Review of Flesh Feast: The Human Brain

This magical thing found its way through the tiny opening of my letterbox the other morning. It is the perfect size of thing to fit through my letterbox. It meant that I didn’t have to run downstairs in my pyjamas while the postman hammered on the door. I don’t know why our letterbox is so tiny. I know it’s an old house, but did people only write tiny letters in the days of yore? This house holds so many unanswered questions. But back to the magical thing.

The magical thing is a chapbook by Socrates Adams-Florou. He’s a bit brilliant. It is a haunting tale of a man who is terrorised by his neighbour. It is gripping. Parts of it filled me with actual terror. It is only a short thing, but in these ten chapters, Socrates manages to convey such turmoil and such overwhelming (and deserved) paranoia that it’s a good thing it ends when it does.

If ‘Flesh Feast’ was a film, the back would read “contains mild peril”, and then it would be scratched out and would say instead “warning: contains shocking scenes of a disturbing nature”. It would not be a PG.

I read it excitedly. I wanted to know what was going to happen to the protagonist.

I liked the part where the protagonist thinks "I am trying to imagine being like Linford Christie". It is the Rocky-running-up-the-steps part of the story. It is uplifting.

I am now a bit scared of snails, though. And I have toothache.

My copy is number 13.

If you would like a copy, all you have to do is email Socrates and he will send you one. But hurry. There can’t be very many left, and you do not want to miss out on this visceral reading experience.

Is it potato time? Yes, it is.

I like potatoes.

I just found this website whilst searching for a photo of a potato. This person made this website. This person is a lord.

I was looking for a photo of a potato because I have a new story up today at The Pygmy Giant. The story is called Mash and it has a potato-theme. It is also the story I talked about here.

I wish I had one of these.

Josie and the H-Bomb

He came at me warm. I couldn’t see, not really. I thought I saw the bones of people. No skin, no faces. Just bones and shaded-in bits where lungs and other organs were. They glowed red in the upside-down of my eyes. For a fraction of a second. Like a stammer. Like time catching itself up after a big, forget-everything shock.

He had something to prove. It’s how it always is with these things. One step and then another, and before anyone knows what’s hit them there are atoms splitting and colliding and the world is forever changed. He changed everything.

The stammer interrupted a noise that was a thousand aeroplanes taking off, and the slamming of every single door, and the cracking apart of the continents, and. Think of the loudest thing you can possibly imagine. Multiply it, and multiply it again. And then, just as you feel your eardrums begin to implode and your bones start to shatter, imagine a silence so great that it’s hard to believe there even is a world, an earth, a place for your feet to be standing on left.

There was no hand holding with this one. He lit up the molecules of me. And he shook me until everything I knew had fallen away. Until all that was left was the in-out, in-out of my breathing, and the idea of me, smaller than a grain of salt but still pregnant with possibility.

I think I shielded my eyes. I think I covered my ears. I think I buried myself in the sand or burrowed into the guano. I was trying to keep myself safe. I knew what was coming. It was bigger than both of us. Not land, this time. Not bodies. A few thousand birds heartattacked and dropped from the sky. A few billion fishes disappeared where they swam. But this was safe. Necessary. Part of a bigger plan.

And I stretched out in the dryness, felt the crackle of the breeze. And knew this romance, this new thing, could only ever end badly.

Bomb/Xmas-themed Reading Night

There is a golden light filtering through my curtains. It is one of those rare December afternoons where the sky is crisp and blue and the sun is a blinder. The last time I experienced light like this was in the old house I shared with my friend where we painted the living room red. I had the front bedroom, and at around four p.m. the light would rush through the window and hit the mirrorball and throw a hundred Will o' the Wisps around the room. And even if I was thinking about all the sad things that were going on at the time, the quality of the light, and the dazzlement always made me smile.

I'm working on a story about a girl who falls in love with a hydrogen bomb, which I'm reading tonight at this...


...along with fellow TTOs Biff and Nath. I think it will be a good night.

New(t) Story

Rainy City Stories is a site with a brilliant idea. I wish I'd thought of it myself. Based in Manchester, it links stories and poems with their places on the map, all within the Greater Manchester area. I spent hours clicking on the lovely cloud markers and reading the stories they pointed to. And then I found the house I grew up in, and the pond under the railway bridge, and I started writing a story of my own. It's called On The Count Of Three, and is now up on the site, putting Newton Heath on the Rainy City map. I'm (as I used to say in my formative years) dead chuffed.

Writing From The Angry Well

I think if I didn’t write I would go mad. I remember watching the first series of Big Brother, and the thing I couldn’t get my head around was the No Writing Instruments, No Writing At All thing. Even if I’d been au fait with weeing on national television, the not being able to write, for even a few days, never mind weeks, would have stopped me from applying anyway.

I’m sure Henry Rollins wasn’t the first or only person to refer to writing as “Poor Man’s Therapy.” He’s so right. I think he originally meant it in a ‘journal’ sense, which I agree with, but from a fiction point of view, writing a story in which the protagonist gets to wreak whatever havoc they want on their enemies is great therapy, too.

L’esprit d’escalier keeps me awake at night. I spent two hours last night thinking of things I could’ve, should’ve said. I thought my head was going to explode. So I grabbed my notebook and started scribbling away, in the dark so as not to wake up the Mr, and five minutes and four pages later, I managed to drift off to a lovely sleep. I’m going over what I wrote now, and I’ve managed to turn a hellish day at work into a story about a murder, that will hopefully prevent an actual murder. Writing works like a pressure release at times. I can plot horrible revenges whilst still maintaining my sanity. If I didn’t write, I would probably be that woman who shouts on the bus. Or I could be much worse, I could be the woman they find in the textiles department of Debenhams every Thursday pounding her fists into the display bed. I would be escorted home with achy wrists and goose feathers still stuck in my hair.

Don’t get me wrong. Not all my writing comes from this angry well. I’d even go so far as to say only about ten percent of my writing is grrr writing. It’s just at times like this, I’m really glad I have this outlet.

Let There Be (Tea)Light(s)

I'm writing something big that I am excited about. It's making me wish I could stay home from work and kick everyone out of the house and change my body clock so that my day starts around 4pm and ends with a 7am bedtime. If I were a lady of leisure, then I would definitely be nocturnal. But then I would miss out on the new and fantastic characters one can only encounter as a public servant. You couldn't make it up.

Special things are happening at my library tomorrow, though. (Apart from the multitude of weird traits and ticks.) To tie in with the National Year of Reading's November theme of "Live Lit", we are holding a storytelling/poetry event at the library. If I can breathe through my nose, and if my voice stops croaking, then I'll be reading a story. I'm quite excited about it. I'm excited about buying the cakes and wine, and about having actual naked flames in the library(if Health and Safety deem this acceptable), and about having poets and writers doing readings in the space that's normally reserved for the One Week Loans and the table with the leaflets. Hopefully, all will go swimmingly, and no firemen will have to be called out.