I’m delighted to say that my short story “The Second Law” has been longlisted for the Galley Beggar short story prize. There are 13 great stories on the list, and they can all be downloaded, for a pound each, as singles from the Galley Beggar website – mine is here.

The site also carries brief interviews with me and all the other listed writers about the story, writers and writing:

This story actually has a precise origin. I was finishing Green Lion, and I’d been searching out pictures of artificial and animatronic lions. I visited an exhibition of Leonardo da Vinci drawings, which featured a reconstruction of his mechanical lion. This led me to his speculative design for a perpetual-motion machine. Clever people have actually built little models of this too – obviously non-functional, but beautiful objects. I was struck by the poignancy of the desire for inexhaustible energy.

You can read the full interview here.

The shortlist will be announced tomorrow, 27 Jan 2017.