Rhys Hughes

rhysaurus said:
Thanks, NJHorror! Hope you'll like them!

Anton Arcane: my Gothic sensibilities ended up getting fused with other kinds of sensibility, such as magic realism, philosophical fantasy, postmodern whimsy, ironic satire, etc; the result was a brand new molecule in which the Gothic only contributes one atom. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it...

But truly, didn't the Gothic always have a strong vein of absurdism in it? Wasn't the Gothic genre always fundamentally absurd? Anyone who doubts this assertion needs only to read The Castle of Otranto, Vathek or The Manuscript Found in Saragossa, three of the greatest key texts of the early Gothic 'movement'. All are very Gothic and very absurd at the same time.

One problem is that some people think that "Absurdism" is somehow equivalent to "silliness" or "nonsense"... But it isn't. The kind of Absurdism I like is the serious kind, the same type that informs and controls such works as Kafka's The Trial or Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita or Mutis's Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll, etc, etc. There's no sillness in that kind of Absurdism.
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Hello, Rhys! Yes, I understand what you mean. I'm not trying to put you down at ALL by saying that... I was hoping you'd understand my... sarcasm?

Did you notice the avatar; I'm trying to poke fun? Do you get the avatar? It actually ended up meaning something besides the couple things I was meaning to joke about.
 
No worries, Anton, I don't get offended easily. Not unless it suits my purposes, which in this case it didn't! :-)

Your previous avatar was excellent. Sorry I didn't mention this before! Corto Maltese meets Adam Ant! :D
 
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The Harpies are going into the post!
 
rhysaurus said:
No worries, Anton, I don't get offended easily. Not unless it suits my purposes, which in this case it didn't! :-)

Your previous avatar was excellent. Sorry I didn't mention this before! Corto Maltese meets Adam Ant! :D
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That's awesome- you figured it out... Corto and the Ants! ha ha... I was cracking myself up when I was making it... really!

Good wishes to you, Rhys. Thanks.

A
 
I well recall recommending this first collection by RH for Ray's consideration many years ago, and Rhys writing warmly in my copy of the original edition--

"to Mark Samuels, without whom this book would not have existed."

Or words to that effect.

I wonder if, back then, he was less opportunistic and not so much of an actor playing a part for his own advantage and in pursuit of imaginary enemies, as appears to be the case now, by his own admission. Not that anything he says is not later open to self-qualification according to his own personal vagaries of course.

Mark S.
 
Mark-- The last part of what you wrote seemed a bit unclear, or were you purposely trying to be unclear, trying to make a point as pertains to your subject? People probably should be able to make valid and hopefully constructive criticisms. The girl I used to go out with used to use sarcasm so frequently that it got to be pretty unbearable. I know she was doing it to bolster her suffering self-esteem. In hindsight- despite the fact it was hardly constructive- I know that some of it was legitimately directed at insensitive things I had done.
 
"To Mark Samuels, without whom this book would not have existed."
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I did indeed write that. And it's true, the book wouldn't have existed without Mark Samuels.

I must stress, however, that I'm probably one of the least opportunistic writers in our corner of the writing world. The very first message I ever left on an internet forum (back in 1998) was a mordant but powerful disparagement of Stephen Jones, the editor. And that's the way I've proceeded ever since.

The evidence is there for all to see. I'd rather be accused of something a little less improbable, thanks.

As for my "personal vagaries", I lavish lots of care and affection on them, and always have. Don't go criticising my vagaries! I hope to enter them in a competition when they are big enough.
 
Worming the Harpy exists, as a proper book. Yippee!

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My latest blog entry is about this... With apologies to Rodgers and Hammerstein... Hey, they were robots, weren't they?

Regards, R!
 
The hardback edition of The Brothel Creeper is now available... The hardback is a limited edition (only 100 copies) and has been signed and numbered by me... A full listing of the contents of this book (and all my other books) can be found on my Aardvark Caesar website here.

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Personally I think this is my best collection to date; and for anyone who doesn't like wordplay and the more whimsical sort of fantasy, I'm happy to report that the stories in this volume are almost entirely serious, sober and dark. It's probably my most "Ligottian" book in terms of mood and vision and (sometimes) language.

The hardback edition includes a bonus tale, 'Cracking Nuts With Jan Hammer', making a total of 21 stories. The earliest piece in the collection dates from 1994 and the most recent from 2010. The book is available from Amazon and many other bookstores or direct from the publisher, Gray Friar Press here.

Thanks!
 
Darn! I've already received the paperback version of The Brothel Creeper. If I had known about the bonus story in the hardcover previously, I would have picked that edition up instead. :confused:
 
Oops! Sorry Freyasfire!

I'm quite inept and disorganised at announcing stuff properly, even though I seem to be plugging myself everywhere like some sort of strutting fool...

I can always email you that bonus tale (and this applies to anyone else who bought the paperback), if you really want to read it and don't mind reading it that way.

Regards and hope you like the book!
 
Two items of news.

(1) Tomorrow my romanti-cynical showcase collection, Link Arms With Toads! is published by Chômu Press. It's available from various online bookstores and elsewhere and here's the link to the publisher's webpage devoted to this book.

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(2) My book of whimsical fantasy stories set in Old Spain is now available for pre-order from Ex Occidente Press here. It's a deluxe limited edition designed for book connoisseurs.

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I have just blogged about this volume here...

Thanks for listening, folks!

P.S. I have nearly finished mailing out all the copies of the hardback edition of The Brothel Creeper. Anyone still waiting for their copy should get it very soon.
 
Great! For the prize draw I've decided this:

A signed copy of Toads! with a poem or story written especially for the winner in which they are the main character.

And because I sometimes write by hand as well as directly onto a computer, maybe a handwritten manuscript copy of one (or more) of the stories in Toads! (if I can find any among all my papers in all my boxes amid all my clutter).

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Remember, folks:

"Whether you are a ghost, a robot or just an apeman, you can always link arms with toads!"
 
I've decided to put one of my (many) story cycles up on my blogsite, partly because I'm finding the stories that comprise it so bloody difficult to get published anywhere. Seems there's almost no market at all for this kind of absurdist fantasy...

So far there are three stories in the cycle. 'The Porcelain Pig' was written last year, but 'The Rotten Otter' is my most recent story (finished two days ago); as for 'The Paradoxical Pachyderms', that was the story I wrote in the window of Waterstones for the Crawley Wordfest back in April...

Others will follow in due course and I'll add them as I write them.

This sequence is meant to be very lighthearted: it's deliberately very silly, as silly as I can make it, and exists just for amusement. But silliness doesn't preclude genuine invention. My influences were humorists like W.E. Bowman (The Ascent of Rum Doodle), J.B. Morton ("Beachcomber") Spike Milligan, Maurice Richardson, etc.

There was a particular kind of British quasi-surreal comedy writing that lasted from the 1940s to the 1970s that just doesn't seem to be popular any more. It's a tradition I adore.

The stories can be found here:

Hogwash and Bum Note -- the series



Hope you enjoy -- even though horror elements don't really feature in them...

Thanks!
 
As a way of generating some much needed pennies -- perhaps enough to enable me to buy a fistful of plums or even half a loaf of bread when I'm stuck in a foreign land later this year -- I have decided to issue my own ebook.

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The Tellmenow Isitsöornot features exactly one hundred stories, most of which have never been published before (or were published in very obscure small-press magazines with tiny print runs back in the 1990s).

Ghosts, werewolves, talking brass heads, captured moons, mechanical men, alchemy, magic and transformation, all these and more rub shoulders in a minor Decameron of devilish delight!

It's available right now for download from Smashwords for $4.99 (just under 5 cents per story)... And the first 6 and a half stories are available as a free sample, if you'd like to check them out first...

Click here if you are interested...

If you do buy it, you'll be doing me a big service, as I'll actually receive 80% of the price -- unlike a previous ebook of mine called Better the Devil, which was issued by an outfit that specialised in embezzling every cent earned by its writers...

Thanks for listening!
 
Today, I posted my review of Link Arms With Toads! published by Chomu Press. Check it out here, if you so desire:

Review: Link Arms With Toads! by Rhys Hughes

I'm sorry to say I wasn't very well acquainted with his work before reading this collection. It served as a great introduction, and I will definitely be keeping an eye out for more of his stories in the future.
 
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