Based in the UK just outside London, I’m also a software developer, though under that label I've worked in a variety of roles over the past 30 years or so; and I collaborate on the occasional IT book (5 published so far).
Lately I’ve turned my attention to writing fiction. Here are the latest results (with plenty more in the pipeline!)
|
Short story: Barbarossa of Seville 4 Sci-Fi comedy with some dark themes! Published by Freedom Fiction Journal on 3 June 2024.
|
|
|
A Liminal walk on an Autumn Evening Just a short piece, exploring poetic language and meter in prose form. Digs into liminality in time rather than space. Published by 101 Words on 24 March 2024.
|
|
|
Flash fiction: I dug NY It's a small world -- and a big, big universe. Published by Sci-Fi Shorts on 20 December 2023.
|
|
|
Flash fiction: Interview With the Vainglorious Krongor When being the face of galactic terror ceases to be fun... Published by Sci-Fi Shorts on 10 March 2023. |
|
|
Short story: Seven Irrational Things A tale of cosmic terror with multidimensional psionic parasites and a young concert pianist. (And it's kind of fun). Published by Soft Star Magazine on 8 March 2023 in their "Wormhole" issue (in print and online). |
|
|
|
Here's an existential sort of 100-word "drabble" published at the appropriately named TheDrabble.com. |
Check back soon for more updates! Or to be notified whenever I get a new story published, do sign up below for my "low noise" newsletter...
My lofty writing inspirations include Gene Wolfe (particularly Book of the New Sun, and Fifth Head of Cerberus), Thomas Pynchon, Philip K. Dick, Ursula Le Guin.
Earlier stuff
My first published story (a flash fiction piece, writing as Matt Stephens) was back in 2011, before I was consumed by my IT "career" -- Grim Love Bus, published by the awesome people at Antipodean SF.
My IT books are also written as Matt Stephens. They are: Extreme Programming Refactored (a quasi-satire on a real software development practice), Use Case Driven Object Modeling with UML, Agile Development with the ICONIX Process, Design Driven Testing, and most recently Parallel Agile. For PA, I was honoured to work with the late, truly great Barry Boehm.