Flash fiction

you know what I hated while growing up?

Curtains.

In particular, the ones in my bedroom. They were a deadly beige with enormous brown…

What are they called?

Paisleys?

Those swirly amoeba-blobs that make up a paisley pattern.

Dreadful-looking things with swollen heads and swirls that gave them arms and legs.

And because the window let in a draught – what we called “getting fresh air” in those days – the curtains swayed in and out, making it look like the paisley monsters were marching towards me as I lay in bed.

Every morning when I woke up, those damned curtains would wave at me, as much as I wished they wouldn’t.

It was always a relief to get up and leave the bedroom behind.

Speaking of which, I’ve got a brand-new, lovely little – or should that be weird and creepy? – bedtime story for Valentine’s Day for you over on YouTube.

Find out why it’s best not to peer too closely at your loved one while they sleep in “Love’s Curse,” right here!

Chat soon,

Morgan

More Morgan? Get 2 of my books free here: morgandelaney.info/newsletter

when I visited my granny in England, people thought I was a burglar.

I loved visiting my granny, but – let’s be honest here – she was a few years older than me, so occasionally things felt a little slow for a young lad full of beans on toast.

One time I decided to see how many laps of the house I could do in ten minutes.

She lived at the end of a row of terraced houses, so I would start in the front garden, run inside, out through the kitchen door into the back garden, then onto the bin, over the wall, back through the alley and into the front garden again.

I reckoned I could do 15, maybe even 20 laps.

In fact, I did four before I bumped into a neighbour at the front door.

She had come around to warn my gran about a suspicious character she had seen hopping over my gran’s wall, again and again.

Although she ruined my chance to do 20 laps, I didn’t mind.

What are you supposed to think when you see the same young lad constantly diving over the wall of a house where you know an elderly woman lives alone?

Either it’s a gang of identical robbers…

or a plague of Morgans.

Neither of which you’d have to worry about in Hawkinge-By-Hythe.

There’s not much crime there.

On the other hand, they do have a family of identical scientific sisters…

and when a mysterious man from Luxembourg arrives in town, he seems to bring a plague of rats with him.

You can find out what happens when the locals are up against the wall in The Phoenix here now

Chat soon,

Morgan

More Morgan? Get 2 of my books free here: morgandelaney.info/newsletter

Listen to this for an origin story:

The cyberpunk himself, William Gibson, was writing a screenplay with a Kazakh director.

Then, in 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed, but Gibson needed to finish a novel. So he sent his friend and fellow writer, Jack Womack, to Russia to work on the screenplay in his stead.

The film’s star died, and so did the film. But based on the turmoil and chaos he witnessed in Moscow – the entire communist political system disappeared overnight – Womack wrote Let’s Put the Future Behind Us.

It’s an absolute belter!

Womack is best known for sci-fi, but this is set in 1990s Russia.

Clever Max Borodin makes the switch from communist bureaucrat to capitalist entrepreneur. But a get-rich-quick-scam to build Russia’s finest theme park – Sovietland: all the fun of the gulag for wealthy tourists – draws the interest of an up-and-coming far-right politician, and the Georgian mafia. All Max wants to do is sleep with his client’s beautiful wife, but matters quickly careen out of control…

It reminded me of The Master and Margarita but as written by Elmore Leonard.

A wickedly funny satire, and edge-of-your-seat thriller rolled into one.

I’m telling you so you don’t get confused when you read my author interview with the Big Bearded Bookseller.

Between his asking me what I was reading and the interview going live, I’d finished the book.

It’s that good.

Find out what other good stuff is coming up right here!

Chat soon,

Morgan

More Morgan? Get 2 of my books free here: morgandelaney.info/newsletter

I’m reading sci-fi at the moment, though I probably shouldn’t.

I’m Irish, and we’re not used to it.

When I was growing up, we had six television channels.

Four English ones, and two Irish wans.

In twenty years, the only sci-fi was Red Dwarf and Doctor Who.

Both on the English channels, of course.

After all, we Irish only recently started believing in the present.

Back in the eighties, we didn’t have roads; we had strips of potholes.

Condoms were prescription-only, and six of the island’s counties were somehow missing—

Whoa! Steady on there, now! – [ed.]

—so it’s no wonder we didn’t believe we’d soon be doing great things up in space.

But it’s now Anno 2026, and I’m ready for the future.

My first read of the year was Daugment by August Niehaus.

It’s a fast-paced sci-fi romp about a decorated military space commander whose mind gets transferred into an augmented dog’s body.

There’s no other way to foil his arch-enemy’s dastardly plan to take over the galaxy.

It’s a neat new twist on the talking animals idea, and the story brims with dogs, rebels, and a pleasure planet where you have no choice but to enjoy yourself…

I enjoyed reading a chapter—or two, or three—each night, so you might like it, too.

You can get Daugment here for free!

Chat soon,

Morgan

More Morgan? Get 2 of my books free here: morgandelaney.info/newsletter

My mother didn’t have it easy.

She didn’t even have a sense of smell.

And while the rest of 1980s Ireland had miraculous moving statues, we made do with mysterious margarine.

Back in those days, butter was bad and margarine was good, so young Morgan et al. all ate margarine.

Sometimes my breakfast toast tasted fine with it.

Some mornings the margarine was weird.

A brand new tub.

Just opened the previous night.

I had put it on my evening toast.

My mother had put it on her evening potatoes.

No problems.

Now it tasted yuck.

It stumped me every time it happened.

Good margarine.

Toast and potatoes.

Bad margarine.

I couldn’t ask my mother for help.

She had no sense of smell, remember, and that messed with her sense of taste, too.

That’s why she added garlic to her potatoes and margarine.

Aha!

Look, I understand about garlic, now, but I still don’t know where she even found the garlic back then.

Yes, my mother was a double-dipper.

Going in for margarine, rubbing it over the garlic on her spuds.

Then going in for more with the same knife.

Making it taste strange if you weren’t expecting garlic-flavoured margarine.

So, the dark mystery was solved, and Mum’s up there now, spreading margarine with the angels.

It’s time to forgive her for her margarine mind tricks.

But you won’t forgive yourselves if you miss out on 50% off loads of my books – and The Phoenix for free.

You’ve got 72 hours before the Smashwords End of Year sale ends.

Go now.

​Quickly!

The Smashwords sale is over but you can still get two more free ebooks from me here!

Chat soon,

Morgan

Get 2 free ebooks from Morgan here: morgandelaney.info/newsletter.

Families are great.

But a lot.

If you’ve had about enough of yours, tell them this is a very important email you have to read.

I’ll back you up.

And it is important, as I present some crazy New Year traditions, that will make your party go with a bang!

Killer List of 10 Bread-Based New Year Traditions.

1. At a party, wait until the countdown to the new year starts before throwing a bread roll over your shoulder. You might hit the person you one day marry in the face with it.

2. Villages used to get through tough winters with the help of crafty bakers. The bakers lined the walls of bears’ dens with layers of puff pastry in autumn while the bears were foraging. Once the bear started hibernating, the bakers would heat the den until the pastry expanded and suffocated the bear. Hungry villagers could pay a penny to eat as much as they were able during the first week of January.

3. In Liechtenstein, they consider it ill-luck to start the new year with leftover bread. Liechtensteiners celebrate New Year’s Eve by dumping their old bread on the street, then racing their neighbours to sweep it into the nearest river or canal first.

4. Irish men who don’t want to die as virgins – but definitely want to die – will spend their New Year’s Eves tossing doughnuts onto the ring fingers of patient banshees. New Year’s Eve is the only day of the year that banshees feel like company.

Though not for long, as the mating habit of banshees resembles that of praying mantises.

5. In the Champagne region of France, people fire rockets inserted into balls of dough at midnight. The rocket simultaneously cooks the bread lightly and explodes it.

People from the Champagne region are called “Huskies”, not “Champagners”, and this is the “yellow snow” that Frank Zappa once warned about. Zappa preferred well-toasted, almost burnt, bread.

6. In ancient Rome, Caligula was gifted an enormous “life-size” chess set made of bread. At a loose end one New Year’s Eve, he ate the entire thing.

Feeling ill the next morning, he forbade the eating of “queens, bishops, or prawns [sic].” Even today, some people still won’t eat bishops in honour of Caligula’s tummy trouble.

7. Before hair dryers, fashionable ladies dried their hair in the oven in order to be ready on time for the New Year’s Ball at the castle. They protected their hair from the heat by wrapping it in pastry.

8. In England, grating buns on a hedgehog’s back on January 1st is considered lucky.

9. In Switzerland, people used to believe that cuckoos caused the passage of time. In 1431, the Council of Basel tried to stop time by eradicating cuckoos.

The clever cuckoos hid in other birds’ nests.

Not wishing to look foolish, Pope Martin V made his baker work all that week.

He baked thousands of pieces of cuckoo-shaped bread. These were “drowned” in Wildenstein Castle pond on the last day of the year.

10. In Japan, young women are increasingly opting for NYBBBs (“New Year Baked Bread Boyfriends”) instead of old-fashioned real ones. Over 90% claim real boyfriends “don’t like being buttered.” A claim that this author finds astonishing.

If that’s whetted your appetite for strange stories, you’ll find tasty bargains at the Smashwords end-of-year sale before 01st of January, 2026. Get 50% off many of my books here.

Chat soon,

Morgan

Get 2 free ebooks from Morgan here: morgandelaney.info/newsletter.