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Warsaw, summer of 1944. Not everyone had bowed down to the German occupation. Like other brave members of the underground Polish Home Army, Monika Proch risked her life for her country to be free.

The previous year, Warsaw had seen how cruelly the Nazis could crush rebellion, with the utter destruction of the Jewish ghetto. Monika vowed the rest of her city would not receive the same fate.

Together with the other men and women of the Resistance, they would rise against the Nazi invaders like a… PHOENIX FROM THE FLAMES!

It’s comics time again, as I have a new issue of Commando out. Phoenix From the Flames, with art by Vincente Alcazar and a cover by Marco Bianchini, is set during the Warsaw uprising of 1944, an attempt by Polish resistance fighters to free their capital from the Nazi occupiers. It’s one of the many tragedies of the Second World War, a moment in which a people’s heroism was betrayed by Stalin’s political schemes.

I decided to write this one after a conversation with another author, who pointed at the uprising as one of the overlooked stories of the war. I’m always looking for fresh topics for Commando comics, and this gave me fascinating territory to explore, both heartbreaking because of its outcome and inspiring because of the courage ordinary people showed.

If that sounds like your cup of tea, then Commando issue 5949, Phoenix From the Flames, is available right now from newsagents, in the publisher’s app, and through Mags Direct.

The post Out Now – Phoenix From The Flames appeared first on Andrew Knighton Writes.

Ted walked into the coffee shop, saw Hema’s body at the counter, and almost buckled over with grief. He didn’t hear the sound he made, but she clearly did, because she turned around, startled and sympathetic.

“Are you all right?” the thing occupying her body asked. She wore different clothes but the same walk, same smile, the grace of her movements unchanged, even with a microbial intelligence occupying her nervous system. As she led him to a seat, her familiar touch brought him to tears. The scent he caught on each sobbing breath both was and wasn’t her.

The staff looked alarmed, but the creature calmed them just like Hema would have done. Ted ought to tell her not to talk to him, ought to admit what that body meant. As the partner of a donor, he wasn’t meant to contact the new host. It was a sick thing to do, putting himself through this, but how could he leave? He wiped his eyes and said nothing as she set two coffees down and took the seat across from him.

“I’m a counsellor,” she said in a soft, familiar voice. “Whatever you’re going through, I’m here if you want to talk.”

Same vocal chords but different inflection, an impression of the woman he’d lost. Brain death, the doctor said, and your fiancé left instructions for circumstances like this, but you still get a choice. As if he could deny her anything, least of all in death.

This woman, this creature, had no idea who he was. That was how it worked, to prevent new occupants intruding on families’ grief. It had happened before, well-intentioned encounters that traumatised everyone, which was why Ted shouldn’t be here. Sitting with her hurt so badly, the only thing worse would be walking out.

He sipped his coffee, looked away, looked at her again. There were purple flecks in her eyes, a by-product of the parasite living in her. Fragments of its real, swarming body that ruined the beauty of those eyes. His hand shook with anger, coffee spilling in his lap, and he had to look away.

“My name’s Enani,” it said, using lips he’d kissed. “Has something bad happened? Did you lose someone?”

He nodded, slowly, painfully, shoulders clenched.

“They must have been special,” she said.

“So special,” he whispered, and looked across his coffee, across the table, across the void that was ripped through his life by a speeding car. She – Hema, Enani, whoever – must have seen through his gaze, because her eyes went wide.

“Oh.” She half rose from her seat. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t…”

“Please.” He didn’t know whether he was asking her to go or to stay, only that he’d been walking through a grey fog of grief and now he felt something else.

“We shouldn’t talk,” Enani said, but she didn’t leave. “Not if you’re… not if I’m…”

She looked shocked, but sad with it, the sadness of compassion for someone else’s hurt. The sort of sadness Hema understood.

“I miss you.” The moment he said it, he knew what he’d done wrong. He squeezed his eyes shut. “I mean her. I miss her.”

When he opened his eyes, he expected to be alone. But she was back in her seat, staring down into her cup, tongue touching her lip, not a gesture he knew.

“I have a question,” she said. “I don’t know if I should ask.”

Ted nodded, if only to keep her there.

“Did you want to donate her body?” She touched Hema’s cheek. “This body.”

There were ripples on the darkness of Ted’s coffee, caused by the shaking of his hands. Shame burned in his cheeks. Hema had made him a better person, but some things were hard to overcome.

“No,” he admitted. “It felt wrong, letting someone else ride around in her.”

“Someone like me.”

He kept staring at the coffee. “Hema always wanted to help other people.”

The door of the coffee shop swished open as another customer came in. The breeze wafted her scent to him again, familiar and unfamiliar. Ted sipped his coffee, trying to wash the bitterness from his mouth. Before, it had been hard to look at her because she reminded him of who Hema had been. Now, it was hard because she reminded him of who he was.

“I couldn’t do what I do without this body,” she said. “Counselling. Helping people through their lives. Even living in your society. None of my people could. There are so few bodies we can use, and even fewer are willing to let us use them. I don’t know anything about the woman you lost, but I think of her every day, and I know she must have been wonderful.”

“She was.”

And yet he had let a sheet of silence fall across her absence, a shroud none of his friends dared touch. Now it was wrenched away and he sat exposed down to his raw, guilty heart.

He’d promised to keep the flame of her memory alive, and instead he’d let it dwindle from fear of being burned.

Enani looked at him across the table, a ghost of the woman he’d loved, an imitation as imperfect as any memory. Tears ran down his cheeks but he wasn’t sobbing any more, wasn’t choking on his own breath. For the first time, he could see the edge of his grief.

He knew what he shouldn’t say, that it was asking too much of her. And he felt bad when that didn’t stop him.

“Can we meet again?”

***

Like last month’s story, this one is set in the same universe as my new novella, All That Is In the Earth. I’ve tried to play with some of the themes that inspired the novella, and flesh out what’s happening around it. This one has far fewer space opera trappings, you’ll just have to imagine a weirder world beyond that coffee shop.

If you enjoyed this story and you’d like to read more like it, then you can sign up to my mailing list, where you’ll get a flash story straight to your inbox every month as well as updates on my books. And if you’re looking for something else to read in the meantime, did I mention that new novella…

***

When Clifford crash lands on the planet of Abaddon, he might as well be dead: a terrible plague and a strict quarantine mean that no one leaves alive.

Clifford isn’t the only dead man walking. Corporate mercenaries and desperate survivors are looking for ways to live in a hostile world. On the run from flesh-hungry monsters, there’s no chance to escape or to build something more. But when Clifford makes a startling discovery, loyalty clashes with survival in an action-packed novella about living with death.

All That Is In the Earth, out now from Luna Press Publishing.

The post Dead Donor Walking – a scifi short story appeared first on Andrew Knighton Writes.

The Western Front, 1917. Charlie Wilberforce, a British fighter pilot, sees the Royal Flying Corps devastated by the German Flying Circus, with their superior planes and experienced pilots. But things turn around when Wilberforce is introduced to a new plane — the Sopwith Camel!

It’s comics time again, as I have a new issue of Commando out. The Fox Vs The Lion, with art by Gary Walsh and a cover by Keith Burns, is a story inspired by a single fighting machine – the Sopwith Camel.

I’ve written before about my fascination with the aerial combat of World War One, and the Camel was one of the most important weapons in that fighting. It was introduced by the British in 1917, as the two sides kept racing to introduce planes that could outmatch each other. Notoriously difficult to fly, the Camel was the death of several British pilots who didn’t learn to handle its forward weight and sensitive controls. But those same features made it highly manoeuvreable and gave its flyers an edge in dog fights.

Of course, a famous weapon isn’t enough to make a good story, so I’ve used the Camel as the basis for a tale about the dangers pilots faced in that war. It’s a little more serious than the time I sent Cadman flying in the same war, but still a lot of fun.

If that sounds like your cup of tea, then Commando issue 5941, The Fox Vs The Lion, is available right now from newsagents, in the publisher’s app, and through Mags Direct.

The post Out Now: The Fox Vs The Lion appeared first on Andrew Knighton Writes.

The characters in All That Is In The Earth started as variations on a theme.

The thought that I’ll one day die has always filled me with dread. But that dread’s not always helpful or comforting, so I decided to spend time with characters who have different responses to death and use them to explore my feelings. I created a situation where death was much more immediate, then set out to see how they might face it.

First up, there’s Clifford, our protagonist. At the start of the story, he feels that sense of dread, and he almost gives in. Struggling on seems pointless if he’s going to die anyway. It’s a nihilistic, self-defeating approach that means throwing away life’s opportunity.

Then there’s the swarm, who are out to kill every other living thing. They’re a thoughtless act of destructive id – if they can’t live, no one else can.

The soldiers – Tork, Boran, and Marel – might seem to have a healthier relationship with death, but scratch the surface and something’s not right. They’re products of a hyper-capitalist society that values more more more. More activity to buy more health and more time, tricking yourself into feeling like you’ll fend off death indefinitely. An impossible attempt at immortality through action, rather than enjoying life while they have it.

The motives of Fifth-Blade Dagran, the crashed pirate in chapter four, don’t get much exploration. She’s from a society that’s in denial about death for themselves but casual in delivering it to others. In the end, she wasn’t on the page long enough for that to come across, but it’s how she got into the story.

Desilian Vang, who we meet near the end, has calmly accepted her death on Abaddon. Some of this is the healthy Buddhist-style attitude of making peace with death, but it’s an approach that can lead to fatalism and inaction, which Vang is sliding towards.

And then there’s Dr Emieke Solvesdin, Clifford’s mentor, companion, and foil. Solvesdin uses religious faith as a source of comfort, a shelter against the dread. That’s something I have complex feelings about, and that needed to be here because it’s so prevalent. But she’s also the character whose approach I want to emulate, because Solvesdin copes with death by caring for other people. Her cancer means that death is most immediate for her, but instead of a futile fight or hopeless surrender she focuses on other people’s lives. By looking after Clifford and others, she ensures that life will go on, even when hers doesn’t.

I can’t find the courage to make that my only thought in the face of death, but I’m trying to focus on it more. Both sides of that are reflected in where Clifford’s head is at by the end of the novella.

Maybe this book helped me work through my feelings, or maybe it’s just where I set them down. Regardless, that’s how I took six different angles on death, turned them into characters, and made my morbid thoughts into an adventure story.

And if you’d like to read the results, you can find All That Is In The Earth here.

The post Six Characters on the Theme of Death appeared first on Andrew Knighton Writes.

War has come to Estis, as Raul and his allies try to free their homeland. But Raul is also battling with his own future and the forces thrust upon him; with the dangers of politics, magic, and love. The fate of a nation lies on the shoulders of a fake chosen one, an idealist forced into bitter compromises, an uncertain hero for a troubled age. Can a rebellion built on lies lead to a better future?

Forged For Royalty, the last book in my Forged For Destiny series, is out today as an ebook and audiobook worldwide, and in print in the US. UK readers will have to wait until next month for the pulped wood version, but if you’re keen to find out how this story ends, now’s your chance!

Fittingly for the climax of the series, this is the one where I get to cut loose. There are epic battles, grand acts of magic, and dramatic upheavals in the characters’ relationships. International politics and family drama tangle around each other as the lies and compromises finally start to unravel. Who lives, who dies, who gets to rule the nation? We’re about to find out.

When I planned what to do with this trilogy, I wanted each book to be a little different. The first one is a coming of age novel disecting the chosen one trope, the second a messy take on a quest, and this last part is a big story of war and politics. But as this is an Andrew Knighton book, some of the tropes get flipped around, familiar notes played in a different order. I want these stories to be fun, but I want them to make a point about power, responsibility, and how we shape the world.

This is the first time I’ve had a whole trilogy published, and it’s immensely satisfying. Trilogies have a special place in fantasy fiction, so there’s something validating about it. And now the story is finished, some people might read it who wouldn’t have taken that chance before. Plus the books look pretty damn cool on my bookshelf.

But this is also an odd moment. Thanks to a mixture of chance timing and upheaval at my publishers, it’s the first time for several years that I don’t have any new books under contract. I feel a little like Indiana Jones preparing to step out onto an invisible bridge, not knowing if I’m about to touch solid ground, having to place my faith in something.*

Hopefully that will change soon, as I have various novels I’m shopping around. And some smaller pieces are scheduled for the next couple of years – I currently have four short stories accepted for publication and nine completed comic scripts in production. But having no novels or novellas feels weird. Maybe I’ll self-publish another collection of short stories to fill the gap, I haven’t done that in years.

For now though, this is new book day. If you’ve enjoyed the previous books, you can find links to buy Forged For Royalty here. And if you haven’t tried this series yet, there are links over here to the first book, Forged For Destiny. Dodgy prophecies and a fake chosen one come together to manufacture a fight for freedom. What could possibly go wrong?

* If that’s got you thinking about Indiana Jones’ and faith’s relationship with religion, this video by Jacob Geller is a great essay on how the events of the films might or might not shape Indie’s faith.

The post Another Book Released Into the Wild appeared first on Andrew Knighton Writes.

Voff’s dreams were ruining his life.

Everyone raised as Pack had soul dreams, whether you grew up on some fringe farming planet or an expedition ship with the grand fleet. Sometime in your teens, the chaos of the subconscious settled into visions of an animal whose soul matched your own. The animal whose genes would be woven through your body, whose features you would wear when you came of age.

“I saw a tiger again last night,” Yall said as they came out of the classroom. She made a slashing motion. “My dad’s a lion. He’s gonna be so proud.”

“I’ve been getting gazelles,” Howry said. “Looks like I’m gonna live fast.” He turned to Voff. “What about you?”

Voff flushed and scurried faster along the corridor, but his friends wouldn’t let him get away.

“Still mixed up,” he mumbled, clutching his satchel tight enough to hide his chin. Lying about soul dreams was a terrible thing, but so was admitting his truth.

Yall and Howry exchanged a pitying look.

“We grow up seeing all these different faces, cobras and eagles and whatever,” Yall said. “We’re bound to dream about all sorts of animals. Makes it hard for your own one to shine.”

“Ms Erdavay says it’s normal to have mixed visions,” Howry added.

Their crow-faced teacher had said that, but she’d said it years ago. Like saying that everyone would grow pubes in the end, it was only reassuring for so long. A pit opened up inside Voff, and he didn’t like to think what it hid.

“I need to talk to a teacher.” He nudged a door open, squirmed through the gap, and shut it before they could follow.

He thought that he’d picked the room for its concealing gloom, but the sound of scrabbling claws told a different story. There was a scent in here he’d known as a little kid, when his family hauled freight from one system to the next. A smell that lingered in the gaps of the ship, betraying their hidden passengers. Wherever people went, rats came for the ride. That faint, familiar scent that so many people found unpleasant, to him it was childhood and the shelter of family. No wonder he’d chosen this door; he had the most embarrassing instincts.

There were rows of cages full of rats for use in science lessons. After all, if rodents got everywhere then they might as well be put to use, their termite-faced psychology teacher had explained. Voff’s stomach churned as he approached the cages, not knowing what to do with his mix of affection and resentment. He tapped the wire and beady eyes peered out from a slender face.

“Hey, there,” Voff said softly. “I don’t suppose you lot could leave me in peace?”

When the dreams had started, his childhood had provided an excuse. Of course he dreamed of rats, he’d grown up with them all around. When his family settled on the orbital, he’d figured it would pass and his soul would shine through. But the rats still filled his dreams, no matter how many videos of apex predators, industrious insects, and elegant birds he fell asleep to. No lions or eagles or army ants for Voff. Just the scuttle and scurry of rats.

His lip twitched in disgust. He smashed his fist against the cage and the rat vanished into its straw.

“Why can’t you leave me alone?” he yelled. “Why can’t I dream proper dreams?”

He slumped against the wall and slid to the ground, chest shaking, fingers clawing at the corner of his bag. The rats came to the fronts of their cages and stared at him as he sobbed.

The door creaked open. Voff rubbed a hand across his eyes, trying to hide their treachery.

“Are you all right, mate?” Yall asked, prowling into the room. Behind her, Howry nudge the door shut.

Voff swallowed. Easier to face the shame first with friends than with family.

“In my dreams…” he began, staring at the rats, but the words stuck in his throat.

Yall froze, eyes wide, halfway to reaching out. Howry’s head did a quick flick back and forth, then he walked over to the cages.

“These little guys get a bad rep.” Howry placed a fingertip against the wire so a rat could sniff at him. “But they’re great at hiding, fast at climbing, and the way they get by on whatever they find, that’s how nothing goes to waste.”

Voff swallowed. He still couldn’t say it out loud.

“Right, Yall?” Howry added, nudging her with his foot.

“I… yeah.” Yall’s smile was forced, but at least she tried. “They’re cute too, with those funny faces. People forget how friendly they are when no one’s trying to kill them.”

For all the comfort their words gave Voff, it was the face in the cage that won him around. It was bright-eyed and inquisitive, eagerly sniffing at the world. A face that Voff wanted to emulate, a creature of curiosity, squirming into the hidden corners of the universe to see how they could sustain him. He got up, walked over to the cage, and faced the vision of his own soul through the bars.

The emptiness inside him didn’t feel like a pit anymore, but a pathway opening up to the vast potential of space.

“In my dreams, it’s always rats.”

***

Like last month’s story, this one is set in the same universe as my new novella, All That Is In the Earth. I’ve tried to play with some of the themes that inspired the novella, and flesh out what’s happening around it. In the book, there’s a character with wolf features, but not everyone in a society can get the most dramatic choice.

If you enjoyed this story and you’d like to read more like it, then you can sign up to my mailing list, where you’ll get a flash story straight to your inbox every month as well as updates on my books. And if you’re looking for something else to read in the meantime, did I mention that new novella…

***

When Clifford crash lands on the planet of Abaddon, he might as well be dead: a terrible plague and a strict quarantine mean that no one leaves alive.

Clifford isn’t the only dead man walking. Corporate mercenaries and desperate survivors are looking for ways to live in a hostile world. On the run from flesh-hungry monsters, there’s no chance to escape or to build something more. But when Clifford makes a startling discovery, loyalty clashes with survival in an action-packed novella about living with death.

All That Is In the Earth, out now from Luna Press Publishing.

The post The Spacefarer’s Dream – a science fiction short story appeared first on Andrew Knighton Writes.

When we talk about authorial inspiration, it’s often in romantic terms. The way an emotional experience moved the author, or a clever insight unlocked a world of wild ideas. But sometimes inspiration comes from something dumb.

When I was starting to outline All That Is In The Earth, I went to a Rozi Plain gig. I didn’t know Plain’s music, except as bassist for This Is The Kit, but an old friend wanted company for the evening, the venue was five minutes from my house, and it was a good chance to catch up. So off I went.

I really enjoy live gigs, but I’m not great at focusing on music, so my mind tends to wander. When I heard Plain singing a song about something green, I thought about jungles, then about needing a location for my first chapter, and the pieces fell into place. By the end of the song, I had a scene firmly worked out in my head. A crash landing in the jungle and a bewildered figure contemplating the destruction his ship had caused:

“Lush leaves rustled, grasses shimmered, trees a hundred times taller than Clifford swayed to the music of the wind. In the blackened trail he’d ripped through that life, chunks of dirt and debris shifted, while flames crawled with flickering brightness into the dryer stands of undergrowth. Oily smoke trickled upward, coalesced into a column, spread into a grey smear against which birds whirled. The whole world seemed so alive, which made it all the more bitter to know that he was dead.“

All that came from the green that Rozi Plain was singing about.

Except that she wasn’t. When I got home and put the record on, I realised that I’d misheard “agreeing” as “green”. The whole scene was built on my dumb brain failing an intelligence check.

(I’m pretty sure this video is the actual performance I saw. Obviously, the word is not green. Any fool could hear that.)

There’s probably a moral to this story, something about how inspiration can arise from anywhere, so grab it whenever you can. But really, my message is that, if you like whimsical folk-rock-ish music, then you should listen to the album Prize by Rozi Plain, and if you like scifi stories that bear no relation to their inspiration, you should go read my novella All That Is In The Earth.

The post Dumb Inspiration appeared first on Andrew Knighton Writes.

My new scifi novella, All That Is In The Earth, has been getting its first reviews, and I’m very pleased with them. Run Along the Shelves strongly recommended it in a launch day review, and Roseanna Pendlebury had an interesting discussion of it in a post about her holiday reading.

One of the things that particularly struck me from Roseanna’s post, and from a previous conversation with Francesca at Luna Press, is that this book is pretty action oriented, and I don’t tend to talk about that. Sure, the theme is how we face death, but it’s delivered through the medium of an action adventure on a planet overrun with zombie substitutes. I should probably mention that part when I’m selling this thing.

To quote Roseanna, “it’s so utterly visual, so constantly filmic. It really would fit on screen so perfectly.”

The post First Reviews for All That Is In The Earth appeared first on Andrew Knighton Writes.

Jill’s belly tensed as she reread the leaflet. It was the same design as the poster on the wall; the same as thousands of adverts across the city, the planet, half the system. An improbably beautiful woman in a lab coat beneath a message:

“Cellular Renew. Restore your skin to perfection.”

And beneath that the instructions that brought her to this waiting room, with its dirt-repellent furniture and bland background music.

She turned to the man next to her, a distraction from the leaflet and the pictures on her personal chip. He leaned forward, one knee jiggling, eyes twitching like a rat in a trap.

“What brought you here?” Jill asked softly, a question chosen by default but which she instantly feared she might regret.

The man looked startled. He was pale and skinny, the side of his face and back of his neck pocked with scars from cybernetic plugs.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude.” Jill pulled back.

“It’s cool.” The man grinned. “Shrink says I need to talk with real people. I’m Gorn.” He pulled up one sleeve, revealing a row of cable ports and the dark lines of outdated dermal circuitry. “Used to do digital runs, freeing information. Some corporate, some for causes. Me, Yardy and Cabbage, great team.” His smile faded. “Got busted running a bank. Yardy’s in the big house, Cabbage took a shuttle out, and I’m banned from biotech interface.”

Gorn ran a finger down the nodules on his neck.

“People see this, they know, and I feel judged. So…”

“You took on a bank?” Across the waiting room, the other customer leaned forward. She was wearing loose sports clothes, her expression eager. “That’s starshine, bro! Pure starshine!”

Gorn shifted in his seat, shrinking before her confidence.

“What about you?” Jill asked. “What’s your name?”

“Sash.” The woman gave a two-fingered wave, like the flare gliders. “Guess you don’t have to ask why I’m here.”

Ragged ridges made up one side of her face, running back into where hair should have been. The was a hollow at the heart of her laugh.

“That must have been painful,” Jill said.

“Shit yes!” Sash laughed. “You know the asteroid races?”

Jill had watched snippets, athletes wearing wing suits and rocket belts hurtling through courses of floating, spinning rocks, skimming over broken surfaces to shave seconds off their time.

“It looks exhilarating,” she said. “And terrifying.”

“It’s the best.” Sash thumped her chest. “I was the best, huge sponsorship, queen of the sports feeds. Then I got cocky, misjudged a spiral entry in the Iyer Biannual, grated myself across a semi-slab. Fucked up my rig, my face, half the bones in my body.” She sighed and sagged. “Docs say I’m as healed as I’ll get, but my body can’t take the pressure anymore.” She held up one of the leaflets. “If I can’t have that, I can at least look like me.”

She screwed the leaflet up and tossed it across the room, straight into a rubbish bin.

“What about you?” she asked. “You look good. Why are you here?”

Jill touched her own stomach. The scar beneath her t-shirt felt like a mountain ridge.

“Cesarean section.” Her vision blurred. She wanted to stop there, but couldn’t hold the rest back. “Complications in an early birth. The doctors saved me, but my little Poppy…” She caught a ragged breath, sucked it back in with the tears. “We regifted the cot, repainted the room, but the scar was still there. It got to the point where I couldn’t even shower, seeing that reminder of what I’d lost, how I’d failed her, I…”

Gorn’s hand on her shoulder was surprisingly soft.

“You didn’t fail anyone,” he said.

It would have been better if there was silence after that, but the soulless background music kept playing, a droning synthetic lullaby that made Jill want to scream. All three of them stared at floor, and into their memories.

Then Gorn sat up with a sad smile.

“Me, Yardy and Cabbage, we had good times.” He ran a finger around a plug socket scar. “Think I want a reminder of that.”

He rose like levers unfolding and patted Jill on the shoulder, but couldn’t look her in the eye as he headed for the door.

“Well, shit.” Sash sprang up, one hand on her scarred cheek. “I was the best, and the best push themselves no matter what. Why would I wipe that away?” She made her two-fingered wave at Jill. “Thanks bud.”

Then she was gone.

A door at the other end of the room opened and a man in a lab coat walked in. He looked around, puzzled, checked a projection on the back of his hand, then looked directly at Jill.

“I was expecting three people,” he said.

Jill looked at the door he’d come through, then the one where Gorn and Sash had left. She thought of Poppy, a beautiful, motionless bundle in her arms, breath gone before it began. She wanted to have the courage to hold on, but some scars hurt beyond enduring. Or perhaps, for some people, there was no living with the pain.

She stood and followed him into the clinic.

***

I wrote this story to mark the launch of my new novella, All That Is In the Earth, which came out this week. I’ve tried to play with some of the themes that inspired the novella, and flesh out what’s happening in its universe.

If you enjoyed this story and you’d like to read more like it, then you can sign up to my mailing list, where you’ll get a flash story straight to your inbox every month as well as updates on my books. And if you’re looking for something else to read in the meantime, did I mention that new novella…

***

When Clifford crash lands on the planet of Abaddon, he might as well be dead: a terrible plague and a strict quarantine mean that no one leaves alive.

Clifford isn’t the only dead man walking. Corporate mercenaries and desperate survivors are looking for ways to live in a hostile world. On the run from flesh-hungry monsters, there’s no chance to escape or to build something more. But when Clifford makes a startling discovery, loyalty clashes with survival in an action-packed novella about living with death.

All That Is In the Earth, out now from Luna Press Publishing.

The post Scars – a science fiction short story appeared first on Andrew Knighton Writes.

When Clifford crash lands on the planet of Abaddon, he might as well be dead: a terrible plague and a strict quarantine mean that no one leaves Abaddon alive.

Clifford isn’t the only dead man walking. Corporate mercenaries and desperate survivors are looking for ways to live in a hostile world. Constantly on the run from flesh-hungry monsters, there’s no chance to escape or to build something more.

But when Clifford makes a discovery that could change the meaning of Abaddon, loyalty clashes with survival in a story about how to live with the certainty of death.

My new scifi novella, All That Is In The Earth, is out today from Luna Press. It’s an action adventure that’s also a meditation on facing mortality, set on a planet I’ve been imagining for over twenty years. If the pitch above got your attention, you can buy a copy at any of these links…

Paperback

Kobo ebook

Kindle ebook

Click here for bonus materials including short fiction, a playlist, and commentary.

The post Out Now – All That IS In The Earth appeared first on Andrew Knighton Writes.