The Afterparty

The Xeroverse is a year old... The celebrations are all but over. It's a party you can still be fashionably late to, however; it's a party gone, but drifting forever on the capricious winds of the web.

I always intended the Xeroverse to be about different places, different times, different states of mind, and the guest flash fiction over the past week has had all of that.

For me, personally, it's been a great honour to host such awesome writing here in the Xeroverse. So I want to say a massive thank you to all the contributors, for making the Xeroversary something special for me, and thank you to everyone who stopped by to read, and everyone who took the time to comment, it's much appreciated.

The Guest List:

Five Voodoo Polaroids of Five Haunted Places by David Senior
A sublime exploration of narrative as association and suggestion. Packed with evocative imagery.

Monster in Mind by Roswell Ivory
A beguiling look inside a mind most murderous, where creative block can affect even the darkest of hobbies.

Journey II by Kate Ferdinand
My sister takes us on a helter-skelter hallucination of a bus ride through a world that is just like ours but different in almost every way.

Cosmic by Xeroverse: 101
OK, by me... ;) A science fiction murder mystery extravaganza in only 101 words.

The Dark Place by Magaly Guerrero
Even trees tell horror stories. Wickedly funny, dark and thoughtful, just like its author.

Caldera Rats by Aidan Fritz
Brilliant, cyber-styled, rat-infested, rustic science fiction. All of that and more.

The Bird Garden by Dee Harding
Beautiful and poignant neo-myth. A more than worthy end to the party.


The room is wreathed in a smoky haze, the music has drifted to chilled, ambient tones, people are trying to remember the world-changing epiphany they had only a few happy hours ago. It's time to call a cab, or find a comfy corner to curl up in as your sleepy eyelids droop.

The Xeroverse is going dark for a while, friends. To give me a chance to get on top of things again, go visit mes parents en français, write some longer pieces... but fear not, fellow fictionauts, the gates to the Xeroverse will re-open some time in August.

In the meantime, here are some of my favourites from the past year.

This Pale Stranger
Keeping zombies down in the old west...

This Infernal Waiting
A familiar kind of hell.

Cold Snap
A fantasy of Nordic proportions.

This Crumbling Bastion
An old man bemoaning the passage of time.

Gunship Afterlife
A post-apocalyptic zombie flash, without the zombies...

Technochoir
A wild dystopian tragedy. I think my favourite piece of writing.