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A short play based on the two flash pieces "Nanny Knows Best" and "Nanny Knows Best - Epilogue" (both of which can be found in my second collection, Nanny Knows Best), has been shortlisted by Broken Arts Entertainment's Future Audio Fiction podcast. This apparently means it is now in the Top 50 out of more than 250 entries.
Finalists will be announced by the end of next week.
Fingers crossed!
Wow,
It's been way too long since I last updated this blog. Possibly as - as periodically happens - I've been so busy with work that I haven't really had the chance to focus on creative endeavours. Maybe, at some point, when I have more time, I'll go into a bit more detail of what I've been up to. But in the meantime, here is just a quick announcement that I'll be reading a flash piece at "42" tonight at Script Haven, Worcester (104 High St). I'll be reading a currently unpublished piece called "A Common Writing Whereby Two People, Although Not Understanding One the Other's Language, Yet by the Help Thereof, May Communicate Their Minds One to Another." Catchy, eh?
The title comes from Francis Lodwick's 1647 manuscript on creating an alphabet which makes any language understandable to people of other languages. This one is notable as I have had the idea for a while but I wasn't able to translate it into an actual story - even a surreal flash piece - and so I used AI as a writing aid. Now, I have mixed feelings about AI. In general, I feel it will be a negative force, not because of terminator-style AIs rampaging about hunting humanity, but because of its impact on employment. It has the potential to destroy whole industries in a way that even the First Industrial Revolution did not manage to do. Similarly, from a creative point of view, AI is currently not good enough to be a genuine danger to writers - its prose style is too mechanical and "Janet and John"-y and frankly I am amazed that so many people have attempted to use AI to write stories which they have then attempted to publish! However, as a creative writing aid, I think it holds a lot of promise. Like "automatic witing" or group collaborations where people write a sentence then pass the story on so someone else can write the next sentence, and various other "creative games," I think AI may be useful in potentially triggering ideas or even coming up with ideas which can then be adapted. And that was exactly the case here - I fed the AI some prompts with varying instructions then saw what it came up with. Obviously, much of the prose was basic rubbish, but a couple of drafts did come up with some plot directions I had not envisioned. Combining these two ideas lead to this unwritable story finally coming together in a way I could actually write.
I'll be reading it tonight at 7:15pm.
Interesting list.
I tend to agree with the Top 10, albeit not the order. I've always found "Do Androids Dream...?" to be a bit overrated, and Flow My Tears.... at only at number 5?
Hmmmmm.
Still, it does remind me that such is the range of Dick's work that even I still have a few novels left to read.
The anthology is available from Amazon and is worth a purchase as it does contain a lot of great short horror fiction. But for those of you who just want to read my contribution (and who wouldn't?) it can also be found on the Trembing With Fear website, here - https://horrortree.com/trembling-with-fear-end-of-summer-2020-edition/
As part of a promotional push for Nanny Knows Best, "Going Postal" is publishing the top and tail stories of the collection - the "Nanny Knows Best" prologue and epilogue, with the epilogue being published tonight.
Get your taster for the collection by reading the final story in the collection, here: https://going-postal.com/2022/04/nanny-knows-best-prologue/
Nanny Knows Best is available from the publisher here: https://hybridsequencemedia.com/nanny-knows-best/?fbclid=IwAR3BhnZjW3yVooCg7G1t3tgFkKMTG63Y9wUwbgBfkQti1lAm0cLNcI4M0Jo
Nanny Knows Best is available fromAmazon UK here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nanny-Knows-Best-James-Burr/dp/B09VWPMQ76/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1647860985&sr=8-3
Nanny Knows Best is available from Amazon US here: https://www.amazon.com/Nanny-Knows-Best-James-Burr/dp/B09VWPMQ76/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1647861071&sr=1-1
As part of a promotional push for Nanny Knows Best, "Going Postal" is publishing the top and tail stories of the collection - the "Nanny Knows Best" prologue and epilogue, with the prologue being published tonight.
Get your taster for the collection by reading the first story in the collection, here: https://going-postal.com/2022/04/nanny-knows-best-prologue/
Nanny Knows Best is available from the publisher here: https://hybridsequencemedia.com/nanny-knows-best/?fbclid=IwAR3BhnZjW3yVooCg7G1t3tgFkKMTG63Y9wUwbgBfkQti1lAm0cLNcI4M0Jo
Nanny Knows Best is available fromAmazon UK here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nanny-Knows-Best-James-Burr/dp/B09VWPMQ76/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1647860985&sr=8-3
Nanny Knows Best is available from Amazon US here: https://www.amazon.com/Nanny-Knows-Best-James-Burr/dp/B09VWPMQ76/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1647861071&sr=1-1
The first review is out for Nanny Knows Best and can be read in full at "The Modern Custodian"
"Nanny Knows Best is the finest short story collection I have read since Benjamin Weissman's Headless and twice as smart. [...] "Burr is a satirist of the first order, the type of cat who takes aim at everything in sight, from the laziness of our leisure-obsessed culture and the ineffectual nature of government employees to the ways in which we all delude ourselves in order to survive, and he does it all with a nonchalance befitting a seasoned showman."
Read the full review here: https://moderncustodian.substack.com/p/a-comedic-buffet-of-old-whores-and?s=w&fbclid=IwAR2wxLememmlJgVZdnbj1X6IUZzgxuOgqMxW4zs0GU37J14hRvilv-A7FCU
Available from the publisher here: https://hybridsequencemedia.com/nanny-knows-best/?fbclid=IwAR3BhnZjW3yVooCg7G1t3tgFkKMTG63Y9wUwbgBfkQti1lAm0cLNcI4M0Jo
It's finally out! From Hybrid Sequence Media comes my second collection, Nanny Knows Best. Featuring stories previously published in the likes of Bizarro Central, Trembling With Fear, Horror Sleaze Trash, The Bumper Book of British Bizarro, decomP, Ellipsis, The Ginger Collect, Reflex and The Wild Word, Nanny Knows Best is a full collection of my shorter/flash fiction to date. Over 26 published stories condensed into its tight 111 pages!
Available from the publisher here: https://hybridsequencemedia.com/nanny-knows-best/?fbclid=IwAR3BhnZjW3yVooCg7G1t3tgFkKMTG63Y9wUwbgBfkQti1lAm0cLNcI4M0Jo
My second collection "Nanny Knows Best" is out on March 20th from Hybrid Sequence Media. Available today is the two story taster from Godless, "Gimp World/Porno Park." For $0.50, who could ask for more?
Finally got the provisional final designs through from Alexi K . Just got to get it all cleared by the publisher and we should all be set.
Personally, I'm really happy with it. Love the NHS iconography - I suspect that will have an air of sinister horror in years to come that is suitably fitting for a collection of absurdist/Bizarro horror fiction.
The publication of "Like The Bird in the Tree" over at Going Postal is a bit of a mixed bag, coming as it does on the very day that Vaccine (soon to become "Freedom") Passports were voted in. Originally intended as a satire of the Smoking Ban, it has sat on my computer for years (along with many of the other State of the Nation stories), waiting to be edited. Sadly, my editing process is notoriously slow anyway as I like to pretty much forget the story before returning to it with fresh eyes. I then do this several times, each "sweep" hopefully improving and polishing the story as I go. Sadly this process is so time-consuming it seems that the world has caught up with me. Indeed, when reality surpasses a dystopia you imagined only a handful of years ago, you know the world has gone truly insane.
That said, on re-reading the story it became apparent how prophetic it was, from the use of lying media to conduct psy-ops on the public, to the malign influence of MSM and Big Tech, to the gullibility of the majority who accept what they are told without question, their morality becoming victim to their new programming from above. Indeed, much of State of the Nation, originally intended as satire on the various aspects of British life is now quaintly out of date and now only really of value as a memento mori of the last 15 years or so, as we saw what was coming but did nothing to stop it. It is depressing that as we march relentlessly toward the fetid swamps of globalist social credit scores and the like, a collection of "dark, satirical dystopian stories" is now just a reminder of a better, freer time. Worse, they are something that we can look towards with envy.
Enough, now. Please read, "Like the Bird in the Tree" at Going Postal.
Courtesy of Alexi K, here are a few more promo images / wallpaper designs for Nanny Knows Best. Final cover still in the works.
Courtesy of artist and designer Alexi K comes a few preliminary draft cover designs for Nanny Knows Best.
And also some rough ideas for promo posters....
Just attended 42, Worcester's genre fiction spoken word event. The Halloween Special is always one of my favourite 42s, but even though some people were dressed up as witches and so on, it didn't quite have the same feel as when it is in person and there are suitably spooky decorations spotted about. Some great stories and poems tonight, some spooky and spectral in the traditional Halloween sense and some more intimate and toying with more personal horrors. I was completely off-theme of course, as I wanted to run "Porno Park" past an audience, as it is the only story in my upcoming collection that hasn't been published elsewhere.
It went down really well, both in online comments and afterwards (luckily I was the last performer before the break so there was plenty of time for feedback).
Just heard from Hybrid Sequence Media, the publisher of my second Collection, Gimp World, that they are currently pulling a cover together for it for a provisonal March release. As I was going through the manuscript I saw that I have now completed what could be called my "pandemic trilogy;" stories all written in and inspired by the pandemic. Now, I admit I find the whole "inspired by the pandemic" thing rather tiresome, when most such stories are realist in nature and focus on feelings of loneliness or isolation or fear of the invisible virus, and so on. Thankfully, seeing the world through a genre lens, it is possible to just see patterns that trigger bizarro-style trains of thought that lead to absurd tales only nominally related to the pandemic, even if somewhat inspired by them.
The first of these stories was "Gimp World" itself, published by Horror Sleaze Trash.
The second was "Porno Park" published at the same place.
The third is "Scoby Snacks". I haven't yet started hawking it around for publication as yet, but as it is in the Gimp World collection, I thought I would publish it here, as an exclusive.
So here we go - enjoy!
“It’s great for the gut micro-biome” is
something that Rob had never thought anyone would say to him, partly because he
didn’t know what a micro-biome was and partly because prior to meeting Natalie
he would never have found himself in a hipster emporium buying things that were
good for the gut micro-biome.
The guy behind the counter handed him a
sealed plastic bag, an artificial amniotic sac, within which a white mass
slipped between his fingers. Rob peered
at its featureless form before turning back to the assistant. “And you just put it in green tea and sugar
and that’s it, yeah?”
“Yep, “the assistant said, his waxed
moustache vibrating like a tuning fork as he spoke. “The scoby eats the sugar then converts it
into beneficial bacteria. And when it’s
done fermenting your green tea, not only will your scoby have grown, but there
will also be a baby scoby there which you can use to make your next batch of
kombucha.”
Rob had always liked the sound of getting
anything for free, even before he had met Natalie and his interests had changed
from beer and football to kundalini yoga, chakra opening and
environmentalism. Funnily enough, all of
which were her interests.
So it was that Rob found himself whizzing
back from Camden on his electric scooter, in his backpack a glass demijohn, a
bag of sugar, a box of organic matcha green tea-leaves and some steriliser.
It could never be said that Rob bore
responsibility well. However, this time
he was determined that he would prove something to himself and, more
importantly, to Natalie. He placed the
scoby into the sickly-sweet brew and gently tapped on the glass as it settled
within, as if expecting a response. As
the days passed, he got into the habit of inspecting his slimy new ward, as it
day by day slowly, but noticeably grew, developing glutinous tendrils which
reached out for sustenance from the furthest reaches of the jar until one day
he saw it; another baby scoby growing from the mother. And while Rob posted pictures of the scoby on
the ‘gram with joking, self-deprecating messages like “I’m going to be a
grandfather!”, truth be told he did, for the first time in his life, actually
feel a sense of responsibility for the oleaginous blob of fungus growing in his
kitchen, perhaps even a bond.
After bottling up his brew, Rob was left
with the decision on what to do with his now two distinct scobies. He was relieved to find from various websites
that he would not need to part with his original scoby, so he decided to use it
again for his second batch, reluctantly giving away the offspring to a friend
of Natalie’s, surprising himself when he found himself asking her how it was
whenever she popped round for a chakral cleansing or burning bowl ceremony.
And so it went on, month after month,
batch after batch, brew after brew until, finally even Rob realised that his
original scoby, now several times its original size but looking distinctly
worn-out and jaded, probably needed to be replaced.
Reluctantly,
regretfully, he picked up his scoby and, needing both hands to manage its slippery
weight, threw it in the bin.
Rob didn’t think any more of it until he
woke the next day and stumbled, still half asleep, into his kitchen and
literally tripped over it. The scoby had
now quadrupled in size and was the size of a medium-sized dog. What it was doing on the floor next to the
bin, he didn’t know, but he could only assume that it had consumed the
contents– various types of fruit pulp from Natalies’s juicer and other organic
vegan scraps – and then climbed out, either in a bid for freedom or in search
of more food. Taking a fresh bin bag
from under the kitchen sink, Rob placed the scoby in it, the bag barely big
enough to cover the whole thing, and then struggled down the stairs from his
flat with it in both arms, before finally heaving it into the wheelie bin.
The next day, as Rob opened the front door
to get to work, he saw the scoby seemingly waiting for him on the front
step. It was now almost waist high at
its central point, its sides spreading out in a circle almost four feet in
diameter, its edges climbing up the walls of the porch.
What
the Hell do I do now? He thought. I can’t just leave it here?
Eventually he decided it was easier to
just drag the thing down the alleyway at the end of the road and then just dump
it in the mucky waters of the Thames.
And true, while the scoby was heavier than expected – he estimated it at
3 or 400 lbs now – and it was also slimy and slippery to the touch, by finding
an old rusty pick axe in the derelict shed that was hidden in the undergrowth
at the end of the communal garden, Rob was able to bury the pick deep into the
scoby’s quivering mass and pull it, in sharp, energetic jerks to the edge of
the river before, groaning with the effort, hoiking it in, pick axe and all.
And as the weeks passed, Rob did not think
of the scoby again, too busy was he navigating the traffic on his e-scooter,
whizzing past the hundreds of missing cat and lost dog flyers posted on the
lampposts to work, like Xerox leaves blooming on metal trees. He would be partially aware of local news
reports on TV expressing confusion about the vanishing homeless population but
he was too focused now on trying to read GreenPeace newsletters on his phone as
Natalie had now apparently developed a passion for biodiversity and fighting
climate change so he felt it would keep him in her knickers if he could be
similarly well-informed. So as she
whined about diminishing species in the Amazon, dwindling numbers of tigers in
India and fish populations in the Channel suddenly plummeting to the point that
the whole body of water now seemed barren and lifeless apart from a foam of
beneficial bacteria that washed up on the coasts in greater amounts every day,
he would tut, and shake his head in disbelief and exhale sharply, while not
really paying too much attention.
That was until one day Natalie called him
through to the living room, where she was stood rigidly in front of the TV, her
hands clasped to her mouth in disbelief.
“L...Look at this!” she said finally, gesturing to the BBC News report
on the screen, a banner “Mystery Mass in Channel moving towards U.S.”
ticker-taping across the image of what appeared to be a slimy white island,
some half a mile across, drifting against
the waves, a tiny pick axe embedded in its centre. It was undeniably his scoby and, as
disinterested as he actually was in environmental matters, even Rob felt a
twinge of guilt as the scoby slowly made its way across the Atlantic, doubling
in size every day, as it consumed mega-tonnes of bio-matter to fuel its growth.
Indeed, as time went by it became clear
that the scoby itself had stopped moving but was now instead just accumulating
mass at such a rate that its mere growth meant that its outer edges moved
hundreds of miles outwards – towards Greenland, Europe and the East Coast of
the States - the Scoby now an expanding fungal continent in a diminishing
kombucha ocean. The American military
tried bombing it, but even their heaviest ordnance did no damage and was as
futile as trying to destroy an island by throwing pebbles at it.
But then the reports from China started to
come in.
Terrifying footage posted on Twitter of
coastal cities collapsing into the sea, clouds of sea-water, rubble, dust and
pre-biotic foam. Grainy cell-phone
images of masses of people being plucked from seafronts by mesophylic tendrils,
of whole cities locking themselves away in fear, screaming their terror into
the night skies. Initially, such footage
was dismissed as CCP propaganda but soon it became clear what was happening on
the other side of the world. An uber
kefir – a kefir kaiju if you will
–was rapidly expanding across the Pacific, consuming all in its path as it
gained mass at an incalculable rate.
Panicked discussion then moved on to what would end life on Earth first
– the kombucha or the kefir – the entire planet girding its loins for the clash of the two pro-biotic titans as
their respective masses swelled to envelop the globe.
Still, whether it was his ADHD or he had been vaping too much Moroccan hash, but by this point Rob had long-since lost interest.
Besides, sea water was delicious now and was outstanding for the gut microbiome.
And for Rob, who had always liked a freebie, that was very much a win.
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