The Spoons That Are My Ears!

Almost one year after I started writing it, my new book is finally finished!

MY CHOLESTEROL SOCKS is a collection of 16 linked stories that also work like chapters in a novel. This book is a big departure for me -- realistic stories with no fantasy element and no impossibilities. Some scenes are absurdist in nature, but it is only the absurdity of everyday life. I am very pleased with this project. It has been written specifically for a Welsh publisher, Parthian Books.

The main character in the stories, Rhodri, is partly (not entirely) based on me. He has all my faults and few of my (supposed) virtues... Most situations he gets tangled up in are autobiographical or semi-autobiographical, and the people and locations that surround him are (for the most part) entirely real.

The contents page is as follows:

(1) Betrayal
(2) Explosion
(3) The Homemade Hookah
(4) Scything for Girls
(5) Errata of Our Quiet Desperation
(6) Dunces and Dragons
(7) The Ski Slope
(8) Bless my Cholesterol Socks
(9) In the Sink
(10) Clouds over Tunetown
(11) Envy
(12) Twenty Six Broken Hearts
(13) Last Thursday
(14) Suicide: a Beginner's Guide
(15) Bald Men in a Shampoo Warehouse
(16) Vanishing

Most of these pieces were written in a state of angst following the loss of my two favourite girlfriends, Lowri and Anahita, one after the other. Therefore it is spiritually dedicated to them. Heartbreak is a favourite tool of the muses...

If the publishers like this book and it proves successful, there may be sequels... I am already toying with the idea of writing a trilogy (THE UNFEASIBLE FOOTWEAR TRILOGY) made up of two further volumes entitled YOUR SATURATED STOCKINGS and OUR MALIGNANT SLIPPERS...