This is a story I wrote some time ago, when I had just discovered Arsène Lupin for the first time. It contains a number of cameos by various characters, some original to me, most not. It is, I hope, an amusing confection, like any good gentleman thief story should be 
This story was recently accepted for publication, and should be appearing in a forthcoming issue of Ink Monkey Mag. Accordingly, the story itself no longer appears here. I have left the annotations, however.
Continue reading The Treachery of Prince Sernine
Not a new story this week, I’m sorry to say. I’ve been working on one, but I couldn’t get it finished in time. So this is an inventory piece, awaiting another draft – I like it, but I haven’t got it quite right. There’s something off in the rhythm.
Anyway, this one originally appeared in my Your Dead Mate LiveJournal under the title of “Peter’s Story,” so some of you may recognise it.
Continue reading The Red Raven
I have no idea precisely where this is going – this is just playing with some ideas for a vampire story that would invert Dracula, by featuring a Western European vampire moving to Romania and buying real estate there a century after the events of Stoker’s novel. Not at all sure that it can work, but the ideas deserve some investigation, which now follows in a short dialogue with no decent conclusion or much resembling a plot that almost certainly won’t appear at all in the finished work.
The title, by the way, is just something that seemed appropriate for a vampire story – it doesn’t actually go that well with this particular story, alas, but I liked it too much to pass it by.
Continue reading Two Bloody Marys, Easy on the Mary
A fragment, part of a larger work (which is, in itself, part of a larger series of works). Hope you like it.
Continue reading The City Dreams Uneasy
Okay, here’s chapter one of yet another new story – as always, let me know what you think:
Continue reading The Brunswick Street Irregulars – Chapter One
Here’s a much belated addition to that first chapter I put up here some weeks back – I’ll try to keep them coming a little more frequently.
Chapter Two
The business of giving a statement was always a lengthy one in Rag’s experience, especially when the cops had nothing to go on.
When they had you, they knew it and you knew it, and the whole statement thing was pretty much a formality. When you were clearly an innocent witness, it was usually even simpler – not to mention that the cop taking your words down would be a lot nicer to you about it. But when they didn’t know what to do next, they just tried to keep you talking, hoping you’d say something – anything – that would give them something to work with.
Continue reading The Brunswick Street Irregulars – Chapter Two
So here’s a short story I wrote recently that didn’t quite come together for me. It also takes place in a new setting, Hell, which is separate from either the Lokiverse or Teleran, but of course, is linked to them both (in some way I haven’t quite figured out yet).
Be interested to hear what you think of it, folks.
The worst thing about Hell is how they let you leave it.
Continue reading The Training of Young Demons
| From: |
Hailey Vincent |
| To: |
Company Address Book |
| Date: |
1, 12:00 |
| Subject: |
We Got It! |
We got it!
We got it, we got it, we GOT IT!
I’m pleased to announce that the Kliest-Hargraeves Consortium has been awarded a prestigious new contract today. We’re going to be doing the Dristeen Ducal Line project! This is worth billions and billions, and the lion’s share of it is going to be ours.
For those of you who haven’t been following the news: Dristeen is a relatively new planet, out towards the spinwise edge of our galactic arm. The people there recently decided that democracy wasn’t working out for them, and have chosen, in a planet-wide plebiscite, to be ruled by a genetically perfect line of Dukes, who we are going to design and create for them.
I hope you can see why I’m so excited about this – my team and I have spent months working on getting this job for us, and at times, it looked like we’d wasted all that effort. I confess, until last night, I was still worrying that those assholes from Blue Sun would snake it out from under us, but in the end, we were just too good for them.
So, three cheers for us, and a big thank you to all the members of the sales team and everyone else who’s consulted for us in putting together the funkspek. Look for the formal announcement and the signed off version of the funkspek sometime tomorrow.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go take some of that holiday leave I’ve been building up in the three years we’ve been putting this together.
Seeya,
Hails.
| From: |
Greta Kliest |
| To: |
Hailey Vincent |
| Date: |
1, 12:03 |
| Subject: |
Re: We Got It! |
Hailey, much as I appreciate and understand your elation and enthusiasm, I really didn’t need you to spam the entire company with this.I recognise that there’s no real harm done, and you’re only anticipating the official announcement by a matter of hours, but please try to keep things a little quieter in future. There is such a thing as industrial espionage, you know.
Okay, now that I’ve got the stern boss bit out of the way, I want to congratulate and thank you for a job well done. Top notch work, and don’t think for a minute it won’t reflected in your Noodlemas bonus this year.
Regards,
Greta
PS – send me a vidcard from wherever you wind up going
| From: |
Greta Kliest |
| To: |
Company Address Book |
| Date: |
1, 12:08 |
| Subject: |
Official Announcement: The Dristeen Ducal Line Project |
As most of you are probably already aware, earlier today we signed contracts for the Dristeen Ducal Line Project. We have committed to completing this project in the next 12 months. The final, accepted version of the Functional Specification was version 4.03, which will be distributed to you all later on today. Those of you wishing to work on the project should indicate your availability for it after reading the FS. The Project lead designers will be Frank Davis and William Monday, and I will be the Project Manager.
This project represents the single largest undertaking, both in terms of effort and income, that our company has ever undertaken. Let’s give it our absolute best, people.
Greta Kliest.
| From: |
William Monday |
| To: |
Frank Davis, Greta Kliest |
| Date: |
1, 12:11 |
| Subject: |
Re: We Got It! |
Okay, just to get it straight, this is not going to another one of those things like the Ruthvenia job is it? Because for all Hailey’s blather about consultation, I still think there’s a better than even chance that the funkspek makes promises we can’t keep.
It’s not at all comforting that the last version of it I saw was the 4.00. When are we going to get to see this new version?
Billy
| From: |
Frank Davis |
| To: |
Greta Kliest, William Monday |
| Date: |
1, 12:14 |
| Subject: |
Re: Re: We Got It! |
I’d like to echo Billy’s points, Greta. I know that after the Ruthvenia fiasco, you took action to bring sales a little more into line with reality, but Hailey has a tendancy to say whatever she has to say in order to get the deal she wants.
Frank
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