Here is a sample of my writing. It bounces around style, genre, form, and other not-quite synonyms.
Morning Rituals
A complete piece of flash fiction. 2018
He stood on the crate to reach the basin. I stood behind him and we observed each other in the mirror. This younger me, stamped with my jaw line and the subtly bent nose of my mother’s folk. He’d grow into his shoulders sooner than I had, I hoped so at least. His red-blonde hair was his mother’s though, so were his slate grey eyes. I leaned over him and showed him the strange morning ritual of the fellowship he wanted to join.
I had him cup his small hands and dispensed a blob of expanding white foam onto his palms. Then the same into my left. I spread it across my face with small circles and he imitated me on his. My fingers could feel the short rough regrowth since my shave yesterday morning. His face was soft and fresh and would be for a very long time. But it wasn’t about the practicality, the need was for a ritual. My father had taught me to shave in the same way. Inducting me into the society of men. The first step down a strange path that had led me to boarding school, to drinking, to rugby, to the army, to the border and to this moment… being a father. It’s not a path I wanted my child to walk and I thought I’d been lucky, life has other plans though. I took up my own razor and gave him a toothless mimic – he didn’t need a blade to learn. Not yet.
We worked the razors across our faces, stripping off the foam and rinsing the implements in the basin of hot water. It was like peeling off a mask as we looked at ourselves with intent. At our exteriors. And it was done. Faces clean. I gave him a rough towel and his cheeks shone red.
“Go on, get dressed,” I said and the pride fled his face.
“It’s only til the end of term,” I said. “Then you’re at Andervale and you can wear what you like.”
He nodded and went to his room. I looked at myself in the mirror. I should have fought for him. But I couldn’t afford to, I told myself. Just get him into a new school where he could be happy and that would be it. My child would be fine, no matter where his path took him.
“OK, dad. I’m ready to go.”
He looked brave in the dress they made him wear to school. The dress I had made him wear for too long. He looked braver than me.
Dirty Words: The Lesson
The opening of a sketch from Dirty Words, winner of an Ovation Award at the National Arts Festival 2016.
There is the teacher, JEMMA, and the student, KIM.
KIM knocks.
JEMMA:
Enter…
KIM:
Hi, I’m here for the – uh – class.
JEMMA stares at him.
Is – uh – this the right room?
JEMMA:
You are late.
KIM:
Uh – yes. Sorry. I’m here for the class. There was an advert. I got distracted.
JEMMA:
You should have checked your cock.
KIM:
Pardon?
JEMMA:
You should have checked your clock… set an alarm.
KIM:
Oh, sorry. I thought you said –
JEMMA:
What?
KIM:
Nothing.
JEMMA:
Alright. Why have you come here?
KIM:
Uh… I – well, my fiance. Well, my girlfriend – she suggested – would like it if I…
Makes inarticulate gestures
JEMMA:
She would like…
KIM:
She wants me to… say things.
In bed.
During…
Makes strange hand gesture
you know…
JEMMA:
No I do not know.
I see exactly your problem. Uncertainty. You don’t want to say the wrong thing because you may offend. But in this orifice –
KIM:
Pardon?
JEMMA:
Don’t interupt me. In this office nothing is taboo. This is a place of learning, of making mistakes and being firmly corrected by a certified and licensed
professional. The art of erotic conversation is the balance of the base and revered – the poetic and the obscene – euphemism and dysphemism. Some times you need to say, “I’m going to bow down and worship the golden goddess at her lowest temple” and sometime you need to say “I’m going to give your dirty snatch a good dicking”. The art of erotic conversation is sometimes a dance, and sometimes a battle.
One must command language, imagery, you must have a big vocabulary.
How many words for ’penis’ do you know?
KIM:
Penis… Cock, dick, willy, sausage, horn, piel, uh – dick… No I said that – sorry.
JEMMA:
That’s it?
KIM:
Phallus?
JEMMA:
I am not exaggerating when I say there are an infinite number of words for the various human genitals. Meaning is fluid.
LEGACY! Of Death…
The opening of a Goon Show-style audio play. 2018
ANNOUNCER:
That was the smooth new wave electro punk classic sounds of The Flaming Yetis. Welcome back to our radio sho-
ACTOR 1:
Podcast.
ANNOUNCER:
To our Podcast, because radio is not a thing anymore apparently. Anyway, welcome back to our show…
FX:
“The Hardcastle Files”
ANNOUNCER:
We last left our hairy heroine heartbroken and hurt at the conclusion of “The Case of Battery Not Included”. Where will her dogged pursuit of justice take her in this week’s episode: “Legacy! of DEATH”
HARDCASTLE:
The morning light prised my eyelids apart like the jaws of life. The sunbeam was laid out across my desk in precut slices courtesy of my office’s Venetian blinds. My hand was still gripping a bottle of Latvian cooking alcohol. I took a long pull, hit the bottom and kept on going. The door opened.
DOOR SWINGS OPEN
It was my protege. Frozen in place. I guess she’d never seen a woman in a green, leopard-print onesie before. Neither had I.
“What is it?” But before she could reply the answer sauntered into my office.
NORTON:
“Mith Hardcathtle.”
HARDCASTLE:
The guy had the face of a constipated mackerel. I could tell his type a mile off. A go-between, a fixer, a lawyer with a big retainer. He took it out and repeated himself.
NORTON:
“Ms Hardcastle. I’m Alan Norton and I require your services.”
HARDCASTLE:
I nodded. “Let’s get started”
FX puffing, rubber squeaking, twisting.
“Here. It’s a giraffe.”
NORTON:
“As a detective.”
HARDCASTLE:
“A giraffe would make a terrible detective.”
NORTON:
“I meant I require your services as a detective.”
HARDCASTLE:
“Why didn’t you say so?”
FX ballon deflating.
Descent
Opening of a short play. 2016
Characters:
THEO Former lead actor on the B-grade sci-fi TV show Anti-Matter.
KARL Strung out fan of Anti-Matter.
An elevator. THEO enters and hits the button for the ground floor. Checks his nice watch. Waits.
KARL hits the lift call and enters when it stops.
KARL clearly recognizes THEO, but only shyly nods as a polite fellow elevator user. THEO ignores him, checks his watch. KARL doesn’t seem deflated as the elevator continues its descent; he seems to be working up to saying something. As he is about to speak the elevator lurches, the lights go out, and both characters nearly fall.
THEO:
Jesus wept!
KARL:
What happened? What’s happening? The elevator stopped!
THEO:
It stopped.
Emergency lights flicker on.
KARL:
The lights are back! Thank God! Oh wow. Wow wow wow… I thought I was dead. Dead, dead, dead. That was close. Oh my heart. It’s racing. It’s like a race car. Here, feel.
Tries to take THEO’s hand.
THEO:
Don’t touch me!
KARL:
No, no, it’s ok, I just think you should feel my heart, it’s really something. Really, really incredible – I thought, really, like… Splat. That was going to be us. It’s pounding like crazy. It’s really… wooooooo.
THEO tries to hit the intercom.
THEO:
Hello? Hello? We’re stuck. Hello?
No response.
KARL:
No response?
THEO glares at KARL.
KARL:
Yeah, so stuck, hey… better than the alternative. Better than plunging to our deaths. Plummeting downwards, sucked down by the lusty embrace of gravity’s bosom.
THEO:
What?
KARL:
Plummeting downwards?
THEO checks his watch.
KARL:
So we’re stuck hey? I guess you’re not getting to wherever it is you’re going.
Me neither.
Stuck.
I’m KARL by the way. KARL Le Roux. Two words. Le Roux.
R O U X.
THEO tries the button again.
THEO:
Can someone get me out of here please? Hello?
They listen.
KARL:
You have a very commanding voice, are you here as a speaker. Perhaps? There’s some kind of convention down the road. I noticed. Just in passing. I don’t really know what’s going on. So are you? Here for that?
THEO:
I am.
KARL:
Well. That explains it.
THEO:
It does.
KARL:
The voice I mean.
THEO:
Yes.
KARL:
Hey… isn’t that actor going to be there? That famous actor? I’m KARL, by the way.
THEO:
You said.
KARL:
Oh. Yup. I did.
Jon Keevy 