This is brilliant, just absolutely bloody brilliant.

Was happy to hear yesterday that my short story Shattered Glass in Shingle will be appearing in the next issue of PUSH. Issue 13 should be out in around 3 weeks, I believe. All details at the link.

Pick up an issue if you can. If it’s good enough for David Peace, it’s good enough for me (and you, you slags).

Pic taken from PUSH editor Joe England’s blog.

Unofficial Britain is a celebration of the uncelebrated.

A champion of the overlooked.

A history of the forgotten.

Click that link to visit a most interesting new site curated and run by Gareth E. Rees, author of Marshland: Dreams and Nightmares on the Edge of London.  I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Gareth was kind enough to post some odd ephemera of mine, London Murder Poems, which you can view here.

This August my short story Echoes will appear in DREAMS OF SHADOW AND SMOKE – Stories for J.S. Le Fanu, a tribute anthology from Swan River Press, edited by Jim Rockhill & Brian J. Showers. SRP’s publications are things of beauty, just incredibly well put together hardback books, and it’s an honour to be included in such a fantastic line-up.

All details here.

Great cover by Jason Zerillo.

Then in September my short science fiction story Me am Petri will be reprinted in the Futures 2 anthology, a collection of 100 stories that have appeared in the Futures section of Nature over the last few years. Published by Tor. Really great to be included.

They haven’t revealed the full cover yet but here’s a cropped version.

A lengthy and very positive review of my Crowley book appears in issue two of The Green Book, a superbly interesting journal published by The Swan River Press.  Well worth checking out.

Just so you know, I’ve got some of the Aleister Crowley: Wandering the Waste limited edition hardcovers in stock. Not too many of these left and when they’re gone they’re gone. Click here for details.

My latest story appears in this week’s issue of Nature. You can read it here, if you fancy it.

Another short story sale to Nature.  Howard Loves Polly will appear within a month or two, I should reckon.

David Longhorn has posted a nice review of my just-released short story collection Get It Down and Other Weird Stories on the Supernatural Tales blog.

This is, I think, a pretty impressive collection of stories, most of which pack a lot into very few words. Strong stuff, interesting stuff, and above all promising stuff from a writer with the ability to surprise.

Click here for book and ordering details.

This is pretty bloody brilliant. The renowned Atlantis Bookshop on London’s Museum Street will be holding an exhibition of Roy H Stewart’s original artwork from the graphic novel Aleister Crowley: Wandering the Waste.

The exhibition opens as part of Atlantis’s annual Crowleymass celebrations on Sunday the 1st of December, 2013. 2-5PM. Roy will be there talking about his art and process, and I’ll be there too – chatting, looking shifty, and generally milling about.

There will be over 80 pieces of framed original art on display, along with several grimoire-like sketchbooks which Roy put together while we were working on the book. And everything is for sale. Prices start at £25.

The exhibition will run until the 24th of December.

If you’re planning to attend, the Atlantis Bookshop would appreciate it if you could RSVP at the email address on the flyer. You can also contact them there if you’d like to reserve a particular piece of artwork.

Hope to see you there!

Two new reviews of Aleister Crowley: Wandering the Waste this week.

The ending really is something quite interesting and special, Hayes and Stewart finding a really involving, and yes, a magical way to end their tale, to end Crowley’s life. But the thing the graphic novel leaves us with, as it should, is that Crowley’s desire to transcend death, and to live in the imagination and the memory of the world, was accomplished. Death took the man, but his legacy lives on.

Richard Bruton on the Forbidden Planet blog.

The impressionistic style often bleeds over into the real world scenes, kind of like how the world of magic often comes into the everyday life of Crowley. I enjoyed both styles but I particularly enjoyed the “Interlude” chapter which was entirely in the first style and was a nice change of pace and break from the often haunting imagery of the impressionist style. Overall, I really enjoyed this book.

David Ferguson on Irish Comic News

Reading Morrissey’s Autobiography. Very enjoyable. My favourite line so far: Morrissey summing up an incident in which his father crashed the family car into a front garden…

The gentle householders of old take us in to sooth our nerves, whereas today’s indignation generation would pellet writs at us from upper windows.

Afternoon.

There’s a bit of a write-up and interview with me about comics and what-not over on downthetubes.net. Grateful thanks to John Freeman.

Further to the info in the article linked above, my malformed short story collection Get It Down and Other Weird Stories will be released at some point in October.

Went to the Roger Waters show last Wednesday, a great gig.

And to the Manic Street Preachers gig last Friday, which was even greaterer.

(Not my video)

Brilliant show.

Writing projects soldier on, some with trench-foot and the odd missing limb. Wheels are still turning. Gears are still spinning efficiently and shedding teeth in equal measure. So much stuff either half-finished or half-outlined that it’s not remotely funny.

A pint. Yes. That’ll make it better.

A long time ago, back when dinosaurs and Jesus were knocking about together and neither of us were quite so decrepit as we are today, Jim Boswell and I worked on a little four-page, grey-scale comic strip called Intergalactic Bank Robbing Teenage Space Aliens On The Run. It was a fun little mad-cap science fiction story, not the heartfelt think-piece you might be imagining from the title. It appeared in issue 12 of FutureQuake and led directly to us doing Project Luna: 1947 together.

Well, it’s getting reprinted soon, which means Jim has been busy changing grey-scale to full colour. It looks really good. See…

It’ll be reprinted in the forthcoming British Showcase Anthology which is being put together by Adam Cheal and published by Markosia on October 1st.

I do feel like a bit of a fraud, I am not British, after all. But Jim is, and he organised it, so I get to sneak into the book like a corpulent, blood-bloated tick hiding in a fold of neck flab.

Since getting laid off from the shipyard in mid May I have done just about bugger all of anything. This must change. So, time to kick into gear and push on with some projects that have been malingering in the edgelands for too long.

While I’ve been dawdling things have been chugging along nicely.

The Crowley book is out in the wild. The signed limited edition sold out in under 24 hours. The regular edition is still readily available.

Project Luna: 1947 is out there in trade paperback. Still a few hardcovers knocking about too.

Get It Down & Other Weird Stories, which collects fourteen of my short stories (ten previously published in magazines like Nature, Supernatural Tales and Innsmouth Magazine, along with four stories seeing the light of day for the first time) will be released towards the end of August.

But it’s time to get a move on with the new stuff.

The as-yet-unnamed WWII/horror graphic novel is ticking along nicely. Chris Askham’s pages are always a treat to see and Bram Meehan’s lettering is consistently top-notch. We’re close to a third of the way through it. Here, have a low-res sneak-peek…

I’ve got a few short stories out there, just need to keep them in circulation until, hopefully, an editor likes the looks of one.

There are a few other comic projects to get off the ground too, along with a couple that got off the ground only to then develop bad knees and rickets before collapsing face first into the dirt. Time to kick them back into life. Or kick them to death and have done with it. Better than having them hanging around in limbo.

Not long now until Thought Bubble in Leeds. Roll on November. I’ll be singing at the Markosia table on both days. Times to be announced.

And it’s off to London the following weekend for what promises to be an exciting event involving my old pal and Crowley artist extraordinaire Roy H Stewart. As Roy said to me recently, “Turns out the occult is a very friendly place.” I’ll post details here once it’s all announced.

Right then. Onwards.

I’ll just put the kettle on first.