(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 […]
He had an excellent innings, but still sad. The elderly Glaswegian pedestrian Alasdair Gray has passed away.
I am neither Oklahoman nor pagan, but the folks at Oklahoma Pagan Quarterly have graciously awarded me first place in the fiction section of their Spooky Samhain contest, for my horror story, Born Free (click on the link to read it for free. Free Born Free. Sigh.). Born Free is set in a little universe […]
Nobody is looking 