The Spoons That Are My Ears!

My novella, The Coandă Effect, is now available for pre-order from the Passport Levant imprint of Ex Occidente Press here.

It's a deluxe collector's edition, limited to only 100 copies.

There seems to be a lot of interest in Corto Maltese. I asked random contacts on Facebook for taglines for my new book. Bruce Sterling in his interview told me that this technique is called 'crowdsourcing'. Here are some of the (mostly bizarre) suggestions I've received in response...

* "With a Gibraltarian witch for a mother and a Welsh father with ties to sorcery, Corto Maltese was destined to be one thing, a pirate." -- Bob Lock
* "‎Not the first in a 10 book series!" -- Tony Lee
* "Corto Maltese...the lighter way to enjoy chocolate." -- Gary McMahon
* "Corto Maltese - he'll make you cross! Ooh." -- Rosie Scribbler
* "The Light Fantastic." -- Huw Rees
* "The wind in his hair, the salt on his lips, danger around every corner, and intrigue straight ahead." -- George Ibarra
* "Every moment in time has a story and every story a time..." -- Robert N. Stephenson
* "Balls out, who's publishing it?" -- Rod Heather
* "A full cast of wacky characters, including a Belgian pirate!" -- Tom Alaerts
* "Melts in your hand and not in your mouth." -- Steve Lockley
* "Do not open this book if you are in the least bit prone to incontinence, as the laundry bill will ruin your finances." -- Ian Alexander Martin

Other news: I've just finished writing my 555th story. I'm sure this number is significant, but I can't really say why! The story that falls under that number is called 'Sangria in the Sangraal' and is part of my Tucked Away in Aragon story-cycle, which is now 70% completed. When that brace of tales is ready I plan to send them to the same publisher who is issuing The Coandă Effect, even though they take place in Spain rather than Eastern Europe (the preferred location for the fiction published under the Passport Levant imprint). My justification for this is that they are mostly set in Moorish Spain, when the west was the east (long before the east became the west).