It’s been a fallow couple of years for me on the writing front, what with all the interesting times we’ve been enjoying of late. But I have a new piece of short fiction published this month and it’s also the most recent story I’ve written, finished at the end of 2021.

Well, I say the most recent, although “Shrine” was actually begun way back in 2009 with a specific anthology in mind. I wrote a couple of scenes but couldn’t find my way through and so set it aside, coming back to it once or twice over the intervening years without doing much more than fiddle around the edges. Then last year I knew, finally, what the story was actually meant to be and was able to finish it after more than a decade of the poor thing languishing on my hard drive. It needed more perspective. It needed more time. It needed to be the writer I am now, not the person I was in 2009.

You can read it over at The Dark where it has found a perfect home.