Animals of October

As this blog winds its way down to its end, I have some exciting and delightful news. Yesterday I signed a contract to have my collection of animal-based short stories published at some point in 2021. These are the weird tales I've been peddling for the last six or seven years as individual pieces, and I'm absolutely stoked that they're finally being corralled together into a collected menagerie. The collection will be titled Fauna  and will be published by a super-cool, socially conscious independent press (I won't say who they are yet as they want to finalise their 2021 catalogue and announce it all properly together). It will include stories about a mimed elephant, time-travelling horses, a mysterious panda, guinea pigs in the underworld, vengeful birds, and a pig with skin made of bacon. They are, true to form, very weird stories that don't necessarily behave in the way that stories should - but that's kind of the point. When it comes to animals, we have our...

Last night I concluded a series of Creative Writing workshops designed for autistic adults. It's something I had planned to get going in the Spring and was originally supposed to take place at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester. I had Funding, I had Plans, I had Dreams. And then, whoops, someone coughed and everyone caught a Pandemic. Such is life. With a PhD to finish, I put the series on the back-burner for a while and then resurrected it online-wise for October. What a total joy it was. I had a contingent of nine participants who threw themselves into the exercises I set with great enthusiasm and focus. I was worried that my instructions would be too confusing or too neurotypical (whatever that means, eh?), but we all seemed to gel really well. I always set aside time at the end of each session for the writers to share what they'd written if they wanted to. MY GOD, they are a talented bunch. I was frequently delighted and astonished at their beautiful words and their pl...

I always intended to use this blog for fictional as well as non-fictional writings, so here’s the first attempt at a little story-tale. For guidance, I asked Twitter to supply me with numbers to lead me to an entry in The Element Encyclopedia of Magical Creatures by John & Caitlin Matthews, which I have here on my desk. Grace Fletcher-Hackwood (@msgracefa) and Jo Howard (@joannuski) were the first to respond, selecting Cacus; a fearsome half-spider, half-human, three-headed beast from Greek mythology, and Adar Llwch Gwin; some mighty giant birds from Welsh mythology, whose name translates to 'Dustwine' (for some unexplained reason). The following tale is the result of this mythic mash-up. Big thanks to Grace and Jo!   Quite the Monster?   One head for talking, one for eating, and one for breathing fire. And so, if you cared or dared to look dearest Hercules, that means three entirely different throat structures and, I expect, three separate stomachs; one shriveled...