Friday, 13 December 2024

Dabbler in Drabbles #4

Dabbler in Drabbles #4 (2024)

The fourth and final volume of the Dabbler in Drabbles project. Together, all four volumes contain exactly 1000 drabbles.

There is a frame of sorts, but it is contained within the main text. The cyclops Polyphemus is telling the drabbles to the centaur Chiron. Some of the drabbles are told from the viewpoint of Chiron, but it is only Chiron's viewpoint as imagined by Polyphemus, and Polyphemus knows this and allows his imaginary Chiron to know it too, which means that the real Chiron also gets to know it (because he is listening on our behalf). But it gets a lot more complicated than that.

Available in paperback and ebook editions.

Tuesday, 3 December 2024

Second Hand Hands

Second Hand Hands (2024)

Fifty new stories. Strange, offbeat, imaginative, inventive, concise, playful fictions featuring ghosts, werewolves, giants, pirates, mutants, spirits, witches, elephants, sentient mirrors and a parade of other odd characters.

These tales delight in language as well as concepts, form as well as content, comedy, tragedy, horror, crime and paradox.

"A Welsh writer who writes as though he has gone to school with the best writing from all over the world." — SAMUEL R. DELANY

"For many years, I have regarded each new book from Rhys Hughes as continuing proof that the universe is a marvellous, exciting and creative place." — PAUL DI FILIPPO

Contents:

My Body Parts * The Stairway Zoo * Duke Electron * Shoe Stones * Roman à Clef * Pirates of the Carob Bean * The Impossible Backpack * The Ornithopter Pilot * Who is the Giant? * Wolfbat * The Plucky Old House at Fisticuffs * Hired Gun Hiram * Three Bens in a Moat * A Sorry Tale * A Werewolf Story * Consent: a Bedtime Story * In the Lost Box * The Chairs * The Self-Haunting * The Turning * Roman Holiday * The Rasp of the Dead Breath * Second Hand Hands * The Spoils * The Sheet * The Actor * Bluebeard * The Anniversary * My Breath * Are You Ready? * The Distribution of Fear * The Other Meaning * War Memorials * Through Our Teeth * The Leaves * The Witch * Girlfriend Archaeology * Candles * Skylights * The Façade * Elephant Letters * The Despatch * Dracula's Dilemma * Granny's School Journey * Hand in Marriage * The Birds * The Passage * So Far Untitled * The Editor * Memoirs of a Mirror

Growl at the Moon

Growl at the Moon (2024)

“Bill Bones was a normal human being until he studied under a Mojave Shaman and was transformed into a man-dog called The Growl. Now, driven by a keen sense of justice, The Growl is on the hunt for the villains who killed his boss, newspaperman Ridley Smart and he’ll stop at nothing!

Crossing the deserts and forests of the American continent, The Growl searches for the men he must kill. Along the way he meets more beast-men, more magicians, the avenger Jalamity Kane who is seeking to rid the world of the beast menace, and other dangerous characters, from the artificial to the wild, from the robotic to the demonic.

In the deft hands of Rhys Hughes, this inventive tale becomes a masterpiece of twists and turns exploring and questioning our definitions of humanity, discovering the very meaning of what life and reality might be.”

285pp. B-format paperback novel. ISBN: 978-1-84583-238-4 Published 6 September 2024

Saturday, 6 July 2024

In This Poem

In This Poem (2024)

75 poems, none previously published. Concerned with such topics as mythical beasts, robots, ghosts, gods, dilemmas, metaphysics, trousers, bridges, haircuts, paradoxes, windows, journeys, brackets, pretzels, dinosaurs, thunder, duels, bears, kangaroos and dozens of other objects, ordeals and ideas. Always entertaining and offbeat. Regarded by the author as his best poetry collection to date.

"I would call him an indubitable modern sentence master." — SAMUEL DELANY

"Like Kafka with a brighter sense of humour.” — A.A. ATTANASIO

"Wit and whimsy and word-relish, high spirits and bittersweet twists." — IAN WATSON

Monday, 1 July 2024

Around the World in Eighty Ways

Around the World in Eighty Ways (2024)

There are many ways of circling the world. It doesn't matter how many days it takes to return to your starting point. What's more important is the method you choose and the style you adopt. Here are eighty different ways of circumnavigating the globe. They are speculations rather than suggestions, implausible or impossible, often lethal but gleeful.

"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

Monday, 10 June 2024

Dabbler in Drabbles #3

Dabbler in Drabbles #3 (2024)

The third volume of the Dabbler in Drabbles project, a four volume extravaganza. There will be one-thousand drabbles in total. The first book features 100 of them, the second features 200, and this new book features 300.

The collections will be published as soon as they are ready, and after the fourth has been released, an omnibus will be prepared that will contain all the drabbles.

This new book is available in paperback and ebook editions.

"A drabble is a flash fiction that is exactly one hundred words long. And here we have a cyclops who is writing them and telling them to his friend, a centaur. Three hundred drabbles. The stories are miniature adventures, comedies and tragedies, tales of space and time, accounts of voyages and discoveries, many of them ironic or paradoxical, some of them featuring robots and monsters and ghosts."

Wednesday, 29 May 2024

The Sunset Suite

The Sunset Suite (2024)

A weird Western.

"Coffee around a camp fire. But every cup tastes like a story. And so the two cowboys, Thorn and Brand, exchange tall tales as they drink. And they will keep telling stories until the pot is empty.

They will relate implausible and incredible accounts of outlaws, pioneers, visionaries, musicians, lawmen, warriors, ghosts, mountain men, dreamers and hellfire preachers.

They will gradually and inevitably turn into stories themselves as they sit beneath the bristlecone pine tree..."

A novella that consists of 26 flash fictions that gradually become more fantastical as the night wears on.

Thursday, 14 March 2024

Dabbler in Drabbles #2

Dabbler in Drabbles #2 (2024)
The second volume of the Dabbler in Drabbles project, a four volume extravaganza. There will be one-thousand drabbles in total. The first book features 100 of them, and this new book features 200.

The collections will be published as soon as they are ready, and after the fourth has been released, an omnibus will be prepared that will contain all the drabbles. 

This book is available in paperback and ebook editions.

"A drabble is a flash fiction that is exactly one hundred words long. And here we have a cyclops who is writing them and telling them to his friend, a centaur. Two hundred drabbles. The stories are miniature adventures, comedies and tragedies, tales of space and time, accounts of voyages and discoveries, many of them ironic or paradoxical, some of them featuring robots and monsters and ghosts. And this is the second volume of four..."

Tuesday, 2 January 2024

Dabbler in Drabbles #1

Dabbler in Drabbles #1 (2024)

The first volume of a four volume project. Dabbler With Drabbles will consist of exactly one-thousand drabbles. The project has been divided into four parts.

The first volume contains 100 drabbles; the second volume will contain 200; the third volume 300; and the fourth and final volume 400. That's one-thousand in total but every volume will be of a different length. After the last volume is published there will be a large omnibus edition.

"A drabble is a flash fiction that is exactly one hundred words long. And here we have a cyclops who is writing them and telling them to his friend, a centaur. One hundred drabbles. The stories are miniature adventures, comedies and tragedies, tales of space and time, accounts of voyages and discoveries, many of them ironic or paradoxical, some of them featuring robots and monsters and ghosts, but each one compressed into an easily-digested snack for the mind. And this is the first volume of four..."