The Spoons That Are My Ears!

I will be concise and mention that my novella, My Rabbit's Shadow Looks like a Hand, which has only been a print book for the past year, is now also an ebook. It's also going to be translated into German and published in Germany, something I am very pleased about.

Conversely, my triptych of three tales known as The Mermaid Variations, which has only been an ebook for the past ten years, is now also a print book. It has already been translated, into Portuguese, and in fact these stories first appeared in that language, long ago.

My collection of linked short stories, The Postmodern Mariner, has been translated into Serbian and published in Serbia in a very nice edition indeed. More about this in a future blog.

I have had a lot of work published in a lot of places and I have signed contracts with several publishers for work to be published in the near future. One of these contracts is for a fantasy novel I finished writing a few years ago. I will provide more details soon, after the publisher gives me the go ahead. The novel is a fantasy, as I said above, but more of an absurdist magic realist thing than a typical fantasy, if that doesn't sound too pretentious, set in Africa, Brazil and the Sahara Desert, and very 1920s/30s in tone, a sort of mix of Don Quixote, Beau Geste and Philip José Farmer.

I also have signed a contract for a substantial collection with a notable publisher in the USA. In fact the deal is for three collections. The first one is out already and the others will follow soon. More details in my next blog post. The idea is to reach readers totally unfamiliar with my work who are unlikely to poke around in the obscure corners of the independent press where so many of my stories lurk. Considered together, the three collections will form a very big retrospective of my work.

But now I want to mention a recently-published anthology published here in India by Om Books called Monalisa No Longer Smiles. It includes fiction, non-fiction and poetry. I am delighted that my suite of poems based on Ancient Greek mythology entitled 'Sticky Myths' is presented here in its entirety. The book is extremely well-produced and more information about it can be found here. The idea is that this is going to be the first of a series of such anthologies showcasing the range and diversity of work that can be found in the online Borderless Journal. Edited by Mitali Chavravarty, Borderless Journal has been one of my favourite literary journals for the past few years and I always make it a priority to send my work there. Borderless has already published many of what I consider to be my best humorous poems. Supporting this anthology is a genuine pleasure for me.

One other thing, if you are fast you can catch a free download of my novella The Ghost Loser from any Amazon outlet.

Oh yes, and yesterday I finished writing a new novel called The Hippy Quixote :-)

# posted by Rhys Hughes @ 6:44 AM 0 Comments

'THE FLASH'

The flash fiction writer went out into the storm. “I need some inspiration,” he said. The lightning bolt turned him into ashes. That’ll do,” he whispered, and the index finger of his ghost began scrawling a story on the damp ground with the carbon of his death.

# posted by Rhys Hughes @ 4:48 AM 0 Comments

FIVE HUNDRED MINI-SAGAS presents no fewer than five hundred of these flash fictions, most in prose but some in verse. I began this project back in May when I was in Aberystwyth and finished it here in Bangalore just a few days ago.

I have been interested in flash fiction, sudden fiction, microfiction, drabbles, etc, for a long time. The mini-saga has an especially rigorous structure due to its short length, though the title can be used as an essential part of the story, lending the writer a few extra words.

I am pleased with the mini-sagas in this collection. Obviously some are better than others, but I believe that the best are fine examples of this tricky literary form. The book has been published in paperback and ebook editions, and for the next three days the ebook edition is a free download from any Amazon outlet. Here is a link to the book on the British Amazon, but check your own Amazon if you wish to receive it for free.

# posted by Rhys Hughes @ 3:19 PM 0 Comments

Now, ten years later, the book has finally been published. My delight is no small thing. Anyone who knows how magnificent the books of Centipede Press are will understand why.

Good things come to those who wait, but even more fantastic things come to those who wait longer.

Or to put it another way: Six balls bowled at wickets in cricket is an over. And so is the wait...

More information about The Senile Pagodas can be found on the Centipede Press website.

The book is now also available for purchase from Ziesings, one of my favourite booksellers. They sell my Raphus Press books too, and books from other publishers...

In the meantime, here is the press release text for The Senile Pagodas:

"When a fictitious book title crosses from the realm of fantasy to reality, it becomes a work destined to break the mold and stake its place in the annals of literature. And in The Senile Pagodas, Rhys Hughes reimagines what it is to break that mold. It’s a book whose name may have been plucked from a Borges/Casares collaboration but standing on the shoulders of giants has its perks. And this book is evidence of that.

       This collection of twenty-one stories (seventeen published here for the first time) acts as an homage to the authors who informed and shaped Hughes’ writing, ranging from Kafka to Hawthorne to Moorcock to Bulgakov. It’s a “who’s who” of literary heavyweights that Hughes honors through his wildly inventive brand of magical realism, which will spark your imagination in the same way his influences have done for him.

       Never averse to a densely packed framework, “Nightmare Alley” and “The Apocryphal Wonder” showcase Hughes’ innate sense for story layering. The former features a traveling bookseller whose escape from an alley is always fleeting. That is, until he finds the customer he was always searching for. And the latter is an ingenious story within a story distorting the line between fact and fiction. Preach a fabrication long enough and what does it become?

       “Abomination with Rice” and “The Bannister” include two remarkable and mystifying dilemmas that complement the work of weird fiction’s towering titans: Lovecraft and Hodgson. If you don’t see the connections at first, just look to the sea and the sky for what’s lurking just out of frame.

       The silly and absurd can be found in “Knights that Go Bump into Things” where there’s proof that not all knighthood results in gallantry. At least, not without bumps in the road or a knight’s noggin. Similarly, “Poe Pie” is a comical but bizarre depiction of hunger as imprisonment in which you may think twice before entering Café Poe again.

       Others such as the Calvino tribute, “City of Blinks,” can be seen as laconic parables. This one centers around a concentric city with tiered levels and a king who watches from above. It’s a seemingly perfect hierarchy, but even a king blinks and an eye can only see what’s in view — for revolution may only be a blink away.

       And “Lem’s Last Book” is an apropos tale demonstrating the physical prowess of a book, one whose presence can absorb the words of other books. When set between two it can create a hybrid of sorts. Though, the jury is still out on what it can produce when lying between two people.

       What The Senile Pagodas offers is a cornucopia of fantastika fiction that reads as though it could have been written yesterday or a hundred years ago. It’s where Hughes channels a variety of perspectives and avenues to further announce his appreciation for mischievous misadventure while also paying tribute to the lords and masters of the written word. But it also serves as the ultimate “thank you” note from one of the supreme authorities of modern imaginative expression in short story form.

       Profusely illustrated with full page author photographs, the edition is 300 numbered copies (with a multitude of facsimile signatures) and 100 unsigned copies."

# posted by Rhys Hughes @ 8:04 AM 0 Comments

Recently I was invited to compile a short list of my favourite books in any category of my choice. I was fdelighted to do so. I was asked by a website called Shepherd that is devoted to books. They have an intriguing and inspiring method of recommending books to readers: through author recommendations. The number of lists is growing rapidly and I feel sure that Shepherd will become one of the major book resources for readers in the not-too-distant future.

My own list has just gone online. I chose what I regard as the Best Underrated Offbeat Humorous Fantasy Books. My choice of five is there to be agreed or disagreed with, but they are all books I have enjoyed immensely and read more than once (it's unusual for me to re-read books). My list features two English authors, two Irish, and one French. I won't say more here. If you want to know who they are, you can find out by clicking on the link above.

I have been reading the lists compiled by other authors with interest. One of my favourites among those I have discovered so far is Best Science-Fiction Novels About Worldbuilding, compiled by the great A.A. Attanasio (one of the best fantasy writers of the past 50 years), a list that includes some of my most beloved authors.

# posted by Rhys Hughes @ 8:22 AM 0 Comments

My new book of flash fictions has just been published as a paperback. It was originally published as a deluxe limited edition by Raphus Press of Brazil with only 30 copies for sale. The paperback, on the other hand, is a mass market product and has been priced low, and the ebook has been priced very low (in fact it is a free download on any Amazon outlet for the next three days).

Many rascals are too tense to be comfortable. Real life rascals have much to worry about. But rascals in fiction can afford to relax a little in the waves of prose that surround them, gently swirling on the wit and wisdom, bobbing on the contrivance, floating on the syntax. It is nice to be a comfy rascal.

# posted by Rhys Hughes @ 8:06 AM 0 Comments

Total wordage? About four million words, though I will have to do a proper wordcount soon. That will involve putting all the stories into one document. It is going to be a big document for sure. The overall name of the story-cycle is Pandora's Bluff. Pandora opened the box of troubles and after the final trouble had emerged, the figure of Hope appeared. But Hope is often false, a trick, a jest. This is the harshly ironic point I want to make with the title of my story-cycle.

I have a lot to say about this project and doubtless in the coming weeks and months I will say much of it. In the meantime I will confine myself to the statement that this is surely the largest fiction project ever attempted by a Welsh writer. Begun in August 1989 and finished in June 2022. Thirty-three years.

When I began writing it, I had no idea that all the stories were going to be connected and form a single story-cycle. I must have written 100 or so stories before the idea came to me. Almost every story in the cycle can be read as a standalone. That is important. But the wholeness of the entire scheme is vital to my vision.

The photo above captures me moments after I typed the last word of the last story. Not a particularly special photo in objective terms, but one that will doubtless have significance for me in the future. A complete list of all the titles in the cycle can be found here. Titles on their own reveal little, but I am pleased with the euphony of the best of them, which are almost one-line poems.

# posted by Rhys Hughes @ 1:44 PM 0 Comments

I have edited a book called Wuxing Lyrical and it has now been published in both paperback and ebook editions. I am pleased with the way it has turned out, which is even better than I was hoping it would be. An article on why I wrote it can be found at Borderless Journal. The book is an anthology of verse themed around Chinese astrology but done in a specific manner.

I often use social media for telling jokes. When I was younger I used to wonder who the people were who invented new jokes, never suspecting that one day I would be one of them. These days, when I see one of my old jokes, I tend to turn it into a poem. In some ways a poem has greater reach than a joke: it is an art object. This doesn't mean that the poem is necessarily better than the joke, but that's a different question. Anyway, I turned one of my old jokes about a fire horse into a poem. Another writer saw it and responded with a poem of his own about a water rat.

The idea for the anthology instantly came into being! There are sixty combinations of animals and elements in Chinese astrology. Why not a poem for each of those combinations? I asked for poets to consider submitting material for the book; they did so; the book was created. The end result is funny, witty, silly, musical, occasionally even profound. I believe it is a good example of how light verse can be just as serious an artform as heavy poetry.

Contributors include prize-winning poets such as Mustansir Dalvi and Maithreyi Karnoor, but also poets who are published here for the first time, and many others in the zone between these two extremes. The book was put together in less than a month. It has made me think that other anthologies should follow. I don't have any plans to regard myself as an editor but I do have several ideas for viable projects. I shall give details about them, if they ever happen, here.

Wuxing Lyrical is available from Amazon (is there anything that isn't?)

# posted by Rhys Hughes @ 2:58 PM 0 Comments

So now I had two Darktree novellas and I put them together and decided to write a third novella called Ghoulysses. All together, the three novellas would make a fairly substantial novel. But I never finished that third part and still haven't, though I absolutely intend to do so one day (maybe this year). That big novel will be called The Clown of the New Eternities.

Anyway, The Darktree Wheel was published in an anthology called Leviathan 2 in 1998 and there it languished for two decades before it was resurrected to appear in a very prestigious book, the Big Book of Modern Fantasy, published by Vintage.

But in fact only part of the novella appeared in that Vintage anthology and so I have decided to reissue The Darktree Wheel in its entirety. Then it occurred to me that it might sit well with another pair of my favourite novellas, The Impossible Inferno and The Swine Taster, both of which I had considered at stages in my writing career to be my best works. The end result is a collection called THREE NOVELLAS and it has been published by my own Gibbon Moon Books press.

I would say that this book is absolutely representative of my best work as a whole. In other words, if you don't like this book I can confidently state that you probably won't like any of my others.

The book is available as a paperback and an ebook. Earlier this year I paid for ten proper ISBNs for my small press and I will be issuing ten of my own books to form a set. This book is perhaps the most vital part of this set.

# posted by Rhys Hughes @ 11:47 AM 0 Comments

First published twenty years ago as part of a limited edition hardback collection from Sarob Press, my novella THE WORLD BEYOND THE STAIRWELL is now available as a standalone paperback and ebook. It is simultaneously a tribute to Hodgson and Borges, with a bit of Lovercraft thrown in for good/bad measure.

This novella received many enthusiastic reviews when it first came out and I am delighted to be able to give it another chance to reach a wider readership. The Sarob Press volume where it originally appeared was limited to only a few hundred copies.

"Enter the weird and original world of Rhys Hughes, an eerie nightmare place of monsters, demons, devils and other strange horrors. If you haven’t read anything by this author previously, then get ready for a truly terrific helter-skelter ride of the imagination." — Jeff VanderMeer.

The novella is avaialble as a paperback and ebook from Amazon and elsewhere.

# posted by Rhys Hughes @ 5:22 AM 0 Comments

As for prose books, I finally managed to finish the complete 'Maigret' series of Georges Simenon. I began reading the series back in 2014. Seventy-five novels in total. I am pleased to have read all of them but I must concur with the wisdom of those who claim that Simenon's best work can be found in his non-Maigret books. In 2021 I read The Man Who Watched Trains Go By. Sheer brilliance! I also re-read the five volumes of the first 'Chronicles of Amber' by Roger Zelazny, a series I first read when I was 17 or 18 years old. It held up well but wasn't quite as brilliant as I remembered it to be. I also finished the last volume in the 'Second Ether' series of Michael Moorcock and finished the final book (that has been translated into English) of the 'Captain Alatriste' series of Arturo Perez-Reverte.  It was a year of coming to the end of sequences...

But let's cut to the chase and talk about the best of the best. These are the books I was most delighted to have encountered in the year 2021: Venus on the Half-Shell by Philip Jose Farmer; Immortality by Milan Kundera; The Mournful Demeanour of Lieutenant Boruvka by Josef Škvorecký; The Housing Lark by Sam Selvon; The Innocence of Father Brown by G.K. Chesterton; and The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles. If I had to pick just one from this list it would be the Škvorecký. It might be noted that these works and writers are very 'male' in their outlooks and styles. Too bad. I am very male too.

But if we really have to make a distinction between men and women writers, then I wish to put in a very good word for the novel Sylvia: Distant Avuncular Ends by Maithreyi Karnoor.

Now let me talk about my writing. I finished a novella made up of five connected stories and I will soon be looking for a publisher for it. Clumsy Carnacki, the Ghost Loser relates the misadventures of the incompetent son of the famous occult detective and the first installment can be found here.

I wrote 24 stories in total, 3 short plays, 6 articles, and maybe one hundred poems.

I had eleven books published in 2021, but considering that six of them were self-published I think it is safer to say that I had five books published: a collection of stories, plays and poems called Weirdly Out West; the two novellas Students of Myself and My Rabbit's Shadow Looks like a Hand; another collection called Utopia in Trouble; and the first of my poetry collections to be published by a traditional publisher, Bunny Queue. I believe that the two novellas in this list are among my best ever works.

Maybe I ought to talk about films... In Bruges was the film I saw in 2021 that has remained most strongly in my mind. I was also pleased to finally get into the films produced by Studio Ghibli. No, I don't think I will talk much about films today: I hardly ever do.

Oh, and one other thing: I moved out of Britain and I am now an expat and a glomad. I currently live on a very nice island at a latitude of 6.2 degrees north and a longitude of 80 degrees east. Have a great New Year! :-)

# posted by Rhys Hughes @ 4:43 AM 0 Comments

The second omnibus volume of several of my OOP (out of print) books is now available, with cover art by the always excellent Selwyn Rodda. The books contained in this omnibus are:

(2) Twisthorn Bellow

(3) The Abnormalities of Stringent Strange

(4) The Further Fangs of Suet Pudding

I am not sure how many omnibus volumes there will be in total. Maybe four or five. I certainly have enough material for ten or more. I believe that this particular omnibus represents extremely good value. It is very large and features four of my best novels and is available from Amazon in both paperback and ebook editions.

The Young Dictator is perhaps my most accessible book, described by the original publisher as "Roald Dahl meets Spike Milligan and Kurt Vonnegut." It was published in Ireland and I have fond memories of the book tour arranged to promote it. Twisthorn Bellow is the first of my 'warped superhero' novels, about a golem who accidentally falls into a vat of nitro-glycerin and turns into a living stick of dynamite.  The Abnormalities of Stringent Strange is my second 'warped superhero' novel and relates the exploits of an apeman test pilot. The Further Fangs of Suet Pudding is its sequel and concerns the same apeman in later life, in a remote corner of Africa, battling resurrected Nazis.

Some blurbs about my work....

"Rhys Hughes seems almost the sum of our planet's literature... As well as being drunk on language and wild imagery, he is also sober on the essentials of thought. He has something of Mervyn Peake's glorious invention, something of John Cowper Powys's contemplative, almost disdainful existentialism, a sensuality, a relish, an addiction to the delicious." — Michael Moorcock

“It’s a crime that Rhys Hughes is not as widely known as Italo Calvino and other writers of that stature. Brilliantly written and conceived, Hughes’ fiction has few parallels anywhere in the world. In some alternate universe with a better sense of justice, his work triumphantly parades across all bestseller lists.” — Jeff VanderMeer

“If I said he was a Welsh writer who writes as though he has gone to school with the best writing from all over the world, I wonder if my compliment would just sound provincial. Hughes’ style, with all that means, is among the most beautiful I’ve encountered in several years.” — Samuel R Delany

# posted by Rhys Hughes @ 4:21 AM 0 Comments

I supposedly gave up writing horror stories ten years ago, but here I am, still writing the occasional horror story. How do I resolve this contradiction? I guess I could say that my 'horror' isn't conventional horror and maybe isn't horror at all, but something else: dark absurdist fantasy, perhaps, or ironic gothic fantastika. But no, that doesn't really wash.

The truth is that I hardly read horror now but I read it when I was young, in my early teens, and began to move away from it over the subsequent years. By the time of the publication of my first short stories I had completely abandoned horror for other kinds of writing. The stories I wrote between the ages of 14 and 17 (all lost now) were probably the purest horror I have written. However, formative influences can never be entirely disengaged from. There is some horror still deep in my writing soul and it comes out now and then.

That's all I will say for the time being. I guess I ought to also mention that I have left Britain and moved abroad, this time to Sri Lanka. It's nice here, up in the verdant hills above the old capital of Kandy.

# posted by Rhys Hughes @ 9:31 AM 0 Comments

On the surface they are fantasy adventures in which Sinbad visits strange islands, dips beneath the sea to meet mermaids, is shipwrecked and rescued and shipwrecked again, finds a message in a bottle that tells a most remarkable story and ends up performing in a very unusual music festival.

And yes, he has learned wisdom over the years and wraps legends around himself like a cloak.

But here also are the delights and perils of experimental forms. Sinbad is locked into a rigorous numerological exploit with previously unknown brothers, is compelled to find safe passage through labyrinths of layered, divergent and fractured narratives, and must put his supreme talents to surviving cultural catastrophes.

"The wages of sin are death, they say, but we sin every day, and Sinbad earns his salary anyway, on seven salty seas."

# posted by Rhys Hughes @ 2:26 PM 1 Comments