The Spoons That Are My Ears!

The ARC (Advance Reading Copy) of Twisthorn Bellow arrived a few days ago. It looks as great as a faux-Penguin should. Actually, this isn't the cover it will have when it goes on sale, but I decided to take some photos of it anyway. As the apocalyptic ending of the novel takes place in France, I thought my photos should be French-themed, hence the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower. In fact, the Eiffel Tower is the narrator of the last part of the book and so here we see him taking a well-deserved break as a desktop item. Publication date of Twisthorn Bellow is 25 March 2010, so wind up your calendars right now!

Over the past few weeks I have been hard at working polishing off my Tallest Stories book. I have now emailed the entire thing to a publisher and completed an afterword which may be added to the text. I am delighted with this project. Another project I am immensely pleased with is a forthcoming collection from Ex Occidente, a publisher based in Romania. Since September I have been sending stories to Dan Ghetu, owner of the press, and he seems to like most of some of many of them. My collection will be called The Impossible Inferno after the longest and most ambitious story it contains. Adevarat ca a inviat!

There's a very brief interview with me over at TLO Online here. It's neither revealing nor unrevealing, as all the best interviews should be. And here's a short piece I wrote on pretension. And here's a short piece I wrote on The Monkey Wrench Gang. I have been collecting sea glass. I am mentioned in The Rough Guide to Cult Fiction as a writer influenced by Alasdair Gray. That's not untrue. Today I saw a fully formed rainbow.