UP YOURS, 2016!

Happy New Year, whoever and wherever you are! I'm off to teach English in South America! Here's to new beginnings!

I'M STILL HERE / SIGN OF THE TIMES

In a continued bid to impart personal information to random strangers on the internet, allow me to tell you about how I recently went to Texas and got engaged.

Actually, how about I bombard you with a shitload of pictures of American signs, because there is evidently something wrong with me. HAVE AT YOU!

There's something about the forests of signs that line American freeways that appeals to me. At one point I passed several McDonalds signs clustered together. Who needs several McDonalds in one spot?! Gun show and 'snake zoo' signs jostled for space beneath BUC-EE and DENNY signs. Every other billboard was for a law firm. I was constantly reminded that littering in Texas "IS unlAWFUL". There's a big thing in Austin about 'keeping it weird'. I experienced several extremely potent storms that everyone was quick to tell me was a "very rare" occurrence. The heat literally stole your breath every time you stepped into it, yet it wasn't uncomfortable. I found an amazing gastropod fossil and saw real-life fireflies. I crammed more experiences into two weeks than I had in two months of my 'normal' life. I proposed to the smartest, bonniest lass I've ever had the pleasure to know. I met some cool people. And then I came back to the UK. Suffice to say, I brought some ace memories with me that I hope to channel into stories at some point. For now, they're fuelling my desire to find work there, preferably before I head to Australia. Fingers crossed for that! And just to remind everyone, this will be the next anthology I appear in: http://nerinedorman.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/announcing-seas-line-up-of-stellar-names.html

TOODLEZ NOODLEZ!

AND SO ENDS THE DRY SPELL

I basically ended up taking a year off from writing, or rather from fully concentrating on it, as first 90% of my stories were destroyed in an unfortunate USB memory stick malfunction, then the start of my own proper business and subsequent balls-deep foray into festival planning consumed literally every waking moment for MONTHS, followed (unsurprisingly) by several more months of ill health, all conspired against me. It's only been since I moved into my current house in March that I've had the wherewithal to crack back on with it properly and re-establish some semblance of discipline (I initially used to write from 7-10pm every day, and then as much as possible).

I've got a few things floating about in the ether at the moment, but today one has been SNATCHED from my grubby mitts by the wonderful Dark Continents Publishing (wonderful, because they also published my story about The King in Yellow, Xanthophobia, in Phobophobia - have you got YOUR copy yet?). The story in question is called DREDGE and will appear in their forthcoming The Sea anthology, edited by Nerine Dorman. In it, a family suffering the aftereffects of both the father's infidelity and the worst storm Australia's seen in years, deal with insidious mutations caused by the return of a long dormant, underwater god. Nerine called it "deliciously creepy" and I'm going to keep using that quote until I the day I die in a mysterious brothel fire at the age of eighty-six.

And with this luvverlee news, I bid you all a cheery Cthulhu!

"Great stuff!"

And a deeply appropriate and awesome song: