"Tale" - new story on 3:AM

Another (very) short story up this week, this time over at 3:AM. I am pumping 'em out, though hopefully without any dreadful and catastrophic drop off in quality. Anyway, enjoy...

The Recession Session

I'm reading as part of the "Recession Sessions" this Friday night (April 24th) at the Betsey Trotwood. The evening runs from 7.30pm to 11pm and I'll be done by about 8.05pm, so get down there early if you want to catch me. If not, come later for everyone else...

The Worms - new short story

I have a new short story up at Dogmatika. It's called "The Worms" and, the first time I opened the page, Google had helpfully added an advert for vet services for dogs, hence allaying my fears about the awesome artificial intelligence they are building. Anyway, have a read, enjoy or fail to enjoy, complain vociferously abut the minutes of your life I have wasted. That alone should make it worth your time...

Random Links Galore

I'm not going to be posting for a wee while so I thought I would bombard you with a bunch of links to explore or ignore.

Check out Farafina, a Nigerian literary/cultural magazine, available to read online and with an interesting piece about Tayeb Salih, amongst other things.

Head to East London for a trip to Donlon Books for all your arty, political and theoretical needs (plus glass cases stuffed with rarities). They even have a rug on the floor.

If you read my post on Tony White's Science Musuem exploits, download Al Robertson's Pynchonian riffing on Mayan computing and then visit his blog for more.

Go to the Spill Festival, with highlights including Tim Etchells' That Night Follows Day.

Wait, barely daring to breath, for my new short story to appear on Dogmatika (if I remember to send it off.... And they still want it...)

Listen to random wibble on Spotify.

And that's it.

Tony White, Albertopolis & Green Beer

Went to the launch last night of a new pamphlet/book/story which Tony White has written as part of his duties as Writer-in-Residence at the Science Museum. Tony is probably best known for "Foxy T," which is generally considered to be one of the best books ever written about London. He is perhaps less well known for "Charlie Uncle Norfolk Tango" which is one of the best books ever written about ignorant, evil grunt policemen being abducted by aliens. His new story, "Albertopolis Disparu," is a sly and funny little pastiche of steam-punk, taking in Moorcock, difference engines, early telegraphy and the idea of the Listening Post (derived from this excellent installation, in front of which the launch took place and which the story is partly a response to). Five thousand copies have been printed, to be given out free at the Science Museum, but you can also get a pdf of it here. But that is not all (no that is not all). Tony also ran a series of workshops with writers during his residency and four of them read from the work that resulted. I haven't read them in their entirety yet, but the tasters were good and you can also download them from the same place. Ended up going to the pub afterwards, witnessing the horror of green beer and arriving home drunk and hungry. My stomach is a cauldron of regret.

Bolaño, N+1 - The Bad and Ugly

Two slightly contrasting pieces from N+1, which have been around for a while, both of which seem as interested in the US "canonization" of the dead Chilean as they do in the work. There's a proper bit of Devil's Advocacy going on here, though this one decides he's worth it and this one decides he ain't. Full marks for contrarian zeal, but I can't help feeling that the "No" camp gets a little carried away, making much of what a hard read the book is and spouting this kind of vile insult: "2666 is a desert of negative space covered with smudges and chaotic scrawls." To me that just makes it sound even better. Maybe that's where I part company from both the sanctifiers and hired oppositionalists.

Post-Lasdun & Post-Apocalypse

So the next James Lasdun story on R4, "Totty," was a disappointment after the magnificence of "Annals of the Honorary Secretary". It was fine as a fairly conventional short story, I guess, but, unless I missed something, offered little more. Mind you, it was read by Greta Scacchi and she wasn't a patch on Bill Paterson's deadpan delivery, so maybe the comparison is unfair. Shame, I guess, but not the end of the world...

Incidentally (what a segue!), AbeBooks have just put up a mini-feature on post-apocalyptic fiction. What larks!