Birmingham Writers’ Group

Mat Joiner’s poem A Wake for Tesla has been published in Through the Gate, issue #3.

“Juggler of sparks, wireless-dreamer…”

Mat Joiner has co-written a piece with Jason Rolfe and Rhys Hughes, published online as part of Sein Und Werden’s ‘Exquisite Corpse’ issue (Spring 2013).

In this surreal exquisite corpse, Henry goes on the run with a pistol and a magpie.

Mat Joiner’s poem A Black Dog has been published in Stone Telling, #9 (Menagerie).

“The days when this body’s a prison ship, and
the nights when I am on the ledge of three AM…”

I take Lolly over to the Illuminated Southcotes. She places her hands on the glass cover and studies the model inside.

“This is lovely.”

“My granddad made it. My dad added to it.”

I slip a twenty pence piece in the slot. I watch Lolly as she watches the miniature people and vehicles move about the model town. Her lips twitch into fleeting smiles at each new scene.

“My dad added this last bit not long before he died,” I say. “Look. Here she comes.”

The tiny figure of a woman holding a baby, no more than half an inch high, runs down from the town, down the beach and into the sea. She doesn’t re-emerge.

John Hathaway is twenty-one years old, a delusional schizophrenic and a murderer.

And now that his father is dead, he’s the only person who knows someone or something has killed four women in the bleak seaside town of Southcotes.

Lolly Quale is drawn into John’s quest for answers, finding a distraction from her own problems through what she sees as their little make-believe mystery game.

And then a fifth body washes up on the beach…

Iain Grant’s third solo novel is a work of philosophical and storytelling trickery, which makes new use of the electronic book format to tell a story so astonishing you literally won’t know where it will take you next.

Viennese Waltz is an introduction to flamboyant traceuse, nerveless pickpocket, and unrivalled cat-burglar Kathryn Blake, and what better place to meet her than Vienna, that city of a thousand faces? For Vienna is always about dancing, if not bright waltzes by candlelight, then a shadow of intricate cold war quadrilles in the dark.

“…a carefully-plotted tale that twists your emotions, and features strong capable women, intrigue, exotic locations, supremely well drawn characters and fine prose.”

A rucksack is stolen. It is a simple and unremarkable theft but it will have far-reaching consequences for five disparate, yet equally marginalised, individuals.

The Victim – Karen is grieving over the loss of her little girl, Amy. The theft of a toy rabbit, the only keepsake Karen has of her little girl, leads her to take some drastic actions to retrieve it.

The Thief – Clarke is a failed businessman deeply in debt to the merciless loan shark Michaels and, having run out of friends to take pity on him, is facing life on the streets if he can’t change something in his own life to turn his fortunes around.

The Loan Shark’s Hired Muscle – Danny has recently served a year-long sentence for child pornography offences, and is struggling to cope with life outside. A social pariah, he seeks solace in the insular world of an on-line virtual reality game, i-Land.

The Therapist – Jane has been helping Karen through the grieving process for the last two years and is perhaps the only person who knows that the relationship Karen had with Amy was not a normal one. Jane, like Danny, spends much of her life in the virtual i-Land, an escape from the bone disease that is inexorably killing her.
The Scientist – Nadia has, with Karen’s help, been tracking the progress of a mysterious plague amongst the city’s urban fox population but finds she has more than work on her mind when MI5 agents appear on her doorstep investigating her family’s links to international terrorism.

In Other Hands is a story about people on the margins of society and the ties that bind us all together.

Strange Horizons have published Mat Joiner’s poem All the Mari’s Parties.

“It’s no fit weather, no fit time, for a fleshless horse to ride—”

Mat Joiner has a story published in issue #48 of Not One of Us.

In a ruined city, a young folk musician leads the resistance against the military dictatorship.

The Seelie Court controls an empire of a thousand suns, each world linked to the next by the black oneirium gateways of the Sacred Guild of Gatemakers. While the empire plunders the conquered worlds to stave off its own destruction, Edenist rebels fight for independence. Caught somewhere in between is Celandine Brey, orphan, apprentice gatemaker and key to a treasure of untold wealth.

Chased by imperial agents and corrupt soldiers, Celandine is aided in her quest by Mr Sukh, mute veteran of the Engine Wars, Orlando Swaan, Edenist and naïve schemer, and Ana Zanbir, a demon-hunter on the run from her husband-creator, now bound to Celandine by an unbreakable oath.

From the narcotic grasslands of Aphid to the ancient temples of Nachista, from the high-rise cityscape of Termagore to the junk world of Immonda, A Gateway Made Of Bone is a fantastic journey through the conflict and chaos of a civilisation on the verge of collapse.

Mat Joiner’s poem Sepia has been published in Through the Gate, issue #1.

“What do you yearn for? asks the September girl…”