Dark, strange and fantastic fiction
We’ve all got to go.
But do it on your terms.
The latest episode of Sleepytime Supervillain Theatre gives you the skinny on how to deal with Ol’ Bony himself.
Would you know what to do if Death turned up with an “Everybody Pays: Gas; Grass; or Ass” bumper sticker?
Exactly!
I have set titles and a rough outline for the next two Alumière adventures, ready for NaNoWriMo.
NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, and the goal is usually to write 50,000 words of a novel during November.
Never afraid to do things wrong on purpose, however, I am going to write two 25,000 word drafts instead.
(Anyone can take part. If you’ve ever thought about writing a book, perhaps now is the right time? Find out more here.)
I’m keeping this week’s offline for now, in case I’d like to do something else with it.
Sorry!
If you want to read everything, you can subscribe to my newsletter here.
Read!
I just finished How To Teach Quantum Physics To Your Dog. This means that, at least for quantum physics, I am now as smart as a dog! I whole-heartedly recommend it, here’s my Goodreads review.
Read!
I’ve just started The Hysteria of Bodalís. It’s about a guy beating a computer game, but everyone believes he defeated the aliens for real. As they were hoping to be saved by the aliens, they’re not happy…
Wait for my review, or grab it FREE now by signing up to Marcos Antonio Hernandez’s newsletter.
Read!
While researching book titles I came across this lesser-known classic by Robert Louis Stevenson. Read short story “Markheim” FREE here.
(Hammer Film Productions called it The Mirror and Markheim when they turned it into a featurette.)
Watch!
Or should that be “watch out”? for the “profound hopelessness” of “ultraviolent” Unicorn Wars, which pits cuddly teddy bears against unicorns in a fight to the bitter end. Coming 2023, and, I have to say, I’m looking forward to this!
If there are no children in the room, then check out the trailer here!
Listen!
Leeds noisemongers Blacklisters are back! Get their latest release
“Leisure Centre” from Bandcamp here.
Enjoy!
(Excerpted from my newsletter dated 22nd October, 2022. Sign up for the full, up-to-date experience!)
I managed to finish “Laura’s Suitcase” (still don’t have a proper title), only to get stuck in another story (working title: “Dirtgod”).
I’ve also eaten a weird but delicious type of Georgian liquid bread that I didn’t catch the name of (I’ll get back to you), and arranged a little something for early next week. Don’t miss it!
Make sure you also fail to miss this week’s story. It’s a funny one to make up for last week’s story, which I gather not everyone enjoyed as much as I did.
England smiled, causing a dimple in Wales and another in Belgium (as if anyone cared).
It had bad teeth.
Based on their arrangement, experts estimated the location of the eyes. It was a very human face. Rumours started to spread, forcing the government to block access to the chasm of England’s mouth.
Cars and trains had plunged into it when the mouth opened, ripping roads and railways apart. But now people jumped and drove into it deliberately to get — finally — away from Europe for real.
People said King Arthur lived down there with Winston Churchill and Robin Hood. Elvis Presley was granted mandatory British citizenship, when the prime minister heard his music echoing up England’s throat.
Experts extrapolated the position of the nostrils. Dynamite and big yellow trucks were sent to clear the blockage, lest it be said the king ruled over a mouth breather.
In Wales, people danced naked to the cult of the dimple.
The Leader of the Scottish National Party said that if the mouth was down there, then Scotland must have the brains.
Northern Ireland said that England must have three eyes, because otherwise they would only get a single wonky ear, while the Republic of Ireland dug a trench across the middle of the country—which was all bog, anyway—because they had no face at all.
Immigrants were refused asylum and deported. Then anyone who didn’t look quite English enough, no matter what their passports said, because it wouldn’t do to have foreigners walking on England’s face.
They were shipped off to… well, does it matter?
The poor were given a starter pack of one hundred pairs of blue plastic shoe covers, because they all had pitbulls which shit everywhere, and they certainly stepped in it, rather than walk around it.
Then Richard Littlejohn made a joke in the Daily Mail, a newspaper which was only ever intended as wrapping for fish ‘n’ chips, and people read by mistake.
About where the stuff that the mouth ate must come out.
It so annoyed China that they bombed England’s face in retaliation.
Naturally everyone was very annoyed with China for a while, but it meant they didn’t have to listen to England talking about its face any more.
And as soon as France stopped complaining about the radiation levels, which would surely drop soon by themselves, everything could go back to normal.
Read!
You can read Dark Matter Magazine’s Special Halloween edition online for FREE this month. Do that here!
Watch!
This short film is not horror, but it does have a monster cat! This is great!
Look!
I’m getting a head start on the cover design for an upcoming project and came across these amazing paintings. What do you think, would you buy a dark fantasy book that looked like this?
Watch!
Remember when the Rubberbandits warned us in 2010 that there was a Horse Outside? (Caution, very sweary link)
Well, it’s finally happened. They’ve come inside. And they don’t speak English, apparently. Horse Inside.
Enjoy!
(Excerpted from my newsletter dated 15th October, 2022. Sign up for the full, up-to-date experience!)
A sweet, white-haired old granny normally sells fruit (figs and oranges, I think) from a public bench outside our closest big supermarket. She’s not there when I arrive with Manchee, so I’m in position when she eventually turns up. But there’s a problem: a drunk is passed out on the bench.
So she starts beating the crap out of him with her walking stick.
Eventually she gets bored of that and crowbars him onto the ground, at which point he wakes up.
That’s Dangerous Lady #1
I am stuck in “Laura’s Suitcase”, the short story I had hoped to finish last week.
Every time I’m just about to give up, it starts to work and Laura draws me back in.
That’s Dangerous Lady #2.
In today’s Flash Fiction, we meet Dangerous Lady #3.
No spoilers, but you should know that today’s short story is aimed at mature audiences who aren’t afraid of spiders.
Frank waited until the last moment to cancel. He called the hotel from the hallway, letting them know he wouldn’t be there. The handle of his small carry-on case sweated under his palm. He turned his phone off in case Lisa texted to ask how the traffic was at his end.
She wouldn’t know he wasn’t coming until she arrived, and would be too angry to drive back and confront him.
She had promised she wouldn’t, but she could never resist showing him her spider when they were together.
When he told Lisa he would do anything for her, obviously he meant anything except spiders.
He’d find someone else.
Maybe.
She kept suggesting they move in together. With rent prices like they were, it made little sense to keep their own apartments. That’s what Lisa said.
For Frank, it made perfect sense. She had her spider in her flat, and he had his flat without. She brought it everywhere with her, though, and insisted on showing it to him.
It was bad enough knowing the thing was there. She didn’t have to shove it in his face!
His phone buzzed as soon as he turned it back on. She shouted at him, calling him a coward and other names. Worse was the tapping of the spider’s legs as it touched the phone to get to him.
He had been right to cancel: it was already on the loose, despite her promises. Well, let them enjoy their holiday together. They wouldn’t need him for that.
He missed her, though, as soon as she hung up.
He dreamt about her that night. She wasn’t wearing panties. She had tied his hands to his lonely bed’s headboard with them.
When she knelt to straddle his face, the spider that lived between her wet lips reached out to caress his face with its hairy double-jointed legs.
Read!
I don’t read much SF, but when I do, then only the good stuff. Like the Mirrorshades anthology, featuring William Gibson, Pat Cadigan, Greg Bear and more. Long out of print, contributor Rudy Rucker is hosting it on his website as a free read!
Prophesy!
I already told you that short fiction magazine, The Deadlands is now free if you sign up. They’ve launched a Kickstarter to fund the next year of fiction, and one of the perks is a 3 card tarot reading for $10. My tarot newsletter was one of my most popular editions, so I know you’re interested.
This is your chance to find out who will replace Liz Truss and clean up at the bookies!
(And marginalised/unpublished short fiction writers can snag a critique from professional writers for a measly $25!)
Research!
I loved this story about the conspiracy theory that Barbara Bush, the wife of George Bush, is the daughter of Aleister Crowley, the self-styled “Beast” of sex magick.
“I wanted to test whether anyone would take the first, obvious step of contacting me and asking ‘Is this real?'”
Daughter of the Beast, or rather Mother of the Beast, is therefore Dangerous Lady #4. (She might not be Aleister Crowley’s daughter, but she did give birth to George W. Bush…)
Enjoy!
(Excerpted from my newsletter dated 8th October, 2022. Sign up for the full, up-to-date experience!)
This week’s story is a blood-drenched psychological horror about a guy who probably needed a hug, while my recommendations roundup will tell tell you when a hug is not appropriate.
Greg puked on the grass verge near the disco. In the moonlight, the mess of hot dogs and fries looked like an autopsy photo of guts. The blood splashed over the back seats was black oily paint.
He didn’t understand how could want them so much when they were alive, yet be so disgusted when they were dead. He could stop at the bridge to get rid of the body if he drove the long way home.
When he arrived, it wasn’t in the trunk.
He even got on his knees to look under the car, in case it had fallen out and rolled there. He had definitely killed the man in the back seat. He had definitely pulled the body out and dumped it in the trunk. The ticklish sensation of enjoying the still-warm skin, while repulsion built in his throat at the blood like greasy sweat, was fresh.
He thought he remembered the thump of the trunk lid slamming shutbefore he puked and drove off. He was always so careful. Could he have left a dead body beside a pile of puke with his DNA in it?
The car wouldn’t start. He got out again to push, but it moved an inch before rolling back to its original position. It didn’t matter about the puke, if they caught him on the bridge in a blood-drenched car.
He was trapped unless someone helped him. He dropped to his knees beside the car and prayed to God. He swore he’d never do it again, if the car would start. It was a lie, and Greg knew it. His God, who had Willem Dafoe’s face, but meth teeth and calluses on his knuckles, knew it too.
Greg stood. The body was in the driver’s seat. He met Greg’s stare of disbelief with disgust.
Greg thought about jumping into the river himself. It was where all the bodies went. There was a beauty in that pattern. But he couldn’t stand the thought of the cold water in his lungs, or the rocks on the riverbed smashing his teeth.
If he walked home, maybe he could slit his wrists in the bath before the police arrived. Caught but not caught. There was a beauty in that idea, too.
Instead, he got in on the passenger’s side. Just to see what would happen.
For the longest time, nothing did. Then the rears doors opened, and the car filled itself with the stench of sweet decay and musty clothes.
The car coughed into life, like spitting out water, and they drove off the way they’d come.
Watch!
A comedy-horror show with puppets? Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared is as good as it sounds!
Check out the new series on Channel 4! Compare them with the original YouTube videos!! Don’t Be Scared!!! Have Fun!!?
Watch!
After being postponed due to the death of Queen Elizabeth II, Stewart Lee’s Tornado is now available on BBC’s iPlayer for UK viewers! Get blown away here!
Watch!
Jarleth Regan is a new stand-up comedian for me. Maybe you’ve already heard of him, but here’s a full hour of comedy first posted online in June 2022.
Enjoy!
(Excerpted from my newsletter dated 1st October, 2022. Sign up for the full, up-to-date experience!)
I’m alone this week, so it was nice to meet this friendly little chap while out exploring.
As long as there aren’t more of them, I’m not worried.
I’m almost ready to put The Squared Circle away to let it “breathe” for a month. During that time, I’ll be tackling some short stories that have been waiting to be written/finished. The book cover is also due any day now!
This week’s Main Feature is all about someone who, like me on my walk, may have taken a wrong turn somewhere, while my round up of recommendations includes NOT killling Hitler to cheer you up (#ImaginationNotMedication), and a podcast investigating reports of the supernatural world crashing into ours.
Enjoy!
(And drive safely)
Working Condition
He kept his anxiety medication a secret, which was stressful.
He couldn’t bear the gossip, if people knew: “I bet he only got the job, because he has ‘anxiety.’”
Alan knew what people were like. It was why he was taking tablets.
He worked hard to become branch manager of the bank, because the tablets were expensive, not because he liked the job. What he would have liked to do was sleep.
Just sleep all day.
Obviously, this meant he must be lazy, so he pushed himself hard to compensate for his laziness. The tablets he secretly took helped with the stress of working so hard.
Even his wife called him a workaholic because on weekends he couldn’t lie around in bed with her. He wasn’t, though: he hated work. But he was terrified that if he didn’t force himself to get up now, then he might never get up.
First thing he always did was take a secret tablet while peeing and trying not to think about a photo of the world’s fattest man he’d seen.
Whenever he thought of it, the man had Alan’s face. He looked happy, though, rather than trapped by his own body.
When news of the layoffs came, Alan tried to look as worried as everyone else, but he hoped they might get rid of him, too. He could relax if he had some time off.
Then he realised he wouldn’t have any deadlines or bosses, and would be relying on himself to muster up the energy to arrange job interviews.
He took a sneaky tablet at lunch and worked harder.
He got promoted to the main office and felt bad that he must have taken someone else’s job.
One day, he decided he wouldn’t keep his anxiety a secret anymore. He was high enough up the food chain now, and he could help others. Show them it was nothing to be ashamed of.
Being a role model made him feel good about himself.
But that made him feel bad about feeling good about other people feeling bad.
So he took another tablet.
Oh, and…
Read!
Here are 7 very short sci-fi stories. All free to read online. My favourite is “Wikihistory”. Check them out here!
Listen!
Uncanny is an invetigation of real-life reports of supernatural events from the BBC. I really enjoyed this. I recommend starting with episodes 1, 5 and 15, all of which deal with “The Evil in Room 611”. Listen here!
Look!
I just came across these awesome photoshop collages by Chemical Messiah. I like!
See you next week!
