It’s been a lean year for publications (three have fallen through and one smelled like a con job so I pulled out) but I feel more confident about this one. My dark fantasy/horror hybrid, The Girl in the Glass Bottle, will make an appearance early next year, in Issue 13 of Australian ezine, SQ Mag.

The speculative short story was inspired by a woman at work. She told me about the time she put a message in a bottle and let it ride the waves of the North Sea, and what happened after she did. I love it when real life inspires the things I write, because it’s often just a case of skewing the details into something with a beginning, middle, and end.

Even as she was telling me, her truly endearing tale of friendship was becoming something a lot more sinister and disturbing in my head. How pleased she will be to discover I have twisted her memories in such a way, remains to be seen.

I really should see a doctor.