‘A Couple of Rough Beasts…’ Accepted for Publication by the Exaggerated Press for Wordland 7: ‘Mountebanks’

My short story ‘A Couple Rough Beasts Slouching into this Burg or that’ has been accepted for publication by the Exaggerated Press for the Mountebanks-themed issue 7 of Wordland magazine, edited by the esteemed Allen Ashley. Watch this space for more details of how to read the story.

Here’s how Allen introduced the theme:

Come shower me with your mountebanks, hawkers of quack medicines, tricksters, charlatans, illusionists and rogues. Bring me your fly by nights, street magicians, fakers and fakirs. Send in the clowns, japesters, carpet baggers and card sharps. Watch the cards carefully, sir, find the lady. Tell me your tales of barkers, wide boys and sly girls. I want to feel that I’ve out-conned the conmen. Dazzle me, pick my pocket and sell me a pony.

Ace-ness! Another FREE eBook!

Madness continues to sweep through the land of Paint This Town Red, and it must be contagious, for following on from last week’s special offer (which was a free copy of my novel The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters – free from 22nd-26th March) I’m doing the same thing all over again and expecting quite different results (which is surely a sign of madness). This time, taking a bow, it’s my novelette Ace Cameron and the Red Peril, which will be FREE to download from 27th-31st March. Get your laughing gear around that!

You can download the book for FREE from here.

And you can find out more about the book by following THIS LINK.

And here’s the remaining timetable of the free books this month:

 

Hangingstone – free from 1st-5th April

Bed Peace – free from 6th-10th April

The Gavel – free from 11th-15th April

Things Won’t Fix – free from 16th-20th April

Reason Sleeps – I’m offering eBooks for Free!

Today I’m continuing my madcap scheme to give away a free ebook every day for a month. Last week I offered you – no word of a lie – my novelette, The Policy of Truth, for absolutely freemans from 17th-21st March. This week, we’re upping the ante, bringing our A-Game, and offering you A FULL FREAKING NOVEL FOR FREE. Yeah, that’s right: a whole novel for absolutely nothing. El Zilcho. Squat-diddley. Nowt.

And the novel in question is my magic-realist text The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters.

You can download the book for FREE from here.

And you can find out more about the book here.

And here’s the full timetable of the free books this month:

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters – free from 22nd-26th March

Ace Cameron and the Red Peril – free from 27th-31st March

Hangingstone – free from 1st-5th April

Bed Peace – free from 6th-10th April

The Gavel – free from 11th-15th April

Things Won’t Fix – free from 16th-20th April

IT’S NO LIE! FREE EBOOK! ‘The Policy of Truth’ by A.J. Kirby

I must be as mad as a March hare, or as a hatter. For every day of the next month, my dears, I’ll be giving away free books. That’s right, free books. You must have found a four-leafed clover because this promotion begins today, on St. Patrick’s Day, and runs all the way through until 20 April. Details of the full schedule of free promos can be found below, but we’ll start off by giving you the gen on our first FREEBIE. It’s my novelette, The Policy of Truth, and you’ll be able to download it FOR FREE from 17th to 21st March.

You can find out more about the book here.

And you can DOWNLOAD IT FOR FREE HERE.

And here’s the full timetable of the free books this month:

The Policy of Truth – free from 17th-21st March

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters – free from 22nd-26th March

Ace Cameron and the Red Peril – free from 27th-31st March

Hangingstone – free from 1st-5th April

Bed Peace – free from 6th-10th April

The Gavel – free from 11th-15th April

Things Won’t Fix – free from 16th-20th April

Celebrate My United Memories of the Past Decade to Mark Republik of Mancunia’s 10th Anniversary

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Republik of Mancunia website I – along with a handful of other United writers – was asked to share a favourite United memory of the past decade. Here’s mine: http://therepublikofmancunia.com/remember-when-van-persie-scored-that-volley-against-villa/

Also worth reading is the Evra one: http://therepublikofmancunia.com/remember-when-evra-scored-a-belter-against-bayern/

“Uniquely, naggingly striking”: ‘Small Man Syndrome’ Real-Time Review Reaches its Denouemont

Chapter Ten

“A long chapter as a sort of central denouement, but with more knots left to tie – or untie. Dale’s monster is more than just his wife – nor is it his two kids with smartphones and hoodies. It is himself, small or tall. (…) It’s as if the book is stretching its limbs, feeling its own way, autonomously – even if the freehold author thinks he knows where his leasehold narrator Dale is taking it in small bites. I have a definite sense of unease, as dreams come to fruition…”

Chapter Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, and Fourteen

“If fiction can leave an offtaste in the mouth, this does. A taste that reflects on even you as a reader for somehow sharing these guilty undercurrents, nodding them through. Only special fiction can carry such strength to alter perceptions of truth and fiction. The warning is for us as much as anyone else in the book, I sense.”

Chapters Fifteen, Sixteen

“But there is somethings endemically unpleasant here between all parties in this book, something unredeemable, even between those who should love each other let alone something as connected to the monster as those lunken bastards, nothing redeemable moreover between the cycles of Gaia and humanity. A once sweet deer become a monster to join with all the other monsters, in fact to join them together in new cycles.”

Chapters Seventeen, Eighteen, Nineteen

“uniquely, naggingly striking…”

“This blend of the horror genre or Gothic (“sleep began to wrap her slippery tentacles around me again”) with the Literary and psychological is so adroitly handled, I feel that I even forget that I am reading a book.”

Chapters Twenty and Twenty-One

“A staggeringly thought-provoking ending, both frightening and fulfilling. No mean feat.”

You can read the review in full here.

And you can buy the book here.