Alex Harwood found an old typewriter in the loft when he was ten and clattered out a poem about a dragon who liked shiny things. Decades later, he’s still writing about things that don’t exist but really should.
He lives in Leicester, writes music and is working on a novel.
Severed Souls Contribution
Live Specimen is a thrilling short story that follows a soldier as she wakes up in the aftermath of an encounter with a hostile organism and finds herself unarmed, low on air and not alone.
Here’s a snippet:
The memories came like a saw to her brain.
Roaches. The skittering horrors bursting from the moon’s crust to thread their needle-limbs through her squadmates. Screams turning to static in her ears. Micro-mass rounds tearing through the creatures. Festoons of crystallised innards stretching starward. Then the Sergeant, overwhelmed, pulled a grenade. The shockwave must have carried her clear of the carnage. Given the moon’s half-gravity that could be some distance.
Listen to Alex Harwood read an extract from Live Specimen here:
Bark &Bone Contribution
Odd Eden follows a lone ecologist who discovers their spaceship has been colonised by an alien World Tree with its own blueprint.
Here’s a snippet:
The engine bay is in bloom, scattering spores like chaotic constellations across an endlessly rolling meadow. The plants chitter and thrum from the undiluted energy flowing through their stems. The sound is tuneless but after a while I hear music and imagine the flowerheads singing in choral worship to the fusion-core: their entombed sun.
Listen to Alex Harwood read an extract from Odd Eden here:
Space Cat Press 