Teasers & fragments

Introducing Sen Foillate

By Alex Brightsmith January 26, 2019 Leave a comment

If you’ve been following Dram Cetus then you may have met Sen before. This comes from both their futures, I think, and since Sen seems keen to tell me about it you’ll hopefully hear more about it in due course. I’ll just leave this here for now, half tease and half promise …

Grounded

By Alex Brightsmith September 21, 2018 1 Comment

Darkness. Darkness and a memory of terror, as vivid as a scar, and suddenly the terror is here and real, suffocating, and there’s nothing to reach for, nothing, only blackness and – Reach, damn you. Reach for what you know. Five things. Five things now. Five things you can (but a protective instinct kicks in, […]

Behind These Walls – a Human 76 story

By Alex Brightsmith June 18, 2016 1 Comment

Old bonds were fading, and new peoples were forming, settled peoples able to defend their own, nomad peoples inured to loss, all manner of peoples. There would always be Searchers amongst them, all the same, as long as there were people such as the Prometheans to prey upon the weak. … but Ghabrie is not […]

A trick of the light

By Alex Brightsmith February 22, 2016 1 Comment

“Vanitas,” she said, with the irritability she had been trying to mask all afternoon finally breaking through, “is only supposed to include an intimation of mortality. There should be flowers, ‘n fruit, ‘n … stuff.” She finished with an airy wave of one elegant hand, her bubblegum persona firmly re-established, but she couldn’t recall the […]

The Hatfield Venus

By Alex Brightsmith May 14, 2014 Leave a comment

“She’s a Venus Anadyomene.” “A Venus Anadyomene?” She smiled indulgently at my ignorance. “Venus rising from the waves. An impeccably proper subject, and a popular one – you can see why.” I flushed slightly. The reasons for the popularity of the subject were prominently on display, but my enjoyment of the view was dampened by […]

Jinavail of the She-Bear, an introduction

By Alex Brightsmith March 9, 2014 Leave a comment

Sometimes I need a frame for the story being told, a reason for my narrator to talk to me, even if nobody else needs to know. So talk to me, Jinavail, damn you, tell me your tale … There are days when it’s difficult to remember, and there are days when it’s difficult to forget; […]

Only for her

By Alex Brightsmith March 3, 2014 Leave a comment

An excerpt from Find the Lady, in which we find John in Paris … Without her letter, memories were all I had, and memories were no use to me in Paris that winter. After several fruitless days I took to busking, hoping to run into Serge in his enforcement role. I ran into a lot […]

Find the Lady

By Alex Brightsmith January 25, 2014 Leave a comment

Well, it’s out, and creeping into the usual range of outlets. For now it’s available from Amazon (UK & USA), Barnes & Noble, iTunes and, of course, Smashwords. Who is the girl currently calling herself Kathryn Blake? Where does she come from and . . . where does she belong? To her potential employer, collecting […]

Find the Lady

By Alex Brightsmith January 1, 2014 Leave a comment

Who is the girl currently calling herself Kathryn Blake? Where does she come from and . . . where does she belong? To her potential employer, collecting statements about this troublesome asset, one thing is clear: this lady is never the lady you expect her to be, she is the pea under the thimble, the […]

Iain Shaw, a product of the Roadshow

By Alex Brightsmith December 22, 2013 Leave a comment

I’ve mentioned the Katie ‘n Pasha Roadshow once or twice – perhaps not here – the daydream I step into when I’m waiting for a train or stuck in a queue, the twenty year soap opera of Kathryn Blake and Pavel Tomeckova and the slow dance of their intersecting lives. Sometimes it’s directly useful, and […]

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