I’m pleased to announce that a new short story of mine has been published over on Pornokitsch, the genre-loving, BFS Award-winning, Hugo-nominated and entirely-safe-for-work-despite-the-name online magazine.
My story is titled ‘01001001 01000011 01000101’. Its inspired in equal parts by Ray Bradbury, Tom Stoppard, Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’ and the 2004 Dennis Quaid / Jake Gyllenhaal disaster movie The Day After Tomorrow. It begins like this:
The book was big and heavy, which meant it would burn well.
Click here to read the whole thing. When you have finished you might like to tweet about it or share it on Facebook. If you’re still on Facebook, of course.What’s with the title full of 1s and 0s?That’s a little mystery for you to solve. It’s part of a secret message embedded within the text.
Hilariously, the other story of mine posted on Pornokitsch was called (0,0). This means that 100% of the fiction I have published on the site has been titled using only two digits.
It’s unfortunately apt that my post-apocalyptic story is published on Pornokitsch, because they are closing their doors at the end of March. I often cite the site as an example of how to do a blog well. Regular, relentless and passionate posting since 2008, out of which spun a publishing imprint – Jurassic London, which published my novella The Good Shabti – and an annual literary awards ceremony. Check out their ‘best of 2017’ round-up and another farewell story (a valedictstory, perhaps?) ‘Is This To Be a Pyschopath Test?’ by my friend Mazin Saleem.
Editor Jared Shurin commissioned some epic artwork for the story by Daria Schreiber. It is reproduced above. For someone to respond to and enhance my writing in this manner is a pleasure and a privilege. You should check out Daria‘s other work on her website. I particularly like her aquarelle work. And I also like that I had to learn what aquarelle actually means in order to write that sentence.
