Flash fiction

The Battle Smurfs are back in the cinema.

James Cameron calls it Avatar, but we all know.

We visited the cinema last week to see Osgood Perkins’ new film, Keeper, which was excellent.

No cinema this week.

Sorry, but No Papa Smurf + No Smurfette = No Morgan in the Audience.

I’ll catch up on my reading instead.

When we lived in Berlin, I went to DVD rental shop, Videodrom, every day.

On the way home from work, I’d pop in, grab whatever looked most interesting and then go home.

Watch the DVD.

Or not, if I didn’t feel like it.

Easy.

Now there’s choice everywhere.

Nadine and I take turns picking what to watch every other day.

I always groan when it’s my turn.

We’ve got Netflix, Prime and Mubi, and I waste hours scrolling and trying to choose.

Too much choice.

So, I made it easy for you today.

The third season (!) of Sleepytime Supervillain Theatre just started over on YouTube, and it’s all you need this weekend.

Like James Cameron, I’ve pulled out several stops for my latest video.

Background music!

Special effects!

No stringy, fish-faced Smurfs!

The brand-new series kicks off with a story about a birthday present you can’t take back…

Watch “Darned Wool” on YouTube here now!

Chat soon,

Morgan

Get 2 free ebooks from Morgan here: morgandelaney.info/newsletter.

I got caught in the terrifying crosshairs of Facebook’s war on AI this week.

Trying to contact author Robert Shearman for a non-fiction thing, I “friended” him on Facebook last Friday.

I also posted a link to my “Stupid Paranoia” YouTube video, which mentioned naked plumbers.

One of those things – or the combination of both – made Facebook suspend my account in case I was a rogue AI.

To prove otherwise, I had to upload a video of my face.

When I tried, my webcam wouldn’t work, showing a webcam icon with a red X where my beautiful bonce should have been.

“Very good,” said Facebook. “Now look left.”

I did so, wondering if Mark Zuckerberg himself had just materialised to help me.

He hadn’t.

“Look up.”

I did, snatching a glance at the screen, which still just showed the X-ed out camera.

No sign of my face.

“Look right.”

In for a penny… I looked right.

“We’ll get back to you,” said Facebook. “But if you’re not real, we’ll delete your account.”

“But…“ I wanted to explain about the webcam.

They contacted me on Tuesday, and I am real, because I’m allowed back on the platform!

Which suggests either:

I don’t actually have a face (and Facebook doesn’t care), or

my webcam can see me even when the computer thinks it’s off…

But at least I’m not an AI.

Which means my books weren’t written by AI.

To celebrate, get 50% – or even 100% – off loads of them at Smashwords’ massive End of Year Sale right here!

Chat soon,

Morgan

Read more — and get two free ebooks — here: morgandelaney.info/newsletter.

Congratulations to Hippolyte Pixii for winning my Name of the Week award!

Posthumous congrats, I’m afraid, as he passed away in 1835.

Hippolyte Pixii is famous for building an early model magneto.

Magnetos are like dynamos, but produce alternating current (AC), while dynamos produce direct current (DC).

And if you win a pub quiz with any of that information, I get 10% of your hamper.

I stumbled across Hippolyte while researching dynamos for The Cat Wore Black.

Before realising I didn’t need any of it after all.

But it proves that, shall we say, distinctive names weren’t invented by modern out-of-touch celebrities and billionaire horse tranquillizer enthusiasts.

I feel Elon Musk – to pick a random name out of the air – would be all over a name like that.

Especially if you told him that Pixii meant, I don’t know, 6-711.

P being the Roman numeral for the 6-7 meme, and IXII being an alternative, less-woke way to write 11.

9 and 2, see? Sorry, I’ve clearly made the coffee too strong this morning.

But suggest it to Elon the next time you bump into him.

He’s always on the lookout for great new names for his growing army of children.

Speaking of which…

A man takes an evening walk to find the foxes he can hear every time the sun goes down.

But as day turns to night, he gets lost.

And learns the noise comes from something much worse in this week’s unsettling bedtime story, “Foxes at Night” over on YouTube now!

Chat soon,

Morgan

Read more – and get two free ebooks – here: morgandelaney.info/newsletter.

it’s been all bloody go here at the HQ of the Official Hawkinge-By-Hythe Historical Society.

First, I had those man sniffles, then a sudden change in weather gave me a migraine.

And then I got lumbago.

Look, I hate making a fuss, but I’m putting my foot down – carefully, because of the lumbago – whoever has the Morgan voodoo doll, could you stop now, please?

The internet tells me “lumbago” is an “outdated term for lower back pain”, and I agree.

We should all be using the more evocative German term instead: Hexenschuss.

Literally “witch shot.”

(In the sense of shot by a witch, not shot with a witch. Though if you found a witch hard and knobbly enough, the effect would be the same, I suppose.)

Witch shot gives you a better idea of how sudden, nasty and inexplicable it is.

I just bent down to recharge my ereader, and suddenly all movement was agony.

Yep, you can definitely see how superstitious peasants would assume evil magic was at play.

There you are, sweeping out your hovel with a broom – or bending down to recharge your ereader – and bang, you’re a has-been.

Not that I believe in witches, of course.

Just fairies.

Horrible things they are, mad keen on dancing.

Dancing? Me? With this back?

No, I’m well out of it.

Unlike graverobbers, Aicke and Bowen.

When the Fairy Queen invites them to dine and dance, they can dance…

Or they can be dinner.

Find out what else is on the menu now.

​A Grave & Dreadful Business is no longer an Amazon exclusive! Click here to see if your favourite bookshop already has it!

Chat soon,

Morgan

Read more – and get two free ebooks – here: morgandelaney.info/newsletter.

Made you look, you dirty duck.

Made you look for nothing.

That’s the version we sang as children after tricking someone into looking at nothing.

Or “gnaw-tin” with the proper Irish accent.

Different places around the world have different versions of the song.

Perhaps you were a dirty crook rather than a duck.

Or at risk of being turned into turtle soup.

But the game is best played in Germany, where they don’t seem to know it.

When we moved to Heidelberg, our flatmate Anne loved to suddenly stop while walking down the street and look up.

She’d wait until several Germans also stopped to look up, then she’d move on and laugh herself silly.

Building sites where nothing has been built yet (i.e., holes in the ground) are also popular for looking at in Germany.

They’re usually saved for Sundays, though.

So the whole family can enjoy the hole together.

But what do you look at?

2026 is the Year Morgan Grows His Newsletter and Sells Some Books.

To celebrate, I’d love to hear what fantasy/horror/genre websites you look at to keep up with the latest news, and which book reviewers you trust for recommendations.

Because if you like a certain website, and you like this newsletter…

other readers of that website might like this newsletter, too, right?

I’ve already started compiling a list, but there are so many!

So, I’d love it if you left a comment or replied to let me know which genre sites and blogs you read?​

Chat soon,

Morgan

Read more – and get two free ebooks – here: morgandelaney.info/newsletter.

Listen.

Do you hear that?

Numbers, floating in the air around us.

Trying to tell me something.

Listen.

It can’t be a coincidence because in my next book, The Cat Wore Black, radios come to Hawkinge-By-Hythe. People love them. Radio gives them all sorts of things.

Music, news, entertainment.

And when the station stops broadcasting at night, the radios transmit strange random numbers.

Which gives them the willies.

Then I read in Wired that plastic surgeons use the formula of the Fibonacci sequence to decide how to lift your butt. Each number in that sequence is the product of the two preceding numbers or when you divide a number by the preceding number, you get 1.6.

Known as the golden ratio, that mathematical proportion makes your bum look better, according to Mario González-Ulloa, the “grandfather of buttock augmentation.”*

It must mean something, right?

Apart from meaning I now think of it as the Fibon-ass-i sequence.

And then there are the gremlins.

The original Gremlins came out in 1984.

Gremlins 2 appeared 6 years later in 1990.

And I just learned Gremlins 3 will be released in 2027.

37 years later.

What do all these numbers mean?

Don’t ask me, I’m rubbish at maths.

Listen, I struggled to solve the problem of one undead girl, two graverobbers, twelve corpses and half a dozen men called Jack O’Brien (partially dead).

How did I do?

You tell me; I show all my work in A Grave & Dreadful Business, available here!

(Only two more weeks before the ebook is available everywhere!)

Chat soon,

Morgan

*Is that… is that a compliment?