One of the shortest stories included in my upcoming anthology was written for an Edgar Allan Poe competition in 2021, in which my work came Runner-Up, and is titled The Clockmaker . Edgar Allan Poe is most famous for his works of Gothic Horror, but it is easy to forget that he also dabbled in Science Fiction, as did many of his Gothic contemporaries. Indeed, a quick Google search has informed me that there are anthologies which solely contain his Science Fiction. The Clockmaker was designed to marry these Horror and SciFi elements to create the sort of story which Poe himself might have written. I won’t deny it: I was pleased with the outcome. At only 500 words, it tells the story of a man who pays a visit to an old schoolfriend (you will realise, if you read much of my Gothic Horror, that old school/university friends play vital roles!) who is an inventor, and spends some time admiring a clock which he has made. I won’t spoil by telling you the ending, but I will say that he does...
Review When you love a book, there are two differents approaches to reading it and, after reading The Alchemist , I realised that I do both - depending on the way the story moves and inspires me. The first is to gobble up the book: tearing through the story and utterly immersing yourself in the world it creates. I often do this when I'm reading my sisters' writings for the first time, but I also do it with Neil Gaiman's work and (randomly enough) Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. The second is to eat it a little piece at a time, to make it last as long as possible. Roald Dahl described this perfectly when Charlie (of eponymous Chocolate Factory fame) nibbles his one bar of chocolate to make it last as long as possible. Before reading The Alchemist , I had only ever thought of myself as a gobbler. Books I absolutely love always got read very quickly. But you don't want to do this with this gem by Paulo Coelho: you want to eat it slowly and feel yourself graduall...