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.