The Spoons That Are My Ears!

Having recently dabbled with painting I clearly decided that sculpture was the next artform that needed some input from me. Why this delusion entered my head remains a mystery, as I don't have an artistic bone in my body. Fortunately I have plenty of artistic gristle and artistic mucus instead -- and I'm also full to bursting with false modesty. The outcome? A beach sculpture entitled 'Driftwood, Driftwon't'.

I'm currently busy writing an essay explaining how and why I wrote Engelbrecht Again! This essay will include decoded versions of the two encrypted passages in the book and will appear as a chapbook issued free with the novel itself. I used to write lots of essays but I hardly ever do so nowadays. I find non-fiction more difficult to compose than fiction -- or to put it another way, imagination is easier than accuracy, for me at least.

My story 'Mandando a Liberdade Para Longe' has just been published in the webzine Phantastes and can be downloaded here.

I'm delighted to announce that my Mister Gum novel has already been accepted for publication by Doghorn. With luck it should be available as a trade paperback next year!

In the past few days I have been planning a new story cycle set on the 'Counter Earth' -- a twin of our own planet that orbits on the far side of the sun. The Counter Earth (or Antichthon) has a long and venerable and daft history and has already been treated by such luminaries as Philolaus, John Norman and Gerry Anderson, and seems a perfect setting for some of my own outrageous tales. I don't have an overall title for the sequence yet but I do have titles for a few individual stories -- 'Whoops a Buttercup', 'Hubble, Bubble, Toil and Minor Disturbance', 'Gin and Chthonic', 'Ecky Thump and Old Earth', etc.