Not Writing about Writing or Fishing

24 November 2023

Many writers write about writing on their writing blogs and write themselves into a right corner where their writing traps them into appalling tales of alliteration.

I won’t do that – much.

I may write about Amazonian fishing monkeys instead.

The Amazonian fishing monkey is a somewhat shy and some say mythical creature who lives by the Amazon and fishes. They are cousins to the Indonesian fishing monkeys. And yes, Indonesian fishing monkeys are a thing – look them up, but don’t disturb them when they are fishing.

They don’t tend to write blogs, they are, after all, monkeys who fish.

I have no doubt that if they wanted to write books they could – probably about bait, different types of lures and how to stop migrating piranhas stealing your catch.

However, their attitude seems to be, why write about fishing when you can simply fish, it’s a lot less taxing and you don’t need to learn typing or understand that a laptop is not simply designed to lever stuff out of your ass.

So, taking a leaf from the Amazonian fish monkey’s non-existent book, I am not writing about writing or even fishing, because I am crap at it – the fishing, not the writing.

I am going to let others write about writing, mostly – unless I have some spark of divine insight that I simply have to share.

I will let others talk about writing because they’ve made some money from it and probably know something about it, so I will link to them and any other interesting titbits that tickle my fancy.

I will also post some samples of my work on this site and stuff I might be working on, and eventually link to the finished products. 

I hope this will keep you entertained while you are fighting off Amazonian fishing monkeys who want to borrow your device because they ate a curry last night...

Dime Store Pulp

10 March 2017

I was going to call my website “Dime Store Pulp,” because it sounds awesome and has that “what the hell does that mean” vibe about it, which makes me look cool and mysterious.

For anyone under the age of me, pulp is something you probably haven’t heard of so I will try to explain it. I will also try to explain how what I write has nothing to do with it, sort of – unless you are drunk at the time and are on medication. (I am, by the way, which probably explains a great deal about me.)

There is a kind of pulp – dime store novels or dime novel pulp that older folk will remember. It was a form of storytelling where working writers (known as “hacks” by the literary elite) would churn out thousands of words of popular stories to pay the bills.  

These fast moving simple tales were full of action, fighting, beautiful women needing rescuing from crazy villains and their never ending supply of disposable henchmen and of course a square jawed hero who could do no wrong.

In short they were bite sized and disposable, nothing like modern movies with all their crazy villains, women who need rescuing (despite how supposedly world wise and clever they are), a square jawed hero and of course the endless supply of disposable henchmen.

And this is what I write, sort of. I make up simple stories, chock full of clichés, action, fighting, crazy villains with lots of disposable henchmen and of course beautiful women who usually hate being rescued by halfwit, square jawed heroes.

The only difference is that I do it for laughs. I take the framework of pulp stories and turn them upside down or sideways or add something just a little ridiculous or off-centre. My work is edgy and full of jokey ideas and situations. Please don’t take anything I say seriously or I will set a zombie-killing goat on you.

I am, at heart, a parody writer and pulp style stories are my favourite starting point because they don’t always need to be deep or meaningful or even well researched (so please note, if you call me out on a factual error I will ignore you, because facts get in the way of fun.)

I don’t pretend to be a great writer or literary master, my stories are meant to be fun, silly, sometimes even a little daft but chock full of laughs because, let’s face it, the world is just too damn dark and we all need a good laugh.

So this website is mostly about giving you some laughs and telling you about me, my stories and hints to what is bubbling up from the twisted mind of me. My stuff is a little edgy, it has bad language because I live in a country with some of the nastiest, batshit crazy creatures on Earth and also because my ancestry is Welsh so I know a lot of swear words.

I will also point you in the direction of those who inspired me and still do and I hope that you will have as much fun reading my stuff as I had making it up.