Weirdly Out West

Weirdly Out West (2021)

Black Scat Books

A collection featuring short stories, short poems, a long narrative poem, a haiku sequence, a play, and an article on the history of the Weird Western.

"Rhys Hughes saddles up & blasts his way across the vast plains — kickin’ up trouble in this hog-wild collection of Western Weirdness. Using various forms (short stories, a play, lonesome poems — even a garsh-dang essay!), he roasts the genre & serves up some hearty, avant-garde grub — fresh as a dew-dappled Texas rose. Guns, puns, cowgirrrls & tumbleweed — what more could ya ask for?"

Contents:

Phony Express * Like a Rhino Cowboy * Short Western Poems * Fables from Farout Stables * Honky Tonk Squonk * The Gunfighters * The Narrow Path to the Far West * Tom Cabin's Uncle * For a Few Hollers More

Vampires with Fairy Wings

Vampires with Fairy Wings (2021)

Gloomy Seahorse Press

A selection of the surviving verse and prose poems of unjustly forgotten 1930s writer Victoria Plumjob. She was friends with André Breton, Salvador Dali, Chump Rumple, Edith Shriek and Roger Dammit Upstairs, and she was one of the leading lights of the Furious Ducks, an obscure avant-garde collective. Most of her work was lost in a series of bizarre accidents but enough remains to fill a slim volume (one of her poems was rescued by an owl from a burning canoe).

Victoria was a precocious child and began writing stories when she was very young. Her earliest publications were in ephemeral student magazines, few of which have successfully endured the ravages of time. The only collection of her work published in her lifetime was issued in a limited edition by Catwheel Press and is now extremely rare. Vampires with Fairy Wings is thus the first volume to feature her work for more than eighty years. It includes an excellent afterword by noted grammatical scholar Jaggery Feeley, and thanks to the efforts of historical researcher Nina Vangerow it also features photographs of Victoria published here for the very first time.

"This book strikes a valedictory note that is neither sharp nor flat but deserves to be struck anyway." -- Bernardo Puffin.

The Pilgrim's Regress

The Pilgrim's Regress (2021)
Gloomy Seahorse Press

The picaresque exploits of a knight on a bicycle... The noble and chivalrous Don Cosquillas (more informally known as Arturo Risas of Madrid) hereby invites you to partake of his adventures as he roams with his trusty sidekick Sancho Panda over Spain and across Africa and all the way to India and the back of beyond. Metafictional and ticklish, he assures you that he has your best interests at heart and if you care to accompany him through these pages you will be richly rewarded, though in what manner he is quite at a loss to specify. No matter! Here be dragons, puppet masters, and all manner of curiosities and hobgoblins.

Contents:

Zucchini Overdrive * Musicians in the Cold * ¡Qué Pena! * How Don Cosquillas Earned his Name * Description of a Liar * Rhodomontade and Piffle * The Laughable Career of the Tickle Master * Risible and Shine * Astragal and Bingbong * Sackbut and Splashes * Tarzan of the Chardonnay * Found Kidneys * Up Without Away * Sinking Fast * Salad in Dallas * My Foot Walked Off Without Me * Westward Ivanhoe! * A Stitched Dog's Tongue * Topaz Days, Emerald Nights * Spider in Slippers * Making It Up As I Go Along * The Fantastical Scholar's Chop-Logic * ¿Qué Cosas? * The Puppet Masters of Tau Ceti * The Logistics of Fictional Life

A Rhys Hughes Sampler

A Rhys Hughes Sampler (2020)

Gloomy Seahorse Press

A paperback 'sampler' of my work entitled SAMPLER because potential readers often wonder what is the best entry point to my large corpus of fiction. 48 stories, at least one a year from 1993 to 2020. All but two of these stories  ('The Chimera at Home' and 'Dogears') have been published before. Ebook edition also available and both priced low.

Contents:

The Forest Chapel Bell * In the Margins * Three Friends * The Duvet Thief * Trombonhomie * The Urban Freckle * The Purloined Liver * Madonna Park * Journey Through a Wall * Bridge Over Troubled Blood * A Girl like a Doric Column * Telegram Ma'am * The Tell-Tale Nose * The Banker of Ingolstadt * The Spanish Cyclops * The Macroscopic Teapot * Climbing the Tallest Tree in the World * Two Fat Men in a Very Thin Country * Finding the Book of Sand * Niddala * The Minotaur in Pamplona * The Candid Slyness of Scurrility Forepaws * Sending Freedom Far Away * Anton Arctic and the Conquest of the Scottish Pole * The Six Sentinels * Degrees of Separation * The Mirror in the Looking Glass * The Strings of Segovia * Loneliness * Rediffusion * The Gunfight * The Grave Demeanour * The Yeasty Rise and Half-Baked Fall of Lyndon Williams * How to Lose Friends and Alienate People * The Blue Jewel Fruit * The Pastel Whimsy * The Soft Landing * The Taste of Turtle Tears * The Prodigal Beard * The Unkissed Artist Formerly Known as Frog * No Fury * The Belly Orchard * Chopsticks * Silky Salathiel * All Your Belongings * The Partial Rapture * The Chimera at Home * Dogears

Omnibus #One

Omnibus #One (2020)
Gloomy Seahorse Press

Five Books in One.

EYELIDIAD. THE POSTMODERN MARINER, THE STICKY SITUATIONS OF ZWICKY FINGERS, THE JUST NOT SO STORIES. THE CRYSTAL COSMOS.

"Rhys Hughes seems almost the sum of our planet's literature... As well as being drunk on language and wild imagery, he is also sober on the essentials of thought. He has something of Mervyn Peake's glorious invention, something of John Cowper Powys's contemplative, almost disdainful existentialism, a sensuality, a relish, an addiction to the delicious." — Michael Moorcock

“It’s a crime that Rhys Hughes is not as widely known as Italo Calvino and other writers of that stature. Brilliantly written and conceived, Hughes’ fiction has few parallels anywhere in the world. In some alternate universe with a better sense of justice, his work triumphantly parades across all bestseller lists.” — Jeff VanderMeer

“If I said he was a Welsh writer who writes as though he has gone to school with the best writing from all over the world, I wonder if my compliment would just sound provincial. Hughes’ style, with all that means, is among the most beautiful I’ve encountered in several years.” — Samuel R Delany

Corybantic Fulgours

Corybantic Fulgours (2020)
Gloomy Seahorse Press

"Who are the Corybantic Fulgours? They are monsters. They live in a room, a room as large as the inside of the Moon, and in this room there are all sorts of ways and means, odds and ends, curves and bends, and no one but no one can ever say what the right way from here to there is. Most monsters don't care about things like that, and the Corybantic Fulgours are made from curdled light, so they care even less. Let's open the door to that room and step inside..."

A book of verses written for monstrous doodles drawn during the summer of the pandemic year 2020.

Samples of pages and an interview about the project can be found at Borderless Journal.

The Meandering Knight

The Meandering Knight (2020)
Gloomy Seahorse Press

An adventure story in verse form.

Bertie Random is an ordinary man and an unlucky traveller. While fleeing monsters on foot, he is accosted by an octopus on roller skates who gives him eight letters. These letters tell the tales of strange incidents across time and space. If Bertie learns the appropriate lessons from reading them, he will be knighted by Fate herself and his bad luck will turn into opportunity. Arise, Sir Random?

An epic poem (or a mock-epic or pseudo-mock-epic) that consists of a frame story and eight other odd and fantastical adventures that are related to the quest of the main protagonist.

Cover art by Selwyn Rodda.

Carrying Women Across Rivers

Carrying Women Across Rivers (2020)
Gloomy Seahorse Press

Quirky poetry in the light-hearted tradition of Richard Brautigan, Don Marquis, Hilaire Belloc, Blaise Cendrars and Edward Lear.

133 verses and prose poems ranging in length from one-sentence quips to absurdist ballads. Space, time, love, journeys, fruit, the thoughts and feelings of inanimate objects and monsters are among the themes covered.

From the back cover:

"Dear reader,please don't have great
expectations about this poetry collection
because you might be disappointed
and I don't wish to be hated by you.

So kindly remember, before you enter,
that although most of the book could
surely be better, all its unrhymed parts
could hardly be verse..."

The Dangerous Strangeness

The Dangerous Strangeness (2020)
Gloomy Seahorse Press

Fifteen one-act plays featuring robots, poets, cowboys, pirates, highwaymen, castaways, mad scientists, homunculi, vampires, ancient warriors, impossible gods, eccentric insults and much more.

Written for puppets and people, for dreamers and schemers, and intended for the page as well as the stage. Includes a collaboration with Mauritian author Vatsala Radhakeesoon.

Contents:

The Handbag Inquisitor * Dust or Human Jigsaws * I Boil the Statistic Overshoe * Fewer Not Less * Three Log Fire * As a Man Grows Colder * Yesferatu * The Letters of the Alphabet * Don't Shoot the Messenger * One Short * The God of Atheism * The Highwayman * A Big Hand * Good Morning! * All Things Nice

Note: 'A Big Hand' was written with Vatsala Radhakeesoon.

Crepuscularks and Phantomimes

Crepuscularks and Phantomimes (2020)
Raphus Press

A collection of thirteen ghostly, gothic, lovecraftian and weird fantasy stories in the ironic mode...

Tentacle telephones that span centuries, men grown in jars, rivers overflowing with the tears of ghosts, phantom twins, tunnels that are the guts of an extinct giant, grotesque antique shops...

All this and more will be found in the pages of this hilariously nightmarish book.

Contents:

Tender is the Tether * Confessions of a Medicated Lurker * The Sauce of the Guile * The Itchy Skin of Creepy Aplomb * Gut Road * Back to Back * Different Shadows * The Blunderbuss * The Partial Rapture * Jacques Inleboqs * The Babbling Brook * The Fangs of the Underworld * The Smoking Room

Note: Two of the stories ('Jacques Inleboqs' and 'The Smoking Room' are only available in the paperback and ebook editions).

Facets of Faraway

Facets of Faraway (2020)
Gloomy Seahorse Press

Stories about incompetent explorers in strange places; knights, goddesses and viscounts that don't exist (but who are stuck in trees anyway); castles that give birth to baby fortresses; anti-matter monsters that meet and greet their twins; time travellers, castaways and ledge nymphs; and a scientist who believes that all the energy in the universe is draining away through a hole in spacetime and who has a cunning plan to plug the leak!

Available from Amazon and other online bookstores.

Contents:

Knight on a Bear Mountain * The Bathing Bells * Small Freedom * The Impregnable Fortress * Little People, Inc. * The Hole Truth * The Stuffed Goddess * The Meltwater Republic * The Non-Existent Viscount in the Trees * The Ledge Nymphs * The Achilles Tendency * Hogwash and Bum Note * Early Morning Chocolate in Madrid * The Soft Landing * Entropy * Fighting Back * The Bubble Bursts * The Realisation of Vast Headgear * A Mirror in Moonville * When Clowns Collide * On What Grounds * Hooves of Ghosts * The Dusky Birron Returns * Cooking Soup on a Burning House * Bringing it Back

Note: The stories 'Knight on a Bear Mountain' is an expansion of the original, and 'A Mirror in Moonville' is a fusion of 'In Moonville' and 'The Mirror in the Looking Glass'. The original stories in both cases can be found in my other books.

Better the Devil

Better the Devil (2019)
Gloomy Seahorse Press

More than 100,000 words of fiction and featuring eighty-six stories. A volume of collected chapbooks that have previously been available only in limited editions or as ebooks, namely Romance with Capsicum, The Skeleton of Contention, Madonna Park, Plutonian Parodies, Young Tales of the Old Cosmos, To Err is Divine, The Devil You Don't, and The Dangerous Strangeness. Some of these chapbooks have been extremely rare. The earliest story here is my earliest surviving story, and the volume samples my career from 1989 to 2012.

Available from Amazon and other online bookstores.

Contents:

The End of the Road * Raindancing * Thinner Air * Passengers * The Catastrophe Trials * The Urban Freckle * The Journal * Oaths * The Dungeon * Romance with Capsicum * The Faust Business * Zumbooruk * The Third Blow * Trombonhomie * The Undeniable Grin * The Innumerable Chambers of the Heart * There's a Woman with a Cactus Instead of a Head * The Apology * Niddala * Miserable with Groceries, Cuddly with Stubble * Under the Tree * Primate Suspect * Sucking the World's Thumb * Big Game * Three Friends * The Big Lick * Madonna Park * Suttee and Sweep * The Gunfight * Poe Pie * The Lollipop God is Dead * The Sun Trap * On the Shoulders of Pipsqueaks * Buffoons of the Moon * The Pink Giant * The Curdling of the Milky Way * Death of An English Teacher * The Cakes of Gehenna * The Pelican of Venice * The Dirtiest Ararat * Cracking Nuts with Jan Hammer * The Precious Mundanity * An Ideal Vocation * Cutting Back * Twelve Candles * Midknight Express * The Cat * The Younger Man * One Better * Convergence * Sexing the Confection * The Falling Lover * Eyelashes in my Nepenthe * Gone with the Wind in the Willows * The Googol Seasons * Go West Young Ripper * The Wooden Salesman * Cosmic Bagatelle * The Spanish Cyclops * The Metaphorical Marriage * The Unsubtle Cages * Encore * The Culture Shock * The Strongest Monster * Description of a Liar * Stale Air * Musicians in the Cold * Better the Devil * Cats' Eyes * The Tools * The Iron Age * The Martian Monocles * The Spoon * Stand and Deliver * Moonchaser * The Burning Ears * Said the Spook * Vanity of Vanities * Suddenly * The Cottage in the Cottage * The Dark Horse * The Apple of my Sky * The Days of the Turbans * Invisible Letters * The Locksmith * Train of Thought

Note: The contents of the paperback edition are slightly different from those of the ebook edition. Full contents can be found on my Aardvark Caesar site. For example, the Fanny Fable tales have been replaced with the Young Tales of the Old Cosmos stories.

Arms Against a Sea

Arms Against a Sea (2019)
Raphus Press

Limited deluxe edition published in Brazil featuring fourteen stories. A perfect square in format (7.87 × 7.87''), 90 pages, with a exclusive handcrafted Japanese binding style.

Also a paperback (and ebook) edition featuring twenty stories. Dreamlike fables that range the distant tropical shores of the overheated imagination. Tales about falling stars, mythological giants, reincarnated cats, lost cities, jungles, sieges, ghosts, mountains. detached faces that set off on sea voyages, cavemen that are living retail outlets, the misunderstandings and misadventures of absurdist life.

Contents:

The Lynchpin * Silky Salathiel * Arms Against a Sea * Weepy Boo Hoo * Maximum Efficiency * Disdain of the Game * The Long Ward * Starfish Wish * The Divided Island * The Siege * And Follow Me * Her Face was Flushed * The Bookmark * On the Threshold * The Shepherd's Ascent * The World Premiere * Moth in a Daydream * Perspectives * All Your Belongings * The Explorer's Porters

Note: The paperback edition contains four stories not included in the original limited volume. These bonus stories are ‘Disdain of the Game’, ‘The Bookmark’, ‘Moth in a Daydream’ and ‘The Explorer’s Porters’.

Slap-on-the-Wrist Stories

Slap-on-the-Wrist Stories (2019)
Gloomy Seahorse Press

Numbers control the galaxies and atoms of the universe but they don't always control us. Freedom lovers seek to break out of the mathematical prisons. There are a certain number of us. Perhaps you are one of them. We go on journeys and have adventures.

But our adventures generate new numbers and we only learn this truth later. The stories in this book are guided by precise numerological constraints but paradoxically they find a greater freedom as a result.

And so do we.

Contents:

* Only Sixty-Nine Whims Away * Postcards from the Hedge * Trouble with Drabbles * Ten of Our Trombones are Missing

Mombasa Madrigal

Mombasa Madrigal (2019)
Gloomy Seahorse Press

Mombasa Madrigal...
...and other African escapades

"A collection of stories introduced by a novelette that is a fusion of memoir, travelogue and speculation. 'Mombasa Madrigal' charts a modern voyage to that city of crumbling equatorial grandeur. A thoughtful, pulsating, intuitive text, it is something new in the somewhat conventionalised universe of contemporary narratives.

The short stories that follow complement and amplify the impact. Outrigger canoes with crab claw sails ride the currents of the Indian Ocean into oblivion, the mountains of Kenya loom high over grounded ships miles from the sea, pirates dream impossibilities and scheme them into reality along the Swahili Coast. And always Mombasa, the gateway to East Africa, pulsing endlessly in the heat of the night."

Contents:

Mombasa Madrigal * In African Airspace * Nothing Will Happen * Noah the Second *Sailing to Port Manitou

Note: The story 'Noah the Second' is only available in the paperback edition, not in the ultra-limited handcrafted original edition.

The Nostalgia that Never Was

The Nostalgia that Never Was (2019)
Gloomy Seahorse Press

"Marco Polo is travelling again in the service of Kublai Khan but this time he wanders off the path and ends up in an unknown part of the world. In his solitude he becomes an emperor of dreams. The ghosts of prehistory visit him, and the phantoms of later ages and the future too. He even finds himself in the unexpected position of haunting himself. Only his very last spectral guest can know everything that is essential, and that last guest may well be you, the reader."

A tribute to Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities but with ghosts instead of cities. 222 ghosts pay a visit to Marco Polo, who is now enthroned in a natural amphitheatre. Having travelled in the service of the Khan he is now a Khan himself, the Khan of the Canyons, and others can come to him for a change. And they do. From Pangu, Adam and Keyumars, three of the first men from three different traditions, to the very last man of all. The centuries slide past, some ghosts are substantial, others are flimsy, a few are nothing more than an idea or the starting point for a tangential routine.

The Early Bird Catches the Worm but the Wise Worm Stays in Bed

The Early Bird Catches the Worm but the Wise Worm Stays in Bed (2018)
Gloomy Seahorse Press

"A change is as good as a rest," said Dr Jekyll doubtfully.

Stories from the beginning and stories from near the end with a minor chasm between. Into this chasm falls a rain of worms that will tickle the napes of those who dwell below. But who dwells below? On either side of the chasm, absurd birds perch on the outstretched arms of plausible gibbons. The chasm will fill up eventually. A lake of worms. That's the way it ought to happen around here...

Contents:

EARLY BIRD
Raindancing * Big Game * The 4-D Mind * Nathaniel * Reflections of a Brass Head * Friends * The Faust Business * Death of an English Teacher * The Myth of Sisyphus * Under the Tree * The Dungeon * Consolations of the Wild One * The Roof of the World * Multicoloured Leaves in Bright Spirals * The Manticore * Zumbooruk * The Achilles Tendency * The Duvet Thief * Sucking the World's Thumb * Passengers * Loop * Romance with Capsicum * There's a Woman with a Cactus Instead of a Head * Miserable with Groceries, Cuddly with Stubble * Bracket * The Glossolalia of Hideo Frigg * The Apology * Primate Suspect * The Pelican of Venice

WISE WORM
Simplicity * Letters from my Windmill * Spoiling the View * Nozzles * Jekking the Oofers * When the Tide Comes in, Belinda Puts Out * What Did You Do for Doomsday? * The Tatty Bye * Hepcats are from Neptune, Bum Notes are from Uranus * Barbarian Gran * Alphabet Soup * Shelf and Safety * The Pink Canoe * Hey! Big Spengler * Counting the Pennies * The Sleep Patterns of Björn Wakeman * The Little Bridge Over the River

The Honeymoon Gorillas

The Honeymoon Gorillas (2018)
Bizarro Pulp Press

"Spud Gunn is the son of Hopalong Beech and Una Gunn. When his parents split up he begins his travels through the West, a place of myths, tall stories and strangeness. On his journey he has many peculiar encounters with the characters who inhabit the West and he begins to suspect that something is not quite right about the world he is living in. Could it be that this West is just a simulation? If so, for what purpose was it created?

Before he finds the answer to this and other questions, he will have to evade the unusual attentions of a troupe of lethal roving actors, the schemes of fake orientals, the catastrophic effects of asteroid strikes and the fury of a giant who is one of the original gods of the West and who has been assembled from his scattered parts in order to break down the walls of existence and reveal the truths beyond.... But what does this have to do with gorillas? Rather more than it may seem to the casual eye!"

Contents:

The Son of Una Gunn * Tumbleweed Tantrums * Phut Tu Ping and the Spittoon Gang * The Proper Setting * The Same Old Zoetrope * Rosco Pico Train * The Tooth on the Floss * Longfellow in the Compressor * Fudge Man Chew * Sarsaparilla Sasquatch * What we Gibber About when we Gibber About Gibbons * A Long Story Short * The Falling Kite Landed on my Back like an Angel Attack

How Many Times?

How Many Times? (2018)
Eibonvale Press

"Rhys Hughes has never been a stranger to experimental fiction and unusual ways of constructing stories, and this mini-collection gathers some of his most far-reaching examples, placed squarely in the world of OuLiPo writing.

Short for Ouvroir de littérature potentielle (the workshop of potential literature) OuLiPo is a grouping of authors who fashion works based on constrained writing techniques, writing that follows rigorous and extremely precise rules concerning structure and layout.

And here, we encounter works based on rigid numerical constraints, works in the form of grids that can be read in any direction, and a logico-erotic tale in which the permutations of the sexual acts are based on the workings of logic gates."

Contents:

The Five Pillars of Flimflam * Half a Dozen of the Other * Seven Sulky Sides for Seven Bulky Brooders * I Entered the Forest at Midnight * Boiling the Kettle * The Careful Plottings of my Enamoured Heart * Boolean Amours

Yule Do Nicely

Yule Do Nicely (2017)
Gloomy Seahorse Press

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat, please put a penny in the old man’s hat. Yes, but we first require more information about the goose, the penny and the hat. We can’t be too careful these days. How fat is the goose getting and what connection does it have with the old man? Is the goose getting so fat that it is likely to explode with disastrous results for the nation? How will paying the old man a penny prevent this outcome? The situation is unclear.

We are on more certain ground when it is explained that the following fictions have been assembled in their present form in order to celebrate the festive season. They include work from the span of the past quarter century. The first twenty-four tales form a weird advent calendar from December 1st to 24th. Then it is Christmas Day and time for the stocking and the twenty-eight little strange tales inside it. Merry Xmas!

Contents:

The Hidden Sixpence * Three Friends * Down in the Park * The Chocolate Princess * Loafing Around * The Duvet Thief * My Beetroot Brow * The Moon and the Well * His Unstable Shape * The Cakes of Gehenna * Double Atlas * The Dirtiest Ararat * Zucchini Overdrive * Suttee and Sweep * The Strongest Monster * Cats' Eyes * Fringes and Bangs * Monsieur Choux * A Corking Tale * Don't Shoot the Messenger * All the Waiting * The Wrong Lamp *The Pancake Hurler * The Precious Mundanity * The Shocking Stocking

Note: 'The Shocking Stocking' is a portmanteau tale incorporating 28 little fictions.

World Muses

World Muses (2017)
Ex Occidente

"The world is a ball and our minds are a room and our lives are an endless dance in the ballrooms of forsaken palaces on those smaller worlds called our hearts, where seismic activity is almost constant, for the geology of our emotions is still young. The volcanic upthrusts of our yearnings make mountains out of our hopes and inspiration shakes the earth and collapses it beneath us and we wish for our fears to turn out to be groundless too. And sometimes indeed they are."

Contents:

World Muses (a series of eighty linked fictions)

Salty Kiss Island

Salty Kiss Island (2017)
Immanion Press

"This anthology collects for the first time Rhys Hughes’ fantastical love stories. What is a fantastical love story? It isn’t quite the same as an ordinary love story. The events that take place are stranger, more extreme, full of the passion of originality, invention and magic, as well as an intensification of emotional love. Also, the voice that tells them has rather a different tone to a conventional romantic narrator. The stories in Salty Kiss Island are set in this world and others, spanning the spectrum of possible and impossible experiences, the uncharted territories of yearning, the depths and shoals of the heart, mind and soul. They are adventure yarns, whimsies and comedies, tragedies and paradoxes. They are melancholy, gleeful, philosophic or mystical. A love of language runs through them, parallel to the love that motivates their characters to feats of preposterous heroism, luminous lunacy and grandiose gesture. They include tales of minstrels and their catastrophic serenades, dreamers sinking into sequences of ever-deeper dreams, goddesses and mermaids, sailors and devils, messages in bottles that can think and speak but never be read, shadows with an independent life and voyagers of distant galaxies who are already at their destinations before they arrive."

Contents:

Foreword * All for Nothing * Accordion Beach * The Innumerable Chambers of the Heart * Paradise Discarded * Eternal Horizon * Starlight Girl * The Cargo Cults of Salty Kiss Island * The Sweetheart Rosary * Venus and Stupid * The Mermaid Variations * Message to Rosita * Left on the Shelf * The Cure of the Scandal in Averroës * Love Keys * The Requirements of Desire * The Sublime Voyage of Ariana Aragão * Died For Puns * As I Walked Out One Midsummer Night's Dream * Don Entrerrosca * A Spaceship in the Shape of a Woman * An Unpleasant Romance * What the Shadow Sees * Afterword

Cloud Farming in Wales

Cloud Farming in Wales (2017)
Snuggly Books

"In Wales it never stops raining. Or almost never. When it does stop raining from the sky, it rains from hearts instead. Indoors as well as outdoors, the people huddle in the endless drenchings, and over time they have evolved into aquatic creatures who only look and behave like men and women but aren’t really. There is a clue in the name of the country. Wales is a nation with no spot of dry land within its borders. Wales is an Atlantis that never stayed under but is just as wet. Crammed with mythical beings and happenings, Cloud Farming in Wales palpitates, germinates and extrapolates, but never evaporates, and the sodden heroes that wade and slosh through the mighty puddles of its pages are generally in search of a canoe."

The Seashell Contract

The Seashell Contract (2017)
Gloomy Seahorse Press

"The seashell contract is binding on the human race. Once it is signed, the ocean will grow warmer and storms rage across the land. Other tales involve the longest chopsticks, a man who falls afoul of the sons of the sea, the first selfie photograph ever taken and its unexpected consequences, the man who swallowed an apple pip in order to grow a tree in his stomach, and the sasquatch who went to work in an office... 22 stories in total and all for a good cause. The author's profits from the sale of this book will go to The Mariposa Trust, a charity that supports mothers and families who have lost babies..."

Contents:

Chopsticks * The Seashell Contract * The Belly Orchard * Billy Holiday on Vacation * The Waters of Fosretaweht * Four Agora Corners * The Salsa Raft * Galaxy Whispers * A Comedy of Gambits * The Bus Museum * Why Look at Me Smugly? * Heavy Rain on a Slow Train * The Monumental Mason * The Promotion * The International Geophysical Ear * Junkshop in Oestrus * The Kizomba Wanderers * Where Everyone Wins * The Four Sea Sons * The Kind of Man * The Selfie Habit * The Workplace Hugger

Brutal Pantomimes

Brutal Pantomimes (2016)
Egaeus Press

"Brutal Pantomimes contains ten tales of absurd exoticism, weird adventure and wild fantasy from the shockingly prolific and highly acclaimed Rhys Hughes. Most of the stories, novelettes and novella included have not previously been published and some are regarded by their author to be among his best works... Enjoy pirate shenanigans, a globe of the Earth that is a voodoo doll, the dubious gifts of a Greek god, impossible angles, improbable sciences, impractical philosophies, a rare tropical yeti in a submarine and so much more. Featuring an introduction by Michael Cisco."

Contents:

The Jam of Hypnos * The Private Pirates Club * Corsets on the Outside * Wise Man * The Inflatable Stadium * The Eeriness that Lurks on the Far Side of Furniture * The Knees of Kionga * Shipyards on Saturn * How Gangrene was my Sally * The Impossible Inferno

Note: The story entitled 'Wise Man' actually consists of six linked tales, namely 'No Fury', 'Your Day', 'Last Chance', 'Nothing Else', 'In Stiches' and 'Most Unwise'

Mirrors in the Deluge

Mirrors in the Deluge (2015)
Elsewhen Press

A collection of 32 stories of unusual fantasy, philosophical satire, ironic adventure and laterally logical daftness.

Contents

The Prodigal Beard * The Bungle Duke * The Modesty Men * The Soft Landing * Gathering the Genial Genies * Najort Esroh * Travels with my Antinomy * The Bubble Bursts * A Dame Abroad * A Real Nowhere Man * Gold, Myrrh and Frankenstein * The Mouth of Hell * The Strings of Segovia * Paired Down * Arms Against a Sea * The Martian Monocles * Suddenly * Stand and Deliver * Trophy Wife * The Unkissed Artist Formerly Known as Frog * The Fairy and the Dinosaur * The Goat that Gloated * Vanity of Vanities * Unicorn on the Cob * Sunstorm * The Anvil Cloud * The Apple of My Sky * The Taste of Turtle Tears * The Musical Universe * The Bones of Jones * Train of Thought * The Haggis Eater

Thirty Tributes to Calvino

Thirty Tributes to Calvino (2015)
Gloomy Seahorse Press

A collection of thirty stories inspired by the genius of the writer Italo Calvino...

Paradoxical and philosophical fables; impossible cartographies and labyrinths of the mind and heart; towers that stretch across the universe; men who set sail on domestic oceans; the opinions and hopes of the sun; sentient geometries; games with gravity and planets; metafiction and wordplay; recursion and exploration; the perplexities of logic and desire.

These thirty tribute stories demonstrate the whimsical inventiveness and originality of an author who has won considerable acclaim for his speculative fiction.

Contents:

The Memory Palace * The Time Tunnel Orchid * Trombonhomie * The Non-Existent Viscount in the Trees * The Impregnable Fortress * Mundi Mourning * The Grave Demeanour * The Planet of Perfect Happiness * Starfish Wish * Beyond Paraparapara * The Pig Iron Mouse Dooms the Moon * Universe Tower * Benchmark * The City That Was Itself * The Rowing Machine * Sending Freedom Far Away * The Cowardly Custard Apple * Doom It Heavenwards * The Chattering Star * Hagmouth Town * A Spaceship in the Shape of a Woman * The Melon Seller * The Square Circle * Giddy Up * The Days of the Turbans * The Blue Jewel Fruit * Canute a Little * Broom Cupboard of Crossed Destinies * The Bathing Bells * My Most Metafictional Tale

Orpheus on the Underground

Orpheus on the Underground (2015)
Tartarus Press

Orpheus on the Underground is the new Rhys Hughes collection from Tartarus Press, containing fifteen previously unpublished stories and ‘The Concise Picaresque Adventures of the Wanderlust Bridge’, which first appeared in Strange Tales II, 2008. Ranging from the ghostly, through horror to the entirely fantastic, Hughes’ marvellously inventive tales steer the reader through the bizarre labyrinths of his unique talent for the strange.

In ‘The Upper Reaches’, two pilots discover a world beyond their mission, while the eponymous hero of ‘Orpheus on the Underground’ attempts to fit classical myth into the transport system of a modern metropolis. ‘Behind Every Ghost’ takes a conventional aphorism to its illogical limit, while ‘The Phantom Festival’ explores the history of music on various levels. In the ‘The Quixote Candidate’, a would-be film director is persuaded to give what may turn out to be an overly comprehensive interview.

In the twenty years since the publication of his first short story collection (Worming the Harpy, Tartarus Press, 1995) Rhys Hughes has become an éminence grise of the strange tale. He wears his reputation lightly, and it is the sheer fun and individuality of the stories in Orpheus on the Underground that make them so memorable.

Contents:

The Upper Reaches * Orpheus on the Underground * The Gargoyles of Black Wood * The Despicable Bungling of Yorick Porridge * Behind Every Ghost * The Ghost Written Autobiography of a Disembodied Spirit * Double Meaning * The Nick of Time * The Bicycle Centaur * The Quixote Candidate * The Pocket Shops * The Concise Picaresque Adventures of the Wanderlust Bridge * The Phantom Festival * Not Looking * New Improved Recipe for Disaster * The Great Me

Bone Idle in the Charnel House

Bone Idle in the Charnel House (2014)
Hippocampus Press

For more than two decades, Welsh writer Rhys Hughes has been entertaining and befuddling readers with his distinctive mix of terror, humor, fantasy, and absurdity. Although influenced by such writers as Italo Calvino and Jorge Luis Borges, his work is utterly unique in its melding of weirdness and comic grotesquerie.

In this substantial collection of new and reprinted stories, Hughes displays the literary skills that have brought him a wide and devoted readership. Many of these stories have been published in leading magazines and anthologies over the past decade; but several are unpublished and reveal their wonders and mysteries for the first time. With this book, Rhys Hughes stakes a claim to being one of the most original writers in contemporary weird fiction.

Contents:

The Swinger * Bitter in Sour * The Old House Under the Snow * Degrees of Separation * The Warlord * Vampiric Gramps * Bone Idle in the Charnel House * What I Fear Most * Rediffusion * Casimir the Converter * Smuggling Old Nick to Newfoundland * Shelling the Toad * The Hydrothermal Reich * The Spoon * Chameleons * Happiness Leasehold * Life and the Plumbline * The Unsubtle Cages * Signma Octantis * The Century Just Gone

Captains Stupendous

Captains Stupendous (2014)
Telos Publishing

Too Much Travel Can Flatten the Mind...

"So you want to know about the Faraway Brothers, do you? Born somewhere in Gascony, they were, in the 1880s, all three of them birthed at the same time from the same womb of the same mother. Grew up in the same household, they did too, eating the same food, reading the same books, counting the legs on the same spider because the family couldn’t afford a real clock; but later they went their separate ways. Scipio took to the sea, to ships, islands and women; Distanto took to the air, to balloons, islands and women; Neary, unluckiest of the triplets, remained on land, taking only to locomotives and stations and chastity. Many adventures they all had and often their paths crossed and sometimes they clashed and the consequences were always totally STUPENDOUS!"

Contents:

This book is a novel made up of the following three linked novellas:
The Coandă Effect * The Gargantuan Legion * The Apedog Incident

The Lunar Tickle

The Lunar Tickle (2014)
Dog Horn Publishing

The Lives and Spacetimes of Thornton Excelsior...

“Thornton Excelsior is a man but he’s not an individual, he’s a multitude, an ensemble of avatars of himself that can exist in any place at any time. His mission is to do all possible things and most impossible ones. Give him a feather and he will tickle the moon until it laughs; give him a laugh and he will sell it in the market for a story; give him a story and he will give you a book of them. This book. A book to make full moons giggle.”

Contents:

An Inconvenient Fruit * The Maze * Hatstands on Zanzibar * The Porcelain Pig * Mad March Stylist * Tears of the Mutant Jesters *The Paradoxical Pachyderms * The Integers * The Shrug * The Longest Name * The Esplanade * The Rotten Otter * The Ducks of Hazard * Knight on a Bear Mountain * The Cheeky Monkey * The Melody Tree * The Reversed Comma * Black Ops * The Burning Ears * The Gates of Corn and Toffee * Whether the Weatherman * Note to Oneself * Said the Spook * The Notorious Unclemuncher * Read All About It * Putting Things Off * The Canapés of Wrath * The Plug * The Queue * Fossils * The Heat Death of Mr Universe * The Infringement * The Television * The Lock of Love *Sheer Lunar Sea * My Bearable Smugness

Note: the story entitled 'Tears of the Mutant Jesters' is a slightly rewritten version of a tale originally called 'The Appendix'

Bottled Love Story

Bottled Love Story (2014)
Gloomy Seahorse Press

"Love can't be bottled but it might arrive in a bottle... Love is a game like chess but with smiles, winks, laughs and kisses for pieces... Love is a problem. Is there a solution?

Cult author Rhys Hughes answers this question and resolves all the paradoxes in his new novelette. Join the woman who has no need for romance and the sailor from another age as they simultaneously attempt to accept and avoid the designs of destiny."

Contents:

This book contains the novelette 'Bottled Love Story' and is distinctive for making extensive use of typographical tricks, unusual layouts, pictures as part of the story, etc.

Rhysop's Fables

Rhysop's Fables (2014)
Gloomy Seahorse Press

"Tired of being given good advice in fables and parables by wise men, sages and gurus?

Why not try Rhysop's Fables instead, a set of 207 unhelpful and irresponsible fables? There are no messages here telling you how best to live your life. That kind of thing is entirely up to you! The philosophy of Rhysop's Fables is that there are no answers to life because life is not a question...

Join a cast of crows, clouds, aardvarks, snails, robots, foxes, dinosaurs, ghosts, pickle jars and many other beings and things in the great quest to fail to unravel the mysteries of existence! You won't regret it; and even if you do, you won't regret your regret!"

Contents:

Foreword * Rhysop's Fables * The Parable of the Homeless Fable * Rhysop's Return * Afterword

The Sticky Situations of Zwicky Fingers

The Sticky Situations of Zwicky Fingers (2014)
Gloomy Seahorse Press

"Zwicky Fingers is a giant fruit bat detective who lives in the past, present and future simultaneously. He is often consulted by the police force when there are paradoxical, lateral or impossible crimes to be solved. His sticky situations are ten tricky cases, one for each finger of two hands; but hands belonging to whom? That's just one of the mysteries you may or may not encounter when you join Zwicky on this decathlon of Calvinoesque whimsies!"

Contents:

The Trail Separation * The Reverse Midas* The Tetrahedron Offensive * The Name of the Nose * The Experimenter's Chagrin * Mr Hyde and Dr Seek * This Werewolf Prefers Muesli * The Sock Camels * The Haggler of Affection * The Lap of Your Gaze

Flash in the Pantheon

Flash in the Pantheon (2014)
Gloomy Seahorse Press

A collection of 123 flash fictions by a writer who has made his reputation as a devoted champion of the short story form. None of the stories in this book are longer than 999 words; most are under 500 words; some are less than 100. The very short story is a noble literary tradition and includes such renowned names as Kafka, Chekhov, O Henry, Frederic Brown, Daniil Kharms and Brian Aldiss among its greatest practitioners. Ranging the spectrum of the imagination and encompassing a diverse range of styles and moods including fantasy, science fiction, humour, irony, whimsy and satire, this collection is perfect for the contemporary reader in our modern busy world.

"If only I'd had Flash in the Pantheon with me when I hitchhiked through Germany in 1959! I did have Fredric Brown's Nightmares & Geezenstacks flash fictions, to which Rhys Hughes tips his hat—but half way down the Rhine I ran out of flash; and I don't mean torch battery. Many of Hughes' microstories imply much, served with wit and whimsy and word-relish, high spirits and bittersweet twists—like a candied anchovy in a shot glass of rum; and some are very punny. Hughes would have kept me going till I got to the Hofbräuhaus." - IAN WATSON

The Gloomy Seahorse

The Gloomy Seahorse (2014)
Gloomy Seahorse Press

A book of poetry by Rhys Hughes with more than seventy poems selected from the past twenty years of his writing career and divided into four approximate categories: absurdism, mystical, science fiction and lovey-dovey, followed by an afterword.

Contents:

Doughnut Go Gently * A Single Soul * My Head Fell into the Cabbage Soup * Nipple Song * Madras Guillotine * The Bones of Jones * Mothers * Ode to Auburnity She Was Peculiar in the Evenings * The Wild Hunt * Lord of Socks * Information Tongs * Madeleine is Her Own Filling Burbank with a Biryani: Bleistein with an Aloo Kofta * Ubu’s Ablutions * Autumn Ennui * Acrophobia in Acre * The Searcher * The Hungover Ruba’iyat * Iguana * Tuning in to Someone Else's Headache * The Cloudy Cider Drinker * More Loss Of Course * Ice Floes in Eden * Grandmother Time * The Damnation of Chris de Burgh * Three Augurs * Gogmagogical * Charles and Diode * Tea for Shoe * You Gave Me Cashew Nuts * The Fall of Rome * Absolutely the Last Monster to Be Boiled in a Pot at My House * Language Lesson * Gothic Looking Glass * The Gloomy Seahorse * The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Vindaloo * Monkey From a Cannon * My Eye Fell into the Bath * The Doors of Her Face * Jump * Khufu * Obtuse Angels * All Had Wide Eyes * Corkscrew * Old Mother Hubbard’s Alopecia Demands a Second-Hand Periwig * The Knight of Whatever * Witness * The Pedestrian's Complaint * Muffin Worry * My Bicycle is Really Yours * Brian the Actor * Huw Rees * The North Face of the Ego * Eyesore Isotopes * It's All Fenugreek to Me * My Girlfriend Left Me in India * Black and White * Tortillas on Sugarloaf * My Foot Walked Off Without Me * Dogdays * Uncommon Prayer * Highly-Strung Women * Snoutferatu * Mutant Fair * I Froth a Lot * Consuming Passion * The Certainty That the Plane is Going to Crash * Sunflower * The Avant-Gardener * My Thumb Has Stuck Fast in Your Ship * The Compass of Digestion * The Vikings are Invading my House * I Can Walk Faster Than a Bicycle * A Girl Like a Doric Column * Hydra Eyebrows * Sensible Ode to an Absurd Moon * Afterword

More Than a Feline

More Than a Feline (2013)
Gloomy Seahorse Press

An illustrated volume of cat stories and poems by cult author Rhys Hughes written over the past two decades and collected together for the very first time. Do you want to know what happened when Pushkin came to Shovekin; or how the sausage dog Bangers the Mash helped every cat in the world; or which grey cat drank fifty cups of tea one after the other? If so, you need to read More Than a Feline...

Contents:

Foreword * A Tale with the Title at the End * The Cat * Cat in a Balloon * Making a Feline * Cat in a Bathysphere * Cat o'Nine Tales * Autumn Cat * Rimsky's the Limit * Fat Cat Fable * Silky Salathiel * Lady, Tiger and Protozoon * The Cellar Door * Cat on a Unicycle * The Magic Kitten * Lunar Love Cats * The Pig Iron Mouse Dooms the Moon * The Cat that Got the Cream * The Big Lick * The Mice Will Play * Cats' Eyes * Alphabeticat * A Word in Your Shell-Like * Bangers the Mash * The Rescue * When Pushkin Came to Shovekin * Fifty Cups of Lady Grey

Buy from Lulu here.

Note: The pieces in blue are poems, not stories. 'A Tale with the Title at the End' is 'His Wife's Whiskers' retitled; and 'The Magic Kitten' is a rewritten version of 'The Magic Lamp'.

The Young Dictator

The Young Dictator (2013)
Pillar International Publishing

"Thanks to a strange set of circumstances, Jenny Khan wins the Carrington by-election and gets sent to Westminster as an MP. Partly because she holds the balance of power in a hung parliament – but mostly thanks to some magical help – she is able to launch a coup, overthrow democracy and declare herself a dictator. Her regime is opposed by the Middle Classes and a Civil War breaks out. Jenny is shocked to learn that the leaders of the rebels are her own Mum and Dad... Then it gets really weird... On this journey you will meet a man that has grown too old to die, a skeletal Queen, Skargills, shrinking continents, honest aliens, interstellar despots and a myriad of creatures and characters at right-angles to reality... This book is an hilarious, absurd, odd, idiosyncratic blast of an adventure. To be enjoyed by mischievous adults and clever children."

Contents:

Jenny Khan * Genghis Kan't * Caterpillar the Hun * Owl Scared of the Dark * The Cat That Chilled the Scene * Moonmoths, Umbrellas and Oranges

Buy from Amazon here.

The Just Not So Stories

The Just Not So Stories (2013)
The Exaggerated Press

"They said it just wasn’t so. But it was! Thirty stories exploring the bizarre and curiously absurd world of cult writer Rhys Hughes... Irony—Whimsy—Paradox... Aliens—Mad Scientists—Monsters... Living Bicycles... Trumpeters in Outer Space... Wordplay... Robots in Lingerie... That’s the least of it... Herein you will discover phenomena new not only to science but also to the imagination! Roll up! Roll up! But if you can’t roll, feel free to hop, prance, slither, gyrate, stride, tiptoe, slide or undulate in any style you choose!"

Contents:

The Mistake * The Pastel Whimsy * The Great Bicycle Migration * Personification * The Strongest Monster * The Mark of Cain, the Jeremy of Abel * Tuberculosis Bells * My Biological Prism * The Yeasty Rise and Half-Baked Fall of Lyndon Williams * The Leveller of Neptune * How to Lose Friends and Alienate People * The Grave Demeanour * The Ugliest Idol in Christendom * Message to Rosita * Lyndon: God * Pulpo * The Underwear Shop * My Crow Nation * Climbing the Tallest Tree in the World * The Censor * Aldrin’s the Buzzword * Butterbrow * The Blue Jewel Fruit * Mate in Pi * Bachelor of Voodoo * The Gunfight * The Tale That Never Got Told * The Sun Trap * The Dwarf Shortage * My Own Worst Anemone

Buy from Lulu here.

The Abnormalities of Stringent Strange

The Abnormalities of Stringent Strange (2013)
Meteor House

"The world has never seen an aviator quite like Stringent Strange. Half man, half ape, half badly added fraction, he can fly anything with wings and many things without. Under the mentorship of the unorthodox genius Professor Tobias Crinkle, our hairy hero soon gets much more than he bargains for when he finds himself up against a fiendish Nazi plot to invade and conquer America before the war has even begun! Fortunately there exists an invention that can help him fight back against the warlike scoundrels, but the consequences of using it will propel him into even greater peril, into an alternative future where the themes and tropes of early magazine science fiction are menacingly real and coexist in perfect disharmony! Into a bracing reality where the only weapons he can rely on are the three special abnormalities he was born with… Come and join Stringent Strange in a stupendous, mysterious, inventive adventure set in a far-flung time When Pulps Collide!"

Tallest Stories

Tallest Stories (2013)
Eibonvale Press

"If every tale told in a tavern is a tall story, then what happens when the entire universe becomes a tavern? It means that every story ever told is tall and therefore untrue, and this includes the true tales. They are all lies. But a lie is a concept only possible because it can be contrasted with truth: without its opposite concept it makes no sense at all. This implies one of two unlikely things, (a) the universe is not really a tavern, (b) there are other universes beyond this one where true stories exist. If you ever learn which is the correct answer to this riddle please let me know."

60 linked stories, 60 illustrations, 18 years in the making...

Taller Stories
Prologue; Rainbow’s End; Ghost Holiday; Those Wonderful Words; Learning to Fly; Learning to Fall; The Banshee; The Queen of Jazz; Anna and the Dragon; Three Friends; The Rake and the Fool; Goblin Sunrise; The Juggler; The Peat Fire; Knight on a Bear Mountain; Something About a Demon; The Furious Walnuts; The Illustrated Student; The Story with a Clever Title; The Silver Necks; Never Hug an Aardvark; Epilogue

More Taller Stories
In the Margins; The Wooden Salesman; Two Fat Men in a Very Thin Country; The Man Who Threw his Voice; The Sealed Room; The Masterpiece; The Hole Truth: a Lie; Entropy; The Time Tunnel Orchid; The Golden Fleas; The West Pole; Islands in the Bathtub; Billion World Boat; The Smutty Tamarinds; A Curry in Camelot; Encore

Last Taller Stories
The Surface Area of a Ghost’s Wanderings; Degrees of Separation; The Folded Page; Milk and Ladders; Niddala; The Juice of Days; The Kissable Climes; But it Pours; The Tallest Midget; The Man who Gargled with Gargoyle Juice; The Minotaur in Pamplona; Wood for the Trees; The Violation; Oaths; Chianti’s Inferno; Gaspar Jangle’s Séance; The Urban Freckle; Corneropolis; The Six Sentinels; The Mirror in the Looking Glass; Trombonhomie; Climbing the Tallest Tree in the World; Anton Arctic and the Conquest of the Scottish Pole; The Most Boring Story

Afterword

The Truth Spinner

The Truth Spinner (2012)
Wildside Press

The complete adventures of Castor Jenkins!

"Castor Jenkins is a Welshman who tells stories that may (or may not) be true... but no matter how fantastic, who can prove they never happened? In the tradition of Lord Dunsany's The Travel Tales of Mr. Joseph Jorkens and Arthur C. Clarke's Tales from the White Hart, here is a collection of club stories full of wonder and marvels, as only Rhys Hughes could have told them!"

Part 1: The Münchausen of Porthcawl
Castor on Troubled Waters * Canis Raver * The Plucked Plant * When Wales Played Asgård * Interstellar Domestic * The Cream-Jest of Unset Custard * The Day the Town of Porthcawl was Accidentally Twinned with the Capital of the Cheese and Biscuits Empire

Part 2: Tribulations of the Human Bean
The Monkey's Pawpaw * Home Suit Home * All in a Flap * Hangfire Bubbler * The Private Pirate's Club

Part 3: Castor on the Seven Plus Seas
Chuckleberry Grin * Penal Colony * Flying Saucer Harmonies * Nemo's Omen * The Thousand and One Pints * Celebration Day

Note: The story entitled 'Hangfire Bubbler' in this collection is a rewritten version of a previously unpublished story called 'Poorly Dawkins'.

Sangria in the Sangraal

Sangria in the Sangraal (2011)
Ex Occidente Press

An entire story-cycle in miniature. One thousand years of the remarkable magical history of a secret region of Spain where few people venture even now. Albarracín is a rose-red town tucked away in the mountains of Lower Aragon. Once the seat of an independent taifa during the dominance of the Caliphate of Cordoba, it remained saturated with ancient mystery long after the separated kingdoms of the peninsular were forged through conquest into the single nation we know today. In Albarracín still lurk the djinn of the wondrous past in their dusty bottles and the ghosts of heroes and villains locked in the crucibles of a rogue alchemist.

Contents:

The Shapes Down There * The Spare Hermit * Sally Forth * The Magic Gone * Sangria in the Sangraal * The Man Toucan * Latitude, Longitude and Plenitude * The Kind Generosity of Theophrastus Tautology * Scaramouche's Pouting Mouth * Knossos in its Glory * Señor Chimera's Hysterical History * The Bone Throwers

Note: the final two stories in the list above are only available in the second updated edition of the book, published by Eibonvale Press in September 2016.

Link Arms With Toads!

Link Arms With Toads! (2011)
Chômu Press

A Showcase of Romanti-Cynical Stories

"Whether you are a ghost, a robot or just an apeman, you can always link arms with toads!"

Self-reflective mirrors looking for their own reflections. Towns that migrate to the moon. Prisoners of elaborate dungeons and gigantic miniature solar systems. Robots, ghosts, rascals, explorers, troubadours, apemen and yetis. All are present in the multiverse of inversion and invention that is Link Arms with Toads!

Contents:

The Troubadours of Perception * Number 13½ * The Taste of the Moon * Lunarhampton * The Expanding Woman * All Shapes Are Cretans * The Innumerable Chambers of the Heart * Pity the Pendulum * 333 and a Third * The Candid Slyness of Scurrility Forepaws * Ye Olde Resignation * Castle Cesare * The Mirror in the Looking Glass * Oh Ho! * Loneliness * Hell Toupée * Inside the Outline * Discrepancy

The Brothel Creeper

The Brothel Creeper (2011)
Gray Friar Press

Tales of Sexual and Spiritual Tension.

Contents:

The Ditching * One Man’s Meat * The Cuckoos of Bliss * One’s a Crowd * Southbound Satin * Pyramid and Thisbe * Is My Wife On Mars? * The Indigo Casbah * God in a Basement Flat * Fanny * Crash, With Shopping Trolleys * Mah Jong Breath * The Flesh Stocking * Casimir the Converter * The Docking of Spaceship Earth * Cuntlock * The Sickness of Satan * The Gibbon in the Garret * The Small Miracle * Cracking Nuts With Jan Hammer * The Quims of Itapetinga

Notes: (a) 'Cracking Nuts With Jan Hammer' only appears in the hardback edition, (b) the item entitled 'Fanny' is a miniature story-cycle consisting of eight brief tales ('Fanny is Famished', 'The Furry Godmother', 'Petal Put the Kelly On', 'Fanny of the Apes', 'Knobheads and Dipsticks', 'Fanny of the Opera', 'Pussy in Boots', 'Flicking a Fleck of Freckled Flapper').

The Coandă Effect

The Coandă Effect (2010)
Ex Occidente Press

A Corto Maltese adventure!

The early years of the 20th century. Submarines, bicycles, physics, ghosts, elusive pirates, honest bandits, hats, icebergs, the Second Balkans War of 1913, the shadow of Franz Kafka, duels and cobwebs, nostalgia and a Finnish villain so dastardly that even the author was shocked by his antics! The Coandă Effect is a novella concerning magic, science, mystery and mayhem, as the enigmatic "sailor without a ship" plumbs the delirious depths of a fiendish plot to convert the souls of the dead into pure energy! Edition limited to only 100 hand numbered copies.

Twisthorn Bellow

Twisthorn Bellow (2010)
Atomic Fez Publishing

Contents:

* The Wings of Phoebus
* The Pots of Pan
* The Skin of Marsyas
* The Feet of Sciron
* The Earlobes of Æsop
* The Shoelaces of Jupiter
* The Clangers of Paris

A full-length metafictional novel describing the "unusual escapades of a self-exploding golem with a twisted horn and attitude somewhere on the astral plane and also on foot right here..." Partly inspired by Mike Mignola's 'Hellboy' character, partly inspired by the works of Philip José Farmer. Cover art by Steve Upham.

Mister Gum

Mister Gum (2009)
Dog Horn Publishing

A compound novel detailing the life and adventures of Mr Gum, an obscene and pompous Creative Writing tutor, with his sidekicks, Fellatio Nelson and Detective Inspector Ynch Short of the Yard. The novel is divided into four parts. The first part is a satire on the teaching of creative writing; the second is a satire on crime fiction; the third is a satire on detective fiction; and the fourth is a satire against satire. Only the second edition of this novel contains the 'Sticky White Hands' and 'I am a Slimy Man' chapters.

Contents:

Part One: The Creative Writing Tutor
* Oh, Whistle While You Work, and I’ll Come to You, My Dwarf * Boo to a Goose * Whaling Well * The Tenant of Arcimboldo Hall * Canon Alberic’s Photo-Album

Part Two: Up a Gumtree
* The Groin Scratcher * Plop Fiction

Part Three: Spermicidal Maniacs
* Where the Sun Doesn’t Shine * Cop Hospital * Plums and Oriels

Part Four: Gum, Set and Match
* The Glue of the Scream * Sticky White Hands * I am a Slimy Man

Engelbrecht Again!

Engelbrecht Again! (2008)
Dead Letter Press

A sequel to Maurice Richardson's classic 1950s gothic comedy, The Exploits of Engelbrecht.

"The Further Exploits of Engelbrecht, abstracted from The Secret Chronicles of The Surrealist Sportsman's Club by A.N. Other, hidden on the orders of the Ruling Committee but dug up again by Rhys Hughes, and authenticated at perilous emotional cost by a selection of mythological beasts including Harpies, Unicorns, Manticores, Zaratans, Vainglorious Chimeras, the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary and a Squonk..."

Contents:

Gauntlet of Gorgons * Far on Bicycles * Young Werther Cheers Up * Surfing the Solar Wind * The North Face of the Ego * Tug of Worlds * Engelbrecht at the Eisteddfod * A Mermaid Supper * Last Tango in Atlantis * A Sandal Waiting to Happen * A Monkey for all Seasons * The Destruction of Destruction * Engelbrecht and Ubu * A Sumwot Labud Sattire * The Chronic Argonauts Get Better

The Postmodern Mariner

The Postmodern Mariner (2008)
Screaming Dreams

"A short book of implausible adventures featuring absurdities, anachronisms, exaggerations, outrageous puns, pirates, mythological beings, giant cups of tea and the occasional metafictional trick..."

Contents:

The Münchhausen of Porthcawl
Castor on Troubled Waters * Canis Raver * The Plucked Plant * When Wales Played Asgård * Interstellar Domestic * The Cream-Jest of Unset Custard * The Day the Town of Porthcawl was Accidentally Twinned with the Capital of the Cheese and Biscuits Empire

Piper at the Fates of Ooze
The Lip Service

The Postmodern Mariner in Person
Rommel Cobra's Swimming Carnival

The Less Lonely Planet

The Less Lonely Planet (2008)
Humdrumming Press

"Tales of Here, There & Happenstance"

Contents:

Foreword * Thinner Air * Troubleroot * Goblin Sunrise * The Two Kingdoms * The Taming of the Old Woman who Lived in a Shrew * Thief Among Thieves * Below the Carnival * The Muse Ouroboros * Accordion Beach * The Mice Will Play * The Desiccated Sage * Two Fat Men in a Very Thin Country * Niddala * Sending Freedom Far Away * The Impregnable Fortress * The Bathing Bells * Doom Laden Haven * The Six Sentinels * In Moonville * But it Pours * The City that was Itself * The Man who Gargled with Gargoyle Juice * The Tallest Midget * The Kissable Climes * The Non-Existent Viscount in the Trees * When the Microscopic Giants Took Over Happenstance * Venus and Stupid * Von Ryan’s Daughter’s Express * In Sunsetville * Fable with Turkish Coffee * Sir Cheapskate * Playing Impossible Instruments * Afterword