Saturday 27 November 2021

My Little Halloween Book

My Little Halloween Book (2021)
Gloomy Seahorse Press

Four horror stories that are perfect for Halloween and just as good at any other time of year.

This is a slim pocket-sized book featuring stories of the macabre, in turns diabolical, kafkaesque, and grotesquely absurd. All of the stories are recent. Two have been previously published, the other two have not.

Contents:

Between the Circles * Are You Being Severed? * Hungry Mouths * The Utterly Conventional Abode on the Perfectly Normal Hill

Sunday 17 October 2021

The Seven Deadly Sinbads

The Seven Deadly Sinbads (2021)

New adventures of the famous sailor.

Sinbad visits strange islands, dips beneath the sea to meet mermaids, is shipwrecked and rescued and shipwrecked again, finds a message in a bottle that tells a most remarkable story and ends up performing in a very unusual music festival.

He has learned wisdom over the years and wraps legends around himself like a cloak.

"The wages of sin are death, they say, but we sin every day, and Sinbad earns his salary anyway, on seven salty seas."

Contents:

False Dawn of Parrots * The Missing Ink * The Seven Deadly Sinbads * Sinbad's Ear * The Geometry of Prayer * The Upside-Down Story * The Little Ironies * The Dusky Birron Returns * The Gala of Implausible Songs

Saturday 4 September 2021

Cthulhu Wants You!

Cthulhu Wants You! (2021)

A collection of short stories inspired by the Cthulhu Mythos of H.P. Lovecraft.

These stories are not parodies or pastiches but darkly ironic fantasies that connect with the Mythos at a tangent. Open-minded devotees of Lovecraft may find amusement in the offbeat ideas, paradoxical plots, whimsical language and strange originality of these tales.

But whether you know what you want or not, be assured of one thing: Cthulhu wants you!

Contents:

Bridge Over Troubled Blood * A Languid Elagabalus of the Tombs * * The Crab * The Itchy Skin of Creepy Aplomb * The Lollipop God is Dead * Abomination with Rice * The Cream-Jest of Unset Custard * Sigma Octantis * The Bicycle-Centaur * How Gangrene was my Sally * The Sauce of the Guile * On the Other Hand

Thursday 2 September 2021

Utopia in Trouble

Utopia in Trouble (2021)

"Some time ago, we set ourselves a goal, an objective, an ideal: to publish an epic poem in the parameters of Rhys Hughes, not Homer. It would be a Rhysariad. And after Mombasa Madrigal (and other African Escapades), Arms Against a Sea (And Other Troubles), Crepuscularks and Phantomimes, here we have Utopia in Trouble. Farce, satire and parody are usual elements in Rhys Hughes' prose, but in Utopia in Trouble they gain an almost cinematic freshness. Not only for the sincere, almost touching tribute to the great filmmaker Jacques Tati in the short story "The Playtime of Monunculus", but for the entire framework of each of the stories in this book. For Utopia, here, appears not only as the hieratic and perpetually stable project of a perfect society, but as the irresistible strangeness that only imagination and fiction can evoke, even if in a brief and dizzying instant. Utopia in Trouble, a collection with fearsome short stories by Rhys Hughes. A perfect square in format (7.87 × 7.87 in.), 90 pages, with a exclusive, painfully handcrafted Japanese binding style, designed at Raphus Press Immanent Headquarters and printed by Sol Negro. As usual, this new chapbook edition will be very scarce: only 25 copies, plus some (very few) private copies."

Contents:

The Burning Nose * The Forever Man * The Playtime of Monunculus * The Overlooked Story * The Geometry of Prayer * Other Days

Saturday 14 August 2021

Bunny Queue

Bunny Queue (2021)

A poetry collection.

"The bunnies of imagination are seeking entry to your mind. Offbeat but timely, whimsical but wise, playful but perceptive, these quirky and mostly short poems may put you in mind of Ogden Nash, Ivor Cutler, Spike Milligan or any other absurdist poet you like, and put a smile on your face while doing so. It is sensible to be silly, profoundly so in some instances. That is the general message of this collection. The bunnies of imagination are already queuing. Will you let them in?"

“Bunny Queue serves up a long collection of short poems that are witty, whimsical, very puny, and on occasion incisive concerning the quirks in language and the human condition. If you are looking for dense, lyrical poetry you’ve come to the wrong place. For the most part shunning adjective and adverbs, Hughes writes in a clean direct voice with sensible line breaks. If you are looking for a light, entertaining read that you can open anywhere for a few good laughs and more, welcome aboard.”
- Bruce Boston, Bram Stoker Award Winner, author of Gallimaufry

"A wonderfully stylish writer. I would call him an indubitable modern sentence master.“
- Samuel R. Delany, Author of Dhalgren

"Rhys Hughes puts a big red rubber nose on language."
- Maithreyi Karnoor, Author of Sylvia

Monday 26 July 2021

My Rabbit's Shadow Looks Like a Hand

My Rabbit's Shadow Looks Like a Hand (2021)
Eibonvale Books


An experimental novella utilising many effects, including parallel columns and text grids, stories within stories and more, all combined into a unique and cohesive whole.

The novella was partly inspired by Don Marquis and his 'Archy and Mehitabel' sequence of poems. In this novella there are twelve shadow rabbits who create twelve texts (poetry and prose mostly) that are fully contained works but also interact with each other to form a bigger story.

These twelve facets are set in a frame by another story and it turns out that this framing story is also potentially framed in a larger cosmos.

A fantasy, a comedy, a magic realist adventure and an example of OuLiPo writing.

Students of Myself

Students of Myself (2021)
Elsewhen Press

"There are few students in my class. When one considers what the subject is, this isn’t surprising. I teach myself.In other words, I impart to my students facts and fancies based on my life and ideas. It’s the least popular class in the university and I doubt it will be funded for another term. But none of that is my fault. I wanted to teach a proper discipline such as ecology, but the authorities wouldn’t let me. They insisted that I teach myself; and as a result, I do so.

The students are given an assignment. They each have to write a short piece about how I spend my free time. But this is information I’ve always kept secret. I can’t imagine how they’re expected to know anything about my private life, certainly not in detail.

Clearly I’m being spied on. Unless it’s guesswork?

I read the essays anxiously.

Yes, only some of them have got it right…"

Saturday 17 April 2021

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

Sunday 21 February 2021

Vampires with Fairy Wings

Vampires with Fairy Wings (2021)

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.

Monday 8 February 2021

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

Friday 8 January 2021

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

Sunday 3 January 2021

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.