curtains to one side and looked out of the window onto the street. The pink tinge of dawn stained the indigo sky, but it was still too weak to be regarded as morning light. I yawned and wondered what I would do next, my mind too busy to close.

I approached the first-floor landing again, remembering that I’d seen Mother Hildegard’s light on when we returned from the cemetery. Now there was only darkness behind the door. I surmised that she must have retired to bed without troubling us, and I turned to go into Catherine’s room instead.

Father John sat in a chair in the corner, his head slumped over his chest as he snored lightly. I looked from him to Catherine and went to her bedside. She slept soundly, her face slightly bruised. She did not stir when I kissed her forehead.

I left them both to sleep and went upstairs, passing my own floor. I wondered if the library would be open.

I knocked on the door first, with three little taps. Enough to stir anyone behind the door, but not so loud to cause alarm. Nothing.

I tried the handle.

The door opened.

The fire, although losing its vigour after hours without more coal, washed the room with a warm glow, the shadows of the bookcases and chairs dancing in its flickering flames. The shadows extended into the vaulted ceiling, reminding me of my old convent in Turin. A place where I had been safe. I went and sat in the closest armchair and basked in the warmth.

I woke up in the armchair, the bright sunlight almost burning my face as it beamed through the stained glass. The fire had died out, and I was cold. I pulled the chair’s crochet throw over myself and huddled there for a few minutes.

I jumped out of my skin when someone called, “Do you take sugar, child?”

Sister Therese. Deaf as a post, Sister Bridget said. I scrambled out of the chair and walked over to the alcove leading to a back room. She was in there fiddling with crockery while a kettle began to boil on the stove. She turned when she caught me in her peripheral. “Yes,” I said, nodding. I did not usually take sugar, but my muscles trembled terribly with the fatigue, and I needed the energy.

“Go and sit down. I’ll be back in a moment.”

I did as she said and returned to the library, reaching for the coal scuttle and emptying some more lumps into the embers. They caught alight and glowed before thickening the flames.

I sat back down in the chair and tightened the blanket, looking at the sunbeams on the carpet. My stomach sank. I remembered.

Catherine.

I was crossing the room to get to the door when Father John entered the library, gently closing the door behind him. I watched him move with what seemed like agonisingly slow effort, my knees threatening to give way while I waited for the outcome. My stomach lurched, all breath leaving my body.

“Good morning,” he said, a tired smile crossing his lips. “We live to see another day.”

“All of us?”

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

←Previous Chapter

Next Chapter⇾

Ways to support this fiction newsletter.

As well as the option to upgrade your subscription to paid, I do also have books that you can purchase as well as a ko-fi and paypal.

Ko Fi Tip Jar

Paypal Tip Jar

If you’re enjoying Salome, you really would enjoy The Muldoon Mysteries series. There are currently two books (standalones) in this series. Click the image below to find out more about them, and find them on Tiny Worlds.

My books are now available at

This essay mostly focuses on the horror elements in The Bloody Chamber and how they were always there in the fairy tales she reimagined. Carter is not generally a name you would think of if someone said ‘British horror authors’ but this collection of stories is classic Gothic horror blended with visceral feminism and a dark aftertaste.

Five things Angela Carter taught me about Horror:

1. Feminism and horror are heavily interlinked.

2. Horror is personal, and the personal is political.

3. Women are driven by different fears to men.

4. Female horror is based on abuse and subjugation.

5. You cannot erase the darkness of the fairy tale.

I studied Carter as part of my English Literature degree at Liverpool Hope University. It was probably the darkest, most visceral literature I’d come across on the course so far, therefore really standing out to me. Her novel The Passion Of New Eve really drove home the violence of the female body and female-centred horror of vulnerability, loss of bodily autonomy and objectification.

‘Carter’s texts were known for the excessiveness of their violence and, latterly, the almost violent
exuberance of their excess. Many a reader has found the savagery with
which she can attack cultural stereotypes disturbing, even alienating.
Personally I found (and find) it exhilarating - you never knew what was
coming next from the avant-garde literary terrorist of feminism.’ - Merja Makinen.

Subscribe now

Feminism and horror are heavily interlinked.

Carter’s reimaginings of classic fairy tales brought abuse and violence to the foreground, sometimes reshaping the female protagonist as the predator (The Lady Of The House Of Love) or carving out enough room for the female character to grow (The Courtship Of Mr Lyon) after an initial period of immaturity and selfishness.

In The Bloody Chamber, the woman enters the husband’s world to find her place in it. In the story, the narrator describes ‘the viscera of the castle’--a body that she then explores. Discovering his dead wives, she knows she will suffer the same fate, but who would help her? She asks ‘Who, on this distant coast would believe the white-faced girl from Paris who came running to them with a suffering tale of blood, of fear, of the ogre murmuring in the shadows?’ The system supports the aristocracy of lords ‘who must be obeyed’ and her powerlessness creates a sense of inevitability, the image of the fantastical ‘ogre’ supporting her fear that they’d think she was hysterical.

The terror of not being believed haunts the female Gothic and female horror stories: The Woman In White, when Laura can’t prove she’s really Laura, watching others sign her death certificate, or in Dracula, it’s Lucy Westenra’s three suitors who cannot believe that her illness is caused by something supernatural, her fiance still refusing to believe it when she becomes a vampire. Could Lucy have been helped earlier if they’d accepted her version of events before Van Helsing had to step in?

Sexual desire and female sexuality.

Many classic horror novels focus on the unnatural desires of female characters ie Carmilla, the lesbian vampire, or Lucy Westenra, the devourer of children (a modern interpretation being the rejection of the role of mother in Victorian society). Female desire was feared, as women were traditionally seen as vessels for male desire, having no desires of their own (challenged famously by Marie Stopes, author of the once-banned book Married Love [1918]). Desire can be presented as monstrous and unnatural, and we see this notion explored in Carter’s the lady of The House of Love.

In her fairy tales particularly, Carter also put a lot of emphasis on the beast being the driver, or the symbolism of the female desire (as opposed to a heavily repressed/uniformed male lead such as a Prince or a King). Carter presents ‘leonine’ male characters to give the heroines something wild and untamed: a male vessel for their desire, something overlooked in traditional teachings of male and female sexuality. Both Mr Lyon of The Courtship of Mr Lyon and the tiger in the Tiger’s Bride are outsiders compared to the other male characters, a playground for the heroines to explore. The beasts in horror stories or some other outside threat (the vampire) can represent repressed female sexual desire and the process of engaging with it.

Horror is personal. The personal is political.

This slogan came about in the 1960s as part of second-wave feminism highlighting how every aspect of a woman’s life (domestic labour, reproductive rights, pay, opportunities, marriage, education) was political and required political intervention in order to generate change. Horror centred on women is often personal, and affects their bodily autonomy, emotional well-being, rights and freedoms.

Both classic fairy tales and Carter’s retellings emphasise the personal lives of the female characters and how patriarchal systems directly affect them on an intimate level: the narrator in The Bloody Chamber marrying for security and wealth, the young girl in The Snow Child being a product of a man’s wish, (and his to do as he pleases) and Mr Lyon and the tiger of The Tiger’s Bride presenting the heroines of the other stories with a wilder, riskier alternative than the traditional options available to them, symbolising the beast, or the object of their own desires.

The transformation of child to woman.

A common theme across these stories and many female Gothic stories is the loss of innocence, whether it be psychological or physical. A transformation of some sort takes place, and in Carter’s work it usually involves menstruation or marriage (or both). The narrator of The Bloody Chamber leaves her mother’s house, a childhood home, to become property of a wealthy man. Her worth rests on whether she bears an heir or not. She cannot see her own desires, only the desires she hopes her new husband has for her.

Breasts, blood and bodies are frequently mentioned to show us the physical and emotional turbulence of the female body, once unable to be explored by its own owner within historic societies and passive heroines of 19th century fairy tales (Little Red Riding Hood allows herself to be eaten and is rescued by the woodsman) but now, it is a vessel of power wielded by the heroines who control their own destinies.

The Female Predator.

The Lady Of The House Of Love presents us with a female predator, descended from a long line of aristocratic vampires, her basic needs as clear to her as they are restrictive. She’s a vampire countess, a woman now, and ‘she must have men’, devouring the young men who are lured into her castle. She dresses up for them in her negligee, leading them to her boudoir of death. This is my favourite tale as it is a twist on Sleeping Beauty, and while it reeks of human remains and rotted earth, the roses still bloom in the garden. You can almost see the skin caught between her teeth, but our vampiric countess is forever changed by the good-natured beauty of a kind-hearted young man, wanting nothing from her in exchange for his goodness. The passive, pure virgin is now a young man, and she must choose whether or not to defy her nature or accept it.

Women are driven by different fears than men.

Generally speaking, when it comes to horror, we can share a lot of fears that are predominantly human fears e.g. the dark, natural disaster, zombies, space horror. However, there are many fears that vary depending on the sex of the audience and the writer. You can see that female and male fears centre on different things. Female fear is mostly centred on vulnerability (The Bloody Chamber), the loss of bodily autonomy (Rosemary’s Baby) and inescapable domestic threat (Copycat). Male fear is slightly different, focusing on the loss of authority (The Shining), the unknown (Dracula) and physical inadequacy (Misery).

The female experience will often focus on vulnerability (whether this is the vulnerability the character herself is aware of or the audience’s perception of her vulnerability) and the constant threat of sexual assault, domestic violence or imprisonment. Carter emphasises the vulnerability of the heroines in a range of ways, but it often comes back to the patriarchal structure they’re held by. For example, the heroine in The Tiger’s Bride, once her father’s property, is lost in a bet and she is won by the tiger. The loss of your freedom and your future fully depending on your new owner is terrifying, and though not horror in any sense, this dark realisation permeates through literature (Pride And Prejudice: Mrs Bennett’s old age livelihood will be at the mercy of her husband’s nephew when Mr Bennett dies) and reminds us that women’s freedom and independence is still relatively new in the Western world. Feminist horror (and other speculative genres) tends to remind us that at any moment, the freedoms we enjoy could be taken away (The Handmaid’s Tale).

The Bloody Chamber collection focuses mostly on female vulnerability, and flips it on its head. Wolf-Alice and The Lady Of The House Of Love position the female as the night terror. The Bloody Chamber focuses on breaking the cycle of vulnerability, as it’s the mother who comes to take down Bluebeard, fighting against the system (patriarchal aristocracy) as much as she’s fighting her daughter’s attacker.

Female centred horror features female subjugation and abuse.

Emotional and physical abuse feature heavily in female-centred horror, and in fairy tales (a core genre I would argue is the trunk from which the horror tree branches), the female character is often unable to do anything about it. The mother is usually absent or just as passive, and the heroine suffers at the hands of a cruel parent-figure (Snow White, Cinderella, Rapunzel).

In Rumpelstiltskin, the boastful miller outright lies to the king to get him to take his daughter off his hands. The miller’s lies about how clever his daughter is and her ability to spin gold from straw will result in the death penalty if found to be untrue. The girl is offered the chance to become the king’s wife if she proves she can spin gold from straw, and if she can’t, he’ll execute her. What say did the miller’s daughter have in this? None whatsoever. Even better, now there’s a weird goblin man called Rumpelstiltskin who will help her, but only if she promises to give him her first child when she marries. Lovely. Another victim. Though the story ends with her becoming queen and discovering the little man’s name in order to free herself from her obligation of giving him the child (what did he want with it anyway? It doesn’t bear thinking about), she is still smiling within her gilded cage that other men made for her.

Carter takes the female prisoner or victim and gives her emancipation: whether that is through her own bodily autonomy, her choice of sexual partner, or her awareness of what is happening to her.

‘I have seen the cage you are weaving for me; it is a very pretty one and I shall sit, hereafter, in my cage of other singing birds but I - I shall be dumb through spite.’ - The Erl-King

The Erl-King perfectly emphasises the classic idea of the ‘gilded cage’: a prison that may not be of the imprisoned’s own choosing, but it is a societal or structural confine they’ve either brought upon themselves or been deceptively lured into. The heroine in the Erl-King loves her captor dearly, but she has known from the start that he ‘will do [her] grievous harm’, so she uses her feminine charms to calm him, and stroke his hair. She chooses her own trap for him: tenderness and violence that results in a dead Erl-king and the girl freeing all of the other imprisoned birds (girls).

You cannot erase the darkness of the fairy tale.

Fairy tales have been passed down for centuries, originating from even older folk tales. They’ve been adapted to suit the palate of the audience of each period in time, but their inherent darkness has never allowed for a full whitewash. Disney and other modern retellings for children have produced heavily-sanitised tales (Ariel’s happily ever after instead of turning into sea foam for example) but underneath the birdsong and fluttering eyelashes, it’s dark. Mothers are often absent, stepmothers are often cruel and motivated by jealousy of young women, and fathers are either passive or instrumental in upholding the patriarchal prison of the heroine. The forest, the unknown and the forces of the supernatural still haunt the fairy tale: bargains with beasts, gilded cages, loss of innocence, bites, pricks, poisons and even death just to name a few.

All of these elements work wonderfully well in horror fiction, too.

Carter not only embraced the fairy tale structure fully, but in her retellings for an adult audience, she brought the visceral, violent feminism to the forefront, and it fits within the genre of horror perfectly.

Leave a comment

Share

Other Horror articles:

• What Anne Rice taught me about horror.

• What is Gothic?

• What is Gothic Egyptomania?

• Horror Romance in Rice’s The Mummy.

This is a snippet of the full post I wrote for my blog, but I thought I’d share it with you, especially those of you who enjoy dark tales, the Gothic and of course, the broad church that is Horror fiction.

Anne Rice is a name many of us in the Western world have heard of when it comes to horror. While not everyone’s number one horror author, she’s up there in the hall of fame for her revolutionary vampire novel Interview With The Vampire. Here are some things that Rice taught me about horror as an author and a reader:

1. Horror can be as simple as the hell you have to exist in.

2. Horror is as much about the self as it is about what is happening to you.

3. Horror doesn’t have to have teeth and claws to be terrifying.

4. Good horror can be as simple as good vs evil.

5. We love dark stories. They’re part of our culture.

Subscribe now

Horror is the hell you exist in.

I first read Interview With The Vampire in 2023. I’d already seen the film and the latest television adaptation featuring Sam Reid and Jacob Anderson, and I’ve wanted to read it for years. Louis de Pointe du Lac is the most tragic, tortured, humanesque character you’re going to find in a vampire novel. Isolated from a world he once knew (mortality) and scrabbling around in the shadows to find meaning, Louis shows us one of our deepest fears: loneliness. True, unfiltered loneliness. The kind you find when you realise it is just you and the world, with no clear place for you to fit in.

Horror being the hell you exist in is a common feature across the Gothic genre: trapped women in isolated castles, ghosts cursed to linger for eternity, husbands with dark secrets they’ll take to the grave, or creatures cursed to endure suffering they never did anything to deserve. You probably had some titles already in your mind but I’m specifically talking about classic dark stories like The Castle Of Otranto, The Woman In Black, Jane Eyre and Frankenstein.

While the idea of Louis du Pointe du Lac is nothing new when it comes to a Gothic character, this is the first time we’ve had a first person POV of a tortured immortal grappling with his new life as a creature of the shadows: the faces he sees mostly looking at him with fear or repulsion. The Phantom Of The Opera came close, but it wasn’t told from the phantom’s point of view (I wish it had been, because Christine and Raoul were insufferable), however that deep sympathy for the tortured outcast was there, as it was in Shelley’s Frankenstein.

Horror being the hell you exist in is also a common theme among the female Gothic: Jane Eyre, the anonymous narrator in Rebecca, Estella in Great Expectations and the narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper. The four walls or world that binds them is their hell, and they must find a way to live within it. This still happens today in Gothic horror and magic realism. I recently read Nightbitch which explores the isolation, loss of self and Heathcliff levels of wildness clawing to get out into the character’s public persona.

Horror is as internal as it is external. What happens within the self can be just as terrifying as what happens to you.

While creature features featuring killer sharks, bloodthirsty rats and rabid dogs can be terrifying, the horror that happens within you can be just as scary. Back to my point about Louis in Interview With The Vampire, we are looking at one individual’s internal battle between the man and the monster inside him.

‘I knew it when I first took a human life to feed my craving. It was my death. And yet I would not accept it, could not accept it, because like all creatures I don’t wish to die! And so I sought for other vampires, for God, for the devil, for a hundred things under a hundred names.’ - Interview With The Vampire.

Rice brings us as an audience to witness the horror of having to live with not just eternity but with a deep, insatiable craving for human blood. Some vampires accept their new nature and feel no remorse, but Louis cannot bring himself to do that. His self-disgust is one of the most compelling things about him, as is his desire for love, to be loved, and to find something that anchors him to the world. This of course could work as a metaphor for living with the regrets you brought on yourself (or didn’t act on), and the choices you might have made differently. It’s a very human sensation, and this is why it’s all the more agonising.

Read more on the blog.

Welcome to episode 20 of Salome.

Salome is a Gothic horror novel set in 1880s Liverpool. When a novice murders a sister at her own convent in Turin, she expects the gallows. Instead she is brought to a clandestine convent on the banks of the River Mersey. Her name is Salome, and she has a gift, but she must choose a side.

Salome is a prequel novel to support the Muldoon supernatural thriller series (Book 3 is coming soon!) and will be released in ebook/paperback in October 2026.

Chapter 1

Book 3? I need to catch up!

Index

Recap on episode 19 here.

It was still there, but I did not even consider defeat.

“You have no dominion over her,” I said, watching the light make the flesh beneath its thin skin bubble and crack. It folded its wings over itself, but holes burned their way through the flimsy cocoon. It writhed and shrank away further into the wall. I moved closer. A final cry, and it fled.

I gagged, the acrid waft of ammonia rising through my nostrils.

“There she is,” Muldoon said, removing the bottle from beneath my nose. I opened my mouth and drew in a deep breath, as though I’d been underwater for too long. The men stepped back and let me get onto my hands and knees, fighting for breath.

I turned to look at him. I wanted to see his arm.

Our eyes met. He pulled his sleeve back down.

The two men carried Catherine back to the convent. When I had banished the creature and returned to consciousness, we entered the catacombs, retrieving her. She was curled up on the floor, her nightdress torn and blood-stained. Father John felt for her pulse, turning to look at me gravely. “She could still die,” he said, sighing. Her wounds were atrocious, but she wasn’t bleeding any more.

The cold silence of the place unsettled me more than the dream. It was as though I wanted to confront it in the flesh. Get it over with. But that was not the way it was done, Father John said. I did not yet fully understand why it always had to happen this way, but I accepted it.

As weakened as I was, I walked ahead to open the door for them, my ears still ringing from the shrieks. From the corner of the street, I could see the light in Mother Hildegard’s office. I looked up at it. Her silhouette stood at the window.

She did not come downstairs to see us, and when we came to the first-floor landing, her door remained closed.

Muldoon laid Catherine on the bed and went back downstairs to get some supplies for her.

“Do you need alcohol?” I asked Father John.

“No. These wounds are not from this world,” he said, turning to look at me. “These wounds are from Hell.”

He bit off a cork lid, spitting it to one side and soaked a rag with holy water from a glass bottle. I watched him clean Catherine’s wound, and to my amazement, the edges of the torn skin hissed and smoked when the water came into contact with it. He continued his work, applying a dressing from the bag Muldoon had brought. I looked down at my own scratches and then back at Catherine. She did not stir. He wrapped more dressings around her wrists, and cut the fabric away from her shoulder. I covered my hand with my mouth. A bite mark. He dabbed it with more holy water and a clean cloth, the acrid smell fading with each application.

When he was finished tending to her injuries, he blessed her and made the sign of the cross, kneeling at her bedside. He finished his prayer and opened another vial of holy water, sprinkling it on the walls, the windows and the door. I put her stockings back onto her feet and covered her with the bedclothes. We remained for some time, praying for her.

Some times after we finished the final prayer of the rosary, I dared to ask a question. “Father…” I said into the silence. My throat caught, my heart overwhelmed with the fear of what was happening, and what could still happen. My eyes filled, stinging. Had I done enough to bring her back? I felt I was not strong enough to quell her doubts when I’d had so many myself.

He patted my hand. “We will know when the sun comes up.” He stood up. “Go and rest now. I will stay with her.”

I left as he suggested, but once the door was closed behind me, I realised that I could not rest. Not now.

I did not see Muldoon leave us again after bringing the supplies. I went to look for him, but I stopped on the landing, hesitating. I could report back to Mother Hildegard, or I could go downstairs and find him.

I walked the same path to the kitchen at the end of the corridor, this time assured that there was nothing behind me, trying to get in. I brushed past a line of drying shirts, the eerie familiarity with the dream making my chest as I heard splashing water.

Muldoon was at the sink, washing the blood out of his shirt, the naked flesh of his back exposed. I stopped. He hadn’t seen me. I quickly turned and hid on the other side of the alcove, but I didn’t have to look again to understand what I’d just seen.

Long raised welts along his back. White from years of fading, but the scars remained.

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

←Previous Chapter

Next Chapter⇾

Ways to support this fiction newsletter.

As well as the option to upgrade your subscription to paid, I do also have books that you can purchase as well as a ko-fi and paypal.

Ko Fi Tip Jar

Paypal Tip Jar

If you’re enjoying Salome, you really would enjoy The Muldoon Mysteries series. There are currently two books (standalones) in this series. Click the image below to find out more about them, and find them on Tiny Worlds.

My books are now available at

The future of my serials on Substack

I’ve been serialising my novels on Substack since 2024, and though it has been great at helping me reach a deadline and prioritise writing, I’m finding it hard to market my published books (I’m embarrassingly active on several social media channels as well as my own blog outside of Substack) while also remembering to link up my latest serial.

I do think it works when it comes to finding readers and practising my skills, but four serialised novels later, I’m finding it tough to keep up. That’s over 60k words each time, and it’s broken down into manageable episodes for my subscribers. Salome is going to finish its course, but I don’t know if I’ll serialise another novel. Shorter stories and novellas, maybe, but the novel aspect is really tricky when you have other titles you need to talk about.

I might post some personal reflections on it on my blog, but for now there is an interesting series you can watch here on Substack featuring and where they talk all about serials on Substack: the where, what, when, why, how and how much?

Write More with Simon K Jones

Crafting serial fiction part 1: What is it?

It has begun! The first part of a live video mini-series about crafting serial fiction, hosted by myself and S.E. Reid. We’re going step-by-step through the process of writing serial fiction, from ideas to audiences…

Listen now

2 months ago · 58 likes · 5 comments · Simon K Jones and S.E. Reid

Salome is back

Speaking of serialised novels! After a short hiatus, Salome is back on Substack. This is a free serial and is a prequel novel to accompany my Muldoon supernatural thriller series. It returned for episode 19 on Friday last week.

Update to the serial schedule: Paid subscribers will now receive an early episode every Sunday, which will then be rolled out to free subscribers the following Friday. This will run for the rest of the summer.

Subscribe now

I’ve started working on a cover for the book, and looking at stained glass windows, swords and chiaroscuro was a great way to pass some time.

It is also currently with Beta readers, and it’s been great getting some reader feedback.

Oceanus

Thank you so much to everyone who bought a copy of Oceanus when the second edition came out on 19th June. If you have the time, please leave a rating and/or a review on Goodreads and wherever you prefer to leave your reviews online. The word of mouth helps so much with book sales, and reviews fall into that.

Thank you so much to everyone who shared the love on Notes recently. I appreciate you.

Coming up:

• I’ll be going live with on Saturday 18th July to talk about Shakespeare retellings and re-imaginings in light of Oceanus’ recent release and the upcoming release of Carnage! Ian can tell you more about the latter then.

• I am working on the third Muldoon novel: Currently untitled as there is a lot going on in this one. Muldoon is back after the events of The Ring and there’s a new terror that settled in during his absence.

Currently Reading/Watching/Playing:

• Still working my way through The Queen Of The Damned by Anne Rice.

• Started on Grave Peril, the third instalment of the Dresden Files. So far, it is more interesting than Fool Moon was.

• My husband bought me Until Dawn for my birthday (still a week away) and I’ve been having a great time. Genuinely scary at times, and I love the teen slasher/lonely mountain atmosphere.

Around Substack:

• recently invited me over to her newsletter for five fun questions.

Happy Endings

What really is the best thing since sliced bread?

Hi! I’m Keris. I’m an author writing about writing and books, music and films and TV, cats and life and food. All the good stuff…

Read more

24 days ago · 10 likes · 3 comments · Keris Fox

• recently released a collection of short stories titled And Another Thing. It’s an eclectic mix of speculative short stories!

• has launched pre-orders for his upcoming novel Harmony House, a speculative thriller. Find out more about it here.

Welcome to episode 19 of Salome. I really left you hanging with 18, didn’t I? And no one is annoyed with me.

We’ve had a hiatus of a few weeks while I worked on promoting Oceanus in the run up to its release, but now that that’s over, we’re back to Salome.

Salome is a Gothic horror novel set in 1880s Liverpool. When a novice murders a sister at her own convent in Turin, she expects the gallows. Instead she is brought to a clandestine convent on the banks of the River Mersey. Her name is Salome, and she has a gift, but she must choose a side.

In the last episode, Salome is ordered to follow Catherine to the cemetery. Father John and Muldoon catch up with her just in time.

Salome is a prequel novel to support the Muldoon supernatural thriller series (Book 3 is coming soon!) and will be released in ebook/paperback in October 2026.

Chapter 1

Book 3? I need to catch up!

Index

Recap on episode 18 here.

“There’s a child in there!” I whispered.

“No,” Muldoon said, shaking his head. “It’s a trap.”

“What?”

Father John stood solemnly, his hat covering his eyes. “It is time, I think.” Muldoon nodded gravely in agreement.

“Your friend is being used as bait, Salome,” Muldoon said.

“But Mother Hildegard said to—”

“She shouldn’t have sent you alone,” Father John said, returning to us and squatting down.

I looked at each of the two men. “It wants you, Salome,” Muldoon said, his face stern.

“Why did she…?” I asked breathlessly.

Father John shook his head. “That I cannot answer. But I am glad we could get to you in time.”

“What about Catherine?”

Father John lowered his gaze, the pause an agonising one. He stood up again. “It is possible we can save her.” His eyes met Muldoon’s, and he gave a grave nod.

Why did they have to be so cryptic all of the time? “Please tell me what is the meaning of this?” I demanded.

“Salome,” Muldoon said gently, looking at me. “How much astral projection have you done?”

I shook my head, remembering the failed forest attempt. “Little.”

Muldoon scoffed. “Little? Come on, that can’t be true.”

I frowned.

“Sure you have. There was the dream, wasn’t there?” he said. “The church and all that? You’ve been there plenty of times.”

“That’s astral projection?” I almost laughed. I was so stupid.

Muldoon continued. “You’ll have to walk to her.”

I began to stand up. He pushed my shoulders down, “No, no,” he said. “In your dream.”

“But I can’t sleep here?”

“You don’t have to sleep.”

“But… The Order? I haven’t finished my training!” The memory of the fading leaves and Mother Hildegard storming out made me feel it would be a wasted effort.

“Better to ask forgiveness than permission, eh, Father?” Muldoon said.

Father John raised his eyebrows, the corners of his mouth wrestling with the impulse to smile. “He speaks from experience, Salome,” he said, grunting in agreement.

Muldoon returned his attention to me. “We can try, can’t we? Do it with me.”

He sat down in front of me, Father John standing vigil with what I realised was a crossbow he’d been carrying on his back. Thoughts swirled around my head, the severity of the situation finally descending like sediment once kicked up from the sea bed in a tempest. Muldoon took my hands in his. “Close your eyes, and go somewhere you’ve been with her before.”

I froze. I’d never dreamwalked intentionally. He squeezed my hands. “It’s all right. Be patient.”

I looked behind us. “But—”

“Ignore that,” he said. The wailing continued, never ceasing or intensifying. Perhaps it wasn’t real, just as they said. The more I listened, the less human it sounded. “Come on. It’s all right.”

I closed my eyes, and opened them again, frustrated. “I can’t.”

“Less of that. Come on. Just go for a walk.”

I stared at him for a moment, dumbfounded. Just go for a walk. It was not as easy for me as it evidently was for him.

“What’s she doing where she is? Go on, show me.”

I closed my eyes again.

First, I heard the faint rustle of the leaves on the trees fading into the background. Then Father John’s breathing, his fingers brushing against the tight wire of the crossbow, making it sing ever so slightly, his heart beating steadily. The thrum of a moth’s wings. The clatter of a glass bottle on the kerbside, somewhere else. A fox disturbing soil as it emerged from its den, its weightless step across the cobbles. Rats squeaking and scratching at rubbish in the alleys. The gentle whisper of air above us…

I wanted to open my eyes and see it all, but I remained still, fully absorbed in the vision. Blackness, and dripping water. The air rushed past my ears as I flew across the city. My focus moved to Catherine, but I waited in the dark.

The tip of my nose was cold. I reached out with my hands and touched the bare bricks of the wall, the dried clay and grooves of the cement rough beneath my fingertips. The candles rested in their sconces, unlit. I gingerly put a foot forward. Floor. Hard floor. I took another step, and another, never lengthening my stride. I let the hard surfaces of the building’s structure guide me down the hallway, a little light at the end waiting for me. Smells, as reassuring as a mother’s scent to an infant, widened my lungs; pollen, bread, freshly-washed linen, the slight must of a wool carpet. Sounds, as soft as they were and far away, grounded me. I was in the downstairs corridor of the convent.

I turned to look behind me. “Muldoon?” I asked. My voice echoed in the cavernous space.

“I’m here.” His voice sounded so far away, but I could see him. He was only a couple of feet behind me, encouraging me to go forward. “Lead the way.”

I followed the sound of the splashing water and the clatter of crockery coming from the scullery. “My hands,” I whispered.

“What’s wrong?”

“They’re cold.” They stung, as though I’d picked up frozen snow and held it with bare hands for too long. My flesh tingled, but I could not move my fingers.

“It’s all right. Keep going,” Muldoon said. I took a few more steps, my confidence eroding with each one. Why was it so far away?

This isn’t right.

I stopped abruptly. I could smell it. The metallic scent, unmistakable. Blood. Something behind him. “Muldoon?” I said, turning around. Two domes further down the corridor. Small. Glowing. Moving up and down the black space. Widening, reddening, slit pupils. One carnivorous mouth, claws tapping on the bricks as it stalked us, slowly. Peering into the dark, I could see that it was upside down, hanging from the ceiling. The cold, foul air of death brushed my cheeks as it beat its leathery wings.

Muldoon followed my gaze.

“Keep… going,” he whispered.

I hurried forward to the scullery, his footsteps following mine. The thing behind him, its joints cracking as it moved closer, sniffed the air and lunged. I heard Muldoon shout as he punched it away, the connection between his fist and its face echoing through the corridor. I winced, clapping my hands over my ears when I heard its deafening shriek. It retreated, its claws scratching the bricks as it clambered back onto the ceiling. I fired one glance behind. It was growing larger, coming back for another attack. I turned away and ran.

The distance between us and the door of the kitchen seemed further than before, and my legs were growing tired. My chest burned, the taste of blood in my throat. I wanted to stop for breath, but I couldn’t.

The Devil wants you to stop, Salome.

I whimpered as I pushed forward, hearing Muldoon at my shoulder. He was growing tired too. “Come on, Salome,” he uttered with a ragged breath. “Where is the door?”

My heart stopped, a culmination of realisations emerging from the murk of my mind. It was up to me.

“It is right here,” I said, crashing into the large wooden door of the scullery. My hands clumsily groped the knob and turned it. I pushed it open with my body, both of us bursting into a warm, tiled room. Muldoon shoved me out of the way and forced it shut with his body.

“Bolt, Salome!” he called, putting his body against it. I clambered up and reached over him, bringing the bolt down. I yelped when it landed on the door, thrusting me back onto the stone floor. Muldoon didn’t move. “I’ve got it. Go.”

It clawed at the door, some of the wood splintering as it tore the panels. “The Lord is my strength and my shield,” I said to myself, making the sign of the cross as I walked further into the room. I followed the sound of the plates dropping into the sink, and the clink as they were laid to rest on the draining board. A calmness came over me. No longer could I hear the shrieking and hammering in the other room.

She had her back turned to me.

“The mountains,” I said, unsure of how they left my mouth without my mind’s approval. “You must have been dreaming of the mountains.”

She stopped for a moment, her shoulders slumping. Her head bowed, she wiped a plate in the warm, steaming water. “I always wanted to see the mountains,” she said dreamily.

I picked up a drying rag and stood beside her. “We should go and see them.”

She did not look at me. The side of her face that I could see seemed content, dreaming, a slight smile in the corner of her mouth. She continued to wash the dishes. I looked down at her feet. Bare. Filthy.

“Let me wash your feet,” I said. “They are cut.”

She turned to look at me. I swallowed a lump in my throat. Her eyes, sunken beneath dark circles, were heavy and lost. The wildness had gone. Death was coming. Her skin, feverish, glowed in the steam of the water. “What do you believe, Salome?” she asked, her voice so small and broken.

I put the drying rag down and wiped a tear from my eye. “I believe in God, the Father almighty.” I sniffed, my throat tightening. “Creator of heaven and earth and in Jesus Christ…”

“He misses you.”

“What?”

“He asks why you do not visit.”

“Who does?”

“You know.”

My heart, seized by fear and the pain of grief, skipped a beat. She continued. “He asks why you choose God over him.”

My fears confirmed, I steadied myself. “I believe in—”

“God has forsaken him.”

“That is not true. I do not—”

“It hurts, Salome,” she said weakly. I reached for her hands and held them. “There is no pain like His absence. There is no greater shame than being forsaken by He who said he loves you. I have committed no sins, Salome.” Her voice was cold, distant. I was losing her. “Why has he forsaken me?” Tears fell from her eyes, but her face did not move. Her eyes looked through me.

“He has not forsaken you, Catherine.”

“The pain, Salome.”

“Come, let me wash your feet.”

I sat her down in a chair and looked around for a bucket. I went to the sink and filled it with soapy water.

“You are cleaning my body for burial,” she said, drifting away.

“No. I am cleaning your feet. You are home now. You must stay with me.”

I knelt down and gently lifted one of her limp legs, placing it into the water.

“I am alone,” she said.

“You are not.” I bathed the foot with the warm water. “I am with you.”

“Then why am I in Hell?”

I gasped. The foot changed. Smaller. Softer. Uncut. It was not Catherine sitting in the chair but a little girl. The younger Catherine, possessed and alone. Her eyes flickered from fear to fury. My hands trembled. “Why am I in Hell, Salome?” her little voice asked. I shook my head wordlessly, my mouth hung open.

I blinked, the blood in my veins freezing. The figure had transformed again. I still could not speak.

“Why am I in Hell, Salome?” Sister Cecilia. Her blonde hair burnt away, her cheeks dusted with soot. My nose curled. Sulphur. “Do you condemn everyone you love to Hell?”

The saliva forced its way to the front of my mouth, that pulse of throat and stomach muscles accompanying it, threatening to lunge. I wanted to be sick. I wanted to flee, to scream, to beg for an end, but I remained still. I looked down calmly at the water, breathing deeply, and continued to wash the foot in my hands.

“You do not belong there. I believe that you can be saved,” I said.

“I am dead.” Catherine’s voice again.

“No, dear Catherine, you are here with me.”

“Everyone you love dies in the end.”

“That’s not true.”

“I am dead, Salome.”

My eyes met with hers. “No, no you are not.”

“I am forsaken.”

“No. I am with you.”

I wiped the dirt away, bringing the clean foot out of the water, placing it on the ground. I brought the other one into the bucket. “I am with you. God is with you.”

“God has forsaken me.” Her chest heaved, her breath rasping.

“I am with you, Catherine.” I hoped that in saying her name, I could keep her there. “We are going to see the mountains.”

Through cracked, blue lips, she asked, “Do you ever wonder, Salome?”

“Wonder what?”

Her dead eyes, turning pale, fixed their gaze on me. “How can God exist when there are so many horrors in this world?” She pulled down her collar, revealing the gaping wound to me. Fresh. The coppery odour overwhelmed me, making me gag. It bled, and she was growing paler by the minute. “The Devil is real. Look…” The blood glistened, trickling down her translucent, eviscerating flesh. I remained still, my heart sinking. The creature behind the door wanted to finish its meal.

I reached for the linen rag on the sink and dried her feet. “Walk with me,” I said.

She rose from the chair, returning to her trance. I held her arm and led her back to where Muldoon was holding the door, his face flushed and his hair hanging over his eyes as it hammered and kicked, fragments of wood scattering across the kitchen floor. A long claw slid down the gap between two panels, slicing his forearm. He cried out as a trickle of blood rushed down his skin, a forked, serpentine tongue darting out of the gap to lick it away.

“Pray with me,” I said, helping her down to her knees. I knelt beside her. Muldoon, his feet slipping under the pressure, made an effort to push his body further against the door. The tongue returned, the creature screaming as Muldoon slammed the point of a small knife into it. The black flesh tore as it pulled itself away from where it had been pinned. It retaliated with a final push, shattering more panels of wood. Muldoon leaned against the bolt, dodging it as it lunged, hungry for more.

I swallowed and thought about what I was doing. Would it work? I didn’t know. I clutched the small crucifix on my chest and decided that what would be, would be.

“Our Father, who art in heaven,” I began. Catherine said it with me in unison, unshaken by Muldoon’s cries as he fought the horned monster in the door. Her eyes were closed. Mine remained open. I looked at Muldoon as I prayed.

Close your eyes.

What?

Close your eyes.

He did as I said as the prayer continued aloud. “Lead us not into temptation,” I said, moving my attention to the creature. I stood and approached, watching it shrink away behind the door. “But deliver us from evil,” I commanded, watching it slam into the wall behind the door, its clawed hands covering its eyes, its skin sizzling in the light. “Amen.” The smell made me retch, but I remained resolute. Catherine continued praying.

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

←Previous Chapter

Next Chapter⇾

Ways to support this fiction newsletter.

As well as the option to upgrade your subscription to paid, I do also have books that you can purchase as well as a ko-fi and paypal.

Ko Fi Tip Jar

Paypal Tip Jar

If you’re enjoying Salome, you really would enjoy The Muldoon Mysteries series. There are currently two books (standalones) in this series. Click the image below to find out more about them, and find them on Tiny Worlds.

My books are now available at

Blogs didn’t go anywhere.

I’ve been spending a lot more time on my blog this month. I bit the bullet and purchased a blog package about a year ago, as I started feeling a shift in this app and where it was going. I love what I have here, and it’s great getting to share fiction and read so many wonderful posts, but something in the back of my mind made me want to ensure I owned some online real estate somewhere. Substack will remain the HQ of newsletters for me, but stepping outside of here into a quiet, cosy corner of the internet may well have been just what I needed this month. My website and blog are mine and when I work there I am free from the like button, the fiction bestseller leader boards and the nonsense that can be Substack notes. Bots still try and talk to me in my blog comments section, but it’s not so bad.

While away in my blog-cave, I was able to reflect on post-launch fatigue (happens every time, but debut authors should watch out for it), books I’ve been enjoying, posts I’ve been writing and what I want to do next with this newsletter.

A Work Of Fiction is having a restructure:

Each month I’ll send out 4 emails (they’ll also become posts on the app/site) and I’ll alternate the content of them each week:

• two will be news, hence newsletter.

• two will be another chapter of Salome until it has finished its run, and then it will be some short fiction or field notes from Muldoon! I know you’re missing him.

That reminds me…

Beta readers wanted!

I’m looking for 2 or 3 people who would be interested in beta reading Salome ahead of its release this autumn. If you’ve already been reading the serial and/or are familiar with the world of Daniel Muldoon, you’d be perfect for this role. If not, I’m still open to a test run from someone who likes to read Gothic horror, supernatural thrillers, urban fantasy and mysteries. Leave a comment or reply to this email if you’re up for this!

Author Interviews:

This week I published my interview with : it was a delightful exploration of books, inspiration and general thoughts on the human experience. I loved interviewing Murph and I hope you’ll enjoy this thought-provoking post.

Interview with AP Murphy

There are some other author interviews already on the blog, and there are more to come!

Book Reviews:

This week I finished Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder. I saw the trailer for the film on Instagram and the moment I saw ‘she thinks she is turning into a dog’ I ran to Libby and started reading. This book was an adventure.

There is no loneliness like motherhood, and there is no transformation like motherhood. This book was an excellent read and if you have found yourself navigating the starless skies of motherhood with nothing but a map of a world that doesn’t exist any more, you need to read this.

Publishing: Why it never gets easier.

Last week I released the second edition of Oceanus with Tiny Worlds Publishing. I have been marketing the hell out of this book and when release day came, I collapsed into a heap of mental exhaustion. This happens to me with every book I publish. It’s a huge project, and it requires a lot of emotional investment, strategic patience and effort.

I published a blog post about it with first timers in mind. It’s a fatigue that nobody really talks about and I wish more authors did. I struggle with it terribly and every single time I believe I can’t write another book again. If you’ve just released your first book or you’re releasing soon, please do have a read of Six Things No One Told Me About Releasing A Book. You’re not alone.

Oceanus: Thank you for ordering a copy.

Thank you so much to everybody who ordered a copy of Oceanus last week. It will never not be surreal seeing it land on doorsteps all over the globe. I’d like to say a massive thank you from the bottom of my struggling, overheated heart.

This is the first launch I’ve had with Tiny Worlds, and every purchase sent their way shows that we can do something about where we shop and who we support when it comes to books. This story means a lot to me and getting the chance to publish with Tiny Worlds was a wonderful experience.

Oceanus is a science fiction mystery thriller novel loosely inspired by The Tempest. Some of you may remember that this was my debut novel, originally self-published in 2024 after running the serial on Substack. Now it has a second edition with publisher

Read this book already? Don’t forget to leave a review on Goodreads.

Goodreads

Available as a paperback or ebook.

Currently/Just finished reading:

• Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder (omg, please read the review, it was a wild ride).

• Isla by J Curtis. Anyone who loves the 80s will love this book. That’s all I can say at the moment (but it’s coming out this summer. Yippee!)

• Fool Moon by Jim Butcher. got me into this after he read all of my Muldoon books (I say all, there are only 3 so far). I am enjoying it, although I have been warned that the earlier books are quite cheesy/horny. He wasn’t wrong about that.

• The Queen Of The Damned. Since I’ve been posting Pinterest pins about The Shade In The Sands And Other Stories, a few people have mentioned this book and that it ties in with Egyptian horror. I’ve started it!

• Seventh Daughter by Ian Barr. Arthurian fantasy partly reminiscent of A Midsummer Night’s Dream but imagine demons and dragons too. Currently running as a free serial on The Word Dump.

• The Exorcist. This is a re-read because I’m currently loving the idea of a series of essays about it for my blog. I have a lot to say, and I am making notes.

That’s all for this week. Have a great weekend and I will see you soon!

One part The Tempest, one part Solaris, one part today’s headlines, and one part Hanna’s marvelous writing. Oceanus is a great mystery with vivid characters.— Tranith Argan Series.

You can get a copy of this book direct from Tiny Worlds Publishing.

You can also get it at all other online book retailers too, but Tiny Worlds does have a handy ‘send to kindle’ feature if you usually buy on amazon.

Ebook

Paperback

I’d like to say a huge thank you to J Curtis at Tiny Worlds, Shane Bzdok for this amazing cover design and to all of you for subscribing and supporting my work over the last two years. I’m very lucky to be here. Thanks for reading.

Leave a comment

More reviews for Oceanus:

Hanna Delaney’s dreamy scifi reimagining of The Tempest by Shakespeare, Oceanus, is an incredibly well done homage to the classic play. While reading it, I felt in a haze of strangeness, in the best way. The feeling is evoked occasionally for me by a sort of uncanny valley in the world: a place much like earth but not quite right (Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer, or parts of Peter Jackson’s King Kong movie believe it or not.) It’s a great vibe for this novel and it works for the characters and plot. You open with someone who doesn’t know what’s going on; you follow a group that mysteriously ends up in a pit without knowing how they got there — it’s all very… dreamy. The characters are excellent, and I found myself sympathizing with and understanding all of them. When I finished Oceanus, I was immensely intrigued how Hanna had adapted or took inspiration from The Tempest, so I borrowed an audiobook and listened through it. I HIGHLY recommend reading Oceanus, and then the Tempest, because I found that Hanna’s book allowed me to better understand the play, and man, I am impressed with the creative way in which pieces are adapted. The daughter in Oceanus and the spirit in the Tempest were two specific things I found superb in their adaptation (can’t say more without spoiiiiiiling it, sorry). The only feedback I have for this one is that I personally would’ve found it more dreamy and alien if the flora and fauna on Oceanus were more strange and weird, and briefly described somewhere. I’m also just a sucker for cool fictional creatures and plants. Anywhooo, go read it for yourself, ya square. - , author of Swells Under Still Waters

Read this book already? Don’t forget to leave a review on Goodreads.

Goodreads

Available as a paperback or ebook.

A starship drifts, its crew gone. The planet it orbits has no name. Survivors are separated on the surface. Exhausted. Hunted. Lost. The longer they stay, the less they can trust their own minds. Their captor is as patient as he is bent on revenge.

Some prisons have no walls.

This story from the blurb alone is about revenge, but in the original blurb it also mentioned redemption, love and forgiveness. Among other things such as man’s eternal quest for knowledge and the opportunity to steal fire from the gods, it’s also about the child outgrowing the parent, breaking the bonds of the protective net.

These themes aren’t new, and neither are the stories you find them in.

What’s this story actually inspired by?

This story is loosely inspired by The Tempest with the characters mirroring those from the classic play: Balthazar/Boatswain/Trinculo, Thea/Miranda, Derrien/Prospero, Anthony/Antonio, Jet/Caliban, Geraint/Ferdinand, but this is very much its own story otherwise. You don’t have to know the play to appreciate this novel, just like you don’t have to have read or seen the Taming Of The Shrew to appreciate and understand Ten Things I Hate About You.

That’s not to say it’s not drawing inspiration from other places. All science fiction can trace its influence across millennia. I would argue that Greek mythology kicked it off: Think Icarus flying too close to the sun and what that represents when it comes to science, technology and nature. Think of Prometheus and how stealing fire from the gods returns in several forms throughout science fiction (Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein being the most obvious one—it was The Modern Prometheus after all).

The natural, the spiritual and the moral come up throughout science fiction and fantasy. This is simply because it has been created by people, and we can’t help putting ‘a little of every artist in their work,’ (Blade Runner 2049).

The Little Mermaid and the immortal soul.

When The Little Mermaid was first published in 1837, it was a Christian children’s story about the quest for an immortal soul. A little mermaid dreams of coming to the surface and walking among men. She learns that humans have immortal souls that do not die with their bodies. Mer-people in contrast have no graves, and they become sea foam when they die. The Little Mermaid is well known as a fairy tale of a mermaid who loves a mortal man, but in the original tale, she also seeks a soul.

‘The mermaid has no immortal soul, and can only acquire that heavenly gift by winning the love of one of the sons of men; her immortality depends upon union with man. Neither do the daughters of air possess immortal souls, but they can acquire them by their own good deeds.’

Selflessness is celebrated as a human trait, and good deeds like that are worthy of a soul.

Coming of age: The wonder comes before the fear.

Thea stands in the front room of her father’s cottage, staring out into the sky ‘still, huddled, watching the storm in controlled awe,’ and she doesn’t immediately act. She is awestruck before she is concerned. The same happens in Andersen’s tale where the little mermaid finds the storm ‘most delightful,’ but as with both Oceanus and this fairy tale, ‘the ship’s crew thought very differently’.

The little mermaid, realising its dangerous, rushes to help a ship’s crew when it is caught in a storm.

it became pitch dark so that she could not distinguish anything; presently, however, a dreadful flash of lightning disclosed to her the whole of the wreck. Her eyes sought the young prince—the same instant the ship sank to the bottom. At first she was delighted, thinking that the prince must now come to her abode; but she soon remembered that man cannot live in water, and that therefore if the prince ever entered her palace, it would be as a corpse.—The Little Mermaid.

I read this story again recently, and the similarities were eerie. It’s funny what sticks. This scene is quite similar to the opening of Oceanus where Derrien and Thea see vessels crashing through the sky. Derrien instructs her to help the vessel crashing into the loch.

At first, the waves were too high for her to capture sight of the shuttle clearly. Only when they started to subside did she see that it had started to sink. The water glugged greedily, pulling the helpless vessel down into the black depths. A break in the clouds brought with it a small beam of light that revealed a grey bow still visible for a few more seconds until the loch would consume that too. —Oceanus.

But starting with a storm isn’t unique to The Little Mermaid. It’s also how The Tempest starts. Miranda doesn’t jump in and save anyone though.

‘Against my very heart! Poor souls, they perished.
Had I been any god of power, I would
Have sunk the sea within the earth or ere
It should the good ship so have swallowed, and
The fraughting souls within her.’

She witnesses the storm and the ship sinking, but there isn’t any opportunity for her to do anything. Prospero also quickly tells her nothing is actually wrong. It’s all magic.

The parallels don’t stop there, but I’ll try and keep this to the point. Oceanus is set in a world where AI is outlawed, and humans are as fearful of artificial life as they are of aliens. Both represent the fear of the unexplained (or known magic/witchcraft) on a new frontier: the colonisation of space.

Oceanus is set in the 24th century, and we haven’t changed much.

After a series of dark passages in a yet-to-happen past, governments united and agreed to stop creating synthetic life. You’ll find out why in the book if you haven’t read it already, but Derrien makes it clear that the demand to ‘make it real’ has cost humanity greatly.

Now we run into Philip K Dick territory. The questions over sentience, consciousness and whether man-made androids (or beings if we’re talking Mary Shelley) can have a soul have hovered over science fiction for centuries. Why do we feel so much sympathy for characters who are not human? Why do we hope the little mermaid will finally get a soul and go to heaven? Why do we feel so much for the creature that Frankenstein has created?

‘The fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.’— Frankenstein

In Brian Aldiss’ Supertoys Last All Summer Long we feel that pang of sadness, a realisation that the android’s life is going to change forever. In Blade Runner 2049, we find ourselves sobbing over Deckard’s throat catching when he says, ‘Her name was Rachael.’ or ‘Her eyes were green.’? Why do we care so much?

Because there is a lot more to being human than we think.

‘Why have not we immortal souls?’ asked the little mermaid. ‘I would willingly give up my three hundred years to be a human being for only one day, thus to become entitled to that heavenly world above.’

The selflessness, sacrifice and loyalty to others is something that the little mermaid discovers she is capable of. The prince marries someone else. She is heartbroken. It would have been a very human thing to do to murder the love rival (not that this is moral, but it is within our nature) for her own satisfaction and chance of securing the prince for herself, but it is also human to try and celebrate happiness for others even when you’re dying inside.

Cutting family ties. Choosing what’s right over what’s least upsetting.

The theme of loyalty and the ties to family is something I’ve explored in Oceanus. The storm is the catalyst for Thea, as she first sees Derrien for who he really is: ‘“Father,” Thea said, her own voice surprising her, “what have you done?”’ However when she meets Geraint, she sticks to what she knows:

“Thea, please can you help me find my father?”

“I’m not sure if I can.”

“Why not?”

She paused for a moment, and rested her hands on her lap. “Father hasn’t told me to.”

He smirked. “You need to ask your father?”

“Of course. I always ask my father.”

Both of these characters will break away from their fathers as the story continues. Another similarity with the little mermaid defying the sea king’s laws. The child needs to carve out an identity for themselves, even if most of the process is painful.

The little mermaid is offered a solution to her misery. She is trapped on the human world and doesn’t have the prince she sacrificed everything for. Her sisters come to the surface and suggest: ‘Before the sun rises, thou must plunge it into the prince’s heart; and when his warm blood trickles down upon thy feet they will again be changed to a fish-like tail; thou wilt once more become a mermaid,’ and tell her that her ‘mother mourns for [her] so much her grey hair has fallen off through sorrow.’ This does not make the mermaid’s choice easy.

What she does next is not what her family would want for her, but it’s her choice.

‘All at once, she threw far out into the sea that instrument of death; the waves rose like bright blazing flames around, and the water where it fell seemed tinged with blood. With eyes fast becoming dim and fixed, she looked once more at her beloved prince; then plunged from the ship into the sea, and felt her body slowly but surely dissolving into foam.’

The Storm As A Catalyst

The storm is the catalyst in all three stories: It is the beginning of The Tempest, the shift in The Little Mermaid and the point of no return for Thea in Oceanus as she learns the man she idolises may well be a monster. Realising what she’s seeing, she says: ‘“Father, what have you done?”’

The storms are symbolic: the initial build of tension that then results in a thunderous release. For the little mermaid, the storm is the moment she becomes ‘of age’ and must decide things for herself. For Prospero and Derrien, the storm is ‘perfect’ so to speak and will bring their enemies into their hands so they can exact the revenge they’ve been dreaming of for years.

But the storms can also represent the inner turmoil of the characters. It is the storm that separates Geraint from his father and throws him into a territory where he has to work it all out for himself. His privileged, princely life is forever changed. Thea must weather a storm to get through to her father and steer him away from further madness.

She shook his slack head and shoulders violently on the sand. His soaked hair and clothes made him heavy. She could not hear if he was breathing over the howling winds and heavy rain.

“Stop it!” she screamed.

Exceptionalism and Icarus

The Greek story of Icarus holds great bearing on science fiction and fantasy. Often, we will have a sorcerer, a wizard or a scientist who is reaching high, far too close to the sun. He will have been warned, or even seen examples of those who’ve gone before and failed miserably. The wax melting symbolises man’s folly, the sacrifice of other aspects of an individual’s life in order to obtain knowledge or power. The exceptionalism is something I wanted to explore in Oceanus. Derrien is banished from his home planet (you’ll find out why) for his inability to respect the rule of law. His desire for knowledge overpowers any sense of morality.

When faced with the apparition of Dr Shona Lennox who warns him in a very Jacob Marley-esque way to back off the project and go home, Derrien still can’t see the danger.

This thing is far worse than anything we can make.”

“Oh Shona. Just think of the potential,” he said. ‘The potential’. He thought of all ‘the potential’ that had come before. His mind flitted from stance to stance. He struggled to think of any ‘potential’ that had truly helped mankind in his living memory. In the face of former unseen catastrophes, Derrien still believed that this time was different. This time, he was right.

In the story of Icarus, Daedalus the inventor warns his son not to fly too close to the sea, or the feathers of his wings will get wet and he’ll drown. He also says not to fly too high or the warmth of the sun will melt the wax that holds his wings together. Icarus is young, giddy and so taken with the experience of flying that he forgets his father’s warning. This story resulted in the immortal idiom ‘Flying too close to the sun’. The ambition or the exceptionalism is something that lingers over science fiction today. It reminds me of a great line you’ll probably know: ‘Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should’.

Derrien—just like Prospero—is the architect of his own misery.

Oceanus and empathy

Empathy comes up as a theme in many works of science fiction, but let’s start with The Tempest. Prospero feels little empathy for the shipwrecked passengers at the beginning of the play. He has been wronged, and he cannot see past that. It is Miranda who starts the play with a greater sense of empathy; and it’s actually Ariel, the enslaved spirit, who tries to teach Prospero empathy. By act five he suggests that if Prospero could see the state the men are in, his ‘affections Would become tender’. Prospero is taken aback by Ariel’s suggestion asking him if he really thinks so, to which Ariel replies, ‘Mine would sir, if I were human’.

Empathy being used as the gateway to forgiveness and tolerance re-emerges in other works such as in Dick’s Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? ‘Empathy, evidently, existed only within the human community, whereas intelligence to some degree could be found throughout every phylum and order including the arachnida’. Deckard himself wrestles with his understanding of empathy. It first seems that caring for a sheep is a way of meeting the baseline for empathy, but it’s when he begins to feel guilt and regret as he retires androids that he realises his empathetic abilities. The entire novel hinges on empathy, as this is where the line between artificial intelligence and humanity blurs.

In Oceanus, empathy comes naturally to some characters but not others. Ironically, it is Derrien who teaches Owen to find his empathy:

‘Owen thought about the fear he saw in Derrien’s eyes when he couldn’t find his daughter; he knew the same feeling too well. It was the fear of a father.’

While there are countless traits and behaviours we can clearly attribute to being human (some of them deeply unpleasant) I feel that empathy and compassion are the ones that instil a sense of hope in any imagined futures we write and read. Even in the darkest dystopian stories, the hope starts with empathy. In Octavia E. Butler’s Parable Of The Sower, it is Lauren Olamina’s empathy that changes the course of their future. The next step is compassion, the overwhelming desire to relieve others of their suffering.

Conclusion

This book was inspired by many things, but I’ve summarised the main influences on the text. Stories to me are deeply human, and I prefer to write character-driven stories, no matter the genre.

As fun as it would have been to write something similar to Forbidden Planet (The Tempest in space) that’s not really what I’ve done here.

Oceanus is out on 19th June 2026, published by Tiny Worlds Publishing. You’ll be able to get your copy of the paperback or e-book from Tiny Worlds directly and anywhere that sells books online.

Share A Work Of Fiction

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

This week I caught up with to talk all things Prospero because as Barbara Dickson and Elaine Paige would attest, we know him so well.

We talked about his relevancy even to today’s world as well as the significance of science fiction and the cautionary tale. This was a fascinating chat and I hope you enjoy our discussion.

Rebekah has developed an adaptation of The Tempest which will be performed on The Golden Hind in London this September. At the bottom of this page you’ll find more details about the production and of course, where to buy tickets.

Oceanus, my science fiction thriller loosely inspired by The Tempest is coming to online bookstores on 19th June 2026 as a second edition with publishing.

• Information and tickets for The Tempest Aboard The Golden Hinde can be found here.

• To find out more about Oceanus, click here.

• Bonus material: The official trailer for Oceanus is here.

Share

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

“Oh God,” Trin said quietly, the enthusiasm finally fading as she spied the tableau. Her feet ached, and her lower back was utterly spent. All that hiking through the brush had been for nothing.

The team of survivors, exhausted and hungry, looked around with mixed expressions of dismay and frustration. There wasn’t even a water source nearby, and after the results of their last trek, Owen wasn’t willing to let anyone wander off to find one.

“We can set up camp for tonight. That’s all we can do,” he said with a defeated shrug.

Someone’s stomach growled in the hush of despair. Owen rummaged through his bag and found only two ration packs. “Anyone else have any food?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. “If you don’t… it’ll be a fight to the death.” Met with silence, he chuckled to himself, “I’m joking.”

The doctor, Ade, located a couple of packs in his own bag, as well as glucose tablets in the med kit. Between them, they shared a lukewarm meal and established a duty watch.

As the darkness started to set in, the other members of the team slept in shifts. Anthony Victor Smith sat up, alert.

Come on, Anthony. This is nothing.

Though every instinct screamed something was wrong, there was nothing there.

It’s nothing, you would have worked it out by now.

He folded his arms and thought about the possible scenarios that brought them here. His mind drifted somewhere other than the seat of tree roots digging into his backside.

This is a hostile territory. He rolled his eyes. No shit. He studied the campers, their huddled forms buried beneath jackets and jumpers.

A training exercise, perhaps?

But these weren’t military personnel that he was with. At least, he didn’t think so.

They’d had five minutes to get out, if that. He wasn’t even sleeping when the sirens started. What he had with him was all that remained in the bag by his cabin door: water, a compass, a notebook, and a change of socks. Everything else was stowed away in drawers and cupboards. He looked up in the hope of seeing the stars, but the canopy of the trees obscured his view. He wanted to know if the ship was even up there, but it was an answer he had no way of obtaining.

His suspicions stewed as he sat there.

What if this was The Rimar ensuring they didn’t get to New Botswana?

But why? Too much trade had been lost already.

He reached for his bag and retrieved his notebook, pulling the pen out of the holder at the back of it. In the darkness, he narrowed his eyes and tried to see what he was writing:

Rimar scheme. But why? Possible reasons:

He stopped. The ferns behind him rustled, and ceased. His pulse did not. He took a deep breath and let it out.

Stay calm.

His medication.

That’s what was missing. He groaned and reached inside the bag again. He’d only been taking it for three days; not long enough to form a habit. Anthony felt around for a slender cylinder and he was met with nothing but the lining of the rucksack. He half-laughed. Stress caused by forgetting stress pills.

The doctor insisted it was only for a short time, but it was important he didn’t miss a dose when travelling. He tossed the bag aside and tried to remain calm, thinking about his breathing as he did so.

Your belly is a balloon, the instructor was still saying in his head. But this was not a yoga studio on Atlantis. This was a jungle in the middle of nowhere, and he was supposed to have all the answers.

You’re the man we need. Nothing gets past you.

He looked across to where Owen was sleeping, the panic tightening his stomach until he pinned it down.

Anthony knew nothing. He knew nothing and they were going to realise it later, or the next day, or the day after that.

Droplets of sweat itched his forehead.

Your breath is flowing, in, out… that’s it.The palpitations started up again.For fuck’s sake. He closed his eyes. Try harder.

But any time he closed his eyes, he felt it. That chill settled itself down on his spine. That sense of being on display, but met with empty eyes when he faced his audience. Eyes burning into the side of his face. The presence of… what?

He glanced around the camp once more, and stood up, brushing the dry, musty earth from his trousers. He stretched, he walked, he circled the camp. He documented it all with his senses: a snap of a twig, a rustle of leaves.

He looked at his watch. Two more hours until Owen took over. Two more hours to keep it away.

He knew what he’d tell him when the time came.

They were not alone, and the enemy was always watching.

Oceanus will be available on 19th June 2026.

Catch all episodes of Salome here, including new episodes.

Salome (All Episodes)

You get this because you give me a reason to finish that draft, edit that line, think about the next book… Of course I write for my own fulfilment but you make it my job, and it’s the best job I’ve ever had. I am so grateful for your support whether you have been here since day one, or you’ve recently joined! Thank y…

Read more

Welcome to Episode 18 of Salome. This is a Gothic Horror novel set in the 1880s and introduces Sister Salome, a young Italian nun who will appear in the 3rd Muldoon book. I started this serial to help you get to know her before the events of the next novel.

Salome suspects her friend is working against The Order.

Chapter 1

Book 3? I need to catch up!

Index

18

I woke up in my dormitory, distinctively hearing her cry. I looked about the dimly lit room, and I could make out the shapes of my sleeping sisters. Only my bed was empty. Instinct, or my embarrassment of bumping into Mr Muldoon in my nightgown once, compelled me to put my habit on before investigating further. Slipping my shoes on, I took the candle out to the corridor.

“Sister?” I whispered. No response.

I slowly approached the landing of the second floor, the small shrine standing against the wall in darkness. Why was it so dark? Even the moon offered no illumination through the barely-drawn curtains.

I looked around, checking the corridor behind me. Nothing. The candle had no more than an inch of use left, and I could see no others nearby. Frustrated, I turned to descend the staircase and look for her in my old room.

The door was open, the bed unmade. I looked for her on the first-floor landing where there was a clock. Three o’clock in the morning. I went to the window that overlooked the courtyard. No signs of life apart from Jethro sitting on the back wall.

The wax of the candle caught my thumb, almost causing me to drop it with the shock of the pain. I implored to remain focused, and went downstairs.

The front door was open.

“Follow her.”

Mother Hildegard stood behind me on the staircase, fully dressed in her habit. The shadows obscured her face until she reached out her hand and made me give her the candle.

I looked at her helplessly, but she was unmoved. It was an order, not a request.

I went out into the street, Mother Hildegard peering out of the open doorway. She pointed to the top of Norfolk Street. “That way,” she said quietly. She must have seen her leave from the vantage point of her office window. It was a still night, with thick clouds shrouding the moon, but I was grateful for the streetlamps.

I rushed on, reaching Jamaica Street quickly. The night was not cold, but I shivered uncontrollably as I walked. I saw her waifish frame wandering past the church until she reached the end of the road, turning right. I stalked, ready to hide behind the nearest wall or post if she should turn, but she never did. We kept walking.

She led me up the hill to the cemetery, the gate open just enough for her to pass through. I stopped for a moment, heart thumping in my chest. Should I have gone back to Mother Hildegard? Or should I have continued to follow Catherine? My breath shortened, my face sweating as I listened to my own raspy inhales and exhales. The panic grew, preventing me from opening my lungs as far as I needed. I forced myself to suppress it, steadying my shaking hand on the railing. I did not want to go any further, and yet duty compelled me to see this through.

The silence of this resting place struck me with a melancholy, the ivy clinging to the stone angels and marble headstones. No wind passed through the trees, but I felt the need to hold myself as I crept behind her. Occasionally ducking behind great headstones, I could study her more closely. She was wearing only a nightgown, but she did not appear to feel the cool air of the night. Her bare feet snapped twigs as she walked. She passed a tall sandstone monument in the centre of the graveyard. It was exposed, and although well over ten feet high, I could not get to it without stepping out from the headstones and trees. I scurried behind it, not letting the heels of my shoes touch the stone slabs on the floor. Fortunately, she showed no sign of suspecting my presence. I held my breath, worried that the illusion of her isolation would break with one clumsy noise. I steadied myself, letting the air leave silently before trying to inhale. I shook my head. My heart beat furiously in my chest as I looked around the side of the stone monument again. She was still walking toward the back of the cemetery. I looked up at the black walls surrounding us. We were so deep in the ground, the townhouses on the streets above seeming so high. Too far away to call for help. I squinted in the dark as I brought my eyes back to where she was.

Catacombs. She was opening the gate to one of them. The high creak of its hinges echoed, bouncing off every high wall of this place.

No, I thought, the icy tingle of fear brushing its fingers along the back of my neck. I crouched down behind another headstone, thinking of what to do next.

Fear struck my heart when I heard the wail, echoing from the tombs beneath. The unmistakable wail of a child. There was a child in there. My shock, my fear, my curiosity, and my concern for the child mingled, bringing me back to my senses.

Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle.

I gripped the edge of the mossy stone with a trembling hand, and I forced myself to stand. She had gone in there, and I would follow.

My heart stopped when a hand covered my mouth, another pulling me away.

Episode 19

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

←Previous Chapter

If you’re enjoying Salome, you really would enjoy The Muldoon Mysteries series. There are currently two books (standalones) in this series. Click the image below to find out more about them, and find them on Tiny Worlds.

My books are now available at

I like to think of writing your first novel as something like handling your first feral cat. You have good intentions, but you don’t know what will happen. Then you’re covered in scratches and bite marks, and it still won’t let you come close (in a way that doesn’t involve bloodshed). Sometimes it gets you right in the face, and you want to cry and abandon the project, but you keep coming back because on some level, you need to. Fast forward a few months and that cat is now calm and curled up in the basket under your desk. You don’t know how that happened, but you’re glad it did.

Maybe it’s because you kept filling that bowl, even if most of it ended up on the floor or worse… missing parts and on your duvet. Maybe it’s because you like to commit to things, even if you feel like you’ve bitten off more than you can chew.

For whatever reason, the cat calms down. They all do.

But then you get the chance to do a second edition. It’s been a couple of years, so you’ll have to try and think back to what handling a feral cat was like. You’ve only got domesticated ones now. They bite and scratch of course, but there’s only one first time.

It’s going to be a bit of a shock.

The second edition

When first suggested the possibility of editing for a second edition and a new release with Tiny Worlds Publishing, I was nervous. I wanted to do it, because I knew it wasn’t perfect (how could it be? It was my first pass at a novel!) but I also knew it would be full of expressions I would no longer use. I knew it would be hard to read, a bit like having to read your teenage diary, (I’ve never had to do that, but you get the idea of how cringey it might be).

The editing process was actually a good laugh. I’m not precious, and I’m forever grateful to have such a good working relationship with J the editor as well as J the writer. Growth should be a bit uncomfortable, but it doesn’t mean you can’t smile when you see how far you’ve come (even when those scratches sting).

A lot has changed in two years.

Two years is a long time to develop your skill when you write most days, and you learn on the job. I’ve published three other books since then. I’ve developed my voice. I am not the author I was in 2024.

I knew there would be the odd typo to clean up, or a passage that would benefit from some expansion. What I didn’t know was how much I’d have developed over those years. It was a pleasant surprise, especially when I strive to be objectively critical of my work.

Going back to who you were is really hard, but I’m proud of what I did.

So what’s the new version like?

This version is even better than the previous one. I will put my name to that, even if the first was already good.

Despite the minor errors, that book received really positive reviews. The story (which is still the same) is solid. The story has been preserved, because that’s what earned the reviews. The typos also earned some reviews, but they are gone now, so now people can just focus on the story when reviewing.

It is still written in British English. If you told me I’d never get another 1 or 2 star review again if I change to American English, I still wouldn’t. The grammar and the expressions of the (not even American) characters are integral. I believe there’s no better way to capture their spirit and the cultures they represent. Also, I’m British, so there’s that…

Preface to the second edition (2026)

In January 2024, an idea that had been burning in the back of my mind for years finally demanded existence. Recovering from burnout from another creative pursuit and adjusting to the arrival of my third child, I tapped away at the keys, wondering where this would take me. A few years before, Philip K Dick and Ridley Scott sparked that what if flame for me, only intensifying the fire with Blade Runner 2049 in 2017.

If I’ve learned anything from my love of science fiction, it is that the future is scary, and it is uncertain, but it is in that shapeless uncertainty where we can mould clay.

This was my first novel.

In my life I’d created plenty of scribbles, characters and plots, but never a novel. Luckily, it knew what it wanted to be, and what an adventure that was.

I’d never thought of chasing an agent, trying to land a publisher or fighting for shelf space in the local bookshop. I just wanted this story to exist.

I originally took this debut to Substack. There was a small but thriving fiction community there, and I am still grateful to have found a platform where I could simply put my words into a virtual bottle to drift across the platform. Others found them, and they waited for a weekly email that brought them more.

This new edition is still the same story as the one I published in September 2024, it just has all the refinement you’d expect for a book that has been revisited by an author who has improved since then. Careful polishing of areas that were a little rough around the edges, and some further insight into some characters.

As tempting as it was to go back and rewrite the entire book (because some sentences were hard to read), I wanted to preserve that original voice. I am still proud of who I was then, and what I had been able to produce from writing sessions that worked around baby nap times, school pickups and all the drama that comes with raising a young family in times of economic uncertainty and bizarre global politics.

This book will always be special to me. It is a story that still moves me to tears, no matter how many revisions I’ve read through, because it will always be about what it means to be human. Then, now, and always.

Oceanus will be available in June, 2026.

I can’t wait to show you this book.

Are you a subscriber? Stay tuned for the exclusive subscriber pre-sale.

Leave a comment

Share

Subscribe now

Keeping this to myself has been so hard but I can finally show you the new cover for Oceanus.

Designed by the wonderful designer (and writer!) this cover could not have been more perfect. I need to extend a huge thank you to my publisher of Tiny Worlds for his input with this too. I couldn’t have wished for a better cover that truly conveys the soul of this story.

Some of you may remember that Oceanus was my debut novel, originally released (by little ol’ me) in September 2024. Following a successful serialisation on Substack, I took it to print (such a minefield). It had a great run, and the reviews have been really good, but it deserved a second edition. It will be published with Tiny Worlds on the 18th of June, 2026.

The new blurb:

A starship drifts, its crew gone. The planet it orbits has no name.

Survivors are separated on the surface. Exhausted. Hunted. Lost.

The longer they stay, the less they can trust their own minds.

Their captor is as patient as he is bent on revenge.

Some prisons have no walls.

Oceanus is a futuristic mystery thriller loosely inspired by The Tempest.

Next week, I’ll be talking more about the book and the changes you’re going to see in the new edition. I am really looking forward to showing you what’s new and why!

Oceanus (2nd Edition) will be available on Thursday 18th June 2026.

Subscribe now

Other news:

• I’ve just finished up with the first draft of Salome and I would like to thank who has been a brilliant developmental editor working with me on this. I can’t believe it’s done. It’ll be out in October, and it left me breathless. Get in touch with him for some really insightful edits.

• Salome (the serial version) will be back next week (I’ll post a link in the next article) but all chapters so far are currently up here. All previous chapters will be moving behind the paywall on 18th June so please make sure you catch up if you don’t want to miss the serial.

• The Midnight Vault I and II are coming out 1st of June! One of my stories, The Switchboard features in MVI. The two new hardback editions are absolutely beautiful and you’ll be able to get them here.

Welcome to Episode 17 of Salome. This is a Gothic Horror novel set in the 1880s and introduces Sister Salome, a young Italian nun who will appear in the 3rd Muldoon book. I started this serial to help you get to know her before the events of the next novel.

Salome wakes from the dream, but the reality is far worse.

Chapter 1

Book 3? I need to catch up!

Index

17

The sun was coming up when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I lifted my face off the blanket. I’d collapsed on Catherine’s bed. The sawmill whirred outside, a light breeze moving the closed curtains, casting waving shadows on the wall in front of me.

“She must rest now.” Father John stood over me.

“Father—”

“Shh,” he said, holding a finger to his mouth. He offered me his hand and helped me up. “Come, leave her.”

I looked once more at her face. Catherine’s face again, her chest rising and falling peacefully. The fiend had left us in the night.

We left her in the silence of her room. Father John closed the door behind us with a gentle click, the fabric of our clothes the only sound as it rustled with our retreating movement. We stood on the landing together, Father John bending his knee and making the sign of the cross to the small statue of La Madonna on the table outside Mother Hildegard’s room. He stood up again and turned toward the stairs wordlessly.

I followed him downstairs. We retreated to the private dining room where Sister Bridget brought coffee and toast. I tore into it like a stray who hadn’t eaten in days. Bridget stopped to inspect my face, tutted, and insisted I went back to bed. Father John persuaded her that it was all in hand, and he would ensure I was able to sleep for some of the day. Satisfied, she left us to talk in peace. I told him of what had happened, and how the floor threatened to fall from beneath my feet. He listened intently.

“This will get worse before it gets better,” he said, massaging his tired eyes. I watched him, wondering why he did not sleep. Where did he go all night? I never asked. My trust in him was unconditional, and I had never questioned it until now. He poured milk into his cup and stirred it. “What did it sing to you?”

“Lucciola.”

“The firefly song? Can you tell me the words?”

I switched to English as best as I could: “Firefly, firefly, yellow, yellow. Bridle the uh… a horse. A mare. The king’s son wants her. Firefly, firefly, come with me.”

His face paled. “A song from your childhood?”

I nodded. “She spoke to me in my mother’s voice, Father.”

He sat upright, folding his arms. “And what did you say? Did you talk to it?”

I shook my head. “I said a prayer for the dead… in case she was… in case she was suffering.”

“Your mother was a Christian, yes?”

“Yes. She is buried in the churchyard of my village.”

He gave a guttural sound of recognition, and pensively sipped his coffee. “I did not know what else to do,” I said. “So I prayed for her.”

“And the demon did not like that?”

“No. It attacked me.” He raised an eyebrow. I elaborated, “Well, it used its powers to attack me.”

“And what did you do?”

I shook my head. “I pushed it back. I know not to where, but Father. It had to shield itself… from me.”

He stared for a moment, puzzled. He spoke again with a lowered voice. “From you?”

“For a split second, while it was all unfolding, and I remembered. I caught my reflection in the washstand mirror. There were no witnesses to confirm what I’d seen… but I saw…”

“Go on,” Father John said. “You can tell me.”

“My eyes, Father. My eyes were glowing.”

He dropped his spoon.

BREAK

Mother Hildegard did not hide her dislike for Mr Muldoon. Any time he entered the house, she made excuses to be indisposed, sometimes for the entire day. I learned that she was incredibly prideful; a sin she wrestled with often.

“It is not easy for Mother Hildegard,” Father John said. “She has given her life to God, to the Order, and so when she meets someone who hasn’t, someone who possesses powers greater than hers, she has difficulty accepting them.”

“Mr Muldoon is very powerful?”

“Very.”

“Why is he not a priest?”

“Several reasons, but you must remember that being a member of the clergy is not a requirement to join this order.” He saw that I wasn’t satisfied with his answer and gave a patient smile. “Suffice to say that he does not want to be. His reasons are his own.”

“When he entered my dream, the vampyre was not there.”

“Yes,” Father John said, leaning back. “I suppose he had to mention that to you?”

“He did.”

Father John shook his head. “I hoped that he could help us hunt down this vampyre. If he is no use, you must tell me, and I will dismiss him.”

“He asks a lot of questions.”

“That’s his job.”

“He is quite certain of everything.”

Father John lowered his shoulders. “Mr Muldoon has had a run of… shall we say, luck? A long one. As much as it pains me to admit it to him, he is seldom wrong.”

I frowned. “Why is this the case?”

“There is a long story I will tell you one day, but when he was much younger, he resided for a time in The Vatican—for his training, you understand. There was an incident. Quite serious. Beneath all of our noses. Let’s just say… a lot of favours are owed to Mr Muldoon.”

Before I could ask any more questions, we were interrupted by the door knocker, and the muffled voices of Sister Bridget and a man.

“Speak of the Devil and he shall appear,” Father John said, raising an eyebrow. I narrowed my eyes. “Another English idiom, my child,” he said, smiling.

Sister Bridget welcomed Mr Muldoon into the private dining room. He held his hat in his hands and bowed slightly. I froze. The smugness he wore on his face in the dream was nowhere to be seen. I caught myself staring, comparing the versions I’d met.

“Please, come and sit with us, Daniel,” Father John said, rising. I did the same. Sister Bridget retreated from the room to make tea and coffee for us.

“Good morning, Salome,” Mr Muldoon said. I straightened. Was he allowed to call me by my first name? I didn’t know. It felt improper. Too familiar. I felt myself blush. He seemed oblivious to his conduct, or to the fact that he had offended me.

“Good morning, Signore Muldoon,” I said, my tongue unable to address him as either Mr Muldoon or Daniel Muldoon. English formalities were confusing to me, and this was not a regular situation. Signore came naturally. It was proper. He laughed slightly, nodding. I wondered if he was going to pat me on the head.

“Signore. I like it.” I must have been the colour of pickled beetroot, for Father John smiled too.

Father John cut up a fruit cake for us, handing the wedges out on small plates. I chewed on the infused fruit, wondering why the man rendered such a ceremony. Sister Bridget returned with the tea and coffee, pouring it out for him, beaming. She finished her business quickly, insisting that we should call if we needed anything else. She took Muldoon’s hat for him without prompting, and closed the door. Why did he have this effect? They either loved him or despised him. I didn’t know what I thought overall, but my hackles were still up from our first meeting.

“I can solve this case in days,” he’d said. “If that. It’s just a vampyre.”

Just a vampyre. He hadn’t caught it yet. What did he think I’d been doing? Dreaming of knitting in my parents’ cottage every night? He’d wanted a closer look at the statue of Lilith. I stewed on it, picking at my nails. In all fairness, I hadn’t seen it before he came with me to the church. But why did the hooded man hide from him and not me?

I brought my hand to the cheek where he hit me in the dream. I was forced to remain there, helping him find more answers to this mystery. I sank back into my chair and watched them make what Father John called ‘small talk’. I learned from Father John that this shallow, polite conversation was a necessity in our line of work. A prelude to all serious conversation, especially if the door has not been closed yet. I chose to keep my responses very short. That was all I could bring myself to do. I was busy studying Mr Muldoon; the man who’d come to my dream, just because he could.

For a dreamwalker, he was not what I expected. Dare I say it, he reminded me of a beggar.

The blurriness and soft edges of the dream had shielded a lot of his features from me at first. Barely cleanshaven, I could see where he’d missed parts of his face while I studied the faded scars across his lean cheeks. Pockmarks. I looked at his suit, coming away at the seams, some of the threads hanging out of the shoulders and the cuffs. The wool of his jacket, shiny in parts, worn away through long wear. I wondered who cared for him? Who provided his clothing?

I realised I was frowning and looked away until I could regain my composure. I was being cruel.

I looked at Mr Muldoon again in the cold light of day. He was slightly unkempt, but remained handsome, his keen features overriding the remnants of his childhood illness. And he certainly did not smell like a beggar. A faint aroma of tobacco lingered on his clothes, perhaps, but his fingernails and teeth were clean. He was so real, and to my annoyance, felt his voice to be so soft it could put even a hissing cat at ease. I could not imagine him as a priest. He smoothed his dark hair down with a hand. It was so dark, I was unable to tell if it was black or very dark brown. But it was sleek and slightly wavy. When they were talking, he looked at me with sad, blue eyes. I cast my face downward. I could feel—what? It gripped my stomach and dragged it down. An overwhelming sense of loss. A chasm in the wanderer’s heart. Once, a voice there longed for a home, but it had since filled with ash. The unwanted. I despised myself for judging him. I did not know him, and I had no right.

I asked God to forgive me. And yet, I could not stop looking at him.

Studying the other sex was fascinating. Of course, Father John was a man, but not a young man. He made me feel at ease, and safe, cared for. A grandfather, and a tutor. This was not the case with Muldoon. He was strange to me. All I had to go on was the dream, what Father John had told me, and some gossip I heard in the corridor about how Daniel Muldoon was “the apple of Father Nugent’s eye,” whoever that was. Father John clearly liked him, and I was surprised by my own jealousy; like that a sibling feels when a parent shows an apparent preference for one child over another.

I did not trust him, but I found his arrogance intriguing. I wanted to know his history, and why he was so powerful. A thousand questions crossed paths in my head, each and every one wanting to burst out of my mouth and interrupt their conversation, but I fought for silence and chewed my cake in thought. Cake seemed incredibly inappropriate for the substance of our conversation, the fruit seeming more bitter with each bite. I washed it away with the coffee, content to listen to their conversation for the moment.

They were speaking about murder.

“It’s the same one, Father,” Mr Muldoon said, pushing the cake aside. I realised I did not have much of an appetite either.

“Are you certain?”

Muldoon nodded in response, and no further questions were asked.

Episode 18

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

←Previous Chapter

If you’re enjoying Salome, you really would enjoy The Muldoon Mysteries series. There are currently two books (standalones) in this series. Click the image below to find out more about them, and find them on Tiny Worlds.

My books are now available at

Welcome to Episode 14 of Salome. This is a Gothic Horror novel set in the 1880s and introduces Sister Salome, a young Italian nun who will appear in the 3rd Muldoon book. I started this serial to help you get to know her before the events of the next novel.

Salome wakes from the dream, but the reality is far worse.

Chapter 1

Book 3? I need to catch up!

Index

16

I woke the following day to find Father John sitting beside my bed.

“She has risen. Alleluia,” he joked.

“Father,” I said weakly, “Good morning.”

“Afternoon, but you are forgiven.”

The small clock ticked on the wall of the dormitory. Light filtered in through the curtains, the first time I’d seen it in what felt like an eternity. A tray of bread buns and cold bacon graced the sideboard. Father John turned to it and removed a knitted tea cosy before pouring me some tea. “Not very hot,” he mused, studying the absence of steam. “Milk?”

“Please, Father.” My limbs felt dreadfully heavy, aching when as little as a joint flexed. I groaned and winced, trying to sit up.

“That was some ordeal you had,” he said, sitting with the tea cup and saucer on his lap. He held it out to me. “Would you like some breakfast?”

I smiled, but I could not raise my body. Exhaustion. “Ah,” he said, realising. “This will not do.” He put the tea down again and reached for a pillow from the bed beside mine, stuffing it behind my back as he lifted me, sitting me upright. “Enough?”

I nodded. He gently brought the cup to my lips. I drank. It was tepid, but I did not care. I was so thirsty, and unashamed of the loudness of my greedy intake. “Some more?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. I nodded and he brought me another cup, and another. I relaxed back into the pillows with a sigh.

“That was the first time, Father… that I felt pain.” I cleared my throat. “Pain in the dream. As though my body fought a storm.” I couldn’t explain it any other way.

“Try to remember what happened, and tell me everything,” he said, sitting back with his arms folded.

I stared at the wall for a moment, my mind unable to retrieve the details. I watched the small hand of the clock as it moved slowly with each minute that passed.

Father John slowly rose from his chair and patted my arm. “I need to give you time. I will send Sister Bridget, and return to you when you are more alert.”

“Father, wait,” I said. “The man I said was coming. He was in my dream.”

Father John smiled. “He is nothing to worry about, Sister.”

“No?”

“No.” Father John chuckled. “Of course, he’s rather arrogant. A law unto himself, but he’s useful.”

“Who is he?”

“His name is Daniel Muldoon.”

My fatigue did not linger. Two days later, I was once again undertaking most of my duties, though Mother Hildegard did not push me so hard. I found myself with time on my hands every evening. Free of time, but not of will.

As Catherine started showing signs of recovery, Mother Hildegard began to limit the amount of visitors she could have. I waited until Mother Hildegard had retired to bed, and crept downstairs to pray with Catherine. She never said much, but I could sense that she appreciated my company. I wanted to ask what they were saying to her, what they didn’t want anyone to find out, but she was still very weak. I would wait.

Once, when she was asleep, I slid a small wooden crucifix under her pillow. I felt silly, and immediately wanted to retrieve it and pretend it hadn’t happened, but she began to stir and it was too late to change my mind.

I read some of the English Bible to her—her gently assisting me with occasional words—and we talked of mundane things. I think it was good for us both. I did not mention the ceremony in the library, and I felt sick with treachery as I talked of other things with her.

One night, when I went in there, she was sitting up, more alert than usual. Her eyes, bright and fixed on me with a decidedness I hadn’t seen before, cautioned me to stay by the door.

“What is it?” I whispered.

She said nothing. Her eyes, luminous in the dim light of her room, did not blink.

“Is everything all right, Sister?” I asked.

My stomach lurched. Her slack lips curled, revealing her teeth. Long, sharp teeth, the threads of saliva hanging from the canines as they caught the faint light of the candle. A deep laugh emitted from her mouth, but it was not hers. “She’s dead,” the voice said.

“What?”

“She died for the cause.”

I wanted to reach out and shake her, but fear held me where I was.

“Catherine?” I sounded pitiful.

Laughter again. “Go home, little one.” Little one. My legs buckled. I slumped against the door.

“Release her!”

My blood curdled at the sound of my mother’s voice singing from the open mouth of Sister Catherine. “Lucciola, lucciola…”

“Stop!”

The thing that had her body smiled, its head tilting to the side, eyeing me peculiarly with thick, red lips. It started again with gusto, singing over my pleas. Singing with her voice.

Lucciola lucciola, gialla gialla

metti la briglia alla cavalla

che la vuole il figlio del re

lucciola lucciola vieni con me.

My thoughts buzzed like a swarm of bees, flitting so fast I could catch none of them. I couldn’t breathe. Our eyes met again, hers as cruel as they were intrigued. If it was my mother in there, I could not let her suffer.

“Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord—”

Slammed against the door by a force I couldn’t see, I fought to remain standing against the gale. It pinned me in place, its grip squeezing my wrists and ankles as it lifted me off the floor. The beams of the building groaned, the frame of her bed lifting and rattling, shaking the walls.

“Leave!” it said.

“And let perpetual light shine upon them!” I cried in defiance. My feet returned to the floor.

With speed and efficiency honed by my training, I leapt for the crucifix on the nearest wall, holding it up to the creature. It screamed, the same unnatural voice screeching at the back of Sister Catherine’s throat. It lunged from the bed, hands grasping for my neck.

“And let perpetual light shine upon them!” I shouted again, my voice steadier even as my legs began to shake from the adrenaline, and—

It stopped. It wailed from behind its hands, shielding its eyes from the light. A light of what origin I could not discern, but it was with me.

“May they rest in peace. Amen.”

Catherine collapsed. I ran to her and lifted her limp form back into the bed. Her eyes, darkened with fatigue, were closed, but I thanked God that she was breathing. I turned to look at the door, and that’s when I saw it.

A bright light blocked my reflection in the mirror. I moved closer to the washstand until I could see clearer.

My eyes. The light was within my eyes.

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

←Previous Chapter

Ways to support this fiction newsletter.

As well as the option to upgrade your subscription to paid, I do also have books that you can purchase as well as a ko-fi and paypal.

Ko Fi Tip Jar

Paypal Tip Jar

If you’re enjoying Salome, you really would enjoy The Muldoon Mysteries series. There are currently two books (standalones) in this series. Click the image below to find out more about them, and find them on Tiny Worlds.

My books are now available at

Welcome to Episode 15 of Salome. This is a Gothic Horror novel set in the 1880s and introduces Sister Salome, a young Italian nun who will appear in the 3rd Muldoon book. I started this serial to help you get to know her before the events of the next novel.

A stranger comes to help, but Salome didn’t ask, and she doesn’t know if she can trust him.

Chapter 1

Book 3? I need to catch up!

Index

I found myself spying on my superiors more and more. I heard them discussing something that I knew was horrible. I only caught words, but if one can paint a picture that represents the full range of colours from only red, green and blue, one can piece together clippings to make a story. I did not need to know the details. Their hushed voices and the fear emitting from Mother Hildegard’s office fed my insatiable curiosity.

There was something outside at night. Hunting. Taunting us. It wanted us to look for it.

First, a woman who we’d cared for at the hospital had been killed, her body parts left on the altar of St Vincent de Pauls’ church. Then, an infant, cold as the stone of the steps it had been left on, devoid of blood. They hid it from me, but I knew. I saw them in my mind’s eye. I saw that I couldn’t save them. I cried in my bed until I was sick, then I cried again, disappointed by my apparent weakness. What would my tears do for murdered innocents? I hated myself for my uselessness. It was easy to hate the reflection of my blotchy, pathetic face as it struggled to control its emotions.

“The Devil wants you to surrender,” I heard Mother Hildegard in the back of my head. That was where she seemed to live now, permanently. “He wants to break you. He wants you to give up.” It would have been easy to give up. It would have been comfortable. Looking away would have been a blessing. But that was not my duty. I splashed my face at the basin and vowed to hunt my tormentor in my dream, should it return.

The hooded figure waited for me in the same place, every time. The moment it vanished made me scream with frustration. I could stay awake all night and resist it happening again, or I could find another way to fight it. “Learn what you can from it,” Father John said. “Take it all in. Every small detail.” But I did not want to sit and study. I wanted to grab the candelabra and burn the church down. I wanted to watch the hooded figure burn, too. I did not want the dream, so I would endeavour to find an end to it.

I slept easily, tired from my training. My shivering muscles loosened as I fell into the abyss, my body soft and heavy in the mattress.

I stalked the same house, in the same hills, with the same fields. What was there to learn from visiting the same dream so many times?

It frustrated me, to the point where I’d developed a general intolerance for conversation outside of my lessons. I knew what was coming after the day had ended. I endured.

“Never converse with the demon,” Father John said.

But I did… In Turin. Perhaps it was too late for lessons.

“Never do it again,” he said. “It was a lesson. Learn from it.”

It was taunting me. The dream. What did it want?

I entered my little house each time, the beds in the same place, the empty rooms and dust-ridden furniture, like a blank canvas waiting for my fingerprints again. The figure behind the curtain, always out of reach. “Come out!” I called. “Show yourself!”

Then one night, another voice answered.

“Who are you?”

Like Sister Catherine, but a man. Not the hooded figure. Someone else. Unthreatening.

“Tell me who you are first.”

And that was when I lost him. Every time. I would not tell him who I was, but I tortured myself with questions. If he had been a demon, wouldn’t he have known my name anyway? I ran through all of these questions until my feet cramped from the incessant stomping up and down the hilly streets of this riverside city, its cool winds chilling the sweat on the back of my neck before it could run. When would this end? I marched on.

“Whoa there. Steady,” someone said as I crashed headlong into a mass of black wool. A suitcase clattered on the pavement, but it did not burst open. I jolted back and looked up.

“Are you all right, Sister?” The early morning sun silhouetted him, and I could not see his face.

I froze. His voice. So familiar. He was still speaking, but the palpitations surged into my ears, my throat, even at the back of my eyes. He reached out to support me, but was too slow.

I grabbed my skirts and I ran.

Collapsing behind the main door of the convent, I panted and wiped the sweat from my brow. Sister Bridget came running down the corridor and fell to her knees, asking me over and over again what had happened.

“The dream,” I said, still fighting for breath. “He’s coming for me.”

“What?” Sister Bridget asked, “Salome, what is it?”

“He’s out there. He’s come to find me.”

She held me, and in response to the immediate comfort that came with the safe arms of any mother-figure, I wept.

The doctor came again, administering something to help me sleep. I screamed, “No, please no,” as I drifted off, helpless. The last I saw of Mother Hildegard was her pensively holding her chin as I closed my eyes. Damn you all, I thought, feeling my muscles loosen as the soft bed absorbed my weight.

“Who are you?” the shadow behind the window asked.

I stiffened, standing there. “Who are you?”

He sighed. “If you won’t speak to me in the flesh, we’ll have to do it here.”

“I don’t trust you.”

He laughed. “That’s fair, given the circumstances.”

“What are you doing here?” I asked, waiting inside the house. I heard his footsteps cross the board of the front step before I saw him. It was the same man. Dressed in a black suit, but he was not a priest. He removed his hat and gave a slight bow.

I remained still.

“I’m hunting down a vampire,” he said. “And you?”

An Irishman. He sounded like Sister Catherine. I looked around for her, and wondered if she could talk here, too. “How is this possible?” I asked.

He shrugged slightly. “You know that old phrase, God works in mysterious ways? I find it helps with things like this.” He regarded me for a moment, his chin turned up slightly. “Do you all look like little boys under the veils, Sister?”

I patted down my head with my hands, and realised I wasn’t wearing my habit. I was bare-headed, wearing my nightdress and robe. He sighed, “Forgive me. I shouldn’t tease.”

He was older than me, his hair almost black, or perhaps it was black—this was a dream after all. He stood at least a foot taller, and looked around the house as though he was seeing it for the first time. I peered outside, and the sky was calm. No howling, no fear, no wolves. I remained still, perplexed by the stillness of the world around me.

“Any clues as to what’s going on here?” he asked, watching me.

The words came without passing through my mind first. “The vampyre is in the church.”

“What church?”

“Up on the hill,” I said, pointing. He shook his head.

“Looks like I’ve reached the limits of my vision, Sister.” He stepped back into the front garden of the cottage. “You’ll have to show me.”

I stepped out and stood in front of him for a moment, the blades of grass tickling my bare feet. If my gut was my guardian angel, it had changed course. Now it was telling me to trust him, and lead him to the church. I gestured for him to follow me, wondering if the ground revealed itself to him with every step he took. “What can you see ahead, sir?”

“An abyss, Sister.”

So different, I thought. “You are not a priest?”

“No.” I turned to look at him and caught him studying the fireflies that swarmed the marshes at the foot of the hill. He caught me watching and raised his eyebrows. “I’ve never seen these before.” He placed a couple of fingers on his hat, trying to keep it in place as the wind blew down at us.

“Lucciola. Fireflies,” I said. He nodded and continued to follow me up the steep hillside. The lights were on as they always were, my body gravitating toward them, rendering me as impulsive as the moth. I picked up the lantern that rested on my parents’ grave. “You know them?” he asked.

“My parents,” I said.

He said nothing, and followed to the steps of the church door. I heard him suck air through his teeth. “What is it?” I asked.

“Blood on the lintel.”

“Yes,” I said, “the remains of a lamb are inside. I think it was some sort of Black Mass.”

He groaned. “Show me inside, Sister, if you wouldn’t mind.”

We entered, the creaking of the heavy doors echoing across the empty church. My shoulders sagged.

“What is it?”

“The vampyre,” I said. “It’s gone.”

“I have that effect on the undead,” he said, a corner of his mouth rising faintly. I did not understand him. Did he want me to laugh? Even at a moment like this? I took a deep breath and thought better of it. This place did not carry the same heaviness for him as it did for me. How was he to know that?

“Usually he is here, and he tells me to stay.”

“Why?”

“I do not know. Once, he grabbed my arm, and my skin was scratched when I woke up.”

The man said nothing, and now that he was equipped with the full view of the church, he gently stepped past me and went to the bones on the floor, squatting down to study them, turning them over in his hands.

“Not a Black Mass,” he said. “Or at least, it didn’t start that way.”

“What is it?”

“A sacrificial lamb.” He looked up at me. ”Its blood was used for protection.”

My heart caught in my throat. Of course: a familiar story. “The destroyer?”

He shook his head. “Possibly, but it can also be used to keep demons out…”

“They can enter churches.”

He nodded ruefully. “They can. At least, until there’s a deterrent. Lamb’s blood can do it, and it did for a time.”

“This isn’t just a vampyre?”

He stood up and pushed his jacket back, placing his hands in his trouser pockets. “This makes things slightly more difficult.”

“It does?”

“Yes,” he sighed. He didn’t share any other details.

I sat down in the nearest pew, my head heavy. He turned to study the altar. “Have you seen this before?” he asked, nodding to it.

The painted face looking down on us from the altar at first looked like that of La Madonna, but her curled lips and wicked grin assured me it was not La Madonna. “Lilith,” I whispered. Her waves of dark hair rested on bare shoulders, her breasts slightly exposed, but not in order to feed the Christ child resting on her hip. She held nothing but contempt.

“Aye.”

If a woman is a daughter of Eve, the vampyress is a daughter of Lilith… But this was a man. I saw him.

“I called him Papa.”

“Who?”

“The hooded figure with the long nails who grabbed me. He felt so familiar. I thought for a second that it was my Papa.”

“And it wasn’t?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. Papa died when I was very young. I never saw him on his deathbed.”

The man rubbed his chin for a moment, lost in thought. He ran his fingers along the pews, the echo of his footsteps bouncing off the walls and the vaulted ceiling. “You’re from here?” he asked.

I shrugged, looking around. “This is my church. This is where I grew up. You first met me in my house.”

“What else has it said to you?”

“Just that I should stay.”

“Hmm.” His silence was frustrating. He continued to study the church, the altar and the bones on the floor. I wondered what was going on in his head. Whatever it was, he wasn’t sharing it with me.

My leg bounced, forcing me back to my feet. “Can we go now?” I asked.

He raised his dark eyebrows and looked at me, as though he’d forgotten I’d been there the entire time.

“No, not just yet. You’re all right.”

I didn’t know what that meant. He turned away from me and continued with his inspection of the church. “Please, we should go,” I said.

“We’ve only just arrived.”

“Please. I want to go,” I pleaded, the walls coming closer as I struggled for breath. I felt my eyes water as his hand struck my cheek.

“Sister! Oi, hang on. Stay with me!” he said, shaking me.

Episode 16

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

←Previous Chapter

Ways to support this fiction newsletter.

As well as the option to upgrade your subscription to paid, I do also have books that you can purchase as well as a ko-fi and paypal.

Ko Fi Tip Jar

Paypal Tip Jar

If you’re enjoying Salome, you really would enjoy The Muldoon Mysteries series. There are currently two books (standalones) in this series. Click the image below to find out more about them, and find them on Tiny Worlds.

My books are now available at

I write speculative fiction, mostly hovering around horror and sci-fi, but hopefully there’s something here that will help you get more out of your own writing. I’ve sold over 500 books in my 18 months as a published author, and I wanted to share my insights into how I can write so much, some of it not needing much of an edit.

Essential background information:

When I decided to start writing fiction properly ie running the risk of letting complete strangers read it and judge it, I had a six month old baby at home, and was the default caregiver for a 3 and 5 year old, too. My youngest is 2 and a half now, and she doesn’t like to nap like she did in infancy. I was already self-employed running a craft business at home, but the joy was wearing off, and it became very expensive to run with many external aggressors chopping its limbs off. That’s where I was at when I wrote my first book.

I wrote because it made me feel happy. I enjoyed putting words down, no matter whether I had 15 minutes to do it or an hour. That’s what I chose to do most evenings instead of watching a Netflix series for example. I wanted it.

Fiction is not something you can fast-track, or maximise earnings on in a matter of months. There are several books (and software) out there claiming to be able to make you more productive and more creative, but for the most part, you just need to write.

I also have ADHD and hyperphantasia. I will explain more on that later.

The less time you have, the more you want it.

Knowing that there wasn’t going to be a clear block of writing made me want it more, and then when I did have time at the computer, I’d smash it out. No checking phones, emails or social media. I was hyper-focused on the work.

I can work through noise. You might want to try and do the same, then you’ll be unstoppable, I swear.

I scribbled stories down in secondary school. Every single project was abandoned at some point. I wrote some fiction for my English GCSE, but I was a prolific reader and a wannabe actor more than anything. I did English Lang/Lit at A level, an English Literature BA and then a Popular Literatures MA before becoming an English teacher. That’s my background.

It was things like MSN messenger and teaching that got me typing at a million miles an hour. As for writing, I’ll show you what got me writing stories quickly and well:

Microfiction and flash fiction. Where good stories are made, or abandoned at low-cost.

You’ll come across a plethora of opinions on this form of writing. Many of them quite negative. What I will say about micro and flash is that they helped me become the writer I am today. If you’ve read any of my books, you’d see that this means they were incredibly useful.

Microfiction and flash fiction are where you tell a complete story with a very limited word count. It’s hard. A lot of it will be rubbish, but if you don’t practice or read any of it, you won’t get better. There have been times when I’ve written something and it’s just silly, or it’s a bit too vague. That doesn’t matter. It was practice.

Flash fiction was actually what helped me feel like writing was achievable. I read a few educational resources featuring examples of flash fiction and I was hooked. I knew that traditional fairy tales are flash fiction but I wanted to see some modern examples. I downloaded a PDF from the National Literacy Trust (no longer there I’m afraid) but most education resource sites for English teaching will have something.

At the bottom of this post, I’ll include some examples of flash fiction that I started out with, and some more recent pieces.

How flash fiction and micro fiction make you a more efficient writer.

‘Efficient’ can have terrible connotations, especially when it comes to fiction, but I’m not saying cut out anything that isn’t 100% functional. That would be bleak.

I wanted to focus on what said here about ‘crisp and direct’. This is something I had to learn to do. It’s so tempting to fall in love with your own pretty sentences and write swathes of purple prose, but if you want to get a story down, you need to stick to what’s important. It’s tempting to use as many big, obscure words as possible but for me as a reader, that just screams insecurity. It tells me you want everybody to know how clever you are. It’s distracting me from the story.

The best hygiene for beginning writers or intermediate writers is to write a hell of a lot of short stories. If you can write one short story a week—it doesn’t matter what the quality is to start, but at least you’re practicing, and at the end of the year you have 52 short stories, and I defy you to write 52 bad ones. Can’t be done. At the end of 30 weeks or 40 weeks or at the end of the year, all of a sudden a story will come that’s just wonderful.- Ray Bradbury

Writers who use flash and micro as writing exercises get a lot of practice in. While I completely agree with Ray Bradbury’s advice on starting short, you can go shorter, especially those of us who are juggling a million other things while trying to write.

I got better at writing because I was writing as often as possible. I also decided to serialise a novel. We had a situation where I was reliably publishing 1 short story and 1 chapter of Oceanus every week for months! The time-pressure was something I found really useful. I know that’s not the case for everyone, but a bit of accountability can’t hurt.

Push yourself. Write stuff that is challenging.

Micro and flash are low-cost. You don’t have to tear something up that you spent weeks on. They’re a safe, controlled environment to experiment in, and you can draft them multiple times.

Don’t be afraid to fail. Duds count as much as hits.

Why are they useful? Why should you take the time to write such short pieces? The’re not going to become a profitable book!

They make you a better writer. That’s my experience.

Something people get horribly wrong with micro and flash fiction is what they think it’s for. I’ve read so many that are just a description. You’re going to find yourself in a situation where you have 50 words. Don’t waste them. The best microfiction gives you enough to go on, leaving you with vividly painted gaps for you to look at between the lines. It can have dialogue, misdirection, vivid imagery and twists bringing it to life.

Microfiction: Why it makes you a better writer.

Microfiction is the perfect opportunity to practice cutting out what’s not important. If the story still lands without certain words, shave them off. You need to tell the whole story, sometimes in as little as a few words. In this piece titled ‘Ten horror stories in under 300 words’ I was focusing on 2 sentence horror stories. They’re fun.

You should be having fun at least some of the time.

The Goodbye

Mourners threw flowers and some dirt onto the surface of the coffin as it was lowered into the hole. They couldn’t hear the screams or the knocking.

What’s happened here? Oh, this person has been buried alive. You can use your imagination for the rest. I didn’t waste time on similes and metaphors because I didn’t have the space. We didn’t need to hover around abstract descriptions or themes. We need to just tell the story, and leave the reader with something to chew on.

It’s a simple story: What’s happening? Something has to happen.

Down Boy

The dog jumped onto the bed and started licking my face. When I rolled over, I saw that my actual dog was whining and backing into a corner.

Again, I’m just telling you what happened. You as the reader can fill the rest in. People will complain that this is ‘lazy writing’ but it’s microfiction. That’s the whole point. Sure, if I’d written an entire novel that required the reader to do everything, they’d have a point. That is not the case here though.

Tip: Always let the reader imagine the monster, the battle, the room etc... As tempting as it is to describe everything blow by blow, the best descriptions are the ones that use only a few breadcrumbs, leaving the reader to imagine the rest. When I first drafted Oceanus, I’d fully described a monster attacking Anthony. It was boring. It didn’t require any input from the reader. When you leave out most of the details and focus on the primal imagery of teeth, or eyes, or claws for example, the reader’s imagination kicks in and that is far more effective than any monster you can describe. Look at Stephen King’s It, for example.

I was writing microfiction daily when I was starting out with my writing career (2024). I either used prompts from Microdosing or I made them up. Either way, if I just needed to untangle my mind or flex my writing muscles, this is where I came to.

It’s something you can do when you have a lot of time constraints, and you will still feel like you’ve achieved something.

Flash fiction

Another form that people can scoff at or struggle to get down. This is an entire story in under 1500 words. Again, it can be treated like a writing exercise where you learn to cut out what’s not important. You’re shaving the excess off. Beautifully written, long-winded sentences can be really lovely and add a vivid description but they’re really not necessary when you’re learning to write efficiently.

The fairy tale is an excellent example of flash fiction. It’s a whole story: A beginning, a middle and an end in fewer than 1500 words. I wrote a lot of flash fiction when I was starting out. It taught me so much about what’s important. In my fantasy story, The Court Of The Phoenix King, I immediately went to the action. I didn’t have space for long-winded, vivid descriptions you might find in a novel or a longer short story.

The wax seal confirmed it. The Phoenix King had summoned a bride.

You can create the same imagery with fewer words.

The courtiers bowed and curtsied at his feet, and melted away like snow from a pebble when he was done with them. A whip of his lace-cuffed sleeve sent the message, loud and clear. Moving on from him, they stopped to admire the droplets of dew on his bride's crown, catching the light of the hearth like diamonds.

I learned a lot from Angela Carter. The Bloody Chamber is one of my favourite short story collections, and each description is so vivid without leaving you out of breath.

Writing serials: why this made me a more efficient writer.

Again, I wasn’t treating this as a ‘It’s just a little hobby, I don’t mind if no one’s reading it’. I was practising my skills, with the aim of putting together a novel at the end of it. Don’t be afraid of making some serious goals.

When your actions are intentional, you can write more efficiently.

How I write:

• I don’t sit at the computer if I don’t have a story ready to pop out. That’s not to say I don’t ever struggle to get words down when I do have a story. I simply mean that I don’t force myself to sit there and stare at a blank page.

• I don’t worry about how something sounds, or looks, or spells until I’m done. You can’t read over or edit something that doesn’t exist. Just get it down. Worry later.

• The story will often be fully brewed in my head first, with a few bits missing until I can work them out at the keyboard. Remember what I said about having hyperphantasia? The dialogue, the setting, the voice. It’s all in my head, and I transfer it to a document. It plays in my head like a film while I’m washing dishes, or walking, or doing something that is not writing.

• For most of my novels and short stories, I usually start with dialogue, and the rest of the story works around it. For me, the dialogue is the story. It brings the characters to life. I find that dialogue can often fall flat (or over explain everything) or sound incredibly unrealistic if it’s not thought through, so it gets more time to develop for me. Dialogue is something I revisit again, again and again with my imaginary machete.

• You don’t have to write every day. If you want to write every day, scribbling words down in a notebook absolutely counts.

• I like writing my novels as serials first. The serial was some gentle pressure that I thrived on. I needed to write in front of an audience. It didn’t matter what size. I needed the accountability. Knowing someone is waiting for chapter 5 makes chapter 5 happen.

How I read:

Being an active reader makes you a better writer, too.

Not only do you actively expand your vocabulary, but you are exposed to different ways of expressing things, describing things and so on.

Mention that to be a good writer, you have to read and watch the excuses roll in. “I don’t have time.” or “I need to work on my own writing.” Of course you do, but if you don’t know what good writing looks or feels like, you’re not exactly going to make a good job of interpreting or developing your own style. You can read instead of scrolling while you’re waiting for an appointment, while you’re on a lunch break, half an hour before bed… it’s achievable. Those nasty little things in our pockets zap so much of our time with the incessant notifications and dopamine hits. I have a setting on my phone that limits the amount of time I can spend on it. It helps so much.

When it comes to reading, I’m not just talking about physical books, either. Audiobooks open your mind, too. I’ve learned so much from listening to an audiobook.

All in all, you need to read widely. There’s no quicker way to go stale than:

• Only reading in your own genre. (How can you know how to make your fantasy more exciting if you’ve never read a thriller? How can you make your horror more unsettling if you don’t know what makes a good mystery? How can you write a great romantic sub-plot if you’ve never read one?) Great character inspiration, dialogue and settings can appear anywhere, but you won’t know that unless you explore. You also run the risk of mimicking, or writing only the genre’s expected NPCs (non player characters) and tropes.

• Focusing solely on your own writing, never reading anything else. I imagine this is like drinking your own urine: the nutritional value decreases each time it filters through you.

• Never letting anyone else read it. Welcome the feedback. Use it if it’s useful. Give it to someone you trust. Talk about your story to people. When you hear the ideas out loud, you might identify a couple of snags.

I have not done any creative writing courses. I do not pay anyone to teach me how to write. I read. I read a lot.

I read, and I pick out things I like. I think about how I’d like to explore those things in my own writing. This is nothing new. It’s not revolutionary. It also doesn’t need to be behind a paywall or inside an 80 page e-book. This is how writers have worked for centuries. Why would this have changed?

A huge mistake writers on Substack make is dedicating all of their time to writing, and taking no or little time to actually read some fiction. Some would rather read 10 ‘how to write’ books than a novel. And yet they want people to read their novels when and if the time ever comes.

There are enough authors on here sharing fiction for free, myself included. Read them. Study them. Think about why people are reading their fiction. “But they’re rubbish.” Are they? Why? Write it down. It’s all learning. You’ll learn just as much if not more from the bad ones. This is true for any job.

Actively reading books to become a better writer.

Think of the last book you really enjoyed. Why did you enjoy it? What was so good about it? Go back into the book and find examples of what really stood out to you. Was it the narrative structure? Was it the choice of narrator? Was it the way the characters interacted? Was it the shift in tenses? Did it trigger an emotional response? Was it the way the sentences flowed? These are all important, but there’s one thing I think about any time I read a book I’m enjoying:

What made you keep turning the page?

I studied English Literature at university, but you have to bear in mind that a lot of the texts were never bestsellers in their day or even after. Some were, but not because of the ‘junk food’ level of edibility. Take Angela Carter’s The Magic Toy Shop for example. That one was never a bestseller, but her work has stood the test of time and continues to be highly regarded. Good stories have soul. I was not taught how to write a ‘killer opening line’ or ‘how to keep the reader reading’. I was not taught how to write at all. I was taught to look for what makes a story good. You learn these things by some kind of osmosis as you read.

And for the love of God, don’t solely focus on modern trad pub for good story tips. You won’t find them. The ‘bestseller’ status is on the cover because on that one weekend of its launch, it sold a certain amount of copies (the required number can vary, too… I have access to Nielsen book data). Go back a couple of hundred years or look to indie authors. I read over 50 books last year, a quarter of them indie. Who do you think was writing the more compelling stories? You don’t have to go tribal, but I do advise that you keep your options open.

Overall thoughts on writing well.

Know what you want to convey. That’s all there is to it. If you’ve done the other things listed above, this becomes more achievable.

ADHD means I have several ideas buzzing around in my head at any one time. I’m easily distracted. I’m paralysed by these distractions sometimes, or crippled with anxiety. However, writing and ADHD go hand in hand for me. Microfiction was accessible. Flash fiction was accessible. They gave me the tools to be a faster writer each time I sat down to do a standard short story, or a novel. Once I started practising, I couldn’t stop. Writing something short and writing it well gives your brain that dopamine because the task is finished. You achieved so much in so little time. Then you want to do it again, and again… It feels better than folders full of half-finished novels, trust me.

Now I can focus on one piece of work for hours, never clicking away unless it’s to Google something (and I avoid that wherever I can). I can get a book written in 3 months. I have weeks where I am dedicated to learning everything there is to learn about a certain skill or topic. This energy I have channelled into my writing. But still, the only writing book I’ve ever read was Stephen King’s On Writing.

And more dramatically, I am powered by my mortality. Every time a great actor dies, I stop and think about what I would have liked to achieve at that age. That’s what drives me. If this was my last year on earth, would I be happy with the things I’ve achieved? I would like this to be a yes as often as possible.

What about spelling, grammar and punctuation?

I was an English teacher, but I can tell you that the more exposure you have, the more you understand the rules. I have a copy of The New Oxford Style Manual, because I don’t know everything! You need something like that nearby as it’s handy for making sure you’re using the right British or American grammar or spelling, quotation marks, semicolons etc. There’s always something new to learn. I make a note of words that are tricky to spell, and I have them nearby on a ‘cheat sheet’ for example.

Having a style manual handy helps you to self-edit your work, as does reading it out loud.

That’s all for now.

I’ve had to really think about how I write well. I hope that this has been helpful and that there is at least one thing you can take from it. Note: This is what I could think of today, but if you have any further questions, I’d be happy to address them in the comments.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Buy a book

Resources:

The First Piece Of Flash I Ever Shared

Another early piece.

Jenny Greenteeth

Writers to check out for flash and micro:

Welcome to Episode 14 of Salome. This is a Gothic Horror novel set in the 1880s and introduces Sister Salome, a young Italian nun who will appear in the 3rd Muldoon book. I started this serial to help you get to know her before the events of the next novel.

Salome begins to feel the pressure of everyone around her pinning their hopes on her abilities.

Chapter 1

Book 3? I need to catch up!

Index

Sister Catherine remained in my bed, and I moved into her dormitory with Sister Mary Frances, Sister Celeste, two other Marys and a Sister Margaret. They were all younger than me, and at times I sensed a thick awkwardness as I felt their curiosity, but none were bold enough to ask questions. We continued with our tasks, never speaking of the flaming sword. I wanted to talk about it, but something compelled me to remain silent.

I visited Sister Catherine as many times as I could. I held her hands and prayed, trying with all my might to shake off the terrible guilt that I felt for her illness. Dr Boughie told Mother Hildegard that she had lost a lot of blood. I don’t know how much the doctor knew of anything. I watched her grow pale and thin and I was incredibly angered by it. It was my fault. I mused on it. Why did I feel so guilty? I thought until I chewed my bottom lip. Then came a distraction.

The window to my room was open, and as it was a Sunday, the sawmill was not in operation. The wind, unusually still, allowed voices to travel from Mother Hildegard’s open window to mine. I leaned closer.

Sister Catherine did not notice my presence. She slept most of the time, and that day she was no different. I looked at her briefly as I leaned on the windowsill and listened.

They were arguing again: Mother Hildegard and Father John.

“He is a member of the order.”

“I do not care. He is not welcome.”

“It is not your decision.”

“I cannot trust him.”

“You cannot control him, you mean.”

I heard her gasp, and much to my annoyance, she lowered her voice to respond to Father John. I heard the door of her office open with an elaborate creak, then slam like the wind was behind it. Someone stormed down the landing and onto the staircase, their footsteps eventually fading. I fled from the window and returned to my chair and picked up my knitting, should anyone check in to see what I was doing.

I did not knit more than two stitches. Not only did the coarse fibres of the wool cut into my scabs like a blade, but my mind was too heavy with perplexity as to what was going on. Their disagreements were getting worse, and it was not my business to ask why.

It loomed over us. The unspoken matter of Sister Catherine’s life, and the battle for her soul.

In the great library, we practised something Mother Hildegard called astral projection. As her skills were limited in carrying out the experiment, she supervised to ensure none of us were in any danger. The first time we did it, Sister Mary Frances had to be taken away, for she vomited on the great rug, fainted, and almost choked to death. The rest of us persisted, first praying to St Michael for protection in battle.

Each time, we travelled to the clearing of a forest. We each stood in a circle, Sister Therese instructing us to remain focused, and only think of that moment. “You see the green leaves of a tree, mottled with light.” The temptation to open my eyes and look for the leaves was strong, but I kept them shut. It was as magical as it was frightening, sharing visions with everyone else in the room, but we were too weak to do any more than that.

The experience only ever lasted a minute or two, and we were back in the library again. The final time it happened, Mother Hildegard swept up her skirts and marched out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

Some of my sisters wept, disappointed with themselves.

The pressure was too much.

I could not save my friend. I could not even save myself.

I took to walking alone in those days. I needed to be away from Sister Catherine, Mother Hildegard, Sister Bridget, even Father John. He would leave me eventually, and I could not entertain that thought. I walked to learn to be alone.

Their presence was oppressive; watching like hawks, waiting for me to scream the answers to our problems. If they weren’t hovering over me, the doctor was tapping my knee, feeling my forehead, or making tonics for me to drink. I held no issue with the man, but I began to forget what my own company felt like.

They let me go out alone, albeit with concern. I assured them there was nothing to fear: I would always return. I did not want to be in the house any longer than was necessary.

Evil had found its way to us, and I feared I was not strong enough to resist.

Episode 15

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

←Previous Chapter

Ways to support this fiction newsletter.

As well as the option to upgrade your subscription to paid, I do also have books that you can purchase as well as a ko-fi and paypal.

Ko Fi Tip Jar

Paypal Tip Jar

If you’re enjoying Salome, you really would enjoy The Muldoon Mysteries series. There are currently two books (standalones) in this series. Click the image below to find out more about them, and find them on Tiny Worlds.

My books are now available at