TJ Hayes · children’s author, writer & game maker
Stories, games & other strange transmissions.
Funny rhyming picture books for brave small humans. Dark flash fiction and poetry for the grown-ups. Tiny retro games for everyone in between. All dreamt up by British author TJ Hayes, who has more than a few screws loose.
AS HEARD ONBBC Radio Upload“Dante”, flash fiction / BA Creative Writing, Falmouth University
Pick a door.
Picture books, flash fiction, poetry, indie games or content editing: everything on this site, sorted by what you came for.
Books
Funny rhyming picture books for kids, written to be read aloud.
Stories
Dark flash fiction and The Exoplanet Explorer sci-fi serial.
Transmissions
Poetry, art and free alien zines you can download.
Games
Tiny indie games, starting with the Pal8tro poker roguelike.
Services
SEO content editing, AI content humanising and English lessons.
Rhyming picture books · The Galactic Zoo series
Greetlings, Earthlings!
The Galactic Zoo is a funny rhyming picture book that takes you on a ridiculous tour of the best and ONLY zoo in this space quadrant. It’s a read-aloud adventure that’s as entertaining for parents as it is for their offspring. Safety, however, is not guaranteed.
Positivity Planet
A picture book about positive thinking. A girl and her cat visit a world where thoughts instantly become reality.
Trevor the Emotional Lizard
A picture book about feelings. The weather-controlling lizard from the Zoo helps children make sense of big emotions.
[Add Tails Through Time image]
Tails Through Time
A rhyming adventure about a time-travelling cat who finds a doorway through space and time at the bottom of the garden.
Flash fiction & sci-fi serials · for grown-ups
Things that go bump in the walls.
Short, dark fiction you can read in a coffee break. It runs from The Exoplanet Explorer sci-fi serial to “Dante”, the flash fiction story featured on BBC Radio Upload.
FLASH FICTION · BBC RADIO UPLOAD
Dante
“He was there again. Maybe I should ask him to start helping with the rent.”
FLASH FICTION · MONOLOGUE
The Purple Prison
“Red pill or blue? Brother, I chugged down the whole damn bottle.”
Work in progress · my new novel
The Hollow War
Beneath London lives a hidden civilisation of intelligent animals who keep the boundaries between our world and the dark spaces beyond it. Then an old dimensional wound reopens in an abandoned Underground tunnel.
A YA/crossover fantasy with cosy animal society, dry humour, found family and creeping cosmic horror. Book one of the Riftburrow Chronicles trilogy, out by the end of 2027.
Games · made by Taylonius
Insert coin. (The demo’s free.)
Small, strange indie games made under the name Taylonius. The first ones run on the PICO-8 fantasy console, right in your browser, and bigger Godot projects are on the workbench.
Make poker hands.
Beat the blind.
Pal8tro is a Balatro-inspired poker roguelike for PICO-8. Play poker hands for chips × mult, beat the blind, stack weird mods from the shop, and try to break the game before it breaks you. It all fits on one 128×128 screen in 16 colours, and it’s very hard to stop at one more run.
9 HANDS · 20 MODS · 10 BOSSES · FREE DEMO
Poetry · Transmissions
Poetry, sent via the telepathic waves of imagination.
An unexpected chill cuts through me
One late summer’s night
No, it can’t be. It’s far too early.
Hope still clings to dwindling light.
from “A New Dawn”
The human behind the transmissions
Hi, I’m TJ.
I’m a children’s author, flash fiction writer, indie game maker, SEO content editor and part-time English teacher. The Galactic Zoo started as bedtime stories for my daughter. Everything else grew from there, in slightly darker directions.
Services · SEO content editing for teams & agencies
SEO content editing that actually works.
I review, edit and optimise content before it goes live, whether a copywriter or an AI wrote it. You get clearer copy that matches search intent, with natural anchor text. Think of me as the quality-control layer between production and publishing.
- ✦Editing and humanising AI-generated content
- ✦Structure, clarity and readability aligned to SEO intent
- ✦Anchor placement and link context for link building
- ✦5+ years in SEO content · BA Creative Writing
- ✦Plus: English lessons for local children
The Signal · monthly-ish
Let’s journey together.
Join The Signal, my monthly-ish newsletter, and get every issue of The Extra-Terrestrial Guide to the Galaxy zine free. After that, expect new stories, new games, book news and the occasional dispatch from the outer edge. No spam, just strangeness.