D Des Anges

Occasionally (often) I am gripped by the inane desire to do something very silly and experimental which uses up a lot of time and produces no impressive result. See: this blog, several books, most of my life, etc.  Often in the last decade or so, that something has been A Garment of some kind. Regular visitors to this blog will be aware that from time to time when I get my shit together…

Autonomous Press’s tenth Spoon Knife anthology, edited by Nick and Azzia Walker, deals in opposites. Youth and age, death and life, light and dark, and so on. It encompasses short fiction, poetry, and pieces which slip and slide across the boundary lines between forms and genres. And I’m in it, with my not-exactly-detective story, The Thought Farmer. Spoon Knife 10: Polarities is available from…

That’s right, once again, you get nothing from me for months and months and then suddenly three posts in quick succession. I am nothing if not predictable. Here, I come bearing an anthology! Brace yourselves: I have work, a funky little folktale to make you feel rotten about yourself and the state of the world, in War Monkey Publications’ From The Yonder V anthology, and you can buy the damn…

To celebrate the publication of Our Chives of Fame, I’m giving us all a little gift. Namely, I have decided that selling the print version of its sister publication, Our Chives of Shame, through online channels which take a massive cut of any given cover price and require me to charge everyone an absolutely stupid amount of money to so much as make 1p for all my work, is stupid, propping up Big…

Hot (in a very loose sense) on the heels of Our Chives of Shame, House of D Publications is proud to present the sister publication, Our Chives of Fame. Ever contemplated holding a séance to fix your electric car? Wondered what would happen if your Roomba unionised? Thought that maybe the best solution to a war would be mutual surrender? Our Chives of Fame has your back. There’s still something…

‘Tis the season, as we are fond of saying at this time of year. In this case ’tis the season, usually, where we look back on the highs and lows of the year past and reflect on our progress and setbacks and all those things that look super good on your LinkdIn profile, a thing I deleted recently because I had done nothing with it for six years and they were about to start scraping it to train…

Hit recently by the realisation that I had put out enough short stories individually to fill a full-length book, I sat down and undertook to: fill that full-length book. What can you expect from this delightful collection? Well, let’s check out the Table of Contents: The Renaka Device – alt-history/sci fiThe Terrible Forgiveness Of Michael Shale – historical/comedyIn The Trenches –…

Since I started submitting short stories and tracking the rejections, I’ve totalled 344 rejections. You can see for yourself what the ratio to acceptances is like; quite gruesome, but part of the point of flinging myself face-first into the wall of submissions like this over the last mumble years has been to desensitise the process and to reduce the degree to which “sorry, it’s not for us” feels…

Hello again. After manfully making myself the sole representative at my union for this year’s soggy Pride Parade in London, drinking too much and ripping my feet to shreds dancing in the basement of a very hot pub once again, I thought I’d crawl back to my much-neglected blog to share some of the Things I Have Made since the last time I updated in that vein. Thing 1: Mending Sometimes you…

Just a short one for now: my cute and fun sci fi short, Are You Thinking What We’re Thinking? is now available to read for free on the Trollbreath Magazine website even if you’re not a subscriber (although you should be! They’re good). They’ve also got a tonne of other excellent short stories in their short story section, where else, if you’re having difficulty with the existence of Monday and…

Rejoice! For the trans and disabled authors and artists of the meat4meat zine are now available to peruse for those who were unable to back the fundraiser! GO FORTH AND PURCHASE meat4meat is an illustrated short story anthology dedicated to exploring body horror by those who know it best. It is a study in the relationship between discrepancy in self and body,…

An unfortunate side-effect of my friendship is that I will occasionally foist upon the sufferers of this condition things I’ve made, partly as a way of demonstrating my considerable affections and partly, let’s be honest, to try to reduce the amount of Stuff which accumulates like dust in my house. In recent months things I’ve made is a category which has expanded to include a truly distressing…

Direct from the Backerkit promo itself: meat4meat is an illustrated body horror anthology featuring works by transgender and disabled authors and artists, to celebrate the close relationship that our communities have with the genre of body horror. It features seventeen gripping short stories of body horror, ranging from debut authors such as Lorelei Thee to masters of the craft such as Joe…

Over on my, um, my “uncreative” blog, if you will: A not-so-short guide to Art Deco London Something to read while you try to avoid talking politics with your family (if you have the good luck to not be having Family Time or Christmas etc, it’s there for your commute).

Man, a lot has happened recently. Some good, some bad, some miserable-in-service-of-betterment. I am a homeowner. I also don’t have a gallbladder anymore, something which will be a great relief, I’m sure, when I’m far enough past surgery to like, take off the dressings. And it’s my birthday next week and everything. But you’re not here for that nonsense (well, some of you might be). You want to…

All is the hell of moving (boxes, boxes, bags and boxes), but I am required to tell you that Baffling Magazine has brought out a compendium of stories from their third year of publishing, among which is my Grown Gown. So if you enjoyed that, like Baffling Magazine, would just like some super short stories for your commute / bathroom / work breaks, or are wracking your brains for Christmas…

Night transforms the world. Owls and bats claim the sky from songbirds, nocturnal predators prowl beneath cover of darkness, and cloying shadows grow thick enough to swallow a scream. As the saying goes: people aren’t truly afraid of the dark—they fear what could be in the darkness with them.The twenty-two authors featured within the pages of Carpe Noctem descended into these midnight waters to…