Me eating the naked lunch

Create50 announcement - my short story is being published!

This morning, Create50 announced the list of the winning entries for their inaugural Twisted50 anthology. Amongst the winners is my short story Lolitasaurus! Here's the link to the Create50 announcement:-
http://singularity50.create50.com/blogs/twisted50-volume-1-and-the-winners-are

This represents something of a landmark for me - my first publication since I quit academia and resumed my true vocation of literary fiction. Hopefully, there will be many more to follow. I feel very strongly that, particularly in my current short-story frenzy, I'm mining a rich seam. Also, I recently had another look at my play, The Senseless Counterfeit, and I'm increasingly persuaded that it's going to make my reputation. Hopefully, at some stage in the not too distant future, I'll be able to persuade decent agents & publishers of the merits of my case.

Mr Nice's Bottom

In my rage against the late unlamented Mr Marks, I wrote Mr Nice's Bottom very quickly. I finished it fifteen minutes ago, and have already submitted it to Twisted50 Volume 2.

Here's a link:-
http://www.create50.com/scripts/57122cc76e6f647231000048?age=verified

The death of Howard Marks has given me an idea for my next short story

The death has been announced of Howard Marks, who in his lifetime morphed from large-scale cannabis smuggler into counter-cultural celebrity lionised as Mr Nice by left-liberals everywhere. James Brown of Loaded magazine describes Marks as a "true modern-day folk hero", who "stood for everything we loved" and "is a bloody great example to us all". 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/11/mr-nice-howard-marks-dies-of-cancer-at-70/

Marks himself described his career in no less glowing terms:-
     "Smuggling cannabis was a wonderful way of living - perpetual culture shock, absurd amounts of money, and the comforting knowledge of getting so many people stoned."

My perspective on Mr Nice is somewhat different. I know, I know, de mortuis nil nisi bonum and and all that jizz. But I speak as one of the so many people he got stoned. I was introduced to cannabis at the age of 15, at around the time Marks was consorting with such beacons of moral excellence as Pablo Escobar and the IRA. I subsequently spent a quarter of a century as a wake 'n' bake stoner, from when my weed habit became entrenched in my early 20's, until I eventually managed to kick my addiction - yes, hippies, addiction - two and a half years ago.

So, in my estimation, Mr Nice was actually rather unpleasant, an opinion corroborated when I came across this account by his former wife of the destruction wrought by this preening narcissist on his own children:-
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1187009/Mr-Nice-More-like-Mr-awful-father---Ex-wife-drug-smuggler-Howard-Marks-tells-destroyed-family.html

Mr Nice went through life sublimely untroubled by the wreckage he left behind him, succumbing eventually to cancer of the colon. I consider it fitting to commemorate his passing with a short story. "Mr Nice's Bottom" is just waiting to be written.

So long, Mr Nice, and thanks for all the memories. Cunt.

And yet another Twisted 2 entry

This afternoon, I completed and submitted to Twisted50/2 the first draft of my latest short story.

The Telescopic Philanthropist's Modest Proposal is about Drusilla Kaftanjellyby, a morally undernourished aid worker in an unnamed country in the grip of war and famine. Drusilla hosts one Mr Marsh-Marlowe, an ineffectual little man whom she believes to be an accountant sent out by the agency in order to question her about the famine relief funding which for ideological reasons she has spent on expensive organic food. Their conversation takes place against a background of artillery fire, controlled by a war lord called Leopold, with whom Drusilla appears to be on very easy terms.

After a while, Drusilla drives Mr Marsh-Marlowe to a restaurant, which turns out to be a very expensive establishment in the middle of a refugee camp full of people starving to death. While they wait for their meal, Mr Marsh-Marlowe reveals that he is actually there at the behest of the Child Protection Unit for Drusilla's local borough back in North London, in order to investigate allegations that she has left her own children to fend for themselves. At this point, however, his attempt to exert himself in his official capacity is interrupted by the reappearance of the head waiter, a Lebanese exile called Pierre, who serves them their braised kid, shot that very morning by one of Leopold's jackasses.

Here's a link to the beast:-
http://twisted-vol2.create50.com/scripts/5706551d6e6f64100f00007d?age=verified