Read Kirsten Krauth While Andy Griffiths is now a global phenomenon for the wildly popular and hilarious books he writes with illustrator Terry Denton, it took years before his work reached an audience. Nick Cave was a particular inspiration. “He’s been lucky to do his own thing. And that’s probably what I value the most […]
I ate a decaying cow. It had fallen down a hill, and was stuck between rocks, its head twisted round. It had been there some time. I tore at its distended belly, made an exit for the gases. I stuck my whole head in, felt it deflate until its innards pressed against me and I […]
(Be patient, I do get around to recommending stuff to read somewhere in here eventually …) Candice Carty-Williams is spot on, at least for me, when she warns re self-isolation: 1) Don’t go out and buy a thousand books. Much like holiday reading, you almost certainly won’t get through them all. Your to-be-read pile will […]
Some Corner of a Dorset Field that is Forever Arabia
1. His shame was exposed, the scar where a shell splinter had torn through his groin and ripped away his manhood. Albert no longer cared. He was counting the moments until he died. A deep sucking followed the crack of bone. The slurping of marrow, the fluid dripping from her jaws, the varied noise of […]
A cop vibe first, then, no: junkie. Both? Whatever: the guy gave off weird. Then he proved it by waving a naked stump at Tati, the melted remnant of his handless arm clubbing the air near her face. Ahh, prescription pain killers, and now she was all ready for a confab, to compare notes, when […]
Armstrong in bedArmstrong looked at her lying beside him, asleep. She was grainy in the moonlight, a black and white photograph magnified a thousand times for forensic examination, revealing a pyramid on Mars, a face on the moon. … He rubbed her flank, distant. She did not stir. The night smoothed the edges. His dull […]
When I bought my first copy of the Bible, the King James version, it was to the Old Testament that I was drawn, with its maniacal, punitive God that dealt out to His (It’s) long-suffering humanity punishments that had me drop-jawed in disbelief at the very depth of their vengefulness. I believed in God, but […]
Three stories published in 2019, all available free for your reading pleasure: The Final Hypotheses of Professor G in Silverblade (a companion story to My life as a lizard, The Boulevardier, and Mr Cranky) KAIJU! in Fleas on the Dog (to quote the publisher: “WHY WE LIKE IT: As lovers of all types of writing […]
It was another one of those dead men, Anthony Burgess, who recommended Lanark to me. Not me personally, but through his book, Ninety-Nine Novels. Burgess was of course just one of many hundreds of people with whom I held conversations in my head, given the number of his books I read back then, one of […]
Nobody is looking 