Writing Award 2022

Sam's mum was dead. All he had to remember her by was an old tape recorder. 'Talk to it' she'd said - it would be like talking to her - But it wasn't. Now he was living with Aunt Lucy, the aunt from Hell. His only help in surviving were: the tape recorder, some Plasticine and a box of drawing pins.

THE TRUTH (SORT OF) ABOUT THE ICEBERG is an alternative history/fantasy where two orphans—one an accidental stowaway, the other a puppet in his uncle's con game—must save the Titanic from yeti-like icebergs. (Spoiler alert: one of them is a mermaid.)

Horatius Scapula, Roman procurator, steps from his portrait in Rodechester Museum. He commands Edward Keaton, the curator's son, to be his guide around town. Trying to cope with twenty-first century finally gets him arrested - but he does save the museum from the unscrupulous Councillor Collins.

Mikey, a child of the media age, is struggling to get a start in life when finds himself arrested for a murder he didn’t commit. When his story is picked up by an idealistic TV researcher he finds himself entangled in a network characters, each driven by a desire for personal success but all willing

When he saw the black dog pursuing the white hare, eighteenth century Joel Penberthy, a young Cornish miner, couldn't know how it would affect his life, or his father's life. He couldn't know how he'd find friends in the future who would save his father from death, nor how he would repay them.

It is one hundred years since a virus plunged the earth into a silent darkness. A new wasting disease now threatens the survivors that escaped to the lunar surface. Believing it to be a variant of the ancient contagion one of them must return to capture it. A single human host must be the trap.

A dream, a beach on the Corniche de l'Esterel, a dark haired French boy, Sebastien... And Carrie Redman is thrust into a life-saving mission.
There is something very special about Sebastien, but he is kidnapped. His rescue takes Carrie from France to Oxford and to a life-threatening confrontation.

Going out with a Bang
With the arrogant ease and timing of seventeen years together as a top rock band - including eight best-selling albums, five of which went platinum, twelve European, four US and two world tours, nine UK and three US top ten singles, and, especially in the early days, sex and

When the very uppermost limit of the summit of your hair is just 15,240 milli-meters from the ground including the gelled to a stiff statue the carefully cut and shaped brown question mark cum mullet at the front, the rest of the otherwise gargantuan commuters encountered on her way to work gripping

Her husband is involved in a car accident and is comatose. Suddenly Anita is sexually involved with one of his male nurses and her quiet, orderly world explodes.

The daughter of a landowner sets out to deal with the practicalities of her estranged mother’s death. As she unpicks the older woman’s life, and works her way through the traces left behind, the daughter finds all sorts of stories, buried like grave goods, among her mother’s earthly possessions.

It’s August 1938, in Dar es Salaam. A young colonial wife, and mother of twins, finds she is pregnant. Set against a back drop of increasing international tensions, as the world heads back into war, Leila must decide how to tell Bill that she is carrying another man’s child, and Bill must decide

Harriet wants her brother’s life at the centre of politics. Shirley wants her lost life as a London barrister. Cassie wants her past life as a mother. Three women, three eras, one opinionated family home, and meadows that were once covered in purple crocuses.

When Seph agrees to meet up with a friend she hasn’t seen for forty years, she anticipates a convivial evening of shared reminiscence. As the reunion unfolds, she finds herself trapped, and forced on a terrifying journey back to times and places that she had managed to forget she had ever been.

“But, sir, what if ET is listening and finds us? Maybe he likes grilled Homo sapiens chops for dinner,” Misha challenges her teacher.
In less than four hours, she’ll find out. The rest of Earth, 74 days later.