I wrote Torn Pages through the Fall of 2017 into the Spring of 2018 and, while I'm somewhat cagey about that certain aspects of that period, it was a wonderful time. My nostalgia for that time, which wasn't perfect, is why Torn Pages gets plastered on so much merch of mine. There are other books but they'll never be another Pumpkin Book. Not even the nine sequels that followed. That may look like a burning pumpkin to you but to me it's a sunny-sun. For once, things seemed to

I love America. More than most British people, I love America. Age eleven, I went to visit Florida and fell in love with how friendly the people there were, how forthcoming and welcoming, as opposed to the stiff-upper-lipped, class-divided, wry, sarcastic society we live in back here. I got a lot of crap from my schoolmates for my, admittedly OTT, love of America, with the common refrain being "leave then!" (those classmates are probably voting Reform right now). I would've d

I've always been cautious about making my stories "too disturbing". Believe me, I'm a human being. I love cats, Walt Disney, and Taylor Swift. I enjoy listening to Tchaikovsky and Mozart. Right now I'm listening to "Fun, fun, fun" by The Beach Boys (no word of a lie). But, obviously, I threw all that caution to the wind when making this latest collection of stories. My first story "The Clown" in this collection is about, you guessed it, a steam-train. No, it's about a clown.

Yes, I know that cover is very disturbing. It's meant to be. The Clown is my latest collection of short stories (the next one's a novel, I promise). In The Clown , there are four short stories, one of which is the title story. My favourite of the stories is "Ham", a retelling of Hamlet with barnyard pigs. I really love Shakespeare and he's all over that collection, despite the cover resembling Saw . Yes, this is a very dark collection of stories. Oh well, I say. Oh well. I'm

This book took up the lion's share of the year and, more than anything, it defines the year. Maybe it defines my entire existence in Birmingham (where I've lived since 2023). This very Victorian book (although set in the present-day) gothic, paranoid, haunted, suspicious of everything. This book, reading it back, is like a very dark, pitch-black version of Peter Pan , this murdered girl brought to another land by a vain, self-obsessed Peter, who dazzles her and then, eventual

My latest book is another short story collection, Victoria Falls And Other Stories. Bloody hell, Lesia outdid herself with the cover for this. It truly is magical. In my wildest dreams, I couldn't have come up with a better cover. This is the exact London-Dungeons-Roald-Dahl-Hunter-S-Thompson cover I wanted, one that conveys the manic energy of the book and its absolute nightmarish darkness. This book, while not set in the Victorian-era, is a colonial-treatise on the lines o

I'm embarking on a drive this month to promote my one and only Christmas book, Presence (not to be confused with the Soderbergh movie of the same name). It's time, in this horrible era, to remember the true meaning of Christmas. "Tonight thank god it's them instead of you", etc. The idea of being in a fortress, taking shelter in warm and kindness while outside darkness rages. In the eighties, in the era of Band Aid, Presence is a satire of well-intentioned do-gooders accident

Suspension's title story is the first one up. I must admit, the inspiration for this was watching a recent production of The Girl on the Train . There, I got to thinking, "what would the infantile male version be of this story?" If a woman, elegant, introspective, sees and then solves a murder on a train; well, a hopped-up male version of that would be a on a rollercoaster! As soon as I came up with that idea, I loved it. This story, even, didn't entirely get rid of the itch

It’s a time of joy and sadness Joy for the hostages who have made it back alive, their parents, friends, and loved ones. Joy for the Palestinians left alive, crawling out of the rubble. Sadness for those Israelis who will not see their abducted loves returned home. Sadness for the Palestinians killed in genocide. The Israel-Gaza War (2023-2025) is not the moral crisis of the twenty-first century. It is only the most publicised, most news-heavy, most divisive and button-pushin

Suspension is my first collection of short stories. For years now, ever since about 2017, I've long been anxious about not having a short story collection. I don't know why, it's maybe been a bugbear because I drilled it into myself that if you can't tell a story in two pages, you're not a real writer. This is, of course, ridiculous. Tolkien never wrote short stories, as much as I know (at least, not famous short stories), and he's the most famous writer of all time. Dickens

One of my oldest ideas, I came up with this in Secondary School, or high school, if you're American. But back then, it was just about...

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While I was writing Eldritch Nights , I was living in my first year with a group of people I didn't really get on with. Words burst from...

As a Brummie, having lived in Birmingham for the last two years or so, when Ozzy died it felt like the city's soul had taken a hit. I...

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Okay, so this book was a mistake. After I put "the fifth book in the Lord Caterpillar series" on Lord Caterpillar Underworld with the...

This book is taking me longer than expected. Yes, my dark little Series of Unfortunate Events homage (with elephants, crocodiles, ghosts,...

I gotta show some love to the movie Sinners , which basically did Moonshine before I could. I love Sinners . Love, love, love. It's a...

I've already spoken in my first blog post about this book how Randy Newman's NSFW album Good Ol' Boys inspired this album, particularly...