Yakanory and the dark fiction of James Burt

 The first review of Mostly Harmless Meetings is in, and interestingly it looks at it not from a gaming perspective, but as a work of literature: “a sort of Borgesian/Oulippian take on British rural folklore”. I like that! Admittedly I’ve not read any Borges (I’ve just ordered a copy of Labyrinths, and I’m told that he also wrote a monster manual), and the closes I got to Oulipo was Georges Perec’s Life, A User’s Manual, which I’ve managed to abandon twice, because I can only take so many lists (here’s an idea: a random stuff-in-the-attic generator, for 20th century horror games, based on Perec’s lists; a sort of “Life, A User’s Tables”). You can read the review, by my friend James Burt, here.

I have recently been reading, and been very impressed by, James’s own work: dark, weird, sometimes horrific short stories. His story A Disease of Books impressed me so much that I resurrected a project I started during the first COVID lockdown: Yakanory. Basically me reading stuff aloud, this started with me reading Dr Seuss tales to friends’ kids over Facebook Live, then briefly took on a bit of a life of its own. My reading of A Disease of Books is below, and I’ve put quite a few other readings up on YouTube and plan to do more soon. You can generally tell how manic I was at the time of recording by what I’m wearing (and I always was a little manic, otherwise I don’t think I’d have had the courage to do something like this).

You can buy more of James’s stories for dirt cheap over on Etsy, read his blog and follow him on Twitter. But first, are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin…