Papa Bach and Other Stories is now available from Black Scat Books!

Inside you will find the following 28 stories:

Entropy Goes Haywire
The Butler Bullion
Uncopyrightable
Papa Bach
Dover and Larson
The Garden of Eden
A Sunday Outing
Hush
The 23 Wounds
The Flotation Device
America’s New Currency
Open Call
Whitman Unblanked
The Dog and the Duck
Eclogue
Foursome
Bellocchio
The Ungracious Guest
Noel
The Mandrake’s Progress
Seven Fables
Jupiter Meteorology
A Tale of Two Sentences
The Market for Typos
The Search for an Ineffective Placebo
Reader Survey
The Presidents’ Tragedy
The Alphabet

Every story a gem! Every page a delight! You should probably buy and read it immediately!

This translation of Alfred Jarry’s early text, “Explanatory Memorandum on the Terrible Accident of February 30, 1891,” can be found in TYPO 13.

From a listing for the Good Press bookstore in Glasgow, here’s a photo of Music From Elsewhere. Apparently Scots are painting their nails to match the ink:

And here’s the book displayed in After 8 Books in Paris, on the rue Jarry. As a staunch ‘pataphysician, I am, of course, delighted. (Thanks to Sarah Walker for the photo.)

My 19th string quartet is subtitled “Cold Nights,” because the nights were cold when I wrote it. You don’t have to play it on cold nights, though. Here, as usual, is the first page.

TYPO 13 is now available from Black Scat Books! For this one, I contributed translations of a story by Tristan Bernard (“The Collector”), an essay by Gabriel de Lautrec (“Latin Symbolism”), and two short pieces by Alfred Jarry (“Explanatory Memorandum on the Terrible Accident of February 30, 1891” and “The Fiancé in Spite of Himself”), as well as an excerpt from a piece for microtonal zither, “Interlude in C.”

My imaginative colleagues are Madeleine de L’Aubépine, Marcel Béalu, Erik Belgum, Terry Bradford, R J Dent, Mike Ferguson, Rachel Galvin, Massimo Gatta, Edward Gauvin, Amy Kurman, George MacLennan, Alfred de Musset, Opal Louis Nations, Ernesto López Parra, Alejandro Albarrán Polanco, Bernard Quiriny, James Richie, George Sand, Walter Serner, Nile Southern, Lono Taggers, Corinne Taunay, Robin Tomens, Paul Willems, and Mark Wyatt. As usual, it’s edited and designed by Norman Conquest.

Here’s another story from my 2023 collection The Potato Farm. Nevil reads a detective novel, amid trouble at work and his growing curiosity about its elusive author. There are 13 chapters of 250 words apiece; here’s the first one.

NEVIL READS A NOVEL

CHAPTER ONE

Nevil settles into his armchair, setting the glass on the table. It had been a slow week at the stationery shop. Sales are down, since nobody writes letters anymore, but he was still on his feet most of the time. To make things worse, Mr. Duckworth was irritated that a shipment of promotional erasers hadn’t arrived, and was cranky with Nevil and Mariella, the other clerk. Nevil is looking forward to a quiet Friday night with a book and a glass of wine. He takes a sip and picks up the paperback.

The title is Don’t Bring a Cat to a Dogfight, from 1961, its colorful cover showing two beatniks fighting in a coffeehouse. The author is Trent Foxberger, who is new to Nevil. He turns the book over to study his photo. Foxberger looks conventionally professorial, with a blazer and pipe. Nevil then reads the blurbs. Critics liked it, comparing it favorably to other novels that were probably popular at the time.

Nevil takes another sip, and opens to the first chapter.

It takes place in the Club Somewhat, in Manhattan. A trio, consisting of suave pianist Sport Betteridge, exuberant bassist Jinx Dugan, and sardonic wit Senator Phelps on drums, is playing their usual Friday night set. There’s a fair amount of description of both the club and their music. During Senator’s solo, a young woman runs across the stage, chased by a stocky middle-aged man. Sport and Senator jump up and tackle him, letting the woman escape.

Every year, Meg Reichardt assembles musicians in Brooklyn for a Holiday Recording Party. This year, I contributed a song that I sent in from upstate. It’s called “Here’s to the Longest Night,” and it celebrates the solstice. You can listen to the whole album on Bandcamp.

This affecting tale of roommate conflict can be found in TYPO 12. Don’t worry; it has a happy ending.