You Don’t Have To Watch This, But I Hope You Do

One of my stories, You Don’t Have To Read This, But I Hope You Do, has been chosen to appear in this weekend’s Liars’ League live literature event, Together And Apart. It’s being performed by Martine McMenemy, and can be watched live, along with four other stories, this weekend on their facebook channel, on Sunday 14th February, from 7pm.

If you join that group you should get sent an invite to the live show when it’s about to begin, hopefully.

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Notes:

1. This is the second of my stories to be read at a Liars’ League event.
2. The first one was The Reading, or Performance Anxiety, in November 2016
3. Where it was read wonderfully by Peter Kenny

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Patreon subscribers get not just early access to content and also the occasional gift, but also my eternal gratitude. Which I'm not sure is very useful, but is certainly very real.

(Ko-fi contributors probably only get the gratitude I'm afraid, but please get in touch if you want more).

Thank you!


A full accounting of the one hundred and fifty tales that make up the entirety of the thousand and one tales

A Thousand And One Tales was my long term, multi-part writing project, that was supposed to encompass a thousand and one tales over twenty years, but in the end fizzled out at a hundred and fifty and about three years or maybe four. Which is still probably more than was necessary.

Anyway, here is a great big list of all of them, for anybody so inclined to read them again, or for the first time, or not at all. It’s okay, it’s over now.

Tale #1: The Unhappy Bride
Tale #2: Wun, Mun and Undun
Tale #3: The Cat Wife
Tale #4: To Follow A Cat
Tale #5: Lonely Isobel

Tale #6: The Farmer’s Daughters
Tale #7: The Woman Who Was Granted Her Wish
Tale #8: The Three Wishes
Tale #9: The Saddest King of All
Tale #10: The Old Lady And The Three Brothers

Tale #11: The Old Lady And The Thief
Tale #12: The Old Woman Who Lived In The Woods
Tale #13: God, The Devil, And The Man Upon The Road
Tale #14: The Jealous Lord
Tale #15: (fragment)

Tale #16: The Man Who Made Himself A Wife
Tale #17: The Woman Who Lived Alone In The Woods
Tale #18: The King And His Weeping Wife
Tale #19: The Three Doors And The Fourth
Tale #20: (fragment)

Tale #21: The Wolves In The Woods
Tale #22: A Long Winter’s Night
Tale #23: Old Tales Are Made New In The Telling
Tale #24: The Lunar Queen
Tale #25: The King And The Light

Tale #26: The Seven Sisters
Tale #27: The Three Sorrowful Sisters
Tale #28: The Wolf In The Woods
Tale #29: The Wolf In The Woods
Tale #30: The King’s Daughter And The King’s Son

Tale #31: The castle was a prison in a sea of untouched snow
Tale #32: The Grief Stricken King
Tale #33: The Offered Daughter And The Promised Sons
Tale #34: The Lonely Heart
Tale #35: The Lonely Man’s Tale

Tale #36: The Old Woman’s Tale
Tale #37: To Lose Your Faith
Tale #38: The Idle Wish
Tale #39: The town, the forest, the past
Tale #40: Methods Of Torture, Methods Of Death (extract)

Tale #41: (fragment)
Tale #42: The Bear In The Cage
Tale #43: The Girl In The Bear
Tale #44: The Falling
Tale #45: The Floating

Tale #46: (fragment)
Tale #47: The Old Lady And The Woodcutter
Tale #48: The Old Lady And The Crows
Tale #49: The Innkeeper And The Woman
Tale #50: The Stolen Child (A Tale Told In Tales)

Tale #51: The Cat In The Graveyard
Tale #52: The Silk Gloves
Tale #53: A Finger For A Favour
Tale #54: The Search For Lost Things
Tale #55: The Forgetful Prince And The Regretful Bride

Tale #56: In The Woods In The Winter
Tale #57: The Thaw
Tale #58: The Tree
Tale #59: (fragment)
Tale #60: The Lure

Tale #61: (fragment)
Tale #62: Lessons For My Children
Tale #63: And We Went To War
Tale #64: Memorial For The Executed Generals Of The Siege Of Colchester
Tale #65: And In Their Ships They Sailed Out Across The Sea

Tale #66: The Silver Ship
Tale #67: The Fountain
Tale #68: The Drunken Sailor
Tale #69: The Swift
Tale #70: The Crow

Tale #71: The Crow Tree
Tale #72: Our paths trace out behind us
Tale #73: (fragment)
Tale #74: The Woman In The Woods
Tale #75: The Woods In The Woman

Tale #76: Of Wolves And Women
Tale #77: The Wolf And The Girl
Tale #78: On Hansel And Gretel, And Horror
Tale #79: Trail Of Breadcrumbs
Tale #80: A Labyrinth of Streets

Tale #81: How to escape from every maze in the world
Tale #82: Ariadne’s Web
Tale #83: Above the clouds, beneath the sun
Tale #84: The Fairy Tale Heart
Tale #85: Married Hearts

Tale #86: (blue plaque on ruined wall)
Tale #87: To Follow A Child
Tale #88: To Ponder Infinity
Tale #89: The Poor Woman
Tale #90: The Woman Who Lived In The Woods

Tale #91: The King’s Wives
Tale #92: The Morning Birds Free The Soul, The Night Ones Take Them
Tale #93: A circle, whispering time
Tale #94: Beneath the weeping willow she sat down and wept
Tale #95: In The Garden Between

Tale #96: On her shoulders, ravens (a dream of judgement)
Tale #97: The Lord And His Angel
Tale #98: The Woman Of Small Miracles
Tale #99: The Protection of Bees
Tale #100: Old Hope

Tale #101: A Story In The Afternoon (alternate, expanded, 2020 version: A Story In The Afternoon)
Tale #102: You Don’t Have To Read This, But I Hope You Do
Tale #103: Lavenham Ghost Story
Tale #104: A Forlorn Appearance
Tale #105: Beneath A Ceaseless Sky

Tale #106: To Be Kept Safe
Tale #107: The House At Dusk
Tale #108: The Woman In The Bookshop
Tale #109: To Stroke A Hedgehog
Tale #110: To Lose A Beard

Tale #111: The Wooden Man
Tale #112: The Sad Tale Of Lonesome George
Tale #113: The Unfairness Of Being
Tale #114: The King In Red, The Queen In Yellow, The People Clad In Rags
Tale #115: A Short History Of A Minor Kingdom

Tale #116: The Third Dream Of The Waiting Prince, In His Time Of Seclusion, In The High Palace Of Eternal Solitude, Above The Clouds Of The Empire’s Reality, Beneath The Moons Of The Empire’s Imagination
Tale #117: The Eighth Dream Of The Waiting Prince, In His Time Of Seclusion, In The High Palace Of Eternal Solitude, Above The Clouds Of The Empire’s Reality, Beneath The Moons Of The Empire’s Imagination
Tale #118: The Fortieth Dream Of The Waiting Prince, In His Time Of Seclusion, In The High Palace Of Eternal Solitude, Above The Clouds Of The Empire’s Reality, Beneath The Moons Of The Empire’s Imagination
Tale #119: Little Sparrow
Tale #120: While The Peasants Tended Their Trees

Tale #121: Between The Hills, Beyond The Waves
Tale #122: The Dogs
Tale #123: (fragment)
Tale #124: A Dream Upon The Pyre
Tale #125: Reflections Of A Pale Moon

Tale #126: (blue plaque above nondescript door)
Tale #127: To Forget, To Forget
Tale #128: Song Of The Data Miners
Tale #129: The Playgrounds Of Our Youth
Tale #130: On Bluebeard (excerpt)

Tale #131: The Swan (A Morality Tale In Miniature)
Tale #132: The Cormorant In History
Tale #133: The Three Sons
Tale #134: The Three Wives
Tale #135: What Is A Child Worth?

Tale #136: The Bull And His Bride, or The Maid And Her Man (fragment)
Tale #137: The Snow Daughter, or The Voice Beneath The Snow
Tale #138: A Mother’s Love
Tale #139: A Quiet Revolt
Tale #140: All I Know Is That I Am Not You

Tale #141: If You Describe Each Moment Of A Person’s Life, It Becomes A List Of Crimes, An Endless Recitation of Horrors, A Biblical Judgement Upon Their Worth
Tale #142: The Ship Sailed Into The Harbour
Tale #143: The Emperor’s Zoo
Tale #144: The King In His Castle
Tale #145: The Ogre’s Boots

Tale #146: Four Tiny Tales
Tale #147: The Toymaker
Tale #148: The Man Who Wept Too Much
Tale #149: The Woman Who Lived In The Woods
Tale #150: The Man Who Left

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Notes:

1. The tales can mostly be read in any order, but a couple come in pairs – Tales #28 and #29 are two versions of the same story; Tale #43 follows on directly from Tale #42; Tales #116, #117 and #118 are all from the same (larger, unpublished) piece; and Tales #133 and #134 are two parts of the same story.

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Support An Accumulation Of Things

If you like the things you've read here please consider subscribing to my patreon or my ko-fi.

Patreon subscribers get not just early access to content and also the occasional gift, but also my eternal gratitude. Which I'm not sure is very useful, but is certainly very real.

(Ko-fi contributors probably only get the gratitude I'm afraid, but please get in touch if you want more).

Thank you!


Places In Space: Volume 2

Places In Space is an episodic ultra lo-fi science fiction serial detailing a voyage of discovery through the solar system and beyond. New episodes will appear here every Monday, for ever and ever and ever (or, more accurately, until I run out of new episodes, around Christmas time or Easter or somewhen).

The first thirty episodes are available as an exciting ebook (entitled Places In Space: Volume 1) either for free or for money, whatever you want, at the links below:

Places In Space Volume 1 (pdf)
Places In Space Volume 1 (itunes)
Places In Space Volume 1 (amazon)

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Notes:

1. The various episodes of Places In Space: Volume 2 were written between October 2019 and September 2020
2. The various episodes of Places In Space: Volume 1 were written between May 2019 and June 2019
3. The various episodes of Places In Space: Volume 3 have not yet been written or conceived at all
4. Also if you like Places In Space you should read Destination: Mars, because it’s similar, better

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Support An Accumulation Of Things

If you like the things you've read here please consider subscribing to my patreon or my ko-fi.

Patreon subscribers get not just early access to content and also the occasional gift, but also my eternal gratitude. Which I'm not sure is very useful, but is certainly very real.

(Ko-fi contributors probably only get the gratitude I'm afraid, but please get in touch if you want more).

Thank you!


Fifteen Monsters All In A Row

A couple of years ago, my niece (then 5) and my nephew (who was 2), wanted to design a computer game, so we designed a computer game. Then I spent so long getting round to actually making it that now she’s 7, and he’s 4. But at least it got made, so I’m not that terrible after all. Just quite slow.

So here’s Fifteen Monsters All In A Row (It’s made in TWINE so should work in pretty much any web browser).

Now Fifteen Monsters All In A Row is a game about fifteen monsters, all in a row. Can you make your way past them and reach the end? And more importantly, will you do it nicely, or horribly? It is, I suppose, up to you.

This game contains 15 monsters (all in a row), several secret monsters (occasionally in a row), multiple solutions to every problem (almost), some exciting stories (occasionally), at least two jokes, and even a super secret special ending.

And also a mystery mon.

Estimated Playthrough Time: 10 minutes
Estimated Replayability Factor: Infinite

Fifteen Monsters All In A Row (an adventure game by Florence, Patrick and David)


CREDITS

Fifteen Monsters All In A Row

A game about monsters.

Game Design by Florence and David
Game Programming by David
Monster Designs And Descriptions by David, Florence, Patrick, and Julie
Stories by Florence and David

(This exciting monster isn’t in the game, but is standing on a list of secrets, or maybe spoilers, from the game. So that’s why he’s here.)

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Notes:

1. This was designed in 2018, and made in 2019, and then bugfixed in 2020
2. No one knows who the mystery mon is
3. Or how it got there
4. Or what it’s doing there
5. But it is there
6. Somewhere

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Support An Accumulation Of Things

If you like the things you've read here please consider subscribing to my patreon or my ko-fi.

Patreon subscribers get not just early access to content and also the occasional gift, but also my eternal gratitude. Which I'm not sure is very useful, but is certainly very real.

(Ko-fi contributors probably only get the gratitude I'm afraid, but please get in touch if you want more).

Thank you!


The New Brothers Grimm

Somehow my A Thousand And One fairy tales project has reached Tale #100 today, and to celebrate that I’ve decided to make some new tales explicitly out of old ones, rather than just sort of generally out of old ones.

And so, in The New Brothers Grimm, I take sentences, paragraphs, and fragments of original Brothers Grimm tales, and then re-assemble them into something new.

The First New Tale
The Second New Tale
The Third New Tale
The Fourth New Tale
The Fifth New Tale
The Sixth New Tale
The Seventh New Tale
The Eighth New Tale
The Ninth New Tale
The Tenth New Tale
The Eleventh New Tale
The Twelfth New Tale
The Thirteenth New Tale

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Notes:

1. All of these were made in February and March 2020
2. They were all made using sentences from the Jack Zipes translations used in The Complete Fairy Tales collection, published in 2007 by Vintage.
3. Various minor changes to nouns, tenses, names, etc, were made to keep things consistent.
4. In a similar way to the In The Terminals Of Minraud trilogy of Burroughs cut-ups I made last year.
5. Which I thought might be interesting at the time
6. But which proved not to be interesting at all
7. To anyone
8. But me.

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Support An Accumulation Of Things

If you like the things you've read here please consider subscribing to my patreon or my ko-fi.

Patreon subscribers get not just early access to content and also the occasional gift, but also my eternal gratitude. Which I'm not sure is very useful, but is certainly very real.

(Ko-fi contributors probably only get the gratitude I'm afraid, but please get in touch if you want more).

Thank you!