After a week he was moved to a different wing and into a shared six-by-eight with a grizzled old con called Alf. He had faded tattoos that stained most of the visible skin on his...

The guard looked down at the scarlet bloodstains blooming on his chest. He appeared to think of something that he needed to say, but as his lips began to form the words, his knees gave...

Jack laughed behind him, a mirthless sound from a man who had been on the wrong end of life’s ironies too many times.

He dropped the phone back onto its cradle, began to turn around and felt a sudden ice-cold furrow open up in his side. Strength drained from his legs, and a moment later he sank to...

He turned and saw Becky, crying in the doorway of her house. What was he doing here? Turning back he saw flashing blue lights at the end of the road, and realised the ringing in...

That’s why Twinkle likes the place so much, Scott thought, looking around at the faded wood veneer tables, and the faded souls drinking at them. Misery was soaked through the place like the old beer...

Blood began to flow, at first cautiously, as if embarrassed by its appearance; a few thin red lines exploring the gravitational trajectory of its new terrain. Now it flowed faster, steadily staining her pale flesh...

I don’t “lol”. I tried it once but it just didn’t agree with me.

Deciding to wait, Scott sat down with a pint away from the bar at a corner table and lit a cigarette. The clientele in there on Sunday afternoon were the same as most other afternoons....

The best writers tend to look the roughest in photos. At least that’s the excuse I use for why I look so bad in mine.

I’m not into this whole “move with the times” thing. I reckon we should just decide on a year and stick with it.

Sometimes truths are what we run from, and sometimes they are what we seek.

The city centre was still crawling with Christmas shoppers looking to add to their already burgeoning piles of gifts. To Scott they were like ants at a picnic, teeming from store to store, trailing oversized...

Around the outside of the room other beautiful women wearing little or nothing at all flitted between the infatuated, intoxicated men, sometimes luring them away for a private dance. The men would follow obediently, weighed...

Remove the comma, replace the comma, remove the comma, replace the comma…

I’m the biggest critic of my own work, but sometimes you nail a chapter so good that you have to take a step back and admire that bitch.

Just been poisoned by my gran. Nothing says Christmas better than familicide and anaphylactic shock.

Consider and then act, don’t react. A worthy opponent will calculate his move to entice a response from you. Make your own play.

Anyone who says “Trust me” is the last motherfucker you should ever trust.

This faulty light fitting at the front door with the dangerously flickering bulb looks rather festive. Who says I don’t do Christmas?

Strange how things turn out. Two birds, one stone and all that.’ McBlane chuckled at his own impromptu joke. ‘But things have worked out for the best and now we all get to work together,’...

Scott could feel the contents of his stomach flip over and over on themselves. He turned to the side and retched, frothy yellow bile spilled out onto the newspaper covered floor, filling the room with...

We were left with nothing because of a love like acid that ate its way through our entire family.

He had done nothing on Christmas day, just wandered around outside in the frozen woods. Hard ground, chill winds and bare branches that looked like they’d been dipped in sugar. None of it seemed real,...

Scott glanced at his watch but didn’t register what it said. The notion of time had become as absurd as the quietly glowing trees.

Solitude led to retrospective thinking, and if the past is what you are trying to get away from, then constant distractions in the present are needed.

Sometimes he missed the numbed, walking-underwater feeling feel that the cocktail of narcotics used to give him. But if a situation went down in here, he was going to need all of his wits to...