No flash fiction this week, for one reason or another. But if you’d like to hear me read my award-winning short story “Sunsets and Hamburgers“, come along tomorrow to the launch of my short story collection, The Last Reef.

The event is free to attend and also sees the launch of another collection, The Turing Test by fellow Interzone author Chris Beckett.

The fun starts at 2pm at the Citte of Yorke pub, 22 High Holborn, London. The nearest tube stations are Charing Cross or Holborn.

TTA Press have just announced their new podcast site, Transmissons From Beyond. Every other Monday, they’ll broadcast a new story taken from one of their magazines – Crimewave, Black Static or Interzone.

I have already been working with Pete Bullock to produce audio versions of my two Interzone stories – “The Last Reef” and “Ack-Ack Macaque” – and they will both make an appearance on the site in due course.

Once again, Warren Ellis exposes the falling number of subscriptions in the printed SF&F short story market.

“Cases are always made that in fact these magazines are on strong — or at least survivable — financial ground. Even ignoring the fact that the money they offer for fiction is pitiful, I think that matters less than that they are reaching massively fewer people every year.”

An auction house sells off an 1800 year-old statue bearing an uncanny resemblance to Elvis Presley, giving some to wonder if the “King” partook in time travel: Link

THREE THINGS HE REMEMBERED ON HIS DEATH BED
By Gareth L Powell

1.

When he was sixteen, he almost drowned. He lost control of his kayak at the head of the rapids at Symonds Yat, overbalancing where the green river water met the first black rocks.

2.

He saw his first dead body at the age of twenty-two. He was working in a pet food shop in Gloucester. He heard a noise outside. When he went to investigate, he saw there had been an accident in the street. It was a hot summer’s day. People were lying smashed and bloodied in the dust.

3.

He was in the kitchen of a friend’s house with Lisa, fetching the dessert. He was forty years old. She had offered to give him a hand. The other guests (including her husband) were drinking wine around the dining table on the patio.

‘I want you,’ he whispered.

She squeezed his hand. ‘I really want you too. But you know if we do this, we can never, ever tell anyone.’