Elephant Words Launched!

an eye out | flash fiction | ongoing saga | work in progress 14:58 16/07/07

Dear readers,

You know how much I already love you all right now?

Well, imagine how much more I will love you when you go over to www.elephantwords.co.uk and start reading?

And imagine how much more you will love me!

Elephant Words is a new website that will feature six fresh and inventive writers interpreting and being inspired by one new image every week. New writing will be posted every day, and there are no limits on the styles or genres that the contributors can use, so it will be worth visiting regularly to see what they have come up with!

To start reading new and exciting writing, go here:
http://elephantwords.co.uk

To find out more about the Elephant Words project, go here: http://elephantwords.co.uk/about/

And to start giving feedback (which we would love to hear) go here:
http://elephantwords.co.uk/forum/

All of the contributors are very enthused about working on the project, and some weeks, they will be worked pretty hard (just look at the schedule over there!), so please go along and offer them your support.

No Comments

Sherlock Holmes Re-Invented

images | work in progress 3:01 14/04/07

Warren Ellis asked The Engineers to re-imagine Sherlock Holmes… And I don’t draw, but it piqued my curiosity, largely because, well, how do you reinvent Sherlock Holmes without either staying too close to the original or Basil Rathbone, or going too far off the original (and it’s worth noting that almost any “genius detective savant” concept, such Monk or Psych, is basically a revisiting of the same basic idea, with a twist!)

So I doodled this out, based on some things that were occuring to me while looking at other people’s awesome efforts.

There’s a kind of “not too much text” rule on the forum, so I’m going to just meander a bit about the subject here.
(more…)

1 Comment

Nanowrimo uh-oh!

ongoing saga | work in progress 18:16 30/11/06

Just a quick post because I know a couple of you wanted to know this as soon as possible: At around 4.30pm, today, I registered a word count of 51,021 words, which means I completed the Nanowrimo challenge with 1,021 words to spare. I am a Nanowrimo winner.

Thank you to those of you that have been asking after my progress, and a bigger thank you to those of you who have had to put up with me being absent and absent-minded for the last thirty days. Normal service will be resumed shortly, whatever that means.

I’m back!

And now I am going to go and sleep. For a week.

No Comments

Broken Narratives

flash fiction | ongoing saga | work in progress 22:40 22/08/06

The two “Life Isn’t A Box Of Chocolates, It’s A Rucksack Full Of Shit” pieces are the first of a new category I’m starting, called Broken Narratives. This category is going to be reserved for pieces of writing that I’ve unearthed that, for some reason, I don’t think I’m ever going to finish, but can’t find it in my heart to discard. (more…)

[3] Comments

Life Isn’t A Box of Chocolates, It’s a Rucksack Full of Shit 1

flash fiction | work in progress 22:38 22/08/06

At lunchtime the weather was fine, but now it looks like there’s a storm coming.

The fact is that it hasn’t been the same since the hospital.
She still fetches the kids, smiles as she tells them stories about being grown up, or settles them in front of the telly while she does the dishes, to make it easier for mum to do dinner when she gets in.
Dad still comes home around the same time as mum, but he always wants to get in the shower first thing, wash off the garage before anyone has to kiss him, so there’s still the half hour of chatting at the kitchen table, the two women of the house, before he swoops down the stairs and fills the house with his booming laugh. (more…)

No Comments

Life Isn’t A Box of Chocolates, It’s a Rucksack Full of Shit 2

flash fiction | work in progress 22:36 22/08/06

“One of the clients suggested that he might kill himself today.”
“Really? Which one?” (more…)

No Comments

Recent Posts

Found Objects

  • The guy with the cock-piercing

    I once knew this guy. He was an unexceptional guy - a little geeky, and a lot loud, but not prone to particularly deep thought, or certainly not anything ground-breaking or controversial. He’d been signed off sick for a while with depression or some-such, and for all his noisy bluster and inability to let anyone else finish a sentence, it was fairly clear to anybody who cared to look that he was a pretty nervy guy.

    The only really unusual thing about the guy was that he had a pierced cock, and like many similar cultural burps, this fact became less interesting to anyone else in direct proportion to how transparently attention-seeking the initial motive behind doing it became.

    This is how a typical situation would play out. Bear in mind I’m paraphrasing, and may be conflating details for effect.

    The guy would walk into a room and ostentatiously announce his presence, by being blustery and loud. People would acknowledge him with an enthusiasm in direct relation to how well they knew and liked him, whether their attention was already taken up elsewhere, and whether or not they were just trying to have a quiet night.

    Depending on the response, he would do something else noisy, until at the very least, most people knew he was there.

    Then, after a while, regardless of what other conversations were going on, he would find a way to mention his pierced cock.

    “Did you see Episode 1?” A person would say.
    “Yeah, it was shit.” Someone would respond.
    “Yeah. It’s even shitter the fourth and fifth times.” The first person would continue.
    “…God, people are always going on about my pierced cock.” Our hero would loudly interject.
    “Hm.” One of the other people around the table would say, tactfully. “Still, looking forward to the second Matrix movie. It should be a treat. After all, that first one was lots of fun.”
    “I mean, ALWAYS. It’s like they’ve never heard about cock piercings before. God, people, don’t go on about it, you know? It’s just a piercing. In my cock. It’s no big deal.” The guy would continue.
    “Right. Yeah.” Somebody would say, feet shuffling. “So…”
    “You know I’ve got my cock pierced, right?”
    “Uuuhm. Oh.” The speaker would look frantically around the other people at the table, and finding no refuge, would take the leap. “Really? So… you’ve got… your cock pierced?”

    The guy with the pierced cock would roll his eyes dramatically, and say “Oh, god, come on. It’s just a cock piercing. It’s just life, you know? Why is everybody so fucking interested in it? Jesus, people are sad, if the only thing they’ve got to get excited about in their mundane little lives is judging someone just for being different, and having a little imagination. Why can’t people just mind their own business and let people like me do what we want with our cocks. It isn’t hurting anyone. It’s just personal expression.”

    “Oh… kay.” Someone would say, sheepishly, absently scratching at their shirt. Maybe their nipple ring was chafing… we’ll never know.

    “It’s like I can’t even go out any more.” The rant would continue. “The other night, I was in this place, just minding my own business, having a drink, and some girls I’d never met before begged me out of the blue to see my cock piercing. So I was like ‘fucking hell, okay, jesus, if it’ll shut you up’, and got up on the table and showed them all my cock. You know, to stop them going on about it.” There would be a pause, in which it’d feel like he was almost challenging someone to talk about something else, his fingers twitching ever so slightly near his zipper.

    Nobody would say anything for a bit. Then conversation would slowly start to get back to normal.

    Then, suddenly:
    “Fuck, okay, if it’ll shut you up, you can see it.”
    And the sound of a zipper.

    For some reason, and I have genuinely, sincerely no idea why, that memory, about a person of great noise and fury that ultimately signified nothing, has been on my mind all day today, so I thought I’d share it with you.

    03/12/10


  • Honest Comic Names

    Chris Sims, ladies and gentlemen…


    03/12/10

  • Evidence of the demise of purchased music is everywhere to be seen, except for one place: the statistics.
    Interesting article about the music industry @ the Guardian

    03/12/10

Digital Breadcrumbs

Recent Comments