Author: Matthew J. Richardson

Stories in Golddust Magazine, Literally Stories, Idle Ink, Writer's Egg, CafeLit, McStorytellers, Whatever Keeps the Lights On, Flashback Fiction, Down in the Dirt, Close to the Bone, Shooter, Soft Cartel, Fiction Junkies, and Heavenly Flower Publishing

November Cold | Short Story

My father disappears on the train between Neilston and Kilmarnock. He does this without leaving my side, without his elbows ever lifting from the plastic tabletop where they prop up his phone. Dad vanishes in a carriage busy with beery, jostling men talking to him about Killie’s injury crisis and whether I am his wee lassie.

In the pub Dad stands pint in hand, watching the horseracing. I’m given a packet of Quavers and the barmaid asks what time my mum is getting back from her Girls Night Out. Then, the weary walk through the terraced houses as the gloom gathers and the November cold creeps. Dad holds my hand loosely as the pavements become crowded.

Continue reading “November Cold | Short Story” →

There’s No-one Here | Poetry

There’s no-one here at the moment.

Just sterilised, shadowed corners and

Rows of steel doors, all closed.

Those stories, pushed along drawer runners,

Running no more

In this halfway house, this budget hostel.

A first chance to rest

Brought to bear by flame and earth.

Thanks for reading, folks. My recent short stories include ‘Sunset Hours‘ and ‘Crib Stuck‘.

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, and Shooter magazine. He is a doctoral student at the University of Dundee, a lucky husband, and a proud father. He blogs at www.matthewjrichardson.com.

Writing with Grace Notes | Creative Non-Fiction

From the conceptual to the mechanical and back again. Merciless chrome and black, mercifully free of cabling, of Wi-Fi range, of needy battery icons.

It is writing with sound and fury, each key an inked thwack on a page stretched taut by paper fingers, writing with echoes of thunderous roars of keystrokes within typing pools, of industry caught halfway between manual and digital.

Continue reading “Writing with Grace Notes | Creative Non-Fiction” →

Sunset Hours | Short Story

The mountainside gloams around the man. He sees it in the dulling of the red-brown autumn heather. It is in the greying, the blueing of the chill air. It is in the sound of the ben quietening.

The man already knows what the evening, what the night will look like; he has seen it once before. Umber and steel and fathomless blue and breeze and movement and yawning space. The man also knows that he will not see nights beyond the one approaching.

Continue reading “Sunset Hours | Short Story” →

No Judgement | Book Review

No Judgement

Lauren Oyler

Virago Press

ISBN: 9780349016511

£20

‘It is the age of internet gossip; of social networks, repackaged ideas and rating everything out of five stars. Mega-famous celebrities respond with fury to critics who publish less-than rapturous reviews of their work (and then delete their tweets); CEOs talk about reclaiming “the power of vulnerability”; and in the world of fiction, writers eschew actually making things up in favour of ‘always just talking about themselves.’

Review

In his series of interviews with Dennis O’Driscoll, Seamus Heaney says that writers should not take account of anything said by critics who themselves have not written anything of note. Lauren Oyler is an established literary critic and less established author; as such, her book on being critical looks at the concept from a multifaceted perspective.

Continue reading “No Judgement | Book Review” →

Crib Stuck | Short Story

One can always tell by the calves. There they are, facing away from the arete. They are hiker’s calves – seemingly hewn from volcanic rock and looking set to erupt out of the socks encasing them. No mere holiday walker, he. An athlete he might be, but calves don’t lie and this pair, high up on the arete, are spasming in the summer heat.

He’s crib stuck, the lad. Not unusual, particularly on this lonely arm of Snowdon. The boy – young man really – has got it bad. White-cuticled fingers clawing at the top of the knife-edged ridge, chest pressed as low to the mountain as possible, eyes wild and with pupils dilated like discuses. He’s looking for security, for the wide open wind to stop battering at his kagool. All nine-hundred metres of near-vertical drop yawns behind him, whilst ahead and over the crest of the ridge lies only more space, more air. This is about as bad a case as I’ve seen, and not made any better for the lad being alone on the mountain.

Continue reading “Crib Stuck | Short Story” →

A Clearing | Short Story

The Fishwick house was unashamedly a vanity project. It was set deep in the wooded Northumberland countryside with only a single rutted road providing access, the kind with a precipitous ridge of grass In the middle which one had to navigate via a roaring clutch. The hassle was worth it though, or at least it should have been.

Colonial in style, the building should have had no place in northern England; its displacement, however, was part of its charm. Even now, dilapidated and crowded by weeds, it retained some dreamlike quality – the wide porch which should have played host to a rocking chair, the sloping lawn which should have been littered with toy cards and half-built forts.

Continue reading “A Clearing | Short Story” →