I'm a Scottish writer, now living in Canada, with more than thirty novels published in the genre press and over 300 short story credits in thirteen countries.
My work has appeared in a number of professional anthologies and I have recent short story sales to NATURE Futures and Galaxy's Edge. When I'm not writing I play guitar, drink beer and dream of fortune and glory.
Tom's granddad is peculiar and slightly eccentric but manages to splice body parts from different animals together and uses a formula to make them grow in size. After splicing parts of a salamander and a bat together to form a "dragon", some of the growth formula gets spilled on the floor where amoeba and ants come in contact with it. Tim's granddad is pressed to come up with a solution to shrink or exterminate the pests as they threaten to destroy the city.
This gets 5 stars from me as this was a thoroughly enjoyable tale. This is the first book I've read from Mr. Meikle, and it was good story.
The dialogue can be witty and snarky (I love Grandad), the rest being well done. The action is paced at a decent level but there is no gore. I don't mind gore, but I want to know about it going in. No obvious typo or editorial mistakes leaped out at me.
For a short story/novella, the characters are developed enough that you care about what happens to them. Mr. Meikle, please give us more stories involving these protagonists.