www.mrcarapace.co.ukbit of a cheat, this one - here's one of the greatest short stories ever written, a gorgeous cameo of sadness and beauty glimpsed and remembered forever as a blessed wound. yes yes yes, i know that blesse means wound in French, that's why I said it, damn it. Anyway, it reminds me of that sense of sadness and gratitude you get wh…

www.mrcarapace.wordpress.comthis week's diversion is a tete a tete with Crazy Jane, an old folk witch who we can find in a Van Morrison song, a Grant Morrison comic, in poems by W B Yeats and Amiri Baraka, in Nick Cave and Skip James murder ballads and even in modern TV series like the brilliant Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (it's a little more nuanced that …

www.boneditch.wordpress.comA car crash that creates a saint.An abused child who becomes the quintessence of distrust.A playground that runs the world.The world's largest organism.The secret truth of bone disease.The witch who became a saint.The town where only psychopaths are allowed to buy homes.The literary festival at the end of the world...For …

music by Ed Smith - https://soundcloud.com/ed-smithwords by Ian Bird - www.mrcarapace.wordpress.com"Look over there, she said to me, passing me my drink, taking my money. I think they’re going to kill each other."I looked where she was pointing, out in the car park, but it was too dark already – I could only see the shapes, likes bones underwater, …

www.mrcarapace.wordpress.comi should be writing a horror story, but instead here are twenty minutes of words about Grendel, the demon of society's mediocrity, and how he inspires Batman, who needs a great movie right now...www.mrcarapace.wordpress.com저자 serial fantasist & novelist @MrCarapace

www.mrcarapace.wordpress.comThis time I’m sidestepping slightly to talk about two films I really enjoy, which I wrote about some time ago on my other website, www.mrcarapace.wordpress.com, and which I just stumbled over again – Ken Russell’s 1971 masterpiece with Oliver Reed, The Devils, and Luis Bunuel’s 1967 work of art Belle de Jour, starring Ca…

www.boneditch.wordpress.comIt's the start of the ends of the world. The madman has written a book about why everything always goes wrong, and it's going to change everything for the worse/better...Tonight’s story is the nineteenth, and also the first part of the third and final act of the story. Act I was the story of Eliot Rent and her friends and…

www.boneditch.wordpress.comThe war ended, so Margaret had no choice but to come home...She's been away for at least a decade, living a life of danger and significance, but now she's on her way home and these days she might just be another divorcee, another orphan. Summoned by her stepmother, Margaret steps into a world that means nothing to her, th…

www.boneditch.wordpress.comWhile I finish writing the next story, here are some words that came out of the panic attack I experienced reading Daphne du Maurier's wonderful novel My Cousin Rachel, and how they both reminded me of the amazing Alice Bradley Sheldon, who wrote one of the scariest short stories ever...For more excitable words about stuf…

www.boneditch.wordpress.comAnother short story from the Boneditch collection..."Have you ever been struck by lightning?""No.""I Have.""What happened?""I struck it back."His heart has been broken, and he doesn't think that's right. So then he meets God, the way people used to meet God, and suddenly he's inspired. Now he knows how to connect with the…

www.boneditch.wordpress.com(c) Ian Bird 2018Jessica is thirteen and all but lives in the local library. It's 1938 and the library is her only sanctuary from the responsibilities that are waiting for her around the next corner like she owes them money.But late one night she hears a scream from somewhere in her beloved library and now there are rumou…

www.boneditch.wordpress.com-a new standalone short story in the Boneditch project-Walker Took is a French speaking, English born, California beach bum, on the run from a marauding horde for a crime he probably committed. He's just fallen in love with a witch called Belinda Pain, who is going to traumatise some catastrophic awakening into him, over …

www.boneditch.wordpress.com(c) Ian Bird 2018a short story from the Boneditch anthology...Jon Tennant had never been so cold in his life. It was mid-December at midnight, and the rain that tore against him had in it slivers of ice and bone. His clothes had been rags before the storm started – now they were a sodden shroud. He would never be this col…

www.boneditch.wordpress.com"You took a mystery and made me want it..."A little girl with a butcher's shop in her brain and what her mad dog told her on a hot summer day.A happy-go-lucky vagrant living a carefree life on the road, a friend to everyone... an Emperor to everyone.God, I'm hungry, is it lunchtime yet? Who's for something off the bone?A …

www.boneditch.wordpress.comAs acrobats slowly unfolded themselves from the deep shadows of stage, turning then falling and leaping and flying faster and faster, around and around the ring, the Ring Mistress finally appeared before us, smiling broadly.They were all smiling broadly, as were we, but they had no faces, just bleached skulls whose rictus…

www.boneditch.wordpress.com"Beneath her raven-black hair, which rolled in waves like the bastard sea at night, was a bleached white skull. Deep within her three eye sockets I could make out the tiniest flecks of fire but otherwise all that was there was something that must have been dead for over a hundred years… Staring at me and smiling.I was sti…

www.boneditch.wordpress.comWelcome to my podcast: a series of horror, fantasy, thriller, romance short stories...Boneditch is my new novel – a weird anthology of kitsch mysteries and eldritch secrets about someone who’s perfect in every sense. It’s the post-mortem of my exquisite corpse of short stories stitched together into a patchwork monster: s…

www.boneditch.wordpress.comA standalone horror short story from the mysterious case files of Eliot Rent..."I have a friend who has assured me, credibly so, that the traces I left behind do not meet the legal definition of evidence. My friend is a good source on these matters. He sees things the way an enemy would, but he is always on my side..."Mee…

www.boneditch.wordpress.com"I don't think he appreciates exactly how prehistoric the insides of me are. It's not a crib down there, is it?"This is the story of how our hero, Kathryn Eliopoulos, picked a flower from her mother's garden and became something profane and potent. Why work for failed saints and grubby devils, when you can be a monster? N…

www.boneditch.wordpress.comAnother short story from the life of Kathryn Eliopoulos, who found a part of herself in a graveyard - something romantic and soulful and raging with a demented loathing for her boss and her life. Her boss wants her to close a deal, her boyfriend wants her to leave her job, Kathryn wants to understand that raging buzzing i…

www.boneditch.wordpress.comA good spot for new listeners to jump in...Here begins the secret history of Ketaki Eleison, and why she's so important to Boneditch. It begins with a daughter and her mother in a garden and then becomes a young woman and her lover in a cemetery... Far away on a deserted island with the person you might love, it's easy to…

www.boneditch.wordpress.comThe final part of Chapter Two...The Rag and Bone Man has come to the Highlands to trade information with a witch who lives on the beach. He has heard of a strange artefact and wants to learn more, but he might be asking questions that have difficult answers.Waiting for him are three people: one is searching for a lost fri…

www.boneditch.wordpress.comIntermission Time!I'm a bit behind with the latest gobbet of Boneditch, so here's a different kind of story to fill the slot...John Welt is utterly everyday. They only thing that marks him out is his slightly old fashioned taste and the treasure chest he keeps under his bed...…

www.boneditch.wordpress.comIt's the very end of the 31st December 1999 and a horde of multi-millionaire scum have gathered to see in the new millennium. Hiding among them are Michael and Belinda, who have two plans: (1) get as drunk as possible on fine wines, and(2) wait for the ApocalypseTheir plans unfold perfectly, but someone else has slithered…

www.boneditch.wordpress.comThe start of Chapter Two: "How To Live Happily And With Security For The Rest Of Your Very Long Life"Eliot Rent has a plan to get revenge on the Fiend who ruined her life - it involves ketamine, an apocalyptic virus and a mutilated devil...to be continued.저자 serial fantasist & novelist @MrCarapace

www.boneditch.wordpress.comHer life changed forever, Eliot Rent visits a solicitor and learns something impossible about her lost family. If there are answers, she is going to have to meet with Ketaki Eleison, a stranger who works for something called Boneditch...To Be Continued...저자 serial fantasist & novelist @MrCarapace

www.boneditch.wordpress.comEliot's life has been shattered by catastrophe. Michael watches - he's her housemate, he's her best friend's boyfriend, and he's sleeping with her. He's a good person, but he hasn't realised that Eliot has pulled him into the Boneditch along with her.저자 serial fantasist & novelist @MrCarapace

www.boneditch.wordpress.comThe first part of Boneditch, a serial novel in progress...They fall into the Boneditch in the dark, and they can never climb out again.The fall changes them, irreparably. Fractures them, breaks their bones. When those bones knit themselves back together, the skeleton is different. For some, that’s a fate worth than death,…