Gary Rowlatt

Stories  ·  Essays  ·  Fiction  ·  Life Story Writing

52 pieces

“The now isn’t peaceful. It’s crushing.” · “I didn’t see it. Of course I didn’t see it.” · “I lay back on a cold, dusty concrete floor. My eyes darted to the red bath towel wrapped around my hand.” · “There’s a stretch of the Thames where the river bends, and the wind feels older than the land around it.” · “Not being good enough. Being invisible. That’s mine. Two fears, but really the same one wearing different clothes.” · “The light hadn’t gone anywhere. It just needed more batteries.” · “I was bent double, tears streaming onto the tarmac road. I cried like a child.” · “POP. That was my hamstring.” · “He made the ship inside it himself. Patience I never had.” · “I went outside today. Looked up at a sky so blue it felt like someone had washed it clean overnight.” · “The now isn’t peaceful. It’s crushing.” · “I didn’t see it. Of course I didn’t see it.” · “I lay back on a cold, dusty concrete floor. My eyes darted to the red bath towel wrapped around my hand.” · “There’s a stretch of the Thames where the river bends, and the wind feels older than the land around it.” · “Not being good enough. Being invisible. That’s mine. Two fears, but really the same one wearing different clothes.” · “The light hadn’t gone anywhere. It just needed more batteries.” · “I was bent double, tears streaming onto the tarmac road. I cried like a child.” · “POP. That was my hamstring.” · “He made the ship inside it himself. Patience I never had.” · “I went outside today. Looked up at a sky so blue it felt like someone had washed it clean overnight.” ·
Personal Essay · Featured

Forty Minutes on the Floor

A bad cut, a long wait, and the memories it dragged up

“I lay back on a cold, dusty concrete floor. My eyes darted to the red bath towel wrapped around my hand. It had to be red, I thought. Maybe that was a good thing, though.”

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Featured Works 10 pieces
Essay · Dementia
A House Full of Ghosts
A portrait of dementia in the language of tea, cake, and quiet devastation.
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Personal Essay
Forty Minutes on the Floor
I lay back on a cold, dusty concrete floor. My eyes darted to the red bath towel wrapped around my hand.
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Personal Essay
The Boy Behind the Gate
When I think of myself as a child, a picture comes to mind. Actually, it's a real photograph. But it's ingrained.
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Flash Fiction
Open
So, a bit of a funny story — I hit the OPEN button on what I thought was the toilet door.
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Flash Fiction
The Paw
I sat behind the chair, its musty smell offering a strange comfort. The air felt thick, squeezing me.
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Essay · Thames
The Ship in a Bottle
They let you walk the deck for a few pounds and a ticket. Men my age who want to feel something they can't name.
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Running Essay
Benfleet 15
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The Benfleet 15 is built on three things: mud that grabs, hills that punish, and pain that teaches you who you are.
Essay
The Cut, the Book and the Life That Changed Mine
Some injuries change you. Some books do the same. This one arrived when everything stopped.
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Essay
When the Sea Is Flat, All Bets Are Off
Filed and finished.
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Flash Fiction 16 pieces
Flash Fiction · Literary
The In-Between
My eyes flicker open. A faded white ceiling. A ceiling fan, turning still. I thought of my paintbrushes in the garage.
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Flash Fiction · Parkrun
Marshall
I had traversed eight hundred thousand years without incident. It was the Saturday morning in Essex that finally undid me.
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Flash Fiction
A Quiet Little Truth
I went outside today. Looked up at a sky so blue it felt like someone had washed it clean overnight.
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Flash Fiction · Running
Ghosts in the Wind
I was bent double, tears streaming uncontrollably onto the tarmac road. I cried like a child.
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Flash Fiction · Micro
Never Never Land
The coach rolls along the dark road, Southend's seafront glowing faintly ahead. We hear the screams first.
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Flash Fiction
One Slip, One Scream
It wasn't supposed to end like this. I was destined to be a carpenter's right-hand man.
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Flash Fiction · Running
Ouch!
Injuries, always lurking in the shadows, waiting for that moment you over-train.
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Flash Fiction · Running
POP
That was my hamstring. I stopped mid-stride. My heart rate was perfect. Everything was perfect until that sound.
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Flash Fiction · Thames
The Long Memory of the Thames
There's a stretch of the Thames where the river bends, and the wind feels older than the land around it.
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Flash Fiction
The Twinge I Wrote Before I Felt
When your brain sees the script before you live it.
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Flash Fiction · Literary
The Woman on the Astral Plane
Her eyes darted from one to the other as they passed by in a blur of colour and darkness. The dark ones she feared.
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Flash Fiction · Literary
The Mark
Two scenes from The Lottery. The mark made in private. The stone thrown in public. After Shirley Jackson.
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Flash Fiction · Literary
After Sticks
Objects that hold a life inside them. After George Saunders.
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Flash Fiction · Memoir
The Big Blue Bus
The one who is larger than life. The one whose confidence pulls people in. He was there — but he wouldn't come out.
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Flash Fiction · War
60 Seconds
The sixty seconds before the whistle blows. Not the charge — the waiting.
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Script · Tarantino
Bench
A Saturday morning at Orsett parkrun. Dennis, Tyler, a bench, and the stories you miss if you don't look around.
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Flash Fiction · Draft
Tita
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I reached the top and stepped outside. The cold air hit me. The stars were the brightest I'd ever seen.
Micro Fiction 5 pieces
Micro Fiction
A Rush of Air
Handle creaks. A rush of air surrounds the hunched girl, forcing through the door with mischief on its mind.
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Flash Fiction · Micro
To the Horizon
Rubble, dust, and craters — where brick-red doors with polished brass still stand in defiance.
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Flash Fiction · Micro
Landslide
Blue white and wispy. Snapped closed, a book on a shelf — our story still inside, waiting to be read.
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Flash Fiction · Micro
Three Deaths
Damp air of mist, mud ankle deep, rats feasting on the dead. Sharp blast of the whistle. I choose death.
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Flash Fiction · Micro
Shane
Head empty. Mouth open. A split second on the crest of oblivion. Silence grows, the air is tight.
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Essays & Memoir 16 pieces
Memoir · Injury
90 Days on the Floor
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In March 2024, I cut through my hand with a chop saw. Three tendons. Ninety days off work. So I wrote.
Essay · Medium
All It Needed Was More Batteries
I was letting the light fade. Not dramatically. Just the slow, quiet kind — where you stop noticing until one morning you wake up.
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Essay
Disappearing Voice
I didn't realise I'd edited myself out of my own story until it was too late.
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Memoir
Pathway to a Silent Mind
September last year I reached into my pocket and took out my phone. I downloaded an app and started to write.
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Essay · Running
Running on Empty
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I opened my eyes; my head pounded. A half-eaten kebab rested there. The smell made me heave.
Running Essay
The Absurdity and Community of Running
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What is it that lures us back to endure the public suffering of running a marathon again?
Essay · Medium
The Now Is Too Small To Live In
Try something for me. Stop. Try to exist only in this present moment. No past, no future. Just now. You can't.
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Essay · Thames
The Wind Remembers
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The wind comes upriver first, a thin, salt-edged breeze sliding past tankers and cranes, carrying mud and diesel.
Essay
The Work Goes Where You Go
There was a period when everything stopped, and in the stillness, something started — something that had always been there, waiting.
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Essay
They Came for My Voice. Left With My Commas.
I loved the title. It was the only reason I used it, and the reason the story started.
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Essay · Space
What Voyager Helped Me See
Out beyond the reach of sunlight, Voyager 1 drifts through the dark between billions of stars. Utterly alone.
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Essay
What Is Your Deepest Fear?
Not being good enough. Being invisible. That's mine. Two fears, but really the same one wearing different clothes.
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Essay · Draft
Marie — The End
They used my mistakes to dictate my future. I thank them for it.
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Essay · In Development
Still Dancing
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Personal, angry in places, honest throughout. No neat resolution.
Running Essay · Memorial
His Day
The laugh, that's what I heard first. Didn't need to look his way — I knew exactly what he was going to say.
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Essay · Personal
Under the Richmond Stars
She was 14. That's right — 14. She is my birth mother. And by the end of this short piece, you'll know exactly what to call her.
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Essay · Personal
We Come From Coram
Fresh, clean — someone had syphoned out the badness. Clouds remained perfectly still against a crisp blue.
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Personal Essay
The Grim Reaper With a Pen and Paper
Fifty stories in three months. Death, grief, loss — apparently that's my voice. I'm about to sit with end-of-life patients.
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Long Form & Books 5 pieces
Novel · Echoes of the Suns
Both Together
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The sun hammered the desert without mercy, its glare bouncing off dunes that stretched endlessly into the horizon.
Novel · Parkrun Series Book 2
Gustbusters
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The early-morning sun hangs low over the estuary, its glare sharp enough to bring tears to anyone foolish enough to look straight into it.
Novel · Parkrun Series Book 1
Raiders of the Lost Park
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Adventure, community, and Essex.
Running Memoir · Book
Steps in Silence
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I remember that run as if it were only an hour ago. My dad had just passed away from Alzheimer's.
Novel · Parkrun Series Book 3 · Draft
The Wizard Oz Hadleigh
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The wiry dog sniffed through the grass, nose twitching as he followed a scent only he could understand.
Projects 2 pieces
Narrative Fiction · Thames Project
HMS Belfast
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A bottle dropped from HMS Belfast, travelling to Sasebo, Japan. A story about fathers, the sea, and the things left unsaid.
Ebook · Thames Project
Transatlantic Thames
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The river as a through-line. History, memory, and the tide that never quite turns back.
Life Story Writing

Every life has a story worth telling.
I can help you tell yours.

I sit with people — in their homes, over a cup of tea — and draw out the stories they've been carrying for years. The ones that haven't been written down. The ones that matter most. Then I write them, in their voice, the way they'd want to be remembered.

Find out more ›

The Ark
𓂀 𓇳 𓃭 𓄿 𓅓 𓆣 𓈖 𓊹 𓋴 𓆙 𓆑 𓇋 𓏺 𓐍 𓁹 𓃀 𓄡 𓅱 𓆤 𓇌 𓈙 𓉐 𓊃 𓋹 𓌙 𓍿 𓎛 𓏭 𓐝 𓂀 𓇳 𓃭 𓂀 𓇳 𓃭 𓄿 𓅓 𓆣 𓈖 𓊹 𓋴 𓆙 𓆑 𓇋 𓏺 𓐍 𓁹 𓃀 𓄡 𓅱 𓆤 𓇌 𓈙 𓉐 𓊃 𓋹 𓌙 𓍿 𓎛 𓏭 𓐝 𓂀 𓇳 𓃭
𓂀
The Ark
Sacred texts. Key required.
Four legs. One name. She knew her way home.
Hissing Sid Collection
Hissing Sid
Something had shifted — that something was anxiety. I hate that word.
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Hissing Sid Collection
The Dash
The van before and now. Like the dash poem, there was so much story in between.
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Hissing Sid Collection
Scar Tissue
I don't want the hand injury to disappear. It's a loss.
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Hissing Sid Collection
The Bow
Writing as it comes out of your head is the gold treasure the Alchemist searched for.
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Hissing Sid Collection
Except
This is the first time in nine weeks I've been alone in a car.
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Hissing Sid Collection
Three Dots as a Pause
And when my fingers pause to think, I press full stop three times…
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Below the vault
☠ · MEMENTO MORI · ✠ · REQUIESCAT IN PACE · † · IN MEMORIAM · ☠ · MEMENTO MORI · ✠ · REQUIESCAT IN PACE · † · IN MEMORIAM · ☠ · MEMENTO MORI · ✠ · REQUIESCAT IN PACE · † · IN MEMORIAM · ☠ · MEMENTO MORI · ✠ · REQUIESCAT IN PACE · † · IN MEMORIAM · ☠ · MEMENTO MORI · ✠ · REQUIESCAT IN PACE · † · IN MEMORIAM · ☠ · MEMENTO MORI · ✠ · REQUIESCAT IN PACE · † · IN MEMORIAM ·
☠
The Crypt
The hardest stories.
The ones not yet written.
Key required.
A sailor.
Not yet written
The Last Run
The run after the phone call. What the road looks like when your father has just died.
Not yet written
What I Didn't Say
The conversation that never happened. The one that couldn't, by the end.
Not yet written
The Hospice Room
A chair by a bed. Someone else's story. My hands. The silence between words.
Not yet written
Still Dancing
Personal. Angry in places. Honest throughout. No neat resolution.
𓂀 𓇳 𓃭 𓄿 𓅓 𓆣 𓈖 𓊹 𓋴 𓆙 𓆑 𓇋 𓏺 𓐍 𓁹 𓃀 𓄡 𓅱 𓆤 𓇌 𓈙 𓉐 𓊃 𓋹 𓌙 𓍿 𓎛 𓏭 𓐝 𓂀 𓇳 𓃭 𓂀 𓇳 𓃭 𓄿 𓅓 𓆣 𓈖 𓊹 𓋴 𓆙 𓆑 𓇋 𓏺 𓐍 𓁹 𓃀 𓄡 𓅱 𓆤 𓇌 𓈙 𓉐 𓊃 𓋹 𓌙 𓍿 𓎛 𓏭 𓐝 𓂀 𓇳 𓃭
The Ark
𓂀
The Ark
Sacred texts. Key required.
Four legs. One name. She knew her way home.
☠
The Crypt
The hardest stories.
The ones not yet written.
Key required.
A sailor.
The Warehouse
Sector 9, Row 47  ·  Government Storage  ·  Restricted Access
Shelved
G.J. Rowlatt — Ref. 001
Tita
Flash Fiction · Draft incomplete
Shelved
G.J. Rowlatt — Ref. 002
Still Dancing
Personal Essay · Half finished
Shelved
G.J. Rowlatt — Ref. 003
Both Together
Long Form Fiction · Stopped mid-way
Shelved
G.J. Rowlatt — Ref. 004
Wizard of Oz Hadleigh
Short Fiction · Draft incomplete

Every life has a story worth telling.  I can help you tell yours.

I sit with people — in their homes, over a cup of tea — and draw out the stories they've been carrying for years. The ones that haven't been written down. The ones that matter most. Then I write them, in their voice, the way they'd want to be remembered.

Find out more ›