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Category: short story

  • Clownstarter & 5318008

    Clownstarter & 5318008

    Peakrill’s next publication will be True Clown Stories, by James Burt and others. James writes: My clown stories are about people who want to be entertaining. They want to bring people some innocent joy, but reality has thwarted them. These are stories about people who’ve devoted themselves to red noses and giant shoes but struggle…

  • Something Happened

    image by The Mycoleum Last night, I was reading dark short stories from some of Nightjar Press’s excellent chapbooks. Walking the dog later, I thought “I fancy writing a short story like one of those writers. You know, those ones”. And suddenly this came spewing out, stream of consciousness-style: The effects were subtle but they…

  • 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…

  • An example of play-by-post in Peakrill

    A Light in the Pavilion by Gordon Browne This is the first of a few posts I’ll be writing about play-by-post RPGs (formerly known as play-by-mail  – PBM – and then play-by-email – PBeM). I played in quite a few PBM games in the 80s, and have been thinking about running one myself for quite some…

  • What We Have Left

    Some time ago I wrote a series of short stories. Here is one of them. They will be published as a book, once they are edited. That should be some time before 2030. If you would prefer to listen to the story (and I recommend that you do) you can hear me reading a slightly…

  • Ship of Theseus – part 1

    Wolves of waterMight of blind force Living movement of sunlight Currents churning The reflecting edges of the shale Soft rains pierce hard marble Heat seeps through the silver There is only mixing and dissociation Nothing remains What is the life that I have chosen? The wave-shattered hull Theseus in the labyrinth Hunched in a cave of broken myths Ship of Theseus by Jute Gyte Dragged off…

  • The Adventures of Bleaklow Part 1

    Pleased to Meat You Content warning: everything. So you’re dithering in the the street one day, trying to work out which turn to take to reach Gampforth’s Exotic Potionérie when you fail to notice a dwarf, and you walk right into him. “EX-FUCKING-SCUSE ME” he spits into your face from a distance of two inches,…