Smouldering Embers

A series of short stories that are interlinked around a common narrative. Each can be read on their own, but together they form the pieces of an intricate mystery.
Most of them are stories about love, but they're not love stories; they're about the pains of the human heart; about yearning and regret, but also hope and reconcilliation.
The stories mainly take place in the summer of 2007 at a time when I was trying to give up smoking. I realized who letting go of a drug like nicotine is not unlike letting go of a lost love. It can become obsessive.
Most of the events centre on the city of Edinburgh. I know the city well, having lived there, and use it a lot in my writing because of its contrasts -- the rough edges of the Old Town and the perfect symmetry of the Georgian New Town; a centre of the Enlightenment and at the same time home of the bodysnatchers. This is a city that inspired Jeckyll & Hyde through the real-life Deacon Brodie.
The girl who wanted more is a title I came up with long before I'd ever heard of Stig Larsen.
It is about a chance encounter; an unlikely friendship and the kindness of strangers. A story of love lost, and redemption, about desperation and despair.
But centrally, it is about two innocent people, victims of the wrongdoings of others and ultimately in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Freinds unrequited is about obsessive, blind love and the extent to which someone will go to realize it.
Cheated hearts is about betrayal, and revenge and the lengths that people will go to to exact it. I wrote the first draft in just a couple of hours; it was a kind of therapy during a dark period of my life.
They are the first three acts of an unfolding story based around a single, mysterious event that unites all the characters.
The fourth part is coming up...