“An adult is in charge,” I thought while reading ‘The Separation’ by Christopher Priest. On the news of his recent death, I moved a few of his novels towards the top of my unread pile, and ‘The Separation’ was the first that I hit. On starting, I wondered why I had not read it earlier […]
I knew what books she liked … – gloomy horror stories, Gothic novels with crumpled covers featuring a drawing of a Bat. Perverted monks, severed hands that murder people, coffins flushed out of graveyards by floods. Evidently reading this sort of thing confirmed her in the conviction that we are not living in the worst […]
Contributor copy arrived. Thank you TE Lawrence, thank you Andrew S Fuller, thank you 3LBE. Beautiful volume.
Second acceptance for the year, I think that I prefer 2021 to 2020 (wot? its not just me?). I now have an odd little something / something a little odd appearing in the January edition of Jersey Devil Press.
I can remember the first time I was asked to provide a short bio, not having published anything before, and all I can say is that I am sort of glad that the print magazine it was in is now out of print, and the website it was stuck in now appears to have drifted […]
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 […]
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 […]
He had an excellent innings, but still sad. The elderly Glaswegian pedestrian Alasdair Gray has passed away.
This from the SMH last weekend (the Saturday SMH is the only newspaper I buy anymore, for the occasional nugget like this, but their review section is becoming so dire I may give up on newspapers altogether): “My memory bank is not my brain: its my book collection. I can’t do without it. When I […]
Nobody is looking 