Fantasy & Sci-Fi

I have been writing for as long as I can remember, but in recent years a great deal of both my prose fiction and poetry has either been straightforwardly fantasy or science-fiction, or has incorporated fantastic or mythological motifs into a more realist framework. This page contains a small selection of my work over recent years to showcase some of my range of writing approaches.

‘Help Wanted’

A short piece, written pseudonymously, framed as a job advertisement in an early-twentieth-century newspaper. It is a small fragment of a larger project based in a steampunk alternate-history of the First World War, featuring references to and appearances from historical and fictional figures of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras.

Wolves

A poem about found family and the price paid for standing up to predators. Part of a cycle of poems that examine modern life and deeply personal issues through the lens of Irish Celtic mytho-history, the politics of the so-called ‘Red Hand’ clans of Medieval Irish nobility, and the psychogeography of Limerick.

Sola Fide

A poem reimagining the tales of the Red Branch Knights and in particular Cú Chulainn’s strained relationship with the Morrigan (the Celtic deity of war, death, magic and stewardship) through an ambiguously-framed love story. This is, above all else, a poem about waiting. From the same collection as Wolves.

“These fragments I have shored against my ruin”

One of the earliest experimental pieces I wrote, “These fragments…” is a ghost story, a metafictional prose-poem about love, loss and the toxic unreliability of the male gaze - no matter how well-intentioned the person doing the gazing is - and a tribute to the imagery and recurring motifs of early-2000s emo music. It is a story about the things you can’t save people from, and the privilege that makes you think you could save anybody in the first place.

Amid Changes

Amid Changes is the first part of a serialised science-fiction story - written pseudonymously - about war, identity, and cross-cultural empathy. As the first part of a longer serial, it was intended to introduce the characters and setting and start unfolding the world for readers.

Sunset Comedown

Sunset Comedown is a short poem about learning to let go. Part of the same cycle as Wolves and Sola Fide, it is one of two poems in the collection that barely engage with the mythological themes of the series, focusing instead on the modern setting that frames the poems. However, it still contains references to the Celtic mythology that underpins the cycle. It inspired my first narrative-choice game, Fond Farewells, which I made in Twine and which can be found on the Games page of this website.