Catmachine

I've been posting a lot of short fiction onto my blog recently. This is partly to give it a wider audience, but mostly to "use it up" so I am forced to write more. I have a number of ideas for new short stories but as ever find it difficult to get started. Perhaps this will give me the incentive to do so. In the meantime work on the novel continues apace despite the official end of the writing course. I am if anything more enthusiastic about finishing it now, not least because I'm very keen to find out what happens in the end. I do already have a vague shape for the overall plot, but am one of those writers who discovers the story as they're going along rather than planning it all with military precision and post-it notes. I'm currently working on filling in the gaps so I at least have a coherent completed first half. I'll then have to resist going back and changing everything and just strike out for the end. After that I can go back and change things, al...

The Genie said, “I have news for thee, O fisherman! I am about to slay thee without mercy!” “O powerful Genie,” said the fisherman, “Why wilt thou kill me and what calls for my death? Did I not deliver thee from the depths of the sea, bring thee to land and release thee from thy bottle?” The Story of the Fisherman, The Book Of The Thousand And One Nights I was the sole surviving member of the E’freet, the last to be imprisoned. We had been fighting the Soleyman’s forces for millennia, our numbers steadily decreasing as one by one we had been captured. And now it was just me. I felt a chill go through me as I was brought before him. How many times previously had this scene been played out? All the Soleyman wanted was for us to submit to his will, accept his “faith”. And some might have suggested we give in. But that was not acceptable. Imagine the destruction that could have been wrought had our powers come under his control and put to the service of his expansionist plans and the moral...

(i) Seagulls. It was beginning to seem as if their population was increasing exponentially. This was the third time in under a week that I'd been awakened in the wee small hours by their strange, harsh noises. And believe me these some of these noises were very strange indeed. Despite the fact that the night was still dark, they started up every day at 4am, regular as clockwork, and began to... to... To be honest I couldn't say exactly what they were doing. Lying there in the darkness, my mind phasing in and out of a light-headed semiconscious state, I resigned myself to having to endure yet another of what in recent days had often started to sound like performances of some kind. This morning it started like an argument - two gulls exchanging guttural insults. However at one point one of them obviously scored a point of some sort as its pronouncement was greeted by a chorus of raucous shrieks and calls from what sounded like a considerable audience... Just what was this? A play...