Diane Foster
Bio
I’m a professional writer, proofreader, and all-round online entrepreneur, UK. I’m married to a rock star who had his long-awaited liver transplant in August 2025.
When not working, you’ll find me with a glass of wine, immersed in poetry.
Stories (233)
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The Identity You're Building in Plain Sight
The first sip hits different when you drink it from that mug, the one with the chip on the handle, the faded logo from a bookstore that closed three years ago. You know the one. It's not just coffee; it's the opening act of who you are today.
By Diane Foster4 months ago in Humans
The Door, the Ward, the Sea
When the ferry horn sounded at the quay, Maya stood with her hand on the rail, feeling the metal hum. The slipway shuddered, gulls slashed the air with their own rude commentary, and the water below was a greenish slate, banded with foam like old marble. She had a backpack, a sealed envelope, and an ache like the pause before a word.
By Diane Foster4 months ago in Fiction
The First Mince Pie Test
I grade supermarket mince pies like a stern Victorian headmistress. It started as a joke. I had a clipboard one December because I was doing the big food shop and wanted to keep a handle on the chaos. I’d scribbled “mince pies?” with a box to tick, then—because boredom and trolleys are a dangerous mix—I added a pretend rubric beneath it: pastry flake, filling warmth, sugar sparkle, lid integrity. Ten points each. Very serious. I told myself the clipboard would make me efficient. It made me insufferable. I was delighted.
By Diane Foster4 months ago in Humans
The Long Way Back to Breakfast
I didn’t know I was drawing a map until I looked back and saw the lines. Three years ago, the first mark was a pin in a place I never wanted to visit: the clinic where the word cancer slid into the room and sat with us like an uninvited guest who wouldn’t leave. After that, the world rearranged itself. Geography shrank to corridors, waiting rooms, and the route from the car park to the ward. Time bent around scan dates. The old map with its trips and dinner plans and casual weekends curled at the edges and disappeared. In its place, a new one started to form out of practical things: which lift actually stops at Level 7, which café opens at 6 a.m., and the nurse who smiles even when the news is complicated. I drew it because I had to.
By Diane Foster4 months ago in Humans
The Note Beneath the Noise
The hall had a cough. It lived somewhere in the ribcage of the building, a dry catch behind the plaster, a flaw in the way air moved through the beams. Most people heard a busy lobby: programs rustling, a baritone laugh, the clink of glass. Aurelia stood near the back doors with her hand on the wall and listened to the cough. It came every twelve seconds, short and hollow. Bad load transfer above the north mezzanine, where the restoration crew had rushed the work to make tonight’s fundraiser happen.
By Diane Foster4 months ago in Chapters
The Knock of Drowned Men
The lighthouse on Blackthorn Isle stood like a sentinel against the endless Atlantic, its beam slicing through the fog-shrouded night every twenty seconds. Elias had tended it for twelve years, ever since the maritime authority shipped him out here to escape the clamor of the mainland. The island was a speck of jagged rock, no bigger than a football field, lashed by waves that crashed eternally against the cliffs below. No trees, no soil for gardens—just the tower, the keeper's cottage, and the relentless roar of the sea. Seagulls wheeled overhead by day, their cries a mocking chorus, but at night, the world fell silent save for the water's thunderous heartbeat.
By Diane Foster4 months ago in Fiction
A Letter to the One
The chair under the canvas awning of the little taverna was always mine, reserved by habit or by hope. I brought books I never finished and letters I never sent, watching the island life swirl and stall. Today, Nisyros shone in that syrupy Greek light, the kind that makes stone shimmer and even the old bicycles look romantic. A breeze stirred the napkin on my table, teasing at the promise of a new beginning.
By Diane Foster4 months ago in Critique
