short stories

Here are details of all the short stories I’ve had published:

Find Yersel

This appeared in Home Fixtures, an anthology of writing in support of the Homeless World Cup. It features the same two characters from Moby Dickheads, this time fannying around at Hibs’ stadium.

Footprints

This nasty wee gem appeared in Postcards from Portobello, a special tenth-anniversary anthology of writing by the Portobello Book Festival, my local festival. It was limited to 1,000 copies, which were given out free at the festival and other Porty arts venues.

Painting the Forth Bridge

This story was commissioned by Historic Environment Scotland, who got twelve Scottish crime writers to write stories in iconic Scottish locations. Mine is set on and around the Forth Bridge. Buy it here.

Moby Dickheads

This appeared in issue 16 of Gutter magazine.It’s about two teenage boys and a dead whale.  It’s quite nasty. You can buy it here. ‬It also made its way into Italian, in an anthology called Much Mojo, published by my Italian publisher Casa Sirio.

Beyond the Heliopause

This appeared in issue 13 of Gutter magazine. It’s about grief and suicide, and is set partly in Portobello, New Zealand and partly in the outer reaches of the solar system. You can buy it here.

The Funeral Crasher

The Scotsman commissioned me to write a new piece of fiction for them. I’d had this idea kicking around for a while, and ‘The Funeral Crasher’ came together quite quickly. Another of my more recent sad-happy things. It ran at the start of 2014. Read it here.

Mojo Falling

‘Mojo Falling’ was originally written for performance at the Melbourne Writers Festival in 2013, for this Liner Notes event. The idea was to give artists of different stripes a song each from The Doors’ L.A. Woman album, see what they came up with. You can read the full story here.

There are Easier Ways To Kill Yourself

This story appeared in issue 138 of the illustrious Edinburgh Review. It sounds depressing, but it’s actually quite cheery for me. You can buy the magazine here.

Just Sign It

This was one of the stranger commissions I’ve had. Freight Design put together a brochure for legal firm Tods Murray and wanted some original fiction in there, loosely tied to the company. They commissioned writers like Ronald Frame and Cynthia Rogerson to come up with something. My own little nugget of darkness is here.

I’m Yours To Knock Around

‘I’m Yours To Knock Around’ was a cheery little number that appeared in 2012 in this brilliant Second Lives (Cargo) collection of stories, a joint project between the University of Strathclyde and Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburg. The brief was to write something about modern Glasgow. So I did, kind of. You can get it here.

Bloodier than Blood

‘Bloodier than Blood’ was published in February 2011 in Issue 4 of the fantastic Gutter magazine, which delivers the best in new Scottish writing. You can subscribe or order a copy from here.

Surtsey

‘Surtsey’ was written for the Edinburgh International Book Festival’s Elsewhere project, in which they commissioned new writing from a host of fantastic writers, including Alan Warner, Denise Mina and James Robertson. You can read it here. Cargo and McSweeney’s collaborated on an absolutely beautiful box set of the collection, which you can buy here.

Playground Rules

This story appeared in The Year of Open Doors (Cargo), published in August 2010, a collection of the finest new fiction coming out of Scotland, featuring authors such as Kevin MacNeil, Sophie Cooke and Aidan Moffat. You can buy it in paper or ebook format here. Cargo released an audiobook version in collaboration with indie label Chemikal Underground, which you can download here.

The Beachcomber

‘The Beachcomber’ is a cheeky wee piece of flash fiction that first appeared in The Herald newspaper in October 2006. Read it here.