Wow, it’s hard to believe that we’ve already got to the last two episodes. And here they are, without further blah, blah, blah:

Episode Fourteen — Part V (Chapters one and two):

Spider and Seedy finally come to the Kunfu-riffic conclusion to their kidnapping caper, learning all about Japanese sword-making, physics and why acrylic ski masks suck. In chapter two, the gang finally puts their plan into action, and they capture the King of the Gag, learning that he has some seriously lizardfish proclivities. And that two women kissing is not as hot as it first sounds.

An excerpt from the kidnapping, as Shute arrives at Helena’s apartment:

The idea was that Max and I were going to get into Helena’s closet and wait for their signal. They hoped to get Shute to agree to being tied up, as part of their little three-some. If that went off without a hitch, then it should make things considerably easier.

We all had another drink together, to kill the last twenty minutes before Shute was due to arrive. No doubt he would be fashionably late. By one pm, we were all keyed up. I don’t mind telling you there was an awkward psycho-sexual energy in the room, not at all dampened by another round of scotch. Honza Chodets was tasting better and better.

I was so wound up, I almost dropped my scotch, when at five-to-one, there was a knock at the door. Helena grabbed our drinks, poured them into the sink, and shooed us into her bedroom, where Max and I got into the walk-in closet. Ariadne waited in the bedroom, looking at me through the slats in Helena’s closet doors.

Helena let Shute in and his eyebrows actually arched when he saw what she was wearing. “Where’s Thipirous?” he asked. “I hope she’s not dressed as provocatively as you Borovich, or my heart might not be able to take it.”

Marvellous Hairy - a novel in five fractals -

Make the most of your inner monkey!

Episode Fifteen — Part V (Chapters three to seven):

After they move Shute, Helena and Max have an ethical discussion about kidnapping, medical malpractice, and branding. The media conference is more like a circus, as the media isn’t exactly on its best behavior. And then Rob gets to watch while the Ghosts have their revenge. In the end, they all live, happily, and ever after. Though Nick still has something to say through his lovely Titania3000.

An excerpt from Dr. Tundra and Helena’s discussion of branding:

“Seriously. You like scotch, right? So say you buy a cer-tain brand and we know that there’s this other brand that is just as good, but less expensive. We can help you find that other brand,” Helena said

“Hmm. Single malt kind of defies the brand concept, I think,” Max replied.

“No, not at all. In fact, single malt is a great example of the power of the brand. We all know that Glenfiddich is a good scotch, but there are lots of other single malts that are better. But everyone knows Glenfiddich — even people who don’t like single malt scotch — because of the strength of its brand. It’s not just the actual product, it’s about the feelings you have for the product. And that’s because they were branding their scotch before people even knew what branding was.”

“So what is Gargantuan’s brand?”

“That’s the problem I have with Shute.”

“That’s your problem? Not the fact that he’s just messed with Nick’s DNA?” Max said. He looked at Shute contemptuously, and for a moment Helena thought he might kick the partially conscious man.

“Well, that too, but he’s not building the Gargantuan brand.”

“You’ve helped kidnap him because of branding?”

“Oh, no, I have other reasons too, but that is my corporate reason for doing so.”

Marvellous Hairy - a novel in five fractals -

Make the most of your inner monkey!

You can find all of the released episodes here archived on my site. Or you may want to subscribe via iTunes.

And you can also listen to the podcasts at the wonderful Podiobooks.com.

You can buy the book at the publisher’s website, or at Amazon.com.

In Episode Four (Part II – The Human Ideal – chapters one, two and three), Rob meets the “threateningly slender” Ariadne, friend of Hippolyta Shute, unhappy worker at the Consume-It! drugstore, and a beautiful person. Then we see Spider and Seedy as they plan a caper (badly). And finally, we learn more about the a-hole Shute (who you may not be surprised to learn drives a Porsche.)

An excerpt from chapter one:

Ariadne Thipirous worked at the Consume-It! drugstore near Bland Street and Dead White Guy Avenue. I think it would be fair to say that she hated working there as much she hated the idea of needing a special cream for toe fungus, but despite that, she was polite and pleasant with almost everyone who purchased something from the store. It was not their fault that they needed genetically modified foods, mood drugs, panty liners, jock itch cream and many other useful items that kept the minor evils of life at bay. Well, it was their fault, but she could hardly blame them for it without feeling like a hypocrite, particularly as she was working there.

You can find Episode One here, Episode Two here, and Episode Three here. Or you may want to subscribe via iTunes. I’ll be listing all the released episodes here, and when I’ve got five done, I’ll be joining Podiobooks.com.

You can buy the book at the publisher’s website, because surely you don’t want to wait until the Fall, when it will be in stores?

Marvellous Hairy - a novel in five fractals -

Make the most of your inner monkey!

I’m quite tickled that my absurd little tale, “The Epiphany of Leonard’s Toenails” found a home at Yareah Magazine.

It seems that the editors of this fine Spanish-English publication enjoyed the odd touches of the story, and they published it in the April edition (number/numero 6). You can find the magazine online here, or you can go download the lush PDF here [pdf link]. (I’d recommend the latter, as this will give a better look at the artwork they’ve got in there.) However, if you want to make commentaries and so on, their new website is the place to go.

Yareah publishes an intriguing mix of commentary about literature, arts and myths (literatura arte y mitos), along with original fiction, poetry and artwork. (The artist of the month is Mark Smalley.)

You can find “The Epiphany of Leonard’s Toenails” on this site too.

When Elisa sat down for lunch, Henry Overduin had no idea how much she was going to change his world.

She and her colleagues from the Department of Corporate Oversight sat in Henry’s section, but he would have noticed her even if they hadn’t. There was something different and magnetic about Elisa Taper. The rest of the diners at Le Fou en Mer were unreserved cyborgs. Most of them wore their cranial implants in a showy style that was the vogue among the rich; Henry found the fashion tasteless. But Elisa’s jet black hair was cut in a bob that just covered her implant. It was elegant. Her eyes were a startling emerald green, and there was something about the intelligence in them that captured Henry’s attention.

She seemed completely natural — just like Henry.

Of course, he had no implants of any kind. Even on his waiter’s salary he could have afforded one, but there was no point, because Henry was noneact. He had been unable to access the datasphere his whole life. When he was young, the world had begun integrating with it, and now the world was the datasphere. The latest generation of implants let humans access sensory experiences as well as information. Apparently, it was more real than real, his regular customers told Henry. Henry never wanted to be a waiter — he wanted to tell stories. But he had no audience. Without the datasphere, he didn’t even have a medium. There were no books, no magazines, no newspapers. There wasn’t a real movie industry anymore — it had all been swallowed by one all-encompassing ubermedia. Even conversation had been subsumed by it. The irony was there was a desperate need for Henry’s originality in what the Germans called the weltgeschichte — the world story. But Henry’s tales weren’t part of it, because he couldn’t be heard.

At least, not beyond the routine of taking orders and fetching drinks. Henry tried not to resent his job. In some sense, he was lucky he was able to work at all. Le Fou en Mer wasn’t so expensive that a human chef ran the kitchen, but it was trendy enough that the clientele were all served by real humans. In addition to Henry, the other staff that day included two students from the city’s main academy. For them, the job was something they would remember fondly after they had graduated to work remotely, or dynamically in the datasphere, depending on their abilities.

But for Henry it was one of the few jobs that he could hold, all thanks to his faulty, noneactive mind.

He tried not to dwell on it, while he walked over to the table where Elisa sat with her colleagues. He let them know the chef’s specials that day, trying to be pleasant, and asked for their drink orders; it might have been obvious he found Elisa attractive, but he tried to disguise it. No matter, Elisa saw. She asked him his name, and was somewhat perturbed when he completely ignored her routine subvocal query.

Read the rest of the story at Abyss and Apex …>

More new fiction is up on the site. Actually, it’s old fiction, but I’m free to post them online now, so I have.

The first is a story by Emily Chesley, the long-overlooked speculative fiction writer who lived in London, Ontario at the turn of the last century. Her classic novel is based on this short, called, “The Afrikaners of East Nissouri”.

And I’ve posted a flash fiction (that means it’s 500 words or less) that has been published a couple of times, first in Trunk Stories, and then as a reprint in Broken Pencil: “The Monkey’s Tail, as Told by Marcel Duchamp the Day After Charles Lindbergh Landed at Le Bourget Field”