We have here another excerpt from my upcoming collection, The Snowman Three Doors Down. In “Herbert’s New Profession,” our protagonist chooses a rather unlikely job to earn some extra money. Here’s how it begins… HERBERT’S NEW PROFESSION My name is Herbert Shrike. I’m 75 years young now, as of my last birthday. I’ll be 76 […]

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The February issue of Le Scat Noir awaits you! This one contains the latest page of my musical instrument drawings, my story “The Snowman Three Doors Down,” and many other delights by other people! You can find it here.

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My upcoming collection, The Snowman Three Doors Down, also includes a few tales in verse. I should add that I write in strict verse forms simply because I like formal constraints. Here’s the beginning of “Pan and Kettle,” originally written for a nonsense issue of The Black Scat Review. PAN AND KETTLE Beneath an oak […]

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Here, as an appetizer, is the beginning of “The Royal Touch,” from my upcoming collection The Snowman Three Doors Down. Our story hinges on a dilemma: which is better, leprosy or scrofula? THE ROYAL TOUCH King Theobald hobbled to the throne, and, setting aside his crutch, sank slowly onto the cushions. Stroking his beard with his […]

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To whet your appetite, here’s the beginning of the title story from my upcoming collection, The Snowman Three Doors Down. It entwines several subplots, and is the only story I’ve written that uses prosopagnosia as a comic device. THE SNOWMAN THREE DOORS DOWN “What’s that picture doing here?” Brick asked, indicating a photo on the […]

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For The Black Scat Encyclopaedia (see previous post), I contributed several entries on poetics. Here’s one of them: IAMBIC CENTAMETER: A line of a hundred iambic feet: Beloved, when I saw you standing there beside that picturesque gazebo by the crumbling garden wall, as bluebirds gaily sang their hearts out high atop the willow tree […]

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Le Scat Noir Encyclopædia offers “All human knowledge in a single volume.” It contains entries from Acrostic to Zwine, and features contributors from around the world—some of whom are distinguished professors at prestigious universities. Others are Nobel Prize winners, while a few have been arrested on felony charges. Discover rare factoids, flash fiction, nubile moon […]

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Long Live Life is now available! It’s my seventh translation of the peerless French humorist Alphonse Allais, a favorite of Surrealists, ‘Pataphysicians, and astute readers everywhere! This is the first publication in English of the master’s 1892 collection, Vive la Vie! — stories culled from the pages of the legendary Bohemian paper Le Chat Noir, […]

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Le Scat Noir #229 is now out, and you’ll probably enjoy it. It’s overflowing with artistic delights, including my parody of Longfellow and Baudelaire, “Hiawatha and the Carcass,” and my usual page of musical instrument drawings. You can get a PDF for a dollar, and it’s over here.

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Norman Conquest of Black Scat Books sent me this spiffy ad for The Zombie of Great Peru, written by Pierre-Corneille Blessebois and translated by Doug Skinner. Read the ad! Buy the book!

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