The Spoons That Are My Ears!

This is my latest painting. I call it 'The Writer' because it clearly depicts a typical writer in a typical pose. I am thinking about printing many copies of this image and making a collage and calling the result 'BFS' (anyone who doesn't understand that reference doesn't need to understand it...) It should be unnecessary for me to repeat that my art suffers from a lack of technique. I'm a bloody awful painter, yet that condition is surely preferable to being good but neglected, like Jože Tisnikar.

My story 'Castor on Troubled Waters' popped up on Podcastle yesterday, so now you can listen to my work as well as read it. Not recommended for dancing, though. This story, of course, is the first tale in my book, The Postmodern Mariner, and it is set in Porthcawl, and it features pirates, beer, chips and volcanoes... Here is the link to follow for that, if you care to follow it. Follow, follow, follow! Or don't.

This is only the second of my stories to be given the audio treatment. The first was my absurdist ghost story 'Journey Through a Wall' which appeared on a Christmas compact cassette for the blind many years ago (back in 1998? I don't remember). I think that cassette was a TDK D-60. I might have lost it, I might have kept it, I'll have to search for it. Maybe it's at the bottom of a box somewhere.

This morning I finished writing my 497th story. It's the last instalment in a linked cycle of tales about sentient planets, moons, constellations and galaxies. This story cycle will form the core of my Implausible Planets book and will be surrounded by an accretion disk of other miniature story cycles, but when (or whether) that book will be finished (or published) I can't yet say, because I don't know... Already I have started my 498th story, a piece about a world where coming second in any endeavour is admired, but coming first or third or any other number is considered a sin. The story is called 'Aldrin's the Buzz Word'.

My new chapbook might be out soon.