It's the First of bloody October for crying out loud! Where has the year gone? Anyway the good thing about that is that October is the month of Halloween, ain't it? So there's no better time to release a horror anthology I reckon. And so here it is, the latest anthology pulled together by the infamous Shakes and Ellis: 'DeadCades - The Infernal Decimation'. Click on Tim Youster's brilliant cover below and it'll take you to that there Amazon lot and there you'll be able to purchase it. I know I'll be reading it this week. Dang! I've a lot of reading on at the moment.

My story, which is for the 2020s, is right at the very end so you'll have lots of great stories to read first before getting to my vision of the future. When you've finished reading it don't forget to put up a review on Amazon and/or GoodReads.



Now I've just got to get Amazon Author Central to get my name added as a contributor. I'm hoping it'll be easier than last time.

I've got me a one day weekend. Back in tomorrow. So will be out for beers later in Liverpool for a wee crawl, after buying a few bits and bobs, then it'll be time to catch some footy. Should be another great game between Liverpool and that Chelski shower with a quick retribution in mind following Wednesday night. May even catch some of the Mancs match. Expect I'll get to five or six top hostelries - you'll have to check out Twitter to see how I do.

Started beta-reading a FlashDog novel this morning. Up to the third chapter and it's really good so far. I shouldn't be surprised by now that there are such accomplished writerers within the FlashDog community. After meeting everyone via the very short stories we composed in Flash Fiction Friday and Angry Hourglass it is with great respect I see all these guys stepping on up and out to novels. Hoping to finish the book this week and get my comments out by next weekend.

In the meantime it is anticipated that 'DeadCades' will be released this week. Exciting stuff. And releasing a horror book in October... seems like it's almost by design. Many thanks to Steph and David in advance for all their work on getting to this point. Definitely top dogs (in a good way).

Went to the PO earlier to pick up a parcel from a couple of weeks ago. Er, I'd been sent me some cheese and biscuits. I wish I'd known I'd have made an effort to pick it up earlier. Not sure if the cheese is supposed to be this stinky. Will report back later... many more thanks for the surprising gift! You know who you are ;-)

Apparently it's World Guitar Day - who the hell makes all these things up? - perhaps I'll strum a little later. Made me think who are some of my favourite guitarists. It's a tough call, and if I thought longer or on a different day, my top picks (no pun intended) would no doubt be different and just as defendable. Here's today's top four anyway: Ry Cooder, Chuck Prophet, Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan.






As for guitars, I have two; a lovely dark green Telecaster (I know three of the four above are on Strats, but hey I love a Tele) and a Takamine 363 semi-acoustic.

The cover reveal for the upcoming 'DeadCades' book has us getting more excited for the book. Tim Youster is once again the artist for the third Infernal Clock cover and he has done a fabulous job, he just keeps getting better.


DeadCades cover by Tim Youster

Now the cover is out it makes the book seem that bit more real and it's expected that we should be able to get our hands on a Kindle version of it by early October. Together with the fabulous cover Steph and David have managed to snag a fantastic author to write the introduction for the anthology too; Christina Dalcher, the author of this summer's super hot noval'VOX'. DeadCades is going to be boss. Just a week or two to wait. Watch this space...

For Twitterers you can follow Tim @TimYouster and Christina @CVDalcher

Only went to York for little over a day, but it was great. Think I should make it an annual event for me birthday - it's past the summer holidays and before people invade the place on the run up to Christmas.



It is a Mecca for real ale enthusiasts with countless ale pubs within the famous walls. Clearly they are not really countless but probably 70 or so (that's a guess - there were 55 ale pubs a few years back and more bars have opened since).



The day started with the helping hand of a Liverpool victory at Wembley against Spurs. Can't be bad. Last year when we lost to them in Game 9 we had 13 points, this time up we've played 5 and have 15 points. Bloody excellent.



Had a lovely load of beers across countless (really this time as I can't recall them all) York pubs with several mates and it all ended up without any of us dancing on tables, falling over, falling asleep in the corner or any other embarrassing stuff - not even a kebab (though I did have a battered sausage with chips and neon green mushy peas - yum!).

Some of the pubs we got to that I do remember the name of included in no particular order: Brew York; House of Trembling Madness; Blue Bell; Hop (Ossett tap); Duke of York; the Wonky Donkey (aka the Three-Legged Mare); Old Starre Inn; Old White Swan. All nice pubs set in a beautiful and interesting city. Lovely stuff.

Well it's this chap's birthday weekend. I don't normally do much special on my birthday and certainly not parties since I was a kid. A couple of years ago I went to York on me tod and went to about 20 pubs over two days. Now that was pretty much ideal. Anyway this year it's York again but with a few mates. Should be good. Very good. Got to get to York early to get ensconced in the first Sky real ale pub we can find - for it's Spurs v Liverpool at 12:30. Really hope Liverpool can start the day off with a bang. Just for me of course.



Expect many pictures of pubs and beers on Twitter - until the battery dies on me phone.

Haven't changed a bit:

Had feedback from two of the Flash Dogs on Fergie Time and have made the decision to finish it based on their comments. Thanks to those guys for their time. Once I've finished it I will have to develop the tightest disclaimer ever to protect my ass if the story is ever to be released to the wild (look these guys are real, they're obviously in a parallel universe very close to own but clearly not our own etc).

And to repay the grace of these Flash Dogs I've volunteered to review a book from another Flash Dog. The Dogs are really producing stuff right now, aren't they?



Talking of reviewing I'm getting around to going through the photographs on my computer, the damn things are clogging it up. I had over 54k photos on it, and you can see above the effect on my Hard Drive. Have deleted 2k today, but I'll need to get on top of it and aim to at least knock a third off. I mean I can't even need 30k photos can I? The 52k photos apparently equates to 195GB. It'll take ages to go through it. If I can knock it down to 150GB in the first instance I'll have doubled the free space on the HD so it's got to be worth the time.



With respect to reading I've managed to catch up with a few books over the last four weeks and have gone from 6 to 3 books behind schedule so maybe I could achieve my original goal. That would require me to read about a book a week or more. That could be affected of course by reviewing and writing myself and maybe NaNo if I chose to go for it. Right now I'd be happy with reading 32 or so probably. After finishing another Pratchett yesterday I've moved on to another classic writerer with a Philip K. Dick, another Oxfam buy - 'Confessions of a Crap Artist'.

Today's #VSS365 was #Control so I wrote a wee bit of non-fiction for it referring to this amazing bit of space memorabilia I saw in Karaganda, Kazakhstan:


Back in the early 2000s I did some work on a project in Kazakhstan. It was the cold time of year. They only really have summer and winter on the steppe there. An autumn wardrobe or a spring catalogue would be the biggest of wastes there. Day time temperatures were circa -40C. But to be fair once it's below -20C anything lower doesn't really make much of a difference. If you're out in it and the wind can get to your skin then it feels like razor blades. Moral of the story. Stay in and out of the wind as much as possible.

Anyways, at one point I was in a city called Karaganda in the middle of Kazakhstan. It's an old coal mining area. In fact the original centre of the city has been destroyed following the collapse of the shallow workings there - it really is a bizarre sight. The hotel I was staying in was a grand affair. But no one goes to Karaganda and the only people there were us from the project.

You couldn't make some of this shit up, so I won't. There were about seven different salads on the menu. All consisted of tomato and cucumber and it seemed that the seven salads involved slicing the two ingredients in different creative ways. On the first night we were asked what drinks we would like with our meal. We all chose beer. The two waiters and then a third person came into the corner as they had a conflab. They came back. 'How many beers will you be wanting during and after the meal?' I think we settled around five or so. 'Okay, can you pay up front for that?' Yep, they had no beer and no money to buy any. Some poor bastard had to go out in the freezing night to get us beer (baring in mind it was -40 day time, it probably was at night too).

When the beer came it was warm. Couldn't chuffing believe it. They said the fridge in the hotel wasn't working very well (which was a worry for any meat based products but was of more concern re the beer). One guy pointed out that maybe they could just fill a couple of buckets with snow and that would do the job. They did, it did.



Karaganda is in the area of Kazakhstan of the Soviet space base, where the rockets have been sending up satellites and spacemen since the 1950s. And not just men but space women too. The first woman in space was Valentina Tereshkova who in June 1963 went up from here in Vostok 6 for 71 hours and circled the earth 48 times. The Soviets call sign for her on the flight was Seagull (Chaika) and that was what our hotel was called.



What was amazing when I asked about the name at reception was that the space pod that she returned to earth in was in the garden of the hotel. I eventually went to look for myself and ... yep, there it was decaying away. It was tiny from the outside, but when you looked in my god, it was hard to believe any person actually fitted inside it yet alone encircled the earth in the thing. There also appeared to be four Bakelite controls on it. All very Steampunk.

And below the whole thing was a pile of asbestos which was dripping from it. I really hope that by now it has been brought into a museum and/or restored and protected. Here's to the amazing seagull anyway, I'll drink a warm beer to her.

Strange week for me this one. There was a Liverpool CAMRA trip to Derby and I chose not to go. I am still pissed off with them that they've gone to a booking system which requires you to purchase a ticket on EventBrite in advance rather than just telling them that 'Yeah, I'll be there on the next trip' and then paying them on the day. It really does disenfranchise some of the older customers who never, and don't want to, buy things over the internet. Ho hum.

So I was off on Friday instead of Saturday. And I went for my bi-annual haircut (ok, not quite that bad) and then went to Southport to see me dad for a chat and a couple of pints in the always excellent Tap & Bottles. The beer was excellent there as always but the day was marred by some bad news. It's not for this place though.

The haircut was speedy and spot on. I do like these efficient Turks. A mother coming in with her daughter mid-haircut proclaiming loudly 'Can someone do my daughter's nose, please?' was a new one on me. By the time I left with my smart new cut the young girl was sat in the window with two long sticks up her nostrils. Like I said, a new one on me.



I'd finished reading the excellent 'Sapiens' by Yuval Noah Harari in the morning and started on David Landford's book about Josh Kirby's art 'The Cosmic Cornucopia'. I love Terry Pratchett's Discworld series and I love the covers that go with them - especially the Kirby ones. I was lucky enough to go to the Kirby exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery a few yers ago. Brilliant stuff. Anyway the haircut was quick and left me time to pop into Henry Bohn's second hand bookshop in search of SF or a Pratchett. There was less SF there than usual is there and no Terry Pratchett at all. So I walked downstairs disappointed, only to see a wee bookcase on the stairs which only had TP books in it. Result! Or was it? As I've not many left to get. I ended up consulting my own website to see my list of TP books before confirming that there was one there that I don't have on my shelf: 'Mort'



I knew I'd read it. But I've no idea where it's gone (or who has not returned it). Anyway, £2 later I've one less Pratchett to complete my set. In fact I've now just got six to get, namely:

• Soul Music
• Witches Abroad
• The Fifth Elephant
• The Last Hero
• The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents
• The Wee Free Men

I didn't have to get too far into Mort to confirm I had read it, for on page one it has my favourite Pratchetism ever, which I've paraphrased myself often:

'Scientists have calculated that the chance of anything so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one.

But magicians have calculated that million to one chances crop up nine times out of ten.'

I mean, come on. That is awesome, and completely right. Probably.

Class Song of the Day has continued unabated - it's a good job I like a lot of bands. With the latest being the wonderful Canadian band Barenaked Ladies who consistently record fab albums and are great live - although I last saw them many moons ago when they played in the Royal Court, Liverpool (so I guess that would be mid-1990s!).

Of all the bands and singers I've had so far in Year 2 there are only the Beatles and Warren Zevon who I haven't/can't seen live (although I did see Paul McCartney when he played Anfield in 2008).








The bands coming over the coming months will include a lot more bands that I haven't seen because I can't be everywhere or every-when.

It's my birthday week next week and whilst the No.1 when I was born was the Beatles 'Hey Jude' I won't be having the Beatles again next week, but I do have it all set up with one of my favourite bands from when I was a youngster. But that's next week and you'll have to wait to see who they are. In the meantime enjoy the songs from the Barenaked Ladies and all the other bands above with links on the CSOTD2 page.