The Spoons That Are My Ears!

I have a scientific and engineering background and yet I believe in non-specified energies. Some places and people seem to be focal points for these energies, which may or may not be real physical forces. But even if they are purely psychological, projections of my own mood, they are still real. That's all that matters to me. Another word for these energies is 'magic'.

There is a lady who lives in Skopje who brims with magic. Like the reflection of golden sunlight on the still waters of a deep lake, she radiates beauty, power and serenity. Her personality sparkles. She is warm, generous, sweet, mischievous, kind, exciting, intelligent, talented, magnificent.

It's a terrible thing to confess, but I am not in awe of many people in this world. I have met few people who have made me feel that I ought to be a lot more humble than I am. But they do exist and Brankica is one of them, the best and brightest.

Spending time with her in Macedonia was an experience that had an unexpected and profound effect on me. I will tell anyone who listens what a lovely lady she is, but she is much more than that. Her heart and soul are so big that they encompassed me the moment I approached her and in fact they encompass the world. Her compassion is truly moving.

And yet it is her strength that is most impressive to me. Her character is heroic and yet undemonstrative. I might have felt feeble and inadequate in her presence, but she inspired me, enthused me, left me convinced that here was the perfect exemplar of an indomitable human spirit.

We disagreed on how long we have known each other. I thought it was no more than eight years, but she insists it is more than ten. The two photos on this blog entry show her as she was in 2007 and how she is now.

Because I am fond of the process of Tuckerization, I have used her as a character in many stories, most notably and extensively in my (as yet unpublished) novel The Pilgrim's Regress. She will continue to appear as a character in many forthcoming works.

She also creates delightful art and she designed the cover for my collection of flash fiction Flash in the Pantheon, and I will be using her art to create the cover of my next book, Thirty Tributes to Calvino, which will be dedicated to her.

I have just returned from an inspiring trip to Serbia and Macedonia. It was more than inspiring, it was possibly life-changing. More of that in due course... I flew from Luton Airport to Belgrade to meet Amira, who was there for the Eastern Orthodox Christmas (which is later than ours). She gave me a tour of the city. A remarkable place, a city that is clearly at the focal point of some kind of magic. Hard to define it more clearly than that. We went dancing in the evening. It's a party city.

I walked around on my own too, wandering at random, chancing upon some bombed buildings from the 1999 war. It is a curious irony that if my country hadn't gone to war with her country, I would never have met her. After only a couple of days I caught the night train to Skopje, a ten hour journey through a landscape of snow and ice. I shared a sleeper compartment with an affable Greek named Panos who shared his bottle of spirits and told me anecdotes about his life.

It had been cold in Belgrade but Macedonia was colder. Minus 10 centigrade at night. I got off the train at 5 AM and wandered an almost deserted city that resembled something from a surreal film set. Statues, hundreds of them, of all sizes, confronted me everywhere I went. Such grandiose monuments, all seemingly piled on top of each other! I found a wonderful hostel, one of the best I have ever stayed in (and it really was so good that I feel I have to recommend it here in public). Then I went off to meet Brankica at the designated rendezvous point.

What can I say about her? My next blog post will just be about her. She is absolutely one of the most remarkable people I have ever had the privilege of knowing in this life of mine. She gave me a tour of the city and we went for a delicious meal in the old bazaar. I had only planned on staying in Skopje for one day before going south, but I couldn't tear myself away from this amazing place. Leaving was a wrench to the heart. Brankica drove me to Greece through a landscape of mountains and mist in the light of the early sun. We spent a day in Thessaloniki.

I flew home with the certainty that I would return soon. I have to return. I still feel that I am flying high over the clouds, the mountains, the sea...

I am leaving for Serbia two days from now. That's the plan anyway. Plans can go wrong because of circumstances. I am keeping my fingers crossed.

In the meantime I am absolutely delighted to announce the publication of my new book! ORPHEUS ON THE UNDERGROUND from Tartarus Press is a collection of weird phantasmagorical stories that has been wonderfully illustrated by the genius artist Chris Harrendence and is dedicated to my lovely and magical muse, Amira Ana Smyth.

It exists right now and is available to be purchased from the publisher. And soon it will be available from other places... I am very pleased with this book. Tartarus Press have a superstition that authors shouldn't talk about their books until they are published, which is why I kept so quiet about this one.

It has been more than twelve years since I was last published by Tartarus Press. They always create a truly impressive product, books that are beautiful art objects, and it is a privilege as well as a pleasure to be published by such a fine publishing house.

Here is part of the blurb that Tartarus have created for this book:

"Orpheus on the Underground is the new Rhys Hughes collection from Tartarus Press, containing fifteen previously unpublished stories and ‘The Concise Picaresque Adventures of the Wanderlust Bridge’, which first appeared in Strange Tales II, 2008. Ranging from the ghostly, through horror to the entirely fantastic, Hughes’ marvellously inventive tales steer the reader through the bizarre labyrinths of his unique talent for the strange... In the twenty years since the publication of his first short story collection (Worming the Harpy, Tartarus Press, 1995) Rhys Hughes has become an éminence grise of the strange tale. He wears his reputation lightly, and it is the sheer fun and individuality of the stories in Orpheus on the Underground that make them so memorable."

This just arrived for me. An illustrated collection of bizarre and darkly funny stories by Sławomir Mrożek, part of the Penguin 'Central European Classics' series, which includes work by Čapek, Krúdy, Škvorecký, Cioran, Miłosz, Ota Pavel and others. Mrożek is like a humorous Kafka.

This will be my first book of 2015. On the first day of January I also plan to start writing a new book of linked stories called Down Cerberus. I have been turning over ideas for this project in my mind for a long time. It is going to be a collection along the lines of the Mrożek and also Čapek's Apocryphal Tales. It always seems a good idea to commence a new venture on the first day of a new year.

Every year I try to write a minimum of 100,000 words of fiction. Some productive years have seen me achieve more than double this figure. But I have been rather lax in the year 2014 and at one point it was very doubtful I would meet my wordage quota. A late surge has got me to 98,500 words. Today is the day I hope to thwart failure!

Merry Christmas! Another year is almost over; and it is with a feeling almost of shock that I realize my blog is now ten years old. My earliest entries were absurdly short and vacuous: I simply didn't know what to write. Then my blog gradually became the main way in which I sought to 'communicate' with my readers and the wider world. Social media sites have eroded this function somewhat. I usually first post news about what I have been doing on Facebook before anywhere else. Yet I am still happy to have my blog and I intend to continue updating it.

2014 was a good year. I did more things in it than I did in 2013. My writing output dropped rather a lot, however. Every year I seek to write a minimum of 100,000 words of fiction. The past few years have proved extremely fertile in terms of production (in 2012 I wrote 240,000 words) but I always knew that a higher rate was unsustainable. I haven't failed to reach my hundred-thousand word target for a decade but this year I am still nine-thousand words short. Let's see what I can do in the week remaining to me! One of the many reasons my output was lower this year is because I seemed to reach some sort of apotheosis with the Bottled Love Story novelette and found it difficult to write anything in the wake of this piece. Now, however, I am finally building up steam again...
The micro-press I set up last December was very busy in the early part of 2014 and issued no fewer than five of my own books, including my one and only poetry collection, The Gloomy Seahorse. It also issued my collection of flash fiction, Flash in the Pantheon, one of my favourites among all my books (including those published by other publishers). In 2015, my micro-press will start issuing books that weren't written by me, including some neglected classics from the 19th Century, a masterpiece from Eastern Europe, and a wonderful magical realist novel by Mike J. Westley that really is something special and should be out very soon.

And, of course, I was published by 'real' publishers too, The Lunar Tickle, Captains Stupendous and (most recently and perhaps significantly) Bone Idle in the Charnel House all appeared in 2014. This made a total of eight books published in one year, my personal record. Next year I am expecting more of my books to be published, both by my own micro-press and also by established publishers. I also have some foreign translation deals currently under discussion, which bodes well for future travel.

After a few years of not really going anywhere, I got back into travel in 2014, making numerous trips within Britain (most memorably to Devon in the summer) and also abroad, first to Ireland and then to Portugal. These foreign trips were primarily work related and involved me giving readings in public, etc. Next year I hope to travel even more, both for work and also for pleasure. Long yearned-for trips to Serbia and India might be on the cards. The latter of these will take some organisation, as if I do go then I plan to stay a long time.

In 2014 one of my main hobbies became learning to dance salsa. I had tried before, years ago, but never really got the hang of it. Finally it started to work for me; and although I can hardly describe myself as 'skilled' now I am at least competent and hope to keep improving next year. I also ended up regularly playing the drums on Sunday nights in a Latin dance club.

I no longer use this blog to talk very much about 'personal' matters, but they are the essence of who I am, so I can't ignore them completely. I had an intense and passionate love affair in the summer; but I also finally grew closer to someone I have known and liked for a long time; and she in fact has become my muse and my dearest friend, more than a friend in fact: my soul mate. I hope that together we will have many adventures in the new year.

As for reading: I think I read more books this year than any other year of my life. I devoured them! A complete list of everything can be found on my Goodreads page. Feel free to connect with me there! I grow increasingly impressed with Ismail Kadare and Milan Kundera and they have both become two of my favourite authors... Anyway, that's enough for now.

It is nice to sometimes talk about books that I haven't written. Max Beerbohm's Seven Men and Two Others is my favourite ever example of fin de siècle literature, superior in my mind to anything created by Wilde, Firbank, Machen, even Saki...

'Enoch Soames' is probably the best pact-with-the-devil story ever written; 'Hilary Maltby and Stephen Braxton' is perhaps the best ghost story ever written; and 'Savonarola Brown' is the funniest and most accurate parody of a pseudo-Shakespeare play ever attempted... The other stories are rather good too, with 'A.V Laider' being the only disappointment; I was expecting the 'twist' ending to be more surprising than it was. But even so, the utter excellence of the whole is not marred. I have read 'Enoch Soames' at least four times in different anthologies but this is the first time I have read the other stories.

This book was metafictional and postmodern before 'metafiction' and 'postmodernism' were even workable concepts. A delight and a privilege to read; and I am delighted and privileged to have just read it.

A parcel came for me. It was a box of books. Copies of A Mountain Walked, an anthology of all S.T. Joshi's favourite 'Cthulhu Mythos' stories. This huge 700 page volume has already become a collector's item.

I am delighted to announce that it includes one of my own stories, 'Sigma Octantis', which was inspired by Lovecraft's early piece 'Polaris' (Polaris is the star closest to the north celestial pole; Sigma Octantis is the star closest to the south celestial pole).

Beautifully produced and illustrated, this deluxe limited edition Centipede Press tome is the ultimate Lovecraft tribute book and includes fiction by Neil Gaiman, Robert Barbour Johnson, TED Klein, Thomas Ligotti, Joe Pulver, Laird Barron, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Gemma Files, Patrick McGrath, Michael Shea and many others...

Centipede Press are an amazing publisher. I am immensely gratified that they are going to publish my collection The Senile Pagodas in the not too distant future.

I have just heard from Hippocampus Press in the USA that my new book of stories has gone to the printers. They were also good enough to show me the full cover of my collection. Here it is...

I have just got back to Wales. It is cold and grey here. But that's exactly what I anticipated. It is better to dwell on some of the high points of my recent trip. Too much happened to give a full account on this blog, but I can mention that after I left Lisbon I went to Fatima, the main pilgrimage site in Portugal. I am not a deeply religious person, but by the same token I am not a deeply irreligious one. I lit a candle for a special person while I was there. I had expected the place to be tacky but it was more tasteful than my fears had supposed; and there was a feeling of calm awe about the place, an atmosphere that seemed to consist of all the hopes of the faithful who have made it their destination in previous decades, though whether this perceived ambience existed just in my mind is a question I can't possibly answer.

After Fatima I travelled to the lovely university city of Coimbra and then to Figueira Da Foz for my three-day beach walk. I had attempted the same walk ten years ago but it had defeated me. It was summer that time and I didn't have enough water. It is a remote stretch of coastline and one is advised to carry all the equipment and supplies necessary. This time my little adventure was successful.

I walked more than 80 km, most of it on soft sand, which made the going much more difficult. The first day it rained and I got soaked, but at night the skies cleared and the stars came out with amazing brightness. I saw meteors, a thin melancholy moon and a succession of incredible sunsets and sunrises. One sunset into the sea had the light of the sinking sun filtered by the spray of the enormous waves that seemed to crash over it... I met not one other person during the whole of the walk. I walked most of the nights as well as most of the days. Strange lights in the sky and out at sea...

My feet were blistered at the end of the trip and my shoulders were aching from carrying my rucksack, but it was worth it, for many reasons... I also sent two messages in bottles to the same special person I had lit the candles for, to double the extremely unlikely chance of them reaching her (or anybody else for that matter)...

When I reached Espinho I stayed with a marvellous fellow called Nigel Randsley. In fact, despite all the incredible sights and experiences, it was the people who impressed me the most on this trip, not just all my old friends but new ones too, such as Joana Neves, Sara Almeida Almeida, Ana Luísa Melo, João Morales, Sandra Maria Teixeira, Paulo Brito, Inês Botelho, Ana Cristina da Silveira... Too many great people to list. I am very lucky.

For the past 10 ten days I have been back in Portugal. I was invited as the Guest of Honour to the Fórum Fantástico literary festival. I have been to many of them before, including the first one back in 2004. Ten years later I see that the event is growing in strength and vibrancy.

My presentation was about how Latin American writers have influenced British writers. The focus of the festival was primarily on Julio Cortázar, who was born 100 years ago. I spoke about Cortázar but also Roberto Bolaño, Macedonio Fernández, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Felisberto Hernández, Cabrera Infante, Álvaro Mutis and Gabriel García Márquez. I enjoy talking on stage with a microphone to an audience, something that would have been unimaginable to my younger self. Ten years ago at the Fórum there was no stage and no microphone, only me standing in a classroom and reading a story I had just finished writing.

So much has happened during my visit that I am at a loss to summarize everything. I had the pleasure of being invited to make a radio broadcast by the excellent Joana Neves. This broadcast is now online and it is in English. I read three stories by Donald Barthelme with lots of introdoctory banter and inter-story chit-chat. The broadcast can be listened to here.

In subsequent blog entries I will talk more about my amazing Portugal trip, including a three day beach walk, 80 km in total distance, from Figueira da Foz to Aveiro.

I have just finished writing my 750th story. It is called 'Died For Puns' and was inspired by Oscar Wilde's De Profundis. It was written especially to submit to an anthology and I will be sending it in the next hour...

Reaching number #750 means that I am exactly three-quarters of the way through my intended life's work. It has taken 25 years so far. Without wishing to blow my own trumpet too loudly, I can honestly say that no other Welsh writer has ever embarked on a project even remotely as grand as this one.

This story is partly about muses. What does it mean to have a muse? In De Profundis Oscar Wilde complains that Bosie was a terrible muse, because Wilde did no work when Bosie was around. Unlike Bosie, my own muse really does inspire my creativity. She is in this story of mine and in fact she provided the impetus for its creation.

I am now in a position to reveal that her name is Amira. She is not only my muse, but also an amazing woman and a true friend. A few days ago she treated me to a bellydance in candlelight and now I know for sure what kind of dancing they have in paradise...

But the main thing she inspired is a story that may actually be the best thing I have ever done. It's a novelette that is available as a paperback book. There is no ebook version because the formatting is too tricky (the story contains pictures and unusual typographical tricks). However I am willing today to offer twenty free PDFs to the first people who ask for one. The only proviso is that you leave a review or a rating on Amazon or Goodreads. Here is a link to the book in question. If you want a PDF let me know. First come, first served...

It gives me enormous pleasure to announce that my new collection of eerie, weird and ghostly stories BONE IDLE IN THE CHARNEL HOUSE has just been added to the online catalogue of Hippocampus Press...

Click on this link for further details of the book.

This collection was edited by S.T. Joshi and it will be published in December this year. Hippocampus Press are really going places, so it is a privilege and an honour for me to be added to their list of authors!

I am delighted with this book which is rather darker in tone than most of my books. It consists of 20 stories, half of which have never appeared anywhere before, including the title story, a novella that I believe is one of my best works.I have attempted to alternate the more atmospheric and emotional type of weird story with the cerebral and philosophical kind. So my influences were Poe, Hodgson and Le Fanu as well as Calvino, Borges and Lem.

I am delighted to share the official announcement of my new book of short stories, Mirrors in the Deluge, which will hopefully be published next year...

I had this particular title 'in storage' for many years before finally putting together a collection worthy of it. The title is a variation of A.Merritt's Dwellers in the Mirage, which for a long time has been one of the most sonorous titles I have encountered for a book.

The press release can be read on the publisher's website here. I am extremely happy with the way I have been treated by these publishers so far. They seem very professional, upbeat, vigorous, and they appear to have vision, which is a quality in scarce supply in the publishing world at the moment.

As for the 'Absurd Welshman' description of myself... The publisher discussed this joke with me and I told him to ahead. I have never had any problems with self-deprecating humour. Indeed, it's an essential for any creative to be able to laugh at themselves from time to time.

The photo shows me signing the contract last week. I have been signing many things lately. I decided to be a bit quirky and use a quill pen and turquoise ink.

Mirrors in the Deluge comprises 32 stories and is scheduled for release in 2015. Further details will be posted periodically on this blog. I am very excited about this book!

The supposed point of my blog is mainly to talk about my writing life and achievements. I use the word 'achievements' in a way that is both proud and ironic. I am proud of what I have managed to accomplish so far, against the odds, but I am also aware that I'm still a long long long way from being a huthold name, let alone a household name! And I do have some exceptional writing-related news, but it has to be withheld for a couple of weeks. Therefore I shall make this particular blog entry about something completely unrelated to literature.

I recently cooked a tagine for a friend. The first photo shows the ingredients. I made my own harissa and used dates instead of prunes. The couscous had chickpeas and almonds in it. The basic recipe can be found here but you can modify it as you please. I put the pomegranate seeds in a dish and then added them at the last minute when the tagine was served.

The second photo shows the leftovers the following morning, which I had for breakfast, with lavash bread and coffee. My friend makes excellent coffee and uses the grounds afterwards to tell fortunes. Her skill with Tarot cards is also remarkable.

I have just returned from Ireland. I went there at the invitation of my publisher Mark Lloyd to promote my novel The Young Dictator. In essence this was a book launch one year late. The event was tied in with Limerick being chosen as the 'City of Culture' for 2014. I did a reading in an old theatre with a bust of James Joyce watching me. It's always a pleasure to be in Ireland.

It wasn't all work. In fact it mostly wasn't work. The far west of Ireland is a remarkable place. One morning during my stay, my publisher revealed to me the amazing fact that Father Ted's house was in the vicinity. It is a private residence in the far west of Ireland, but we went up the driveway anyway and knocked on the door. "May we take some photos outside the house?" we asked the woman who answered. She not only gave us permission but also gave us a bishop's mitre and a prepared sign. Then she invited us indoors and showed us the room where Bishop Brennan was kicked up the arse and the "I'm not a racist" window.

We also had time to explore County Clare, including the spectacular Cliffs of Moher. There are castles and abbeys and towers and other ruins almost everywhere. The region of the Burren is an extraordinary karst landscape that I plan to hike properly one day. Rather oddly the weather was quite good. It turns out that the Burren has its own climatic zone that is different from the rest of Ireland, much milder and drier. It hardly rained at all during my visit. This surprised me a lot.

I also ate extremely well during my stay and my publisher was very generous with buying me pints of the black stuff.

The entire trip was extremely enjoyable with the exception of the ferry crossing from Wales to Ireland, which took place in a storm. I have been at sea in storms before, but this one was particularly bad. All the ferry companies cancelled sailings with the single exception of Irish Ferries. "We are going to try anyway!" the captain cheerfully announced. I had blithely announced that "I never get seasick, I am a seasoned traveller" before departure, but I was soon forced to eat my words. Or rather, everything that I had eaten decided it preferred to be back out in the world.

The Young Dictator is available from bookshops and online from Amazon and elsewhere... I really want to write a sequel to this novel, so I need you to consider buying it. The more copies it sells, the greater the chance I will be asked to write a sequel...

I went to London on Saturday for the launch of my new novel Captains Stupendous. The launch took place at the Forbidden Planet bookstore, which is larger than I seem to remember it, and also in a different location. Clearly the business has expanded.

The novel is available from Amazon too and other online bookstores.

After the signing we went to a pub around the corner. It was nice to meet my publisher for the first time. Then I went to Madame Tussauds. It's the first time I have been there since I was about 9 years old. It was good fun.

My next booklaunch is in Ireland on October 7th. I am hoping to make an adventure of getting there and travel to Limerick by bicycle, but this depends on the weather. I should know how feasible this will be in a couple of days from now...

My story 'Eternal Horizon' has been republished online by Lightspeed Magazine and can be read for free by clicking on this link...

I wrote this back in 2002 and it's a good example of the sort of thing I love to write but for which there is almost no market these days. It's not SF, not quite fantasy, not quite magic realism, not quite fabulism, but sort of a mishmash of all these... It's also a love story...

It was originally published in the anthology Album Zutique edited by Jeff VanderMeer but it appeared with several errors (the title of the story was given wrongly as 'Eternal Sunset' for some reason) so I have taken this opportunity to make the correct text available.

My next booklaunch and signing is going to take place in London at the Forbidden Planet Bookshop on September 27th between the hours of 1pm and 2pm.

The book in question is my novel Captains Stupendous...

This will be a joint event with Sam Stone, who will be signing copies of her new novel What's Dead Pussykat.

I don't do many booklaunches in the UK, and in fact I have only done three (The Abnormalities of Stringent Strange, The Postmodern Mariner and The Less Lonely Planet) in the past six years...

Issue #3 of THE IRONIC FANTASTIC is now available for download -- absolutely FREE! All issues will be free; that's the point of this project. I edited the first two issues, but I have to say that Paulo Brito, the editor of the third, has done a much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much better job than I did...

Issue #3 is so far ahead of the first two issues that it's like comparing the Matterhorn with a nose. Paulo is a superb designer with a true designer's eye... This issue contains work by Michael Bishop, Chris Harrendence, Sissy Pantelis, Caleb Wilson, Bruce Holland Rogers, David Rix and too many others to mention...

This issue is also -- I am almost blushing to admit -- a sort of tribute to myself and my work. It also contains my 742nd story, 'The Melon Seller'... and it's free, all free! Download it by clicking on this link.

I have just received the complimentary copies of my new collection of stories The Lunar Tickle. I am extremely fond of this book but I know it won't be a very popular one and sales will almost certainly be low because it is a kind of fantasy that is fairly unusual these days, especially in Britain and the US, namely fiction that utilizes non-empirical logic.

The logic that controls the development of the stories in this collection tends to be lateral, i.e. based on word- and ideas- association rather than everyday causality...

I love this kind of fiction but very few other people do... Spike Milligan was the last great exponent over here (his Puckoon is a masterpiece of punnery and absurd comedy), but before him there were writers such as Maurice Richardson, J.B. Morton and many others doing this kind of thing... Lighthearted word-games, absurd ideas and lateral twists of logic.

One magazine that published many of these writers was Lilliput, which was founded in 1937 and lasted until 1960. It was especially good in the 1940s. The cartoons of Raymond Peynet also appeared there...

My favourite ever comic novels, W.E. Bowman's The Ascent of Rum Doodle and The Cruise of the Talking Fish, are also vague members of this elusive 'non-genre genre'.

I have added this title to my Aardvark Caesar blogsite, which lists all my published books so far.

The Lunar Tickle is available directly from the publisher here or from Amazon. The cover artist is Emmet Jackson, who was also responsible for creating the wonderful cover for my novel The Young Dictator.

I went on a political demonstration last Saturday, the first I have been on for several years. My photo even appeared in the BBC news. Here I am on the right (not politically) radically opposing war by munching on some salad! I went with two friends and we marched through Newport. The atmosphere was good natured, thankfully; and although there was a very heavy police presence the entire situation wasn’t as oppressive as I had feared it might be. The demonstration won’t change anything, of course, but I guess such events are often more about defining yourself and demonstrating your beliefs than persuading others to change theirs.

I was there primarily to protest against the astronomical sums of money being spent on unnecessary weaponry when so many drastic cuts are being made in essential services... But one thing I find very annoying about these demonstrations is the way the extreme left try to hijack every protest march and make it look like it is a communist march instead of a march consisting of individuals from every part of the political spectrum... The irony of communists marching against war would be amusing if it wasn't such a slap in the face. Communism is aggressive, acquisitive, expansionist and intolerant. I know what a 'false flag' operation is... it's manipulating the scene so that moderates and sensible ordinary people have to march behind the hammer and sickle... I am fed up with it. There really needs to be a plan of action by individuals at such events to visibly declare their independence from such fringe parties.

This other photo shows my friend Elena demonstrating her “determined” look...

Life. A strange thing. I will now always remember a red bowler hat. Actually it’s not the hat that’s important so much as the person who wore it; and it wasn’t exactly a bowler hat but a related style that is rather more feminine. Maybe a bowler hat for women is still a bowler hat? I am currently reading Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, in which a bowler hat (definitely a male hat and black) plays a significant part in the plot.

Kundera has sat on my shelves for decades until I finally got round to reading him last year. I know that when it comes to sexual politics he is considered to be a very masculine (i.e. chauvinistic) author, but in fact I think that such a crude judgment does him a disservice. The ramifications of the decisions made by his characters are complex; by no means are the men in his stories always in control, the women always their prey. It is probably Kundera’s raw honesty that some readers find objectionable. He is one of those writers who specialise in unpalatable truths; and that surely is one of the proper functions for a writer?

My new novel is available on Amazon, both in the print version and as an ebook...

Amazon UK
Amazon US

This novel began life as a 'Corto Maltese' novella entitled 'The Coandă Effect', published by Ex Occidente in Romania a few years ago. I rewrote it so that the main character is now Scipio Faraway. Then I wrote two novellas as sequels featuring Scipio's brothers, Distanto in 'The Gargantuan Legion' and Neary in 'The Apedog Incident'.

All three novellas together constitute the novel. Needless to say the plotting was quite tricky, but I think I managed to tie all the strands of all the plots together neatly at the end... Although this novel has already been cited as an example of the 'steampunk' subgenre, it isn't really that. I prefer to think of it as something else. 'Steamprog' perhaps...?

The book is going to have an official launch next month at which I will be present. Watch this space for details!

I have just received the counter-signed contract for a future book of mine that is going to be published by Hippocampus Press in the USA. This book is collection of my stories and was edited by S.T. Joshi. I am especially pleased with this one because Hippocampus Press seems to be really going places...

The title of the collection is Bone Idle in the Charnel-House, a title I have had in ‘storage’ for a very long time. It’s also the title of one of the longer stories in the book. The stories alternate between the more traditional styles of weird fiction (utilising emotions, atmosphere and plot) and the less popular cerebral strain favoured by Borges, Calvino and Lem (where ideas and conceits are the main protagonists)...

Anyway, with luck this book should be out before too long. Fingers (and tentacles and Möbius strips) crossed!

Festivale Online Magazine have just interviewed me... Other writers interviewed for this project include Terry Pratchett, George R R Martin, Tim Powers, Joe Haldeman, Anne McCaffrey...

Publishers and editors often ask for a photo for promotional purposes and I usually provide a selection for them to choose from. I have been told that I look different in every photo taken of me. This photo shows me with an 'evil' beard, a style favoured by many writers but which I rarely wear.

The interview can be read by clicking on this link.

I plan to write 1000 stories in my lifetime. This is a well known ambition of mine. I also plan to put exactly 100 of them online for free reading. I have just added the 18th instalment of this project. All eighteen can be accessed by clicking on this link:


When I was younger I daydreamed about editing my own literary magazine and I was going to call it 'The Platinum Ass' as a nod to Lucius Apuleius' brilliant novel The Golden Ass. But that daydream never became a reality and so the title has migrated to become that of a blog.

All (or most) of the stories I choose to appear on the site will be examples of my shorter and lighter work, as I don't think that a computer (or phone) screen is a good medium for the reading of more substantial fiction. I am old-fashioned that way, I'm sorry to say... Ah well!

I have had an extremely good personal month, one of the best for ages, and therefore my writing has suffered as a result. My rate of production has dropped to a very low level. Too bad! I will pick it up again soon enough... In the meantime this photo shows me on the terrace of a house near Aberglasney Gardens, which I have been lucky enough to wander around in the sunset recently. This is not a dressing gown but a blanket... I am hoping to be spending quite a large amount of time in this new location.

But anyway... This is supposed to be a blog about my writing life. A new review of my collection The Just Not so Stories has just appeared in Locus. It's a review written by the most excellent Paul Di Filippo.

Ever since I had a story published in The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime anthology last month, I have been considering the idea of writing another crime story... Recently I have been reading the 'Maigret' novels of Georges Simenon and it occurred to me that it might be fun to write a 'Maigret' tale of my own. I am toying with the idea of getting Maigret to intertextually raid the Château de Roissy, which always seemed to me to be a highly illegal establishment... People who know what I am talking about at this point will appreciate the opportunities of colliding two radically different styles of writing and two incompatible sets of moral values... And I have a great potential title for my story... 'Fifty Shades of Maigret'.

My new novel is available for pre-order as from this moment...

It's an adventure featuring three brothers who are captains of different types of transportation, namely ship, zeppelin and train, and how they avoid and interact with each other; and the consequences of living in interesting times (the early decades of the 20th Century!); and the secret political intrigues that take place behind the scenes; and... magic and yetis and living skeletons and lots and lots and lots of other stuff!

It is available from Telos Publishing and I am delighted to be working with them.

It's not really a Steampunk novel, more of a Steamprog one. There is very little punk anywhere in it, but quite a lot of prog...

"So you want to know about the Faraway Brothers, do you? Born somewhere in Gascony, they were, in the 1880s, all three of them birthed at the same time from the same womb of the same mother. Grew up in the same household, they did too, eating the same food, reading the same books, counting the legs on the same spider because the family couldn’t afford a real clock; but later they went their separate ways. Scipio took to the sea, to ships, islands and women; Distanto took to the air, to balloons, islands and women; Neary, unluckiest of the triplets, remained on land, taking only to locomotives and stations and chastity. Many adventures they all had and often their paths crossed and sometimes they clashed and the consequences were always totally STUPENDOUS!"

I have just finished reading this. It's science fiction but not the conventional sort. The stories within are more concerned with with the redefining of experiences and situations, with language and communication and the subtleties of meanings under the stresses of time dilation and time shifts, than with the standard themes and props of the genre...

David I. Masson flourished briefly at the end of the 1960s thanks to New Worlds magazine and 'New Wave' SF, which encouraged experimentation and a heightened awareness of literary techniques. It was a cultural progression within the genre that sought to broaden the horizons of readers and thus the next generation of writers, and although the general impact wasn't quite as revolutionary as had been hoped, it did sufficiently change enough perspectives to make a full return to ordinary SF almost inconceivable.

There were many failures among the 'New Wave' experiments but in my view the successful work that emerged made the whole movement worthwhile. Masson was one of the best products of this shift, though hardly typical of it; and The Caltraps of Time, his only book, contains the entirety of his oeuvre: ten stories that are radical enough to earn him lasting respect as a highly original and significant intellectual writer.

The first story in this book is also the earliest, 'Traveller's Rest', and it is really very remarkable, the sort of thing that Stanislaw Lem or Borges (if Borges had done SF) might have written. 'Psychosmosis', 'Mouth of Hell' and 'Lost Ground' are also superb. Masson is a bit like a cross between John Sladek and the Strugatsky Brothers with a touch of Ian Watson. For a small minority of SF writers the question "Is this possible?" is less important than "Is this logically rigorous even though it's impossible?" And generally I prefer fiction that takes the latter approach to the former because it seems more conducive to greater imagination and invention.

I was challenged to write a love story by a dear friend. It wasn't really a challenge but just a question, "Have you ever written a love story?" The answer was no, not really; so I decided to make a proper attempt. I have in fact written one or two love stories in the past ('The Lute and the Lamp' for instance) but now I really wanted to strive to produce something much more substantial with love as the main theme.

From the outset I knew that any love story I might attempt was going to be not only 'magical realist' in tone but firmly located at the more fantastical side of that spectrum. I worked feverishly on the piece, almost in a state of heightened awareness, and the final result was a novelette, Bottled Love Story, which I now feel able to announce openly in public.

"Love can't be bottled but it might arrive in a bottle... Love is a game like chess but with smiles, winks, laughs and kisses for pieces... Love is a problem. Is there a solution? Join the woman who has no need for romance and the sailor from another age as they simultaneously attempt to accept and avoid the designs of destiny."

That's the blurb I wrote for it. The story is rife with typographical tricks and contains images as part of the essential dynamic of the text. This is something I have always been interested in and something I want to explore more fully and deeply in future: the manifold possibilities of form. In recent years form has been somewhat neglected in favour of 'substance' and the days when someone like B.S. Johnson could insist that holes were cut in the pages of his books (in order to facilitate a rather emotionally charged trick that turns out not to be a trick at all but something authentic) are long gone. This is a shame. Form can have no less an impact, both emotional and cerebral, than content.

One section of the novella is my attempt to write a story determined by Tarot Cards in the way that Italo Calvino did (so spectacularly) in The Castle of Crossed Destinies. This was the first Calvino book I ever read, thirty years ago, and it changed my views on literature forever.

As I said, Bottled Love Story is a novelette, only 14,000 words or so, but I feel that it is much bigger in its sensibilities and story than the actual length would suggest. The paperback can be bought from Lulu or from Amazon...

I also wanted to turn it into an ebook, but the complex typography defeated my attempts to format it. So I am going to offer it as a PDF to anyone who wants it in this form, at the very reasonable price of 50 pence. Please use the Paypal button below to order it in this form and I will email it to you promptly. Don't forget to specify your email address!

This book may be translated into Farsi and published in Iran one day, perhaps in conjunction with other works of mine. I haven't had a definite offer along these lines yet; but the proposal came to me recently and naturally I responded in the affirmative with enthusiasm!

I have just returned from a week in Devon. I went to the village of Chagford to visit my lovely friend Martina and also to do some hiking and camping over the solstice period. The plan was to walk for five days and rest for two. As it happened, I'm not as tough as I was ten years ago and I only walked for three days. I wandered Dartmoor and a selection of forests, crossing and recrossing streams, and camped next to a river where I built my own shelter, which was warm until a couple of hours before dawn. That always seems to be the way. I am incapable of building a shelter that stays warm all night. Ah well!

On the morning of the solstice I rose very early to watch the sunrise from a high vantage point. Gazing across all the gentle hills and mist-filled valleys was a special experience. That part of Devon is perfect walking country with a selection of different terrain and nothing too strenuous and it is full of standing stones and other ancient monuments.

Martina has a studio near her house and I was delighted to view her paintings as originals. Previously I had seen them only as prints or digital images.

Chagford is one of the great contemporary artists' communities, for as well as Martina it is also home to Alan Lee and his daughter Virginia, Brian Froud, David Wyatt and many others. Such a wealth of artistic talent had me gobsmacked with awe! And indeed I spent a lot of my time scarcely able to draw breath in the vicinity of such luminaries. For instance I went to visit David for tea and was confronted with a great abundance of totally amazing work when I walked through the door, the first of which was this illustration of a word witch. I said, "Hey, this looks like the writer Theodora Goss!" to which David replied, "Yes, it's her. She visited me last year."

Martina played the piano for me and I had a go myself for the first time in about eight years. Here is a film of me playing (not too badly but not too well) the first of Erik Satie's Gnossiennes. I now want a piano again! I also want a coffee machine that makes incredibly strong espresso. And a cat... Martina has these things and they are good...