Michael Egan

Baltic Fleet

My dad left school really young and started working on the docks in Liverpool at a rice mill called Heap's. I think he was maybe 15. He was lifting huge sacks of rice with a docker's hook. His workmates were all older, seasoned rum drinkers. He told me once he became an expert rum…

That sounds like an excellent plan!

Yrtneon – 2 Chapters

In these chapters of Yrtneon, Gid becomes worried about his sister, Stacey, after he finds her trying to cut their dog's tail and behaving just really strangely. This is the point of transition from our world into the 'other' world, the point where the novel moves from a kind…

I got married yesterday! Woop!

I asked AI for advice based on my last 3 novels failing to sell or raise a sniff of interest. Gave it the synopsis for a novel I’m writing and a rough plot for a detective novel. AI’s advice was that a career writing literary stuff was unsustainable and I should write the detective novel!Cheers AI!

Is it meant to be a piss take? Or is this reality now?

Black Tarn Gap – Chapter 17

There are many betrayals in Black Tarn Gap and Callan learns to cope with them with a numb acceptance. I worry sometimes I've invested too much of a sense of defeat in Callan, that I've tried to portray him as understanding the futility of standing against a system but…

God’s Work

Here's a story about sacrifice and choices. I'm pretty sure it was inspired by The Lottery by Shirley Jackson but I was also reading a bit of grim dark at the time so it pushes more into fantasy. GOD’S WORK The hills were behind him and the river ahead of him. Here, where the river at…

An Atlas of Imagined Places

A few years ago, I had an idea to write a poetry collection where all the poems formed a narrative. Not exactly a new idea. I've always liked maps and imagined worlds, so I thought why not write a collection of connected poems about an imagined world (not so different…

Two Poems

Years ago (I think maybe 2007) I wrote a poem about cormorants. Years later I edited and edited and edited that poem until it became a different poem. Here's the first one, The Cormorants, and its mutated/improved/evolved/damaged echo. First draft The Cormorants They are being called in…

Porcupine 77

Here's a strange story about love and betrayal. It's probably inspired by the writing of George Saunders, Barthelme too. It's a pretty sad story and I suppose in a way it's a dystopian story. I'm sorry about what I've done to Brown Bear 15's life. PORCUPINE 77 I tell you, the minute…

Conan Doyle - that guy was trash!

Robin

I'm getting married in two weeks so here's a poem from my collection Shapeshifters about love. I wrote it after my future wife came for a meal at my house back when we were only dating. I think I made tapas. Robin And then I saw a robin settle on the table where I’d placed our meal. You’d…

Short Fiction

When I was at UEA, I took a module called Art of Short Fiction (I think that's what it was called), which was taught by the amazing Philip Langeskov. This was in the second half of the year, when I was pretty set on the fact I was writing a novel for my dissertation but had found…

Oglet Shore

Before I started on an MA at UEA, I was writing a novel about AI. It was set on a beach (is it really a beach - a river bank) near Liverpool Airport called Oglet Shore. Hence the title of the book. The book was about three siblings living on this riverbank/beach in a near future…

Alt Keening

Bridge, false barrow of steel, a black wing at rest, contorting distance. As if I could step that way and never begin. A door closed. Nothing will pass or sink into forgetting. The bridge sleeps, blinks at shutter sharp light, slanting shafts stabbing at glass and solid fact. There are…

A middle grade fantasy or a fantasy about writing fantasy?

I think my writing is literary. I like getting into the heads of my characters, crafting poetic sentences, exploring emotions, but also playing with plots that start with 'what if' questions. I'm a speculative writer - my first novel was…

Shapeshifters

I can't remember the last time I sent a poem out to a magazine but I still write poetry almost every day. I think that's partly to do with a string of rejections that inevitably dampen the spirit but there's also something to me about the whole world of poetry that makes me see it as…

YRTNEON

I love this book. Like properly love it because it represents everything I wanted to be as a writer when I was a kid. Back then I read Elidor and The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by my hero Alan Garner, The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper and of course, everything Tolkien wrote. I created my…

Black Tarn Gap – Chapter 6

This chapter deepens the psychological horror of what Callan and those imprisoned with him are going through. In a way it introduces the idea of the "gaps," where prisoners literally vanish with all records erased. Maybe that's a metaphor for historical revisionism and…

How to hold on

I've been editing my novel Black Tarn Gap this morning and realising how much the book is a personal, individual story rather than some huge statement about fascism. It might be a dystopian novel imagining a future/now fascist government but really it's about how Callan, the main…

Extract from ‘Goldy’ – The Wake

Who is the Wake? The simplest answer is that he's the central antagonist of Goldy, but really the who of the Wake is more complex than that. In the original draft he was called The Boar Man and he was fully mortal. A local villager upset by the intrusion of…

Goldy

While completing my MA at UEA, I wrote a novel called Goldy. I've talked about how that novel developed in a previous post. Goldy is a literary horror novel. I'd compare it to Starve Acre by Andrew Michael Hurley or maybe Lanny by Max Porter. It weaves together the POVs of four very…

The Inheritors

Hopefully, I'll be starting a PhD soon, the focus of which will be a novel called The Inheritors. I haven't started really writing The Inheritors but I've plotted it and written a rough first chapter that might not end up in the final novel. Instead, I'm focusing on writing Lowly…

Black Tarn Gap Chapter Two

I'm going on holiday next week and I'm considering taking the printed manuscript of Black Tarn Gap away with me. Not to edit exactly, but to reconnect with and evaluate from the distance of the author as returning critic. When I wrote the book I really believed in its…

POV

I've been plotting my new novel Lowly over the last few days. Most of this is happening in my head as I play with my daughter, Georgia. I've had very little time this summer to actually sit down and write but maybe that's a good thing because at the start of the summer I thought I'd write a…

Black Tarn Gap

ICE. Restrictions on basic freedoms. Threatened laws that limit the right to protest. The feeling that our society is one of being watched, known, analysed and evaluated by authorities that should really be there to protect you. That subtle paranoia that might not be paranoia and…

Lowly When I was studying for my MA at UEA a couple of years ago, I took a module called Art of the Novel. One of the early tasks we were set was to write a synopsis. I’d just finished writing a children…

I wrote about my new book, Lowly. How it began as a very different novel three years ago, how books mutate and change, ideas merging and/or vanishing michaelegan2025-hnkie.wordpress.com/2025/08/08/l...

WRITE OR WRONG Should I keep writing? That’s a question I’ve been asking a lot lately, although the answer never seems to make itself clear. Some days I can feel it nagging at me without the question …

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Found myself writing a horror novel set during the Black Death. It has a demonic dog. A cult that cut off their own legs. A one eyed man that might be god but is probably just a nob. An angel made of ice. Eternal Return. And a boy filled with guilt and self hate. Sounds fun. It’s called Lowly.