you can read my story 'The Mylar Chamber' in volume 8 of Tales of the Unreal, out now! It is based on a true story: poet Ira Cohen's inadvertent discovery of the photographic technique he used to create his Mylar images. unrealpress.substack.com/api/v1/file/8db65c28-735d-4244-8748-cf02302a50a1.pdf
my story 'Swan Song' is out now on @fictionontheweb! it is a fictionalised retelling of expressionist painter Oskar Kokoschka's commissioning of a life-sized doll of his former lover, Alma Mahler.
you can read it here: www.fictionontheweb.co.uk/2025/05/swan...
much like the adage about waiting for a bus, two of my stories have come along at once this week-
'Corvo's John', now available to read on House of Long Shadows, is based on the mysterious, beguiling, inscrutable literary enigma that was Baron Corvo:
houseoflongshadows.substack.com/p/hls-no-19-...
great news! my talk on 'The Gothic and The Doors' is on youtube, for all and sundry to enjoy my dulcet tones: www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVir...
wrote a very silly ghost story
as usual, the story is based only partly in reality, this time featuring the delectable character of Count Eric Stenbock, described by Yeats as a "scholar, connoisseur, drunkard, poet, pervert, most charming of men". full issue of the magazine available here: drive.google.com/file/d/1k6RL...
my story 'The Baptism of the Petit Comte' has just been published in The Literary Fantasy Magazine - archive.thearcanist.net/posts/2507ba...
update: the talk now has an accompanying playlist (i may or may not have got carried away adding goth songs not actually referenced in the talk) open.spotify.com/playlist/0Y7...
in slightly different but not entirely unrelated news, my talk on The Doors as part of the Romancing the Gothic series is coming up, saturday 19th july at 10am and 7pm: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-gothic...
out today: 'Rereading Musicians and Their Audiences: Popular Music Autobiographies', ed. Tom Attah, @profkirsty.bsky.social, & Christian Lloyd. featuring my chapter on Lady Gaga as pop's greatest Wildean since Bowie - 'Lady Gaga's Wildean Self-Representations'! www.bloomsbury.com/uk/rereading...
intro post: