The Spoons That Are My Ears!

This photo shows the dramatic death of arch-villain République Nutt at the hands of Twisthorn Bellow in his subterranean lair far beneath Strasbourg. Because it's bad form to give away the ending of my novel in such a casual manner, I'm pleased to report that this isn't actually how that fiendish chocolate-headed rascal dies. We see Monsieur Nutt impaled on the golem's favourite weapon, the kpinga, a throwing-sword typical of the Azande warriors of north central Africa, but in fact Twisthorn deals with his foul enemy just with his bare knuckles. A picture may be worth a thousand words but often those words are fibs!

So far I have featured many bad monsters on my blog but none of the good ones. Bearing in mind that 'good' is a highly dubious term in the context of the unfolding story, here is the main hero of the action, the golem Twisthorn Bellow himself, together with his kpinga. This portrait was made before he exploded, obviously. He doesn't explode until the end of the final chapter, which I guess would be another spoiler if it wasn't such an inevitable outcome right from the beginning. I'm working on that final chapter right now, so the entire novel should be finished in a week or so, meaning I'm currently writing faster than I've done since the year 2000.

I have just received some copies of an anthology that features my story 'The Innumerable Chambers of the Heart'. The title of the anthology is Traps and rather unsurprisingly it is themed around the concept of being trapped. My copies were strangely mailed to the house of the drummer Huw Rees and when I went to collect them, a mouse ran into his house from outside. My story isn't about mice, but it does involve people trapped in a stone maze that is actually a giant apartment block built over a subterranean volcano that erupts. There always has to be something that explodes, doesn't there?