Something a bit different. I go for cycles more than I do walks, and the back roads of East- and Midlothian are my usual haunts. I've explored some of the old coal mining region in a previous post. A ride on a road bike is necessarily restricted to roads, because you can't branch off onto … Continue reading Esk Valley & Moorfoots: a ride
Any discussion of Yukio Mishima's life and work has to deal, at some point, with his death. A right-wing nationalist appalled by the Western influence on Japanese society and culture, he tried to lead his own personal militia in a coup. It failed and Mishima immediately committed seppuku - ritual suicide - before (following the … Continue reading The Japanese Proust? Yukio Mishima
The Beltane issue of 'Weird Walk' (reviewed here) went to several print runs and is now unavailable. As I write, this Samhain issue is already on a second run, so this tidy little zine has evidently struck a chord. What does issue 2 bring us? Well, more content for a start: we now have 48 … Continue reading Zine review: ‘Weird Walk’ #2
"At last, the night has a hero" - Cabal strapline. I've written elsewhere about the anticipation my friends and I felt in the months before the release of Clive Barker's second feature film Nightbreed in the autumn of 1990. Not that we got to see it: an unimpressive box-office in America meant it only got … Continue reading At last…Clive Barker’s ‘Nightbreed’ (1990/2014)
Momentum is everything. It's a long time since I posted anything about my own writing. It's definitely taken a back seat since I started this blog, but this year I've written two short stories and most of a novella. How has it gone? *** Firstly, the two short stories. I grew up in a small … Continue reading #AmWriting
Into the Gyre 