Running zine to buy & download

“The first time I heard Circulation’s Green, I was in a flat in Nottingham at the turn of the century. Me and a group of friends had sunk into chairs or lay on the floor, sipping beer and looking at the speakers as they throbbed and shook.”

…from Issue 2

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I write and illustrate a fanzine about running and the Peak District and whatever comes into my head. That can include fell-running, house music, literature, philosophy or whatever else has captured my thoughts that month. It’s called Between 6 & 16 Miles (like this site) and I paint and draw some art, write an essay around it all – a writerly, artistic essay I hope, with aspects of fiction, psychogeography, Nature writing and more all thrown in – at something like 3000+ words. Sizes vary, but it’s A5 at the moment.

It always takes me a long time to write it all and paint the images, so the release schedule can be erratic; however it’s unlikely it’ll take more than 3 months to create a new issue. There’s a hardcopy and a digital version for each edition and the hardcopy will include the digital version by default.

I don’t use AI at all anywhere in the process.

Micro fiction & ebook short stories to download

“On the lawn, between the fencing and among the bougainvillea he sits and in his head there’s a Japanese dragon swirling and looping above the endless lights of Tokyo’s gigantic conurbation. He sits and and he’s thinking about what it would be like to be enveloped in that warm, dark blanket of night, with a dragon swirling through the air above”

…from Sometimes Our Secrets Make Weird Organising Principles

As a part of the art and fanzine creation process, I find myself writing short fiction and micro fiction from time to time. There’s often a lot of it in fact, just below my everyday life and thoughts. Sometimes I get it right and get it out in a way that I’m happy with and that’s what I’m giving away here.

I’m interested in writing about working class people, in their imaginations and the way that they think and do things in their lives. I’m interested in the way that imagination makes things strange and creates a world that’s complete and entire and sometimes wrong and sometimes beautiful.

This is where I write about things that aren’t the Peak, aren’t always to do with Nature or being outside. This is where I write about cities (like the one I grew up in) and about everyday people who are more interesting than mainstream culture would have us believe.

These are free to download. I’ll collect them into a single volume and print it up eventually, so check back soon.

There’s no AI here.

Magazine articles I’ve written & illustrated that you can read

“Llamas peer from behind a tree and watch us run past. We reach more grassland and the small hills that enclose these pastures make it feel like its secret and removed from the rest of the Peak District’s thoroughfares. We’re running on meadows full of waving grass, past wildflowers and limestone outcrops, the rock clearly visible like exposed bone and far away there are tunnels of yellow sunshine on the tops and black thunderheads are gathering themselves up into teetering black mountains.”

…from The Poetry Of The Pommie Panter in Like The Wind Issue 42

I usually publish in running mags but it’s not unheard of for me to write for blogs, like It’s Looking A Bit Black Over Bill’s Mother’s. You can read some examples that I’ve got permission to reproduce here, below. They include scans with the design, the writing and the art, plus a standard text version embedded into the page.

I also write and illustrate a running zine about the Peak District and whatever comes into my head. It’s called Between 6 & 16 Miles and if you like the kind of writing that I publish in these publications, you’ll probably like that, too.

I don’t use AI at all anywhere in the process.

Writing without a home yet

“Autumnal sun made the things it was touching glow brightly; winter was in the ground, the rocks and the water and summer was dying in golden pools of light on the hillsides.”

Sometimes I get back from somewhere and just start writing. It’s not always fully formed, but it gets the ideas out and I quite often come back later to turn what’s there into something worth reading. My work for Like The Wind started out this way.