The Potato Farm is now available! This collection of thirty stories is my first book of short fiction since The Snowman Three Doors Down in 2018.

What happens when constellations socialize, when Faust and the Devil start drinking, when imaginary friends gain imaginary friends, when Sleeping Beauty and Rip van Winkle trade places, when Duncan paints a cockatrice, when a terrifying Werechurch roams the land? And was it really a good idea for August and Collier to start that potato farm, especially given Collier’s troubled past? You’ll find slapstick, vivid characters, fictional physics, and surprising narratives, often filtered through stringent constraints to keep the language lively. If you read only one book this year, read this one over and over again!

It’s designed by Norman Conquest, published by the delightful people at Black Scat Books, and available on Amazon.

A very short story, from my upcoming collection The Potato Farm.

IMPASSE

“I have nothing to say,” he said.
“Who asked you?” she asked.
“I won’t dignify that with a reply,” he replied.
“Then I have nothing more to add,” she added.

Some capitalist theology.

At Derek Pell’s request, I speak briefly about our experiences working with Artificial Intelligence for our book The Man Who Ate His House. Thanks to Mamie Caton for shooting the video, which you can see here.

Kiarna Boyd asked me to narrate her novel Blessed and Cursed Alike, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of its publication. I called in Brian Dewan as engineer, and we managed to record the whole book in four days (not in a row). Kiarna has released the first chapter here. More will follow! Sex, violence, magic, and motorcycles as only Kiarna can write it!

This useful design can be found in Typo 3.

TYPO 3 is now available! For the third issue of this inimitable publication, I contributed a parody of Oscar Wilde (“Bosie’s Translation”), an article on the design of single-serve salt packets, a design for a Hawaiian Ouija board, and a translation of a letter by Aloysius Bertrand, as well as examples from my collection of antique calling cards.

My estimable fellow contributors are Tim Newton Anderson, Tom Barrett, André Breton, Jahan Cader, Norman Conquest, Farewell Debut, R J Dent, Germaine Dulac, Eckhard Gerdes, Boris Glikman, Vasilisk Gnedov, Amy Kurman, Edward Lee, Emilia Loseva, Gabriel Pomerand, R. Prost, De Villo Sloan, Robert R. Thurman, and Nico Vassilakis.

It’s edited by Norman Conquest, published by Black Scat Books, and available on Amazon.

A selection of original artwork from my comic book Shorten the Classics will be on display throughout August, at the Elting Memorial Library in New Paltz, NY. I’ll also give a reading there on Wednesday, August 9, at 7 pm; I’ll be joined by another alumnus of the NYC performance scene, Tom Keener. The library is at 93 Main St., and more info is available here.

ADDENDUM: And here’s a photo of the exhibit, thanks to Mamie Caton.

I’ll perform some historical musical oddities, drawn from my upcoming book Music from Elsewhere, at the symposium at Lily Dale, NY, July 27-29. The conference is organized by Shannon Taggart, and includes presentations on art, the paranormal, and the history of Spiritualism by Phil Ford, J. F. Martel, Amy Hale, Emily Hanger, Charles and Penelope Emmons, Allison C. Meier, Michele Takei, Michael W. Home, Steven Intermill, Maria Molteni, Gillian Matini, and Vivienne Roberts. Shannon will also talk about her book of photographs of Lily Dale, Séance, which I urge you to buy and admire.

I’ll be appearing on the 28th; the official description is:

Music from Elsewhere (Strange Attractor Press 2024) collects music attributed to non-human inspiration—tunes from fairies, trolls, trows, angels, spirits, and aliens—as well as examples of musical ciphers, imaginary music, and speculative music: categories that often combine and overlap in unpredictable ways. In this presentation, composer/performer Doug Skinner plays some of the pieces from his archive and tells the stories behind them, including channeled music by the Shaker community, the Fox sisters, and the “musical medium” Rosemary Brown.

And you can find more info on Shannon’s website.

POSTSCRIPT: For the curious, these are the pieces I performed:

“The Lullaby of the Fairy-Woman” (a fairy lullaby from the MacLeod clan on the Isle of Skye)
“Regina Cæli Lætare” (Gregorian chant attributed to angels)
“L’Ange et l’enfant” (a song by Chrétien Urhan, dictated by a discarnate voice, 1835)
“Anya Ray” (a song in the alien language Solexmar, channeled by Bernard Byron, 1962)
“Port na bPucai” (an Irish tune attributed to spirits, thought now to be whale song)
Music from An Adventure (a scrap of music heard in a time slip by Eleanor Jourdain, 1902)
“Mother Ann’s Song” (a Shaker song channeled by “O. W.,” 1844)
“From the Moon” (a Shaker song channeled by “one of the sisters in Groveland,” 1838)
“Disappointment” (a piano piece by Rosemary Brown, channeling Robert Schumann, 1980)
“The Haunted Ground” (a song by the Fox sisters, received by table rapping, 1851)

ANOTHER POSTSCRIPT: And here we are…