New Fiction: “On the Arrival of the Paddle-Steamer on the Docks of V–”

So, news: my latest story, On the Arrival of the Paddle-Steamer on the Docks of V–, is now free to read on Eclipse Online with a particularly lovely Kathleen Jennings illustration accompanying it (I’m not saying I submitted to Eclipse just ’cause they had Kathleen illustrating all the stories, but it didn’t hurt. Kathleen is kinda awesome).

So I’m psyched. I mean, I’m really psyched. It’s been a long while since I had a story out there people could read without buying a book. Or, for that matter, a story out there at all. I’m going to be spending the rest of the day being all writing things FTW!, but for now I’ll just offer up this free taste-test of what’s on the far side of the link:

Our tiny hotel room is boiling, even now, but heat doesn’t bother Patrick and he sleeps, shirtless, with the thin sheet coiled round him like a loving serpent. It’s a trick for him, nodding off. He cultivates a talent for sleep, adores the act of dozing off like it’s a second lover. He says it keeps him young, and perhaps it does, for people are always surprised to learn Patrick’s real age.

I’ve started smoking again, since it no longer matters. Patrick copes with things through slumber, while I survey the world, my exhalations accompanied by the splash of river meeting dock. The river is the life-blood of V—, they tell you that in all the flyers.

Words. I do stuff with them sometimes. And after that, people choose to read ’em. It’s pretty much my favourite thing in the world, so thank-you all for being part of the process. You fucking rock.

Also, as particularly  long-term readers may notice that, this is one of a particularly haphazard series of stories that feature the same title convention and themes, starting with On the Finding of Photographs of My Former Loves and continuing with On the Destruction of Copenhagen by the War-Machines of the Merfolk and, hopefully, including one or two additional stories that I really do need to finish writing one of the days. They’re all stand-alone stories, but they’re linked in the crazy way that things in my mind get linked. 

Hope your Monday rocks hard, ’cause mine is kicking off in a pretty fine fashion. Now I’m heading off to Write Club in order to do the word thing a little more…