In case you missed it, TTA Press included a link to my story “Mid-Life Crisis” in their selection of Christmas goodies:

Click here for link.

Day two of the TTA Press advent calendar features a link to my short story “Hot Rats”.

TTA Advent: Day Two

Doing What You Have To Do To Get By

By Gareth L Powell

The three inflatables rounded the headland an hour after sunrise. Kadie Jones crouched in the lead boat, wrapped in the noise and fumes from the outboard motor, gripping a heavy service revolver in one hand. She wore a thick military surplus coat and a fur cap with khaki earflaps. As soon as the prow of the boat hit the beach, she sprang out and splashed up onto the shingle, her boots crunching noisily as she ran. Ahead, in the town, the church bell tolled.

“We’ve been spotted,” she said.

Continue reading “Friday Fiction”

Over the past 24 hours, I’ve pulled together and submitted a 30,000 word book manuscript. It’s a collection of articles (mainly advice for budding authors), interviews and other pieces of writing, some of which first appeared on this website. It’s rough at the moment and probably needs the attention of an editor, but I’m still proud that I’ve managed to pull it together in such a short time – and I’ll post further developments as they happen.

This is an extract from a short story called “The Winding Curve” which I co-wrote with Robert Starr, author of Creek Water and The Apple Lady. The full story appears in Rob’s 2008 collection Sophistry By Degrees.

A year after his wife’s death, Mike finds himself on the old coast road south of town, with his daughter in the back seat. They’ve lingered too long at the cemetery, and now they’re driving around because he can’t face taking her home to an empty house.
Continue reading “Friday Fiction”

I’ve written and published 25 pieces of Friday Flash Fiction this year. That’s slightly less than one per fortnight, which isn’t bad going. As we’re approaching the end of 2008, I’ve compiled the following list of my 10 personal favourites from 2008, with links.

1. Roswell
2. Carnival
3. Natalie
4. Mid Life Crisis
5. Fresh Meat
6. God’s Gift
7. Hot Rats
8. Life Goes Wrong
9. Chip Heads
10. Jetsam

THE CLOUD PRINCESS

By Gareth L. Powell

 

He came in fast, aerobraking hard, scrawling a fiery trail across Jupiter’s pristine clouds. And then, when he’d shed enough velocity, he dropped, spreading black carbon fibre wings to catch the pummelling jet stream.

 

Ahead lay a dark whorl of cloud – a raging storm the size of Earth’s moon. And before it, dwarfed by the fury of the maelstrom, he saw the Cloud Princess.

 

The old airship was labouring at a depth far deeper than the one she’d been designed for, her vast impellers spinning furiously as the storm dragged her in.

 

She’d seen better days. As he got closer, he could see where some of her docking spines had been torn off. There were panels and aerials missing. Whole vanes had been ripped from their mounts.

    

He pulled in his wings, falling in a swooping arc that carried him under her rudder, into the shadow of her gas bag. He was aiming for the promenade deck at the rear of the gondola, and the airlock that accessed the main ballroom.

 

Once there, if he could get to her bridge, there was a chance he could save her.

 

CHIP HEADS

By Gareth L Powell

Five years ago, the first neural chip implants appeared – soft biotech gel memory chips that held our schedules, important birthdays and anniversaries, the phone numbers of our friends and families…

Over the next few months, the chips were steadily upgraded. New models were released with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. They took the place of our mobile phones and our internet browsers, giving us inbuilt access to the sum total of human knowledge, twenty-four hours a day.

We became reliant on them.

And then something in the net ate everyone’s brain.

Well, not everyone. There are still some unaffected people – children, some pensioners… and people like me, who dug the chips from their heads and survived.

The affected people move in strange patterns, like shoals of fish or flocks of birds. They are calm and do not see the world around them – until whatever it is that controls them releases its hold, which it does every few days, for them to eat and shit and go crazy… Then they’re back to walking in strange, soothing patterns again.

When they’re released, they’re usually starving. Like ravenous zombies, they’ll eat anything to hand, pursue any animal or unaffected human they see and tear it apart.

Trust me; you don’t want to be caught in the open when that happens.

Currently, I’m living with a handful of unaffected men and women on the upper floors of a downtown tower block. The lift doesn’t work and we’ve blockaded the stairs – but we’re not going to stay here forever.

There are mobile phone masts and Wi-Fi servers everywhere. Somehow, they still have power. If we can knock out enough of them to disrupt the signal that controls the chips, maybe we can make a difference… And maybe we can start to rebuild.

I thought I’d try my hand at podcasting. This is my first attempt. It’s a bit rough (as I’m still learning how to use Audacity) but think of it as an experiment, and let me know what you think:

mid-life-crisis-by-glp

I’ve been experimenting with recording my fiction. Here are two works-in-progress for you:

• http://www.archive.org/details/ThaiCurry
• http://www.archive.org/details/GodsGift