Various Variety

Being, in the main, a round-up of random stuff from the last week. It’s been one of those weeks.

• Life is so a Cabaret – spent the weekend in London watching various varieties of cabaret performance. Most especially lovely to see Miss Leggy Pee taking her unique brand of charming on the road to such exotic locations as Vauxhall and Stockwell, but other treats included the sharp-tongued talents of Dusty Limits and Myra DuBois and the rock and roll antics of Holy Ghost Revival. On the other hand, there was a woman with a dodgy French accent talking to a penguin puppet and attempting to play a teapot through a hose.
• For Art’s Sake – and squeezed into the interstices between the cabaret we enjoyed the weans’ cakefest and consumed more Bacon at the Tate than can possibly be healthy. Not sure about the Turner Prize though. The common reaction seemed to be: “pile of toss”, and who am I to disagree.
• Treat him well, he is your Brother (for a day) – Monday night was the annual Brother For A Day variety event in support of the Terence Higgins Trust. More cabaret, more variety, a new act from Miss Pee and a new look for the old fella, but he’s not fooling anyone. And I won a tarot reading in the raffle – which will be interesting.
• I’ve heard the word and the word is DOG – Wednesday was spent at the always entertaining WordDogs. Really nice to see new readers taking part, and some awesome stories being performed. Hopefully the next one will be soon.
• Pirate Music – my infamous pirate-musical story (What? It’s a pirate story written as a musical! What’s so hard to get?) is FREE to download from Keep To The Code – the official fan site for Pirates Of The Caribbean. It’s an exclusive tie-in taster for Fast Ships, Black Sails the stunning new anthology edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer, and featuring  exciting piratey stories by Michael Moorcock, Naomi Novik, Garth Nix and many other great writers. The indefatigable Vandermeers have been giving us a sequence of genius anthologies over the last couple of years, and this one looks every bit as entertaining as the rest. Stick it on your Christmas list now – it’ll go nice with the parrot and the festive hamper of ships biscuits and grog.  (Ps. Drop me a comment here if you like the story – I’m genuinely interested in reader reaction to this one).

• Further extra pub news also – Last but not least, there’s a whisper that my story Spy Vs Spy will surface soon in Interzone. Shh! Tell no-one, you never know who’s watching on these internets.