The Spoons That Are My Ears!

My new book has just been published by Wildside Press in the USA. It's a collection of linked stories called The Truth Spinner and I think it's the best book I have had published so far. I mean that in terms of invention, humour and structure I don't think I'm capable of doing better than this, for whatever that's worth.

Of all my characters, Castor Jenkins, the hero of this book, is perhaps the most voluble. The stories he relates are in the 'club' tradition, not dissimilar to those of Dunsany's Joseph Jorkens, but it's not simply a case of faking outrageous exploits. He's trickier than that. He might lie about trivial things but be completely serious about the most incredible events...

The origin of this new collection was in something the editor Stephen Theaker said while reviewing The Postmodern Mariner, a previous collection of mine, where Castor first appeared... "A complete collection of Castor Jenkins stories would have been even better, but as it stands the novella feels like an unnecessary adjunct to the Jenkins stories. Certainly, the unique and very admirable Castor Jenkins stories deserve to be in a book with his name on the cover."

This seemed like good advice, and because The Postmodern Mariner turned out to be a failure in commercial terms, I didn't hesitate in planning new adventures for Mr Jenkins, enough to make a book that would give him a second chance at getting his strange messages out to the world. The Truth Spinner contains eighteen stories in total, grouped into three sections, and it can be purchased from Amazon as a paperback or as an ebook.

If you would like to hear an audio version of the first story in this collection, please click on this link. It appeared on Podcastle a few years ago.