Detox | Writing News

White lighthouse on rocky island cliff with waves crashing and small islands in the background

As I mentioned recently, for the past couple of years I’ve been working away on the first draft of a novel (working title ‘Detox).

It will be a literary thriller set on the island of Eilean Mor in the Flannan Isles, which is about as far flung a place as you can get in the UK. One of the narrative threads that I’m weaving through the novel is the famous disappearance of three lighthouse keepers (James Ducat, Thomas Marshall, and Donald McArthur) in 1900 from the lighthouse. No trace of the men has ever been discovered, despite Northern Lighthouse Board (NLB) regulations stating that one man had to stay in the building at all times.

The mystery gave me the excuse to travel through to the National Records of Scotland search rooms in Edinburgh, which holds documents going back as far as the twelfth century. Pre-booking is essential, as many of the more delicate books need to be brought out of storage.

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Feedback | Short Story

Wastebasket containing crumpled manuscript pages with handwritten edits

Dear Ronald,

I have had the opportunity to read your submission – an opportunity I wish I had not availed myself of.

As you will no doubt be aware, flash fiction is a flexible format which authors have used in a near-limitless number of ways to tell stories. I suppose your piece meets this criteria, although it was flash fiction to me in the sense that it left the imprint of your hackneyed spelling and of a grammatical smorgasbord of dunderheadedness imprinted on the insides of my eyelids.

As for structure? I can only assume that something happened to your submission between your posting it and the document arriving in my hands. Some intra-dimensional event perhaps? Maybe it was torn apart by rabid, foam-flecked Alsatians before being hurriedly pasted back together by a well-meaning postal worker with an acute visual impairment.

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Detox | Writing News

A highly detailed, sharp-focused image featuring a remote lighthouse.

It’s always nice to be able to share a piece of good news…

I attended the Scottish Association of Writers 2026 Conference last weekend, and was delighted to receive second place in the Constable Silver Stag competition for the general novel, judged by the fantastic Anne Hamilton.

‘Detox’, a novel I’ve been working on for some time, is pencilled in for being complete in early 2027, and it was fantastic to get some positive feedback on the draft and to know what I need to go and work on. The elevator pitch is as follows:

Abandoned and starving at a remote therapeutic lighthouse retreat, Becca must uncover the awful truth of her captivity before fear and betrayal tear her fellow survivors apart.

I shall keep working away at the drafts, but it was nice to hear that I might be on the right track in the meantime.

Thanks for reading folks. Recent short stories include ‘Shift‘ and ‘The End of the Day‘.

Matthew Richardson is a writer of short stories. His work has featured in Gold Dust magazine, Literally Stories, Close to the Bone, McStorytellers, Penny Shorts, Soft Cartel, Whatever Keeps the Lights On, Flashback Fiction, Cafelit, Best MicroFiction 2021, Writer’s Egg, Idle Ink, The Wild Word, Down in the Dirt, and Shooter magazine. He has a Professional Doctorate in Education. Matthew blogs at www.matthewjrichardson.com.

The End of the Day | Short Story

Becca is lonely. They say it like it is a bad thing, those teachers, that guidance counsellor, the parents whispering behind their hands at birthday parties. They said it as though the condition has a horrifying miasma surrounding it, some sort of accompanying social smell. Rancid, like milk gone bad.

There are worse things to be than lonely, though.

These people though, they don’t take into account the worlds that are visible only to Becca. Universes that only she can see. Walking along a school corridor, she can be anywhere inside her head. The tinny slamming of the lockers is muted, the boyish jostling becomes immaterial, the spitballs seem to arc around her, pulled out of her gravity by the mass of her imagination.

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Shift | Flash Fiction

Cold air shifts, tugged between a closed door and another, closing. Shoes shuffle against the swept floor, footsteps purposeful but never rushed. Speech is superfluous here in the mountains, amidst the thin air and underneath the morphing skies.

There are privations of course, the hardships of rock-hewn bedrooms and straw mattresses, but also the sense of paring back, of the shedding of the unnecessary.

So as the poets, the thinkers, the lost, shift past each other in the shadowed-sunstriped cloisters, do not think of them as poor or desperate. Think of them as rich – rich in spirit, in solitude, in silence.

Thanks for reading folks. Recent short stories include ‘Scale and Perspective‘ and ‘Picking your Mark‘.

Matthew Richardson is a writer of short stories. His work has featured in Gold Dust magazine, Literally Stories, Close to the Bone, McStorytellers, Penny Shorts, Soft Cartel, Whatever Keeps the Lights On, Flashback Fiction, Cafelit, Best MicroFiction 2021, Writer’s Egg, Idle Ink, The Wild Word, Down in the Dirt, and Shooter magazine. He has a Professional Doctorate in Education. Matthew blogs at www.matthewjrichardson.com.

Picking Your Mark | Short Story

Picking your mark is important. This is no smash and grab. This is no crime of opportunity. This is tradecraft.

You look for sloppiness, for laziness. Expensive bikes left in back gardens. Hopper windows ajar. Packages left hanging from letterboxes. Easy pickings.

You look for signs of opulence, of wealth. How expensive are a person’s drapes? What car is parked in their driveway? Does security lighting protect their wealth?

Lastly, you look for patterns. When do they leave in the morning? Are their hours regular? Are there neighbours twitching at drapes?

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