E-books
“Skins Out!”
Imagine a world run by replicants where humans, “skins”, are treated as slaves. This is the speculative world in which “Skins Out!” plays:
“He’s out there right now, lurking in the shadows between the faulty neon of the SENOI Psilocybin Omelette House and the pretzel seller’s cart with the misspelt ‘pretzle’ sign on the corner of Chin Chew Street. He’s even making bit-part appearances in my Dreams.” Excerpt – Tocsin Bray’s Softdiary entry: 25/12/293; 07:40.
“Skins Out!” is a visceral, life-or-death pursuit through the roti bars, malls and the wet market of a dystopian Singapore. In a twist on existing notions of xenophobia, Riefenstahl, a replicant, obsesses over the ‘skin’ (human) he has under surveillance while increasingly missing all those qualities that conspire to make him less than human. “Skins Out!” was first published in England’s Sierra Heaven, issue 2. It subsequently appeared as ‘The Dream Virus’ in Canada’s TransVersions, issue 7.
“Last night, a Skin Dreamt Riefenstahl … Again, I ask myself as I watch the Dream on the brainmap soft: if the Skin can Dream Riefenstahl, why can Riefenstahl not Dream that it is a Skin?”
Available now as an e-book, $0.99c from the Amazon Kindle Store (free to borrow if you’re an Amazon Prime member).
Steve Jobs’ last words
Steve Jobs doesn’t appear in this new, previously unpublished short story. It doesn’t include the Apple founder’s much-reported last words, either; so if you don’t know what they were, I recommend the search engine of your choice. The first ‘chapter’ follows, by way of a teaser.
“While cutting back the flat-leaf parsley today I discovered a South American rainforest tribe living in the vegetable patch.”
“Steve Jobs’ last words” is US$0.99 from the Amazon Kindle Store and if you join Amazon Prime you can borrow it for free.
Dream Me An Island
An island rising from the sea, sand strewn with coconut husks frothing at its perimeters; leaning palms; the hills a mirage of purple looming from the rainforest… Set on an imaginary Caribbean island – a conflation of Tobago and St Lucia – ‘Dream Me An Island’ tells the story of local taxi driver Charles Wesley ‘Smiley’ Gumbs, who is coerced into using Obeah Magic to pressurise the Raubbau International Mining Corporation to stop mining for gold.
The island’s slave-descendant inhabitants also face other kinds of invaders: tourists, non-indigenous plants and animals, and they continue to ward off harmful magic and cure their ills with ‘jumbie names’, bush baths and medicine bags of blood, bones, skins, eggshells and feathers. But, as Charles W. ‘Smiley’ Gumbs discovers, curing an island dying of greed was another thing altogether: as the Obeah Magic Man tells him, “Anything that belong to this island be taken back by this island.”
‘Dream Me An Island’: Fancy a virtual Caribbean holiday? Go on! You’ve earned it.
The Cruel Countess
“There were so many discoveries to make in the Ohlsdorf cemetery: the masked, bandaged eyes of the woman in relief on the Thörl grave with its chained posts; the boy and girl sculptures at the Gaiser grave; the prone lion guarding the Dalmann tombstone; silvery, shredded bark glinting in the winter sun; prismatic drops of occulting melted snow on branches; the ornate water tower on Cordes-Allee, a forgotten turret of Mervyn Peake’s crumbling Gormenghast, flickering like a candle in Time’s yawn.”
“…‘The name’s Sam Kite.’
‘Fate.’
‘Pleased to meet you.’ It’s not every day you bump into Fate at the cemetery. ‘I’ve abandoned my search for the truth,’ I said. ‘I’m now looking for a good fantasy. Any suggestions?’
The Cruel Countess chuckled in the recesses of my Inside Head. ‘For the past few moments you’ve been talking to a statue. I’d say that wasn’t bad for a start. Let it come naturally, or you won’t feel the benefit.’
‘May I come back and see you again?’
‘I will be here. I shall decide in due course whether or not you see me.’”
‘The Cruel Countess’: an appointment with Fate in the world’s biggest cemetery.
Port After Stormy Seas
What happens when three drinkers take an impromptu boat trip? And why are the other day-trippers so relieved to get back to port? The title of this e-book comes from a reference in the introduction to Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim, and a quotation from Spenser’s The Faerie Queene. JP Donleavy’s A Fairy Tale of New York also gets a mention. Get Port After Stormy Seas on your Kindle, PC or iPad for US$0.99 – less than you pay for the coffee you drink while you’re reading it. Amazon Kindle Store link.
The Vale of Health
The Vale of Health is a part of London’s Hampstead Heath, supposedly so named because it was spared by the Great Plague of 1665-1666. The Vale of Health is also my short story about a painting with a life of its own. It was inspired by the 1914 Henry Lamb portrait of the writer Lytton Strachey, a man who was ironically something of a stranger to good health; that is, considering he sat for Lamb in his Vale of Health studio at various times over a period of several years. Henry Lamb’s portrait of Lytton Strachey, one of the better-known members of the Bloomsbury Group, can be viewed online at the Tate Collection’s website. It’s an extraordinary painting, not least considering Strachey was supposedly in love with Lamb at the time. Click here for more details of The Vale of Health e-book, US$0.99 at the Amazon Kindle Store.
A Shelterless Man
A Shelterless Man: Kindle Poems is available exclusively from the Amazon Kindle Store for US$2.99. Twenty-four poems about books, writing, film, music, love and the creative process, by Chris Bell. Some of them have been published in small press magazines and e-zines, some of them were written specially for this Kindle-exclusive collection. The title comes from a passage in Jack London’s book, The People of the Abyss, in which he describes his experiences among the poor in the East End of London.
Shem-el-Nessim
“The Mu’ezzin of the Sultan al-Zahir Barquq mosque in the City of the Dead was calling for morning prayers when in one last rattling exhalation the Englishman opposite me expired…” Shem-el-Nessim (subtitled ‘An Inspiration In Perfume’) was inspired by an advertisement for a real perfume of that name. First published in Zahir magazine, issue 13, Summer 2007 (US); then the Postscripts 18, ‘This Is The Summer of Love’ New Writers Special, 2009 (UK), in April 2010, Ellen Datlow gave the story an honourable mention in the anthology Best Horror of the Year, Volume 2, published by Night Shade Books, and it subsequently appeared in The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 21, published by Constable & Robinson, 2010, edited by Stephen Jones. Buy now for US$0.99 from the Amazon Kindle Store.
Iniquity
“It happened around the time hats came back into style…” Iniquity opens in a speculative future Auckland, New Zealand. The story hypothesises a not-so-distant time in which bloggers and citizen journalists are prosecuted by a repressive government for “media crimes”, the internet is outlawed and the news is censored to remove any references that threaten to harm the interests of the state, cause panic or disturb social peace. Buy now for US$0.99 from the Amazon Kindle Store.
The Bumper Book of Lies (Expanded Edition)
If you’d rather read the stories on this site on e-paper or your PC, further details here. Request a free sample or buy now for US$4.99 from the Amazon Kindle Store. Click here to see what the reviewers said about the print edition of The Bumper Book of Lies.
Liquidambar
Buy Chris Bell’s prizewinning novel Liquidambar for US$2.99 as a Kindle e-book from Amazon Kindle Store. Further details here.
A Shelterless Man
Twenty-four poems about books, writing, film, music, love and the creative process, by Chris Bell. Some of them have been published in small press magazines and e-zines, some of them were written specially for this Kindle-exclusive collection. US$2.99 from the Amazon Kindle Store. Exclusive cover design by Elisa Bowman. Buy now.
Man Alone
John Mulgan’s New Zealand literary landmark in a new e-book edition, with a Kindle-only cover that pays homage to the original hardback version: US$3.99. Optimised for Kindle with active table of contents, new author biography and corrections to errors in existing public domain texts. (Note: this work is still in copyright in some countries and the wordsSHIFTminds e-book edition is not for sale to US customers.) Amazon.com Kindle Store link.
“It’s a hell of a thing, you can’t live in the towns and in the country they all go crazy. So I’ll be moving again.” Johnson, Man Alone, John Mulgan
