The Spoons That Are My Ears!

Two more monsters for you. Monsters ought to be bad and this pair are very bad -- badly done! The first monster is the shape-changing robot Tiktac Spittlegit. He's not French but he's malign! He can transform into any domestic object and actually has no 'basic' topology. Here we see him changing so rapidly between the forms of garlic bulb, bird eye chilli, mate gourd, tealight case and drawing pin that he appears to be all those things simultaneously. Which makes him look like a sort of owl. A bad owl. This photo of him was done last night, on a Monday. Owls don't like Mondays. They want to hoot the whole day down.

Ruby dubDub on the other hand bears an uncanny resemblance to myself. Pure coincidence. She is a female monster with a taste in Jamaican music who keeps her dreads under her burnoose. Ruby's dreads, of course, have nothing to do with her hair. They are more literal than that... Her one redeeming feature is that she reads the magazine Postscripts, which is an incredibly cheap and corny way of publicing the fact that issue #18 is now out, featuring my story 'The Gala of Implausible Songs'. Of the several hundred stories I've written, this is certainly in my top 10 personal favourites, though I don't know exactly in what position it can be found.

Soon I'll have to start trying to make a cover for my Mister Gum novel. My idea is to make the outline of a miniature Cerne Abbas giant out of winegums on the beach and photograph that image as the tide comes in. I might scatter some props in the vicinity too: a bicorn hat, if I can get hold of one; a pistol, probably fake; maybe a toy snake. The result might be fairly evocative of what happens in the novel. I think the publisher of this book had difficulties finding an artist willing to take the project on, which is why he allowed me to have a go. I wish I had more talent with visual images. Or maybe I don't wish that!

The second part of my Americymru interview is now online here...