What a thrill it has been this weekend to see a story of mine up on The Saturday Evening Post's website. This is a magazine whose name I've long beheld with something close to awe, so connected is it with writers who have meant the world and more to me - everyone from Poe and Washington Irving, through such favourites as Steinbeck, Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jack London, Salinger, H.E. Bates and Shirley Jackson, and on to the likes of Pynchon, Updike, Vonnegut and Ray Bradbury.

The year has been taking good shape for me, and I am excited about the imminent publication of my first novel, Dead House. But I've learned over the years to savour the small successes (and, for me, used to playing a game where rejection so heavily outweighs acceptance, every published story still counts as a significant triumph). The names of the great writers I've listed are among those looking down from the mountaintop, and three (and about to be four) books along, and with probably a hundred stories in print, I still feel very much at the foothills stage. But that doesn't stop me from looking up, and it only encourages me to keep on dreaming...

(if you have ten minutes or so to spare, and feel like dipping into a short story, please click the link below...)

http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/20...