I’ve finally posted the promised New Year story here on my website. I confidently predicted that this year’s story would be set in the portal universe, but I’ve had to make a late story substitution for two reasons.

Firstly, I’ve been ill for the last few weeks. Secondly, this story is a prequel Earth Girl story about Fian. I intended it to be quite short, but Fian has other ideas, and he’s notoriously stubborn. Fian’s story is already much longer than I expected, it’s developed a whole set of extra complications, and as far as I can tell I’m barely a quarter of the way through.

Rather than ruin Fian’s story by chopping it brutally short, I’ve decide it to let it continue to its natural length. That means it will eventually end up being published either in a collection or as an individual novella.

The substitute story is George Was Dead. It has no connection to either Christmas or the New Year, and isn’t set in any of my future universes. I wrote George Was Dead years ago for a competition, which it ended up winning. I’ve been thinking of putting it on my website at some point, because it’s a fun short story and I’m rather fond of it. Now is obviously a good time to do it.

You can read George Was Dead here.