Life According to Brian

Life According to Brian chronicles 44 stories of mishap and misadventure of a scale unparalleled in modern man. Disguised in comedy to protect the seriously guilty, the story follows Brian’s escapades traversing the world and captures not only the lunacy of life but the luck involved in avoiding one’s own death.

The guidebook for the mentally impaired includes: poaching, drugs, imprisonment, kidnapping, poisonings, alien hunters, crocodile suicide and much, much more…

The sorry episodes are being played out via a game of chess. God and Charles Darwin, seeking to save mankind, are plotting Brian’s untimely demise. The winner of each play gets to choose the method of death. Constantly interrupted by visiting deities, kings, queens and E.T., the two main players are frustrated in their attempts to have some peace and play the game, with a nice cup of tea and some Mr Kipling cake.

Send the kids away, euthanise the cat, find a comfy chair, pour a pint of the finest whisky…have a reliable psychiatrist on speed dial.

Come inside and enjoy the ride…

Leaving Behind

All his life, Malcolm Tutt wanted to be found. Now on the eve of turning fifty, he realised that sometimes life may never find you and if you wanted it bad enough, sometimes you would have to go and look for it yourself. The only problem was that he would have to die, if he wanted to live.

A young woman finds out that her husband is having an affair with her best friend. She decides to confront him, but before she does, she hatches a plan to catch them in the act of betrayal. As she gets closer and closer to discovering the truth about her husband, her anger towards them grows. Like a cheap paperback novel, her life begins to unravel until one night she commits a terrible act, and in the process, finds out what a scorned woman is truly capable of.

Leaving Behind is a collection of short stories that explores the lengths that people will go to when they are desperate, each with an unexpected twist.

Last Keeper's Lighthouse Stories

The very nature of lighthouses captures the imagination. Being marooned on different lighthouses throughout my career has produced many memorable incidents and humorous stories. Diverse locations like Lundy, Alderney, Wolf, Sark, all have something unique to offer. Rock tower lighthouses, land lights or island lighthouses, each one is different. Cooped up on a tower and being pounded by heavy seas is not only exhilarating, but frightening as well. Fog signals can play a huge part in a good duty period and the relief for going ashore is always welcomed. The characters are what makes this book such a good read. It gets your chuckle chops in overdrive, especially at some of the antics on the lights. A month’s duty is filled with incidents and the constant change in weather conditions has an effect on everything that you do. These stories will show how hardship goes hand in glove with humour whilst aboard.

Ladybirds - Tales on the Wing

As a youngster I loved getting, and subsequently owning, a brand new ‘Ladybird’ book. I especially liked the smell of the pristine pages as I turned them for the very first time. There was an aroma to their ‘inks’ that was distinctly ‘Ladybird’. What a joy! What a childhood memory!

These new tales came into being from the front covers of specific ‘Ladybird’ books, so to them I am clearly indebted. I just let my imagination do the rest once the seed was sown. They are both weird and wonderful, and abound with fact and fiction, truth and lies, deceit and lust. Very unlike the little books themselves, and if you take the trouble you will surely see what I mean. 

Lady with Edelweiss

Human ashes in a tea caddy, a baby delivered in a snowstorm, worm pie, a priest with a passion for airbrushing. How much do we know about our friends, our families, or even ourselves? This debut collection exposes the strangeness of everyday lives, embracing the light and the dark sides of human nature.

Uncomfortably honest and direct, these stories reveal the fears and passions of the mind through their characters, places and situations, an exploration of the boundaries between fantasy and reality. These are people we all know. 

A rich potpourri of character and plot in this intriguing (and sometimes dark) collection of tales from a talented storyteller.

Angela Locke. Author of Dreams of the Blue Poppy (Robert Hale) etc

Steph Newham has empathy with all her characters so presents her stories as rounded pieces for her readers’ enjoyment. Where she takes on characters from history her research is careful and enriches her stories, which range across many subjects.

Vivien Jones. Poet, author. Co-editor Southlight Magazine

Short but not sweet, Steph Newham writes vignettes that blaze out, illuminated briefly by the photo-flash of her pen. And when the light blinks out, you are left wondering as the scene presents itself again like the complexity of good wine, each time leaving a different taste.

Tony Walker. Author of A Christmas Ghost, etc and The Classic Ghost Story podcast.

These stories are atmospheric, the characters well-drawn. In ‘Unwise Words’, I felt the young mother’s regret and shivered in fear as the bonfire was lit. The sights and smell in the four Spanish stories took me to that country and I laughed out loud at the manuring of the roses in The Sand Walk. Something here for everyone.

Gwen Kirkwood. Author of sixteen Scottish novels and novellas (Joffee Books)

Journey's Bend

A poignant collection of short stories with a vivid mix of relatable characters confronting a bend in the road. The lucid prose, rich in imagery, illuminates people’s unyielding courage in challenging times.

Dealing with bereavement, displacement and renewal, the creative tales twist and turn through the vagaries of life. In the opening story, Gran absconding from a care home makes her escape in a red Reliant Robin, an epochal vehicle from her courtship days. Courageously, in ‘Wind Horse’, Maggie harnesses her wild emotions and canters on to fresh green meadows.

Using varied settings and compelling voices of all ages, Journey’s Bend celebrates the resilience of the human spirit. Tinged with humour, the touching stories will resonate with a wide range of readers scrambling through change.

Ghostly Visions

A journey through the strange visions and visitations of characters: historical, contemporary and futuristic. The brief tales are written for easy reading and reach from ancient times to the imagined worlds of the future. Rather than horror stories, these experiences are unfolded as the strange and intriguing encounters of people who are visited by an unexpected presence, or who travel through unfamiliar landscapes both physical and mental. Many tales are set within historical worlds that may be remote but have some familiar features and some significance for our own times. The imagination of those engaged in these experiences are often stretched as they discover truths about themselves and their surroundings. Young people come of age as they witness unfamiliar occurrences and world-weary personalities find fresh meanings in the scenarios that they move through. Many of the stories explore the relevance of ancient myths to the truths that the characters find on their voyages of self-discovery.

Falling Behind

Do you really know the person you have committed the rest of your life to? Are they the same person you married, once knew, or have you ignored those subtle changes and made compromises just for the sake of happily ever after? Perhaps it is you who has changed, and now everything you once cherished, once hoped for, does not bind you in the way that it once did.

Against the backdrop of the Pacific Ocean, Beth, and her husband Jake, travel to Samoa to reset and mend a broken marriage. But the suspicion of an affair, an addiction, a crime, or the thought that he just does not want to be around her anymore, travel with her to this island paradise.

How does it feel to lose a child? Your children are not supposed to leave you before you leave them. How do you live in a vacuum, unable to breathe, when sleep and inevitable death are the only reprieve? And then, what happens when you are responsible for their death? An old man and women, isolated from the rest of the world, abandoned by their families and neighbours, grapple with grief.

Falling Behind is a collection of six short stories that explores the character of grief and its manifestation in people and how these very same people attempt to ride it out and hope, at the same time, for it to end. As with Leaving Behind, each story bears an unexpected twist.

Events of an Ordinary Life

Events of an Ordinary Life is a collection of wide-ranging and wildly imaginative tales. The series is a mixture of fiction, supernatural fiction and true event stories that will keep you wanting more. You’ll find comedy, suspense and drama in a very enjoyable reading experience.

Epiphanies

Understanding life and its realities has always been difficult, not only for children but also for those who are considered as adults. Epiphanies is a collection of short stories that portrays challenges of life and illustrates how events can lead to some 'Aha' moments!

Dead Serious

Stanley was a skinny, timid child who dreaded school. Each Friday, his mum, Irene, would bribe him with a toy car, compelling him to attend the following week. She and his father, Pete, provided love and support, but their eldest son always remained anxious, with little self-esteem. Then, at the age of 10, a greater embarrassment caused him even more anxiety: his mother had bought him the wrong shirt for the football team he had joined with his friends.

Previously, the child had been happy to be invisible, allowing disappointment and others to take control of his life. This single incident made him determined to take charge. He had lots of friends, including Glyn and Roy, who would help him; perhaps they might even have some fun. His first test would be to stand in front of hundreds of boys when he took the school assembly.

Stan knew his struggles to change his life would be a long journey, but he was certain he could develop an inner strength and become more confident. He would no longer be 'short straw Stan' – he was ready to take control of his life.

Portrayed through separate, linked novellas, these tales of Stan's life from infancy through his teenage years may be read as one continuous novel. Alternatively, any chapter may be chosen from any novella and read as a short story.

Dead Plague

Warning: do not read this book if you are of a sensitive disposition!

Within this book lies a collection of short stories each different from the other but all connect with aspects of horror, suspense and survival, set within a post-apocalyptic world, where the dead have risen from an unknown viral outbreak, that abidingly seek the flesh of the remaining survivors.

The remaining humans attempt to find some semblance of a life on a reformed earth created by the dead. Each story depicts how the dead have reshaped the lives of the survivors and illustrates how they struggle to conform to the change while trying to hold onto some sanity and attempt to continue with life while pondering how long that life will be.