Hello all! The week before last I was at a writer’s retreat at Metal Culture in Southend during the Essex Book Festival after winning a spot. Visit my YouTube channel for more joyous things, The Essex Book Festival and Metal Culture website.
Here’s my vlog:
The reading of the book I started whilst there:
And the BBC Look East segment. I don’t speak but I appear twice, the last time being an embarrassingly large close up of my mug.
I think I can safely demand to be carried about in a Sudan chair from now on. The local paper did a little story on my acceptance onto a writer’s retreat for the Essex Book Festival.
Toodle pip!
Guten tag! It’s freezing here and snow is covering the ground like pretty little drops of frozen water.
My short story Fingerprints on the Blind Tour is available to pre-order through issue #1 of Clash Magazine, have a peek and get yours!
Here’s a little video of updates, including some very good news I got yesterday. Hurrah!
Hello! May all your jolly moments come at once in an overwhelming rush.
I was interviewed by horror podcast Deadman’s Tome about my new story with the magazine, and other things as well. It was live which meant I had to crawl out of bed at twenty to four in the morning my time. At first I was quite chatty, but a muesli crash ensued. Enjoy!
Hello my little veggie cocktail sausages! I thought I’d share with you a BBC radio show of one of my favourite parody satirical poets (is that even a thing?) Tim Key looking into one of the most fascinatingly odd Russian absurdist writers, Daniil Kharms.
The BBC info reads:
“Daniil Kharms (1905-1942) is one of Russia’s great lost absurdists – a writer whose world still alarms, shocks and bewitches more than half a century after he died in prison during the siege of Leningrad.
In his short, almost vignette-like writings, nothing is sacred or as it seems. His narrators dip in and out of moments, describing curious, often disturbing events before getting bored and leaving his characters to their fates. Old ladies plummet from windows, townsfolk are bludgeoned to death with cucumbers, others wander around in search of glue, sausages or nothing. By turns pointless and harrowing, they are funny. Very funny. And they are funny now.
Comedian, Russophile and crumpled polymath Tim Key has been entranced by Kharms’ beautiful, horrible, hilarious world for years. But is there more to Kharms than a series of curious happenings cooked up by an eccentric mind in a troublesome world? Key suspects there is. And he’s prepared to delve.
As he delves, he encounters Noel Fielding, Alice Nakhimovsky, Matvei Yankelevich, Peter Scotto, Tony Anemone and Daniil Kharms.”
So, without further fannying about, here it is. Enjoy!
https://player.fm/series/seriously-1301233/tim-key-delves-into-daniil-kharms-and-thats-all
First up… guess who’s novella/connected short stories were just accepted?! No, me, I meant me.
Not so long ago I posted a couple of sites where you could read Aleister Crowley for free, and threw in a UK documentary for chuckles. It’s a little over the top and sensationalised but still interesting.
Well, it seems it was part of a series called Masters of Darkness, and I’ll share the others with you now on the equally bizarre alchemist and mathematician John Dee, sadistic Marquis De Sade and ‘mad monk’ Rasputin (not an author, you got me, but come on, he’s fascinating). There’s a book about him I’d really like to read which apparently cuts through the myth, which I’m endlessly in favour of.
I’ve also added a documentary about Issei Sagawa, the student of avant-garde literature who murdered and cannibalised his girlfriend and, due to a technicality, served only fifteen months. Yep… He now makes his living writing and talking publicly about being a cannibal.
I missed an exhibition in London of John Dee’s library a year or two ago, I’m still annoyed about it.
John Dee
The Marquis De Sade (disclaimer: Andrea Dworkin talks a lot of tripe)
Rasputin
Issei Sagawa
Good day and a merry afternoon. You can purchase my Victorian set weird fiction horror type story here. There are weird drugs, cults and spooky things so enjoy!
I have returned!
I’ll just give a little personal update before looking up weird arty things to share. The first video is a vlog of my two weeks spent at home with Bill in Southend, Essex. The second is a reading (not live) of my occult science fiction horror short story.
If you ever wanted to learn how to make a Sidecar cocktail…ask Bill, not me. I’m also still reading my favourite stories each week here.
Our podcast, Bizart, is back. We discuss odd things, art things and anything else.
And we are back! I (Madeleine Swann) chat with fellow weirdo arty type Stephen Waring about odd stuff, art stuff and anything else.
Timeline:
0.23 – Twin Peaks Season 3
3.00 – The Brighton Fringe Festival
22.55 – Religious cults and social media hang ups
Hello popsicle sticks! I read my own work to an audience of complete strangers for the first time in my life, my new bizarro book 4 Rooms In A Semi Detached House, for the 2017 Brighton Fringe Festival. My hands were shaking, I was terrified.
Brighton has a lot of cool stuff in it so I made a little backstage video as well as filming the first reading (which has an impromptu Q&A at the end), and I also offer advice to any live reading newbies such as myself. My boyfriend Bill, who does my book covers, and our friend Steve had art showing in a gallery at the same time and I added clips of them discussing their work below.
Ta dah!
Fun times around Brighton, including books, rainbows and lots of tea:
The first reading, 11 am, at Made Cafe:
Bill discussing his work at The Round Georges:
Stephen Waring (LoFiGuy) discussing his work:
Madeleine Swann 